"As long as countries anchor capitalism, citizenship will anchor global mobility."
Prof. Kristin Surak
About
Prof. Kristin Surak joined the LSE in 2020 as an Associate Professor in Political Sociology who specializes in the politics of global mobility. Her research on elite mobility, international migration, nationalism, and Japanese politics has been translated into over a dozen languages. She publishes in major academic journals and writes for popular outlets, including the London Review of Books, Washington Post, The Guardian, New Statesman, and Wall Street Journal. She also comments regularly for global sources, such as the BBC, Bloomberg TV, Huffington Post, Channel News Asia TV, and Sky TV News.
Kristin has held several internationally recognized positions, including Richard B. Fischer Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University, Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for Japanese Arts and Cultures, and Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. She is a Lifetime Fellow of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge and an Academic Peer of Hitotsubashi University, and has been a visiting professor at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and at New York University in Abu Dhabi.
The American Academy of Political and Social Science has recognized her scholarship, which has been funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Japan Foundation, Fulbright-Hays Foundation, and Leverhulme Foundation, among others. Kristin has also advised a number of governments and governmental bodies, including ones within the European Commission and European Parliament.
Areas of Expertise
Elite Mobility
Crossing borders is an intrinsic part of living in a world divided by countries. Elite mobility is a fundamental element of global flows, if typically overshadowed in public debates by less privileged migration. Kristin is the world’s leading academic expert on investment migration. Over the past decade, she has travelled to more than twenty countries, spoken with hundreds of people, and assembled a new dataset to unpack how the market in golden visas and golden passports works. Her research in this area has illuminated the unexpected ways in which global inequalities may be reduced, reproduced, or reinforced in a world where borders and boundaries still divide.
International Migration
Analyzing international migration means analyzing the unexpected. Less than 4% of the world’s population falls under the UN definition of an international migrant, yet cross-border mobility is one of the hot-button topics of today. Kristin’s pioneering research on international migration has reconfigured understandings of how states and markets interact in channeling labor flows, and how this operates with distinctive characteristics in different world regions.
Japan
Japan is a country that fascinates many – including the Japanese. Fluent in speaking and reading the language, Kristin has probed deeply into the ever-changing dynamics of the social, cultural, economic, and political processes that both define and cross-cut Japan. She comments regularly on Japanese politics for global news sources and provides sharp-eyed analyses of social transformations. Along the way, she has also become a licensed tea master.
Globalization
We live in a globalized world, but what that entails is often misunderstood. Kristin’s work on globalization has challenged conventional understandings about power politics, contemporary dilemmas, and the transformation of the political economy in a world defined by contradictions.
AFFILIATIONS
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Hitotsubashi University
2022 - present Academic Peer
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London School of Economics
2021 - present Faculty Associate of the International Inequalities Institute
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SOAS, University of London
2020 - present Research Associate of the Department of Politics
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SOAS, University of London
2020 - present Research Associate of the Japan Research Centre
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University of Cambridge
2017 - present Lifetime Member, Clare Hall