Dr Sarah Kunz

I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. As an interdisciplinary researcher, my work sits at the intersection of human geography, sociology, migration studies and postcolonial theory. My research interests include privileged and investment migration, the politics of migration categories, the relationship between mobility, coloniality and racism, global social inequality, and the study of elites and their intermediaries. Trained in qualitative and quantitative research methods, I have a special interest in multi-sited ethnography, mixed-methods and archival research.

At present, my research looks at investment migration with a focus on the Citizenship Industry, the corporate sector developing, managing and promoting citizenship-by-investment. The project aims to enhance our understanding of the history, impact and future of residence- and citizenship-by-investment (RCBI) programmes, and to understand the role of corporate and private actors in developing and managing RCBI.

I am also working on a book on the migration category expatriate to be published with Manchester University press in 2022. The book works across multiple sites to offer an in-depth study of the history and politics of the category expatriate. It tells situated stories about the category’s (re)making, contestation and lived experience and shows that migration is a key terrain on which colonial power relations are reproduced, reworked and translated today.

I received my PhD in Human Geography from UCL, my MSc in Sociology from the LSE and previously worked as a mixed-methods social researcher at NatCen Social Research.