Research

Research themes

Across these themes, I work as a mixed-methods researcher, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to understand migration and displacement.

Internal displacement governance: How do states govern internal displacement and refugees’ mobility after settlement, especially in times of disaster? My current work within the GRIID project examines how national rules on protection and movement are implemented by provincial and local authorities in Turkey. Using the 2023 earthquakes as a critical lens, I show how disaster and housing policies that appear universal on paper are strategically applied, producing varied experiences of secondary displacement and assistance for citizens and refugees in different places.
Migration aspirations: How do migrants form and revise aspirations to move onward, stay, or return? I study aspirations as evolving judgements shaped by changing legal regimes, labour markets, and social relations rather than as fixed preferences. Focusing on Turkey as a country of origin, transit, and prolonged stay, I show how people with similar structural constraints nevertheless pursue very different mobility trajectories, depending on family obligations, political context, and expectations about the future.
Risk and perception: What role do perceptions of risk play in migration decisions? I do not treat risk as a fixed, objective condition, but focus on how migrants interpret dangers and opportunities in their everyday lives. I examine how they read policies, borders, infrastructures, and local authorities, and how these cognitive and emotional understandings of risk evolve over time. Drawing on work in Turkey, including post-disaster settings, I show how these changing perceptions of risk reshape people’s sense of control and vulnerability, and in turn their decisions to move, stay, or return.
Borders and territory: How do borders and territorial politics structure migrants’ options and imaginaries? I analyse Turkey’s position within broader migration regimes and how states narrate their territory—who belongs, who is a “guest,” and who is a threat. Linking these discourses to everyday practices at borders and in cities, I trace how security logics and territorial claims translate into differences in legal status, protection, and long-term life chances for migrants.