Position:  Professor
Campus Affiliation: York College | Graduate Center
E-mail: msharpe@york.cuny.edu
Degrees/Diplomas: PhD CUNY Graduate Center
Research Interests: Politics of international migration; comparative immigration studies; globalization; immigrant political incorporation; comparative politics; international relations; political transnationalism

Michael Orlando Sharpe is a Professor of Political Science at York College  and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Additionally, he is an Adjunct Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Dr. Sharpe’s areas of expertise are comparative politics and international relations, and his research interests concern the politics of migration, immigrant political incorporation, and political transnationalism in the Netherlands, Japan, and around the world. His first book,  Postcolonial Citizens and Ethnic Migration: The Netherlands and Japan in the Age of Globalization was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2014. Dr. Sharpe’s Visiting Fellow or Visiting Scholar appointments include the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) Leiden University, University of Amsterdam, University of Aruba, as well as Sophia University, and  Keio University in Japan. . He has been a Mansfield Foundation and Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership U.S.-Japan Network for the Future Program Scholar. Dr. Sharpe is currently completing his second book, The Politics of Racism and Antiracism in Japan. (Cambridge  Forthcoming). His other research concerns include the politics of remigration or the paid voluntary return of migrants and their families (“pay to go schemes”) and implicit boundary making in liberal democracies.

Read an interview about with Dr.. Sharpe here https://politicalscience.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2016/11/HomoPoliticusSpring2017.pdf from the Spring 2017  issue of our department newsletter, Homo Politicus

Books

Postcolonial Citizens and Ethnic Migration: the Netherlands and Japan in the Age of Globalization. Houndmills, Basingstoke:: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

This book provides a cross-regional investigation of the role of citizenship and ethnicity in migration, political incorporation, and political transnationalism in the age of globalization, exploring the political realities of Dutch Antilleans in the Netherlands and Latin American Nikkeijin in Japan.

Articles in Field Of Expertise

• “Extending Postcolonial Sovereignty Games: The Multilevel Negotiation of Autonomy and Integration in the 2010 Dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles and Dutch Kingdom Relations.” Ethnopolitics. April 2020: .
• “What Can the United States and Japan Learn From Each Other’s Immigration Policies.” Expert Voices The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. on Japan: Security, Economic, and Foreign Policy Recommendations. U.S. Japan Network for the Future Cohort IV,.Arthur Alexander, ed.. June, 2018: 139-155.
• “What Can the United States Learn from Japan’s Immigration Policy.” Policy Guidance From the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future Cohort IV. The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation.. June, 2018: 21-22.
• “Japan as an Emerging Migration State.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific. Volume 17, Issue 3 September, 2017: .
• ““Gaming the System: Trump’s Executive Orders on Immigration”.” E-Connect. Volume 23, June, 2017: .
• “What Does Blood Membership Mean in Political Terms?: The Political Incorporation of Latin American Nikkeijin (Japanese Descendants) (LAN) in Japan 1990-2004.” Japanese Journal of Political Science. Volume 12, Issue 1 February 2011: .
• “When Ethnic Returnees are Defacto Guest workers: What does the introduction of Japanese Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) (LAN) suggest for Japan’s definition of nationality, citizenship and immigration policy?.” Policy and Society. Volume 29, Issue 4 November 2010:
• “Affirmative Action in Crisis in the United States?.” Connect. Volume 13, Number 1 April, 2009: .
•  “Globalization and Migration: Post-Colonial Dutch Antillean and Aruban Immigrant Political Incorporation in the Netherlands.” Dialetical Anthropology. Volume 29, Issue 3-4 September 2005: .
• “Hate Crimes in the United States.” Connect. Volume 4 Spring, 2000:
• “One World Without Racism: Equality and Diversity, Third International Conference Against Racial Discrimination and Racism: Towards a World Conference on Racism in 2001.” Connect. Volume 3, Number 1 Jan. – March, 1999: .

Book Chapters

• Sharpe, Michael O.  2022. “Who Is Truly Dutch? The Politics of Law, Policy, and Practice  Commentary on the Netherlands” in  Controlling Immigration 4th edition., Hollifield, James F., Philip L. Martin, Pia M. Orrenius, and François Héran, Stanford: Stanford University Press

• Sharpe, Michael O. 2022. “Two Sides of a Similar Coin: A New Norm of Constrained Rights or Latecomers to  Immigration in East Asia? Commentary on Japan and South Korea” in  Controlling Immigration 4th edition., Hollifield, James F., Philip L. Martin, Pia M. Orrenius, and François Héran. Stanford: Stanford University Press

• Sharpe, Michael O. 2021. “Postcolonial Sovereignty Games and Neocolonial Domination in the 21st Century: The End of the Netherlands Antilles and Construction of New Dutch Caribbean Political Entities and Relations”,  in Adlai Murdoch (ed.)  The Struggle of Non-Sovereign Caribbean Territories. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press

• Sharpe, Michael O. 2014. “Race, Color, and Nationalism in Aruban and Curaçaoan Political Identities” in Essed, Philomena and Isabel Hoving (eds.) in Dutch Racism. The Netherlands: Rodopi, pp. 117-131.