Kazuko Suzuki, PhD

Dr. Kazuko Suzuki is the author of the award-winning book, Divided Fates: The State, Race, and Korean Immigrants’ Adaptation in Japan and the United States, which compares adaptation patterns of three Korean diasporic groups (Zainichi Koreans, Tainichi Koreans, and US Koreans). The book demonstrates how contexts of reception, including different conceptualizations of ‘race’ in relation to nationhood, affect the adaptation of immigrants of the same ethnic/national origin. It also shows how ‘race’ can be fabricated by the state or the dominant group even when the phenotype and skin color of the dominant and minority groups are similar.​​

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Dr. Suzuki was a Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University and was an affiliated faculty member in the Program of Ethnicity, Race and Migration and the Council of East Asian Studies during the 2017-18 academic year. She was born in Japan. After working for a Japanese company for several years, she came to the United States for her graduate education. She received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University in November 2003. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Texas A&M University and an affiliated member of the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute (RESI) and the Women's and Gender Studies Program. She also mentor students who are interested in the Asian region.

​She specializes in International Migration, Comparative Race & Ethnic Studies, Global Race Studies, Gender & Sexuality, East Asian (Japanese) Studies, and Asian American Studies. She has fieldwork experience in Japan and Russia, as well as in the United States. She is interested in “invisible” social oppression against minority groups such as immigrants, racial minorities, and women in Asia.​​

Her research interests include: global diffusion of racial phenomena and racism, historical and regional analysis of ‘race’ beyond the Western paradigm, racial classifications in the post-genomic age, modes of incorporation and immigrant adaptation; human trafficking in women to the U.S. and Japan; and gender and sexuality in Japanese popular culture media, in particular Yaoi / BL (Boys Love). More recently, she is interested in Critical Minerals Studies. Dr. Suzuki currently serves as a board member of Studies in Comparative Political Theory, book series by Oxford University Press.

​​She has research and teaching experience at various institutions such as the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Stanford University, the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) at Columbia University. She was also an Abe Fellow of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).