Migration and mobility; socio-cultural change and diversification; time and temporalities; entrepreneurship and startups; the changing world of work; uncertainty, precarity and privilege; race, ethnicity and gender; placemaking, belonging and urban transformation

Asia, in particular Japan and Singapore; Switzerland; Brazil

Helena Hof is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Zurich and PI of the SNSF Starting Grant project “Provisional Futures: Migrants as wanted workers, yet temporary residents (TEMP Migration)”. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Bonn, Germany, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Before joining ISEK, she has held teaching and research positions at Waseda University and at Sophia University, Japan, the position of senior teaching and research assistant at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies at the University of Zurich, and a fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany. She has also been an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Asian Migrations, Waseda University, Japan (ongoing), the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore and the Center for Metropolitan Studies, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Helena Hof’s ethnographically-informed work explores the implications current demographic change has on migration, mobilities, and socio-cultural change. It spans Asia (especially Japan and Singapore), Europe, and the Americas and focuses on the intricacies of people’s lifeworlds in global metropoles under rapid transformation. In her current SNSF-funded project, Helena Hof and the research team collaborate with the Global Migration Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada, and the Institute of Asian Migrations, Waseda University, Japan, in the aim to analyze how temporariness, as well as social categories of difference such as gender, ethnicity, and class, affect migrants’ placemaking and entail shifting meanings of work and a life worth living.

Book

Hof, Helena. 2022. The EU Migrant Generation in Asia: Middle-Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities. Bristol University Press, Global Migration and Social Change Series.

Journal articles and book chapters

Hof, Helena. 2025. "The immobility of the highly mobile: Existential (im)mobility among transnational entrepreneurs in post-pandemic Singapore." Mobilities. DOI 10.1080/17450101.2025.2598269.

Hof, Helena. 2025. "‘White Innovation’: Conceptualizing Changing Racial Hierarchies Through Migrant Entrepreneurship in Singapore and Japan." In Migration, Transnational Flows, and the Contested Meanings of Race in Asia, IMISCOE Research Series, S. Lan & M. Debnár (Eds). Springer, pp. 121-140 (Open Access).

Hof, Helena, Aimi Muranaka, and Joohyun Justine Park. 2024. “Employment as an anchor: The prospects of emerging East Asian skilled migration regimes through the lens of migrants’ access to the labor market.” Asia and Pacific Migration Journal. DOI: 10.1177/01171968241292376.

Hof, Helena. 2024. “Pushing Social Norms: Foreign Entrepreneurs Fueling Japan’s Innovation?» Contemporary Japan. DOI 10.1080/18692729.2024.2423969.

Hof, Helena and Jaafar Alloul. 2023. Migratory class-making in global Asian cities: The European mobile middle negotiating ambivalent privilege in Tokyo, Singapore, and Dubai. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2023.2271669

Hof, Helena. 2022. ‘Die mixed embeddedness ausländischer Unternehmer*innen in Tōkyōs Startup-Ökosystem.’ [The mixed embeddedness of foreign entrepreneurs in Tōkyō’s startup ecosystem] In: Chiavacci, David; Wieczorek, Iris. Japan 2022. München: VSJF – Vereinigung für sozialwissenschaftliche Japanforschung, 233-259.

Hof, Helena, Simon Pemberton and Emilia Pietka-Nykaza. 2021. 'EU migrant retention and the temporalities of migrant staying: A new conceptual framework.' Comparative Migration Studies. 10.1186/s40878-021-00225-5. Watch Youtube trailer here.

Hof, Helena and Yen-Fen Tseng. 2020. 'When “global talents” struggle to become local workers: The new face of skilled migration to corporate Japan.' Asia and Pacific Migration Journal 29 (4): 511-531. DOI: 10.1177/0117196820984088.

Hof, Helena. 2020. 'Intersections of Race and Skills in European Migration to Asia: Between White Cultural Capital and ‘Passive Whiteness’. Ethnic and Racial Studies. DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2020.1822535

Hof, Helena. 2020. Opting Out for Getting In: Existential Mobility in European Graduates’ Migration to Asia.' Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. DOI: 10.1080/15562948.2020.1755761

Hof, Helena. 2020. ‘Locally Embedded Cosmopolitans? European Millennials’ Boundary Work in Singapore and Tokyo’ In Contemporary European Emigration, Brigitte Suter und Lisa Åkesson (eds). Routledge: pp. 39-57.

Hof. Helena. 2019. ‘The Eurostars Go Global: Young Europeans’ Migration to Asia for Distinction and Alternative Life Paths.’ Mobilities. DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2019.1643164.

Hof, Helena und Gracia Liu-Farrer. 2019. ‘Gender, Labour and Migration in Japan.’ In The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture, Mark Pendleton, Jennifer Coates und Lucy Fraser (eds). Routledge: pp. 189-98.

Hof, Helena. 2018. ‘‘Worklife Pathways’ to Singapore and Japan: Gender and Racial dynamics in Europeans` Mobility to Asia’, Social Science Japan Journal, Special Issue Winter 2018, 21 (1): 45-65. https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyx035

Liu-Farrer, Gracia und Helena Hof. 2018. ‘Ōtebyō: the Problems of Japanese Firms and the Problematic Elite Aspirations.’ Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies (Waseda), 34: 65-84. https://doi.org/10.57278/wiapstokyu.34.0_65

Book reviews

Hof, Helena. 2022. Book review of “Transnational Musicians. Precariousness, Ethnicity and Gender in the Creative Industry” (Beata M. Kowalczyk, 2020, Routledge). Intersections, 47 (July 2022)

Hof, Helena. 2022. Book review of “Studying Japan: Handbook of Research Designs, Fieldwork and Methods” (eds. Nora Kottmann and Cornelia Reiher, 2020, Nomos). Social Science Japan Journal.

Book review of Expatriate Managers: The Paradoxes of Living and Working Abroad, Anna Spiegel, Ursula Mense-Petermann and Bastian Bredekötter (2019). Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, 2020, 4(2): 275-277.

Book review of `Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan`, Milos Debnar. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, XI+235 pp., 89.99€ (ISBN 978-1-13756526-6). Social Science Japan Journal, 2017, 20(2): 235-38.

Others

Podcast on ‘The social construction of skill’, CERC in Migration and Integration Borders & Belonging Podcast's Season 4, Episode 9 (with Gracia Liu-Farrer).

Podcast of the monograph The EU Migrant Generation in Asia: Middle-Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities. Bristol University Press, Global Migration and Social Change Series. New Books Network.

Hof, Helena. 2022. ‘How COVID-19 changed migration (research): Constrained research practices, constrained migrant subjects.’ Blog post of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, 3 June (https://www.mmg.mpg.de/940281/blog-hof-how-covid-19-changed-migration).