Hein de Haas is a sociologist and geographer who has taught and worked in the Netherlands, Morocco and the United Kingdom. He is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Between 2006 and 2015, he was a founding member and co-director of the International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford. He continues directing IMI and is also Professor of Migration and Development at the University of Maastricht. His main teaching commitment is the  Introduction to Migration Studies course at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), which is open to UvA and exchange students.

In his work, De Haas has advanced a long-term view of migration as an integral part of global change and development. De Haas is lead author of The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, a leading text book in the field of migration studies. He also maintains a blog on migration-related topics.

His research focuses on long-term trends, causes and impacts of international migration in origin and destination societies. De Haas did extensive fieldwork in the Middle East and Africa and, particularly, in Morocco. His publications cover a wide range of issues, including migration theory, trends and drivers of migration processes, the effects of migration on development in origin societies, the nature and effectiveness of immigration policies, the links between climate change, environmental change and migration as well as issues around racism, identity and transnationalism (see here for a full publication list with links to articles). He is also author of a personal account of his experiences in Morocco.

Between 1993 and 1995 De Haas studied the links between socio-economic transformation, desertification and oasis agriculture in a south Moroccan oasis.  Between 1998 and 2001 he led the IMAROM project on the interaction between migration, land and water management and resource exploitation in Moroccan and Tunisian oases. While at Oxford University, De Haas was awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for the DEMIG (Determinants of International Migration) project (2010-2014), which studied trends and drivers of global migration trends and the effectiveness of migration policies. In 2015, De Haas was awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for the MADE (Migration as Development) project (2015-2020), which investigates how processes of development and social transformation have shaped human migration across the globe over the past centuries.

Hein de Haas holds an undergraduate degree (propaedeuse) in cultural anthropology (1989), a master’s degree (cum laude) in social and environmental geography of the tropics and subtropics (1995) from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD in social sciences from the University of Nijmegen (2003). Between 1998 and 2001 he worked as a researcher at the University of Amsterdam and between 2001 and 2005 as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Nijmegen. In 2004-2005 he was visiting scholar at Bilkent University in Ankara (Turkey) the Program of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University of Cairo (AUC; Egypt).

In 2006, he joined the newly founded International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford. From 2011, he played a role in lecturing and directing the newly established MSc in Migration Studies at the  Oxford Department of International Development (ODID). He was also a fellow at the Oxford Martin School and governing body fellow at Wolfson College. In 2015, De Haas was appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam.  During the 2020-2021 academic year he was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS).