Dr. Mert Pekşen
Research associate
Member of the working group Social Geography with a focus on population and migration research
Main research interests: Borders and border regimes, geographical migration research, political geographies of migration, geographies of racism, urban research, legal geography, politics of memory, and critical cartography.
Mert Pekşen is a social geographer and has been a member of the Institute for Geography (IfG) and the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at Osnabrück University since 2021.
Pekşen completed his Doctorate at the Graduate Center, City University of New York in June 2021 with a dissertation on "Displacing the border: Refugees, law, and geography in Turkey" (June 2021). In his dissertation, he examined the policies and practices that Turkey uses to (re)construct the border at different geographical levels in order to control the mobility and distribution of refugees.
Pekşen's research interests include borders and border regimes, geographical migration studies, political geographies of migration, geographies of racism, urban studies, politics of memory, and critical cartography.
He is co-leader of the DeZIM joint project "Societal Spaces of Migration" (GeRäuMig) (duration: 01/2025 - 12/2027).
He is deputy coordinator of the Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership EuMIGS.
Pekşen, M., Kurtarır, E. (forthcoming) Istanbul, a Solidarity City? Solidarity practices and policies of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Book project edited by H. Bauder and M. Setrana. Solidarity City: International Perspectives of Migrant Inclusion and Refugee Protection.
Scharrer, T., Lambert, L., Millar, S., Pekşen, M., & Laakkonen, V. (2024). Contested future-making in containment: Temporalities, infrastructures and agency. Comparative Migration Studies, 12(1), 54. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-024-00413-z
Kubiak, D., & Pekşen, M. (2024). Defending Democracy is an Ongoing Task (26/2; Germany Brief). Istanbul Bilgi University - European Institute. https://eu.bilgi.edu.tr/media/files/GB_26_TR.pdf
Pekşen, M. (2023). Refugee Illegality: Governing Refugees via Rescaling Borders in Turkey. Journal of Refugee Studies, 36(4), 897-916. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead050
Balistreri, A., & Pekşen, M. (2023). Borders, Territory, and the Republic of Turkey. DIYÂR, 4(2), 189-209. https://doi.org/10.5771/2625-9842-2023-2-189
Brahm, E., Ferstl, J., & Pekşen, M. (2023). Racist violence in Germany: Why the data on the extent differ greatly (DeZIMinutes 14). DeZIM. https://www.dezim-institut.de/publikationen/publikation-detail/rassistische-gewalt-in-deutschland/
Müller, A.-L., Pekşen, M., Kubiak, D., Brahm, E., Gencal, K., & Pabst, R. (2023). Racist attacks and their socio-spatial impact: On the constitution of spaces of the migration society. In Polarized worlds. Proceedings of the 41st Congress of the German Sociological Association in Bielefeld 2022 (Vol. 41). https://publikationen.soziologie.de/index.php/kongressband_2022/article/view/1658
Pekşen, M. (2022). Reluctant border agents: Enlistment of transportation workers in procedures to limit refugee mobilities in Turkey. Citizenship Studies, 26(7), 1011-1026. doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2022.2137945
Peksen, M. (2021) Displacing the border: Refugees, law, and geography in Turkey. Graduate Center, City University of New York. academicworks. cuny.edu/gc_etds/4355/
Peksen, M. (2013) A Conceptual discussion on forced migration: A case study of displacement of Kurds in Turkey during 1990s. Diemen: AMB Press.
GeRäuMig: Social spaces of migration
DeZIM joint project of IMIS/ Osnabrück University, IKG/University of Bielefeld, BIM/HU Berlin and InZentIM/University of Duisburg-Essen
Duration: 01/2025 - 12/2027
Funding: BMFSFJ
Project management together with PD Dr. Anna-Lisa Müller (IKG/University of Bielefeld)
Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership - EuMIGS - European Master in Migration Studies
Duration: 2022-2025
Funding: European Commission
Deputy Coordinator
https://www.eumigs.eu/
RäuMig: Spaces in the migration society
DeZIM Joint project of IMIS/ Osnabrück University, IKG/University of Bielefeld and BIM/HU Berlin
Duration: 01/2022 - 12/2024
Funding: BMFSFJ
Employees
https://www.dezim-institut.de/projekte/projekt-detail/raeume-der-migrationsgesellschaft-raeumig-7-15/
Summer semester 25
- Small study project: Sustainability and Outdoor Tourism in Focus: National Park Hohe Tauern, together with Prof. Dr. Kyoko Shinozaki and Natalie Kerschhofer (Paris-Lodron University Salzburg)
winter semester 24/25
- Migration, Solidarity and Urban Politics, Monday: 14:00 - 16:00, together with Prof. Dr. Andreas Pott and the colleagues from Aalborg University, Denmark
- Researcher's positionality: Biography, subjectivity and reflexivity in migration, Monday: 12:00 - 14:00 together with Prof. Dr. Andreas Pott, the colleagues from the EuMIGS network
2024. "Maps, anti-racism, and the documentation of racist and right-wing violence in Germany". Department Colloquium - Department of Sociology and Human Geography - Paris-Lodron-University-Salzburg. Salzburg, Austria. June 6.
2024. "Maps as archives of the present: Mapping of right-wing violence in Germany". New Cultural Geography 2024. Münster. May 25.
2023. "Mapping right-wing violence in Germany". Annual conference of the AK Geographical Migration Research 2023. Osnabrück. November 24.
2023. "Institutional memory of refugee mobility governance in Turkey". Turkologentag 2023. Vienna. September 21.
2023. "Smugglers, rescuers, informers: Negotiations of bordering by local residents in a coastal town in Turkey". IMISCOE Annual Conference 2023, Warsaw. July 7.
2023. "The EU-Turkey deal and the planned CEAS reform". Online debate. July 7.
2023. "Memorialization of racial violence: Thirty years after the arson attack in Solingen". Osnabrück Geographical Colloquium. June 7.
2023. "Spaces of Migration Society. On the socio-spatial effects of racially motivated attacks in cities". DeZIM-FG Wednesday. February 22. (with Kübra Gencal, Daniel Kubiak, and Anna-Lisa Müller)
2022. "Internal borders, illegality, and deportation". Social Justice, Cities, Citizenship Research Group, University of Leeds. November 23.
2021 "Production of refugee illegality". New Directions in Law and Society. Center for Justice, Law, and Societies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. October 9.
2021. "Future-making while waiting for resettlement in Turkey". 18th IMISCOE Annual Conference. July 8.
2021. "Reluctant border agents: The contested role of transportation workers in refugee mobility governance in Turkey". 4th CeMig Migration Lab - Socio-legal Perspectives on Borders. University of Göttingen, January 22.
2020. "Double rescaling: City as a confinement space for refugees in Turkey". 4th International Conference for Carceral Geography. Brussels, December 15.
2020. "Refugees, law, and geography in Turkey". Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Departmental Meeting, Halle, Germany, November 4.
2019. "Travel documents, vehicles, and drivers: Governing large-scale refugee mobility in Turkey". Governing Migration Beyond 'Fortress Europe', Cambridge, UK. September 17.
2019. "Displacing the border: New spaces and actors of governing refugee mobility in Turkey". American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington D.C. April 3.
2019. "Geography of asylum in Turkey: Refugee protection, rights, and urban scale". Political Geography Specialty Group Pre-conference, Washington D.C., April 2.
2017. "The EU-Turkey deal: Can Turkey solve Europe's refugee reception crisis?" EES Student Research Day, CUNY, April 7.