iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Stuff you perhaps don't know: "Ciao" comes from Venetian "s'ciao", literally "[I am your] slave". From Latin "sclavus" (schiavo in modern Italian). Meaning is more "at your service". Same root as "servus", common greeting in Southern Germany and Austria.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

E aí, beleza? I made some graphs using data from yesterday's election in Brazil: here the vote share of Bolsonaro junior plotted by %white, %evangelical, and income. Units are 5000+ municipalities. More here: alexandreafonso.substack.com/p/who-voted-...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

These are the most common family names in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. www.rts.ch/info/suisse/...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I made a small visualisation of the birthplace and nation represented of players at the World Cup. Stunning 96(!) players born in France. You can play with it here: claude.ai/public/artif...

Network diagram on a dark green background titled "The Birthplace Map: World Cup 2026 Squads," with the subtitle "node size = degree (players + countries connected)." Gold circles represent the 48 World Cup nations and smaller grey-green circles represent countries that only supplied players without fielding their own team, positioned roughly according to real-world geography (Americas on the left, Africa and Europe in the center, Asia and Oceania on the right). Curved green lines connect birth countries to the nations players represent, with thicker lines indicating more players. France is the largest node by far, connected to 15 countries totaling 76 players, including thick lines to Algeria, Haiti, Senegal, Congo DR, and Côte d'Ivoire. The Netherlands is the second-largest hub, with an especially thick line to Curaçao (26 players). Other notable hubs include Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco, and the United Kingdom (split into England and Scotland). A legend at the bottom explains the gold/grey node colors and the line-width scale; a footer credits the source as worldcup.csv, 1,248 squad entries, 282 cross-border players.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Very happy to see this out on perceptions of welfare deservingness for different categories of migrants, together with @lorenzopiccoli.bsky.social and Samir Negash @fggaleiden.bsky.social, open access in EPSR:

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Who drives this? It depends heavily on pre-existing immigration attitudes. Among the most immigration-sceptic respondents, the doctor-vs-fast-food rating gap reaches nearly 3.8 points. Among the most pro-immigration respondents, the same gap is only 1.2 points.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Fast-food workers: no ethnic penalty. OLS coef. for African descent: –0.06, p > .05. Race didn't shift evaluations for the low-status applicant. Medical doctors: clear ethnic penalty. OLS coef.: –0.30, p < .01. Being Black cost the doctor ~1/3 of a rating point.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Four vignettes — same text, only photo changes. Mean visa ratings (1–10): Doctor "Dr Ben Williams" White: 8.87 | Black: 8.56 | Penalty: –0.30 (p<.01**) Fast-food "Max Botha" White: 6.42 | Black: 6.36 | Penalty: –0.06 (n.s.)

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

In the experiment, respondents rated two South African visa applicants — identical in every way except ethnicity (African vs. European descent, via AI-generated images) and occupation (medical doctor vs. fast-food worker). One question: should they get a visa? (1–10 scale)

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Does being high-skilled protect you from ethnic bias when applying for a UK visa? In a new pre-registered experiment to be published in International Migration Review, I find that high occupational status doesn't shield immigrants from ethnic prejudice — it may activate it.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Then there's the probable incoming plagiarism lawsuit by Murray.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Have to admit I enjoyed reading this somehow.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

In my time "going woke" was just called "acknowledging what everybody knows is true"?

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Preparing to teach another class in Dutch and am reminded of this evaluation I got at KCL.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Very happy that this article with Samir Negash and Lorenzo Piccoli has just been accepted at the European Political Science Review. In it we show that "welfare chauvinism" is much more nuanced than many assume.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Percentage of votes for André Ventura (radical right) and AJ Seguro (centre-left) in the 2nd round of the 2026 Portuguese presidential elections. Parishes plotted by share of population with tertiary education.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

E.g in Switzerland, the far right candidate gets 72% (!) of the vote

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Note that the radical right does *much* better in the very large Portuguese diaspora abroad than in Portugal itself (at least those who vote, turnout is very low): here Ventura nearly reaches 50% (not all votes counted yet)

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Btw if you want to know more about the new radical right in Portugal, check out this new book edited by the excellent João Carvalho, with a chapter by yours truly.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

In the Portuguese presidential election, very clear victory of the centre-left candidate Segura against the radical right Ventura.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Here's an interesting difference in the vote of the Portuguese diaspora in my country of birth (Switzerland) and the country where I live in yesterday's presidential election: in Switzerland the right-wing populist candidate gets 63% (!) of the vote while he comes only third in the Netherlands: 10%

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

So Maduro, a ruling head of state, is charged of "possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices" www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

Not exactly a Xmas merrymaking post, but I wrote something on the changing environment for international academics in the Netherlands and how it has changed over the last 10 years: open.substack.com/pub/alexandr...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

This is the BBC headline on yesterday's coup in Guinea Bissau. However reports in the Portuguese press (GB was a Portuguese colony) imply that the detention of the president is a smokescreen and he may have orchestrated the coup himself?

Solderiers seize power in Guinea Bissau and detain the president

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Looking forward to our next PEPP talk with @huysmans.bsky.social, December 2 in the Hague cc. @mileskellerman.bsky.social

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

"But Switzerland's boring": this looks like a really cool article based on qualitative interviews with ultra rich people on whether they'd move for tax reasons academic.oup.com/ser/advance-... cc. @gabrielzucman.bsky.social

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Perhaps some of the Netherlands' housing problems would not be so acute if everyone didn't want to live in a max. 2 or 3-storey terraced house like the Brits, but rather in a flat in a larger building (say 5-6 floors), like the Germans or the Swiss?

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Just discovered the existence of this 💥🚨Portuguese martial art💥🚨🥷 called Jogo do Pau.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Nice that you are all energised by the dynamism of a young, good looking progressive centrist. Now let me introduce you to the approval rating of Emmanuel Macron.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Not that it matters a great deal, but Wilders's PVV has taken over as biggest party ahead of D66 in the latest count. Difference is 3000 votes, both have 26 seats.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Only about half of the voters who voted Wilders in 2023 voted for him again.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

🚨💥Exit poll for Dutch parliamentary election of today: serious chance that the liberal Democrats of D66 come first ahead of Wilders. Sort of a surprise given previous polls

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Is there any regulatory reason why these slogans have to be so bland or vacuous ("vote for us", "together forward",...) or are all these parties (24, 15 of which hold seats) just exhausted and not even trying?

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

The description of Nuno Espirito Santo as the only "black coach" in the Premier League shows how much race is a social construct. I wonder if anyone identified him as black when he was young and had hair? www.bbc.com/sport/footba...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

And the answer of the minister in charge is just "we'll just make sure we don't send lhgbti+ people there"

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Uganda has passed one of the harshest anti-gay laws in the world and is described as a living hell for lgbtq+ people. Meanwhile, the Netherlands strikes a deal with the Ugandan government to send rejected asylum seekers there.

Uganda passed one of the harshest anti-gay laws, lgbt people describe it as living hell

Netherlands strikes deal to send rejected asylum seekers to uganda

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Before this I thought 21st-century fascism would be sophisticated and insidious but it is really cheap, loud and explicit.

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

There is a town in Switzerland where there are more Portuguese nationals than Swiss nationals www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-od...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Teaching a class on Democracy tomorrow and used this dataset of electoral democracy in US states (2000-2023) by @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social. Very interesting but grim, of course democracypolicylab.berkeley.edu/state-democr...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Incidence of measles over time in US states: look at the graph after 1980, when vaccine mandates entered into force. ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

So this paper shows that it's actually economic issues that have led voters to move from populist right to social democrats, rather than social democrats moving right on immigration. It actually had the opposite effect. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Academic publishing is the most profitable business in the world www.newscientist.com/article/mg24...

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

At least it's only for him, easy to verify. Wonder how you show you have one at Berkeley? Do you leave your prize on your windscreen?

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Alexandre Afonso @alexandreafonso.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

At my alma mater, receiving a Nobel prize gets you a reserved bike parking spot.

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