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Portrait of Helene Hof

Helena Hof

Swiss National Science Foundation Professor, University of Zurich, ISEK - Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies
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Helena Hof is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Zurich. She is PI of the Swiss-government funded project “Provisional Futures: Migrants as wanted workers, yet temporary residents”, a comparative study of Canada, Switzerland and Japan’s drive to temporary migration and migrant workers’ agency in three sectors: IT, health (nurses) and construction. Helena’s ethnographically-informed work explores the implications current demographic change has on migration, mobilities, and socio-cultural change. Her research spans Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and uses an urban lens, as well as social categories of difference such as gender, ethnicity, and class to analyse shifting meanings of work and a life worth living. Among her most recent publications are "The immobility of the highly mobile: existential (im)mobility among transnational entrepreneurs in post-pandemic Singapore" (Mobilities) and "‘White Innovation’: Conceptualizing Changing Racial Hierarchies Through Migrant Entrepreneurship in Singapore and Japan." 

Research focus while a Fellow with Bridging Divides:

Helena Hof will be a guest researcher of Bridging Divides in relation to her Swiss National Science Foundation funded project ‘Provisional Futures: Migrants as wanted workers, yet temporary residents.’ Using a multi-sited, interdisciplinary approach, Helena and her team will study migrant workers in three key sectors—information technology, health care, and construction—across Canada, Switzerland, and Japan, exploring how temporariness shapes human action and social relations. At TMU, she will collaborate with the Global Migration Institute’s leading scholars, including Scholars of the Bridging Divides research program and with researchers at the BMO Newcomer Workforce Integration Lab. 

Relevant publications or reports: 

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, Aimi Muranaka, Joohyun Justine Park. 2024. ‘Employment as an anchor: The prospects of emerging skilled migration regimes through the lens of migrants’ access to the labour market.’ Asian and Pacific Migration Journal. 33(3), 554-576. DOI: 10.1177/01171968241292376

Hof, Helena. 2024. ‘Foreign entrepreneurship in the Japanese startup ecosystem: Can deviance fuel innovation?’ Contemporary Japan, 1–21. 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, 50(2):1-19. Doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2023.2271669

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.

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, 9(19). DOI: 10.1186/s40878-021-00225-5.

Hof, Helena and Yen-Fen Tseng. 2021. 'When “global talents” struggle to become local workers: The new face of skilled migration to corporate Japan.' Asia and Pacific Migration Journal 29(4). DOI: 10.1177/0117196820984088.