On Migration with Saskia Sassen

In this keynote discussion, Saskia Sassen answers Michael Žantovsky's and audience questions on migrants and how migration relates to the make up of cities. Sassen emphasizes that migrants are a small population, spread unevenly across cities and rural areas, who are assimilating into various cultures. The cultural identity of a migrant can affect their migrant experience, especially depending on where they are settling. Sassen draws on her own experience as a migrant and reflects on her research.

"There are people from India, China, Prague, New York, etc., all these differences come together. That is a geography that cuts across North-South divides, that cuts across East-West divides, there is enormous fluidity. I think, there are all being flattened into a sort of a corporate subject, I know not all of them, but many of them are. It is a very particular class of people I think. It doesn’t matter where they come from.”

Saskia Sassen is a professor of sociology at Columbia University in New York. She was born in the Netherlands and grew up in Argentina, Italy, France, and now lives in the United States. Throughout her life, she has written eight books and edited three more. Her work focuses on cities, immigration, and the global economy, and has been elected to the Royal Academy of the Sciences of the Netherlands as well as appointed by the French government as a Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et Lettres.

Michael Žantovsky is a former ambassador to the United Kingdom, and current executive director of Vaclav Havel Library in Prague. He discusses with Sassen her previous lecture at the reSITE 2016 conference and presents new questions based on her talk and his reaction to it.
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