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Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen 2012.jpg
Sassen in 2012
Born (1947-01-05) January 5, 1947 (age 78)
The Hague, Netherlands
Alma mater University of Notre Dame
Known for Studies of globalization, world cities, and international migration
Spouse(s) Richard Sennett
Scientific career
Fields Sociology, economics
Institutions Columbia University, London School of Economics
Thesis Non-dominant ethnic populations as a possible component of the U.S. political economy: the case of Blacks and Chicanos (1974)

Saskia Sassen (born January 5, 1947) is a Dutch-American sociologist. A sociologist studies how people live together in groups and societies. She is famous for her ideas about globalization and how people move between countries. Globalization means how countries and people around the world become more connected.

Professor Sassen teaches sociology at Columbia University in New York City. She also teaches at the London School of Economics. She created and made popular the idea of a global city. She wrote about this in her 1991 book, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo.

What is Saskia Sassen's Education?

Saskia Sassen started her studies in 1966. She spent a year at universities in France, Italy, and Argentina. There, she studied philosophy and political science.

From 1969, she studied sociology and economics at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. She earned her Master's degree in 1971 and her Ph.D. in 1974. She also got another Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Poitiers in France in 1974.

Where Has Saskia Sassen Taught?

After finishing her studies, Professor Sassen worked at Harvard University. She then held many teaching jobs in and outside the United States. One of these was at the University of Chicago.

Today, she is a professor at Columbia University. She is also a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

What Are Her Main Ideas?

In the 1980s and 1990s, Saskia Sassen became a well-known writer on cities. She looked at how globalization changes cities and economies. She studied how people and money move around the world. She also looked at how technology affects how countries are run.

Sassen noticed that countries might lose some control over these big changes. She studied how people and ideas move more freely across borders. This is called transnationalism. She also identified and described the idea of the global city. Her 1991 book, The Global City, made her famous for her work on globalization. An updated version of her book came out in 2001.

In the early 2000s, she focused on immigration and globalization. Her books have been translated into 21 languages.

Saskia Sassen's Early Life

Saskia Sassen was born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1947. In 1948, her parents moved to Argentina. The family lived in Buenos Aires.

Saskia Sassen also spent some of her childhood in Italy. She has said that she grew up speaking five languages. She is married to another sociologist, Richard Sennett.

Saskia Sassen's Books and Writings

Professor Sassen has written many important books and articles.

Books She Wrote

  • The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1991, updated 2001). This book explains how these cities became central to the world's economy.
  • The Mobility of Labor and Capital. A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow (1988).
  • Cities in a World Economy (1994, updated 5th ed. 2018).
  • Losing control? Sovereignty in An Age of Globalization (1996).
  • Globalization and its discontents. Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money (1998).
  • Guests and aliens (1999).
  • Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (2006). This book won awards.
  • Elements for a Sociology of Globalization (2007).
  • Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (2014).

Books She Edited

  • Global networks, linked cities (2002).
  • Digital Formations: IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm (2005).
  • Deciphering the Global: Its Scales, Spaces and Subjects (2007).

Book Chapters

  • "Mediating practices : women with/in cyberspace" (2002).
  • "Beyond sovereignty: de facto transnationalism in immigration policy" (2004).
  • "Electronic markets and activist networks: The weight of social logics in digital formations" (2005).
  • "When Places Have Deep Economic Histories" (2010).

Articles She Wrote

  • "Embedded borderings: making new geographies of centrality", Territory, Politics, Governance (2017).
  • "How Population Lies : True, big cities no longer draw big numbers. But that doesn't mean their power is slipping too.", Newsweek International (2006).
  • "Predatory Formations Dressed in Wall Street Suits and Algorithmic Math", Science, Technology & Society (2017).
  • "'One of the most culturally diverse cities in the UK': Saskia Sassen on Manchester", City Metric (2017).
  • "Migration policy: from control to governance", openDemocracy (2006).
  • "The repositioning of citizenship and alienage: Emergent subjects and spaces for politics", Globalizations (2005).
  • "Regulating Immigration in a Global Age: A New Policy Landscape", Parallax (2005).
  • "Comment: We seem to have forgotten history", The Guardian (2004).
  • "Going Beyond the National State in the USA: The Politics of Minoritized Groups in Global Cities", Diogenes (2004).
  • "The new lords of Africa", The Guardian (2003).
  • ""A message from the global south,"", The Guardian (2001).
  • "Special report: refugees in Britain — Unstoppable immigrants", The Guardian (2000).
  • ""Home truths: The notion that the west is threatened with mass invasions of immigrants is a myth,"", The Guardian (2000).
  • "Women's burden : counter-geographies of globalization and the feminization of survival", Journal of international affairs (2000).
  • Cities : between global actors and local conditions (1999).
  • "Beyond Sovereignty: De-Facto Transnationalism in Immigration Policy", European Journal of Migration and Law (1999).
  • "Global financial centers", Foreign affairs (1999).
  • Transnational economies and national migration policies (1996).
  • "Analytic borderlands : race, gender and representation in the new city" (1996).
  • "[with Morita, Kiriro], "The New illegal immigration in Japan 1980-1992", The international migration review (1994).
  • "[with Smith, Robert] Post-industrial employment and third world immigration : casualization and the New Mexican migration in New York (1991).
  • New York City's informal economy (1988).

Awards and Honors

Saskia Sassen has received many awards for her important work:

  • In 2004, she received an honorary degree from Delft University of Technology. An honorary degree is a special award given by a university.
  • In 2013, she won the Premio Princesa de Asturias in social sciences. This is a very important award from Spain.
  • In 2014, she received honorary degrees from Universidad de Murcia (Spain) and École normale supérieure (Paris).
  • In 2016, she received an honorary degree from Universitat de València (Spain).
  • In 2017, she received an honorary degree from Universidad de Guadalajara (Mexico).

Images for kids

  • NYC-Skyline-1

    Sassen's 1991 book The Global City charts how New York, along with London and Tokyo, became the most important cities in the global economy.

  • Saskia Sassen at the Subversive Festival (cropped)

    Saskia Sassen at the Subversive Festival

See also

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