Professeure associée
Associate professor
Galatasaray University – Istanbul, Turquie
Biography
Didem Danış is Associate Professor at Galatasaray University, Sociology Department, in Istanbul. She holds BA degrees from Boğaziçi University (Istanbul, 1997) and MA in Sociology from METU (Ankara, 2001). She stayed at International Migration and Ethnic Relations Program in Malmö University, Sweden as a visiting Ph.D. in 2002-2003. She completed her doctoral thesis at EHESS (Paris, 2008) in which she analysed social networks of Iraqi transit migrants in Istanbul. She recently co-edited a book published in Turkish: Borders and Expulsion. Interdisciplinary perspectives on migration, migrants and state in Turkey (Notabene, Istanbul, 2014). She has several publications on migration policies, refugees and urban issues.
Research project
Her research is in line with the second axis which aims to investigate scales of solidarity (family, tribal, ethnic or religious) in the arrangement of regional migration flows. In a previous research conducted in 2003-2006 with Iraqi transit migrants and refugees in Turkey, she analyzed the construction and/or transformation of social networks that migrants mobilize in a situation of uncertainty and vulnerability. For this new project, she wants to focus on Syrian refugees in Istanbul and to examine networks they have recourse to in the settlement and adaptation process. At this point she will try to find out the configuration of various networks and to see whether there is a hierarchical or complementary relationship among networks based on familial, ethnic, religious, as well as sectarian identities. She will also examine the relation of these networks with so-called “hospitable” reception politics towards Syrians in Turkey.
Keywords
migration policies, social networks, undocumented migrants, transnationalism