Ayşen Üstübici - Future aspirations and migrant use of digital space

Study location	Türkiye, Istanbul
Type	Summer Research Program - Undergraduate, full-time

Language requirements	English

Other requirements	At least 2 reference(s) must be provided.

Overview

This proposal aims at producing a general framework for studying the processes of displacement and emplacement of recently arrived, highly skilled migrants (including but not limited to those officially categorized as refugees) to post-industrial cities where they play a key economic role. Going beyond the forced–voluntary migration binary, we will focus on professionals originating from economically and politically unstable contexts primarily from Turkey but also from Russia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Lebanon and Syria. We will seek response to following questions: How do highly skilled migrant negotiate class privileges and belonging in their first years after migrating? How they use social media to send transnational feedback to those who stay? As the final output, the research will provide a pilot study on the role of social media in representing experiences of newly arrived migrants and in shaping migration aspirations of those who stay behind.