Research

Diasporas

Situated at the intersection between home and host states, diasporas are uniquely positioned in global politics and offer unique insights into ongoing debates in the field of comparative migration studies, and international relations. My research focuses on transnational immigrant communities or diasporas, and their political behavior towards various political processes in their home and host states.

Transnational Authoritarianism

Authoritarian states increasingly exert influence over their citizens abroad, thus challenging established conceptions of democratic citizenship in migrant-receiving societies. My research is deeply concerned with the determinants that shape the ability of authoritarian states to affect politics in their diasporas, and beyond.

For my dissertation topic see below.

Knowledge Transfer

Insights gained from my research have been disseminated into various reports and projects over the years. Aside from advising international organisations and governments, I have also worked on specific knowledge transfer projects to inform policymaking on issues such as democracy, peace-making and fighting disinformation.

Dissertation

In my dissertation, I explore the ability of authoritarian migrant-sending states (home states) to engage, mobilize, demobilize and repress their diasporas across different democratic migrant-receiving countries (host states). More specifically, I explain why authoritarian home states are able to mobilize their citizens abroad in some host state contexts, while they fail to do so in others. My primary case study is Turkey and its diaspora engagement across European host country contexts where I have conducted various episodes of multi-sited fieldwork between 2017 and 2022. Due to the ongoing pandemic, I further shifted to new remote and digital methodologies, in addition to in-person fieldwork activities to generate additional data for my dissertation project.

My research was supported by the Joint Initiative for German and European Studies, the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict, and Justice, and the R.F. Harney Program in Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

For Gözde, authoritarian reach across borders should be considered an issue that affects everyone, regardless of the country or community to which they belong. “In a world where democracy is in decline, and under constant threat, I believe that we have to understand better the way authoritarian states reach into our communities. And by communities, I don’t only mean transnational immigrant communities, but anyone concerned with the future of democratic citizenship, because it happens around us and it can affect our rights and freedoms as citizens.”