FACULTY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY | Seminar
Migration seminar: Race, Interests, and Perceptions in International Migration

The field of international migration has largely ignored race. Does the Global North's apparent warm welcome of mostly white Ukrainian Orthodox Christians fleeing Russia's war and its hostility towards black and brown non-Christan Middle Easterners and Africans escaping war and deprivation tell us anything? Although latecomers to the study of international migration, since the 1990s, political scientists have innovated the field of the politics of international migration but few works locate race as a focal point of analysis in either migration politics or international relations.

The study of race in international migration in international relations is still rather nascent and centers on the Western world with a focus on how racial differences influence perception of threat, common identities, and even standards of good governance. Andrew Rosenberg's book Undesirable Immigrants: Why Racism Persists in International Migration offers a corrective to much of this in his examination of race and international migration from the perspective of international relations. It builds on the work of many critical and traditional scholars with a novel quantitative approach that “seeks to unmask” the issue of racial bias against “non-white migrants” primarily from the Global South.

Michael Orlando Sharpe is Malmö City Guest Professor in Migration Studies from 1 September to 30 November 2026. He is Professor of Political Science at York College and Professor of Political Science and International Migration Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Dr. Sharpe’s areas of expertise are comparative politics and international relations, and his research interests concern the politics of migration, immigrant political incorporation, and political transnationalism in the Dutch Kingdom, Japan, and around the world.

His first book, Postcolonial Citizens and Ethnic Migration: The Netherlands and Japan in the Age of Globalization was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2014. Dr. Sharpe recently completed his second book manuscript, The Politics of Racism and Antiracism in Japan, under contract with Cambridge University Press. His other research concerns include the politics of remigration or the paid voluntary return of migrants and their families (“pay to go schemes”) and implicit boundary making in liberal democracies.

Additionally, Dr. Sharpe has another project on questions of non-sovereignty, freedom of movement, and diaspora in the Dutch Caribbean and the European Union. He is very intrigued by the intersections of the politics of migration and racism around the world. Dr. Sharpe’s Visiting Fellow or Visiting Scholar appointments include the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) Leiden University, the University of Aruba, the University of Amsterdam, Sophia University, and Keio University.