1. Refugee Governance & State Identity

This pillar develops my core argument: states evaluate displaced populations as citizen-material—potential building blocks for their desired political and demographic futures. I examine how states use refugee inclusion and minority exclusion as complementary mechanisms of nation-building and boundary-making.

Book Project: Refugees as Citizen-Material
This book theorizes refugee governance as a long-term tool of demographic engineering and nation-building. I argue that states strategically include refugees who match preferred ethnic, religious, or ideological traits while marginalizing domestic minorities deemed incompatible with national ideals.
The project draws on archives, interviews, and policy documents collected in Turkey, Belgium, and Geneva.

2. Climate Mobility, Border Policy & Environmental Governance

My emerging research investigates how climate extremes, border enforcement, and state narratives interact to shape mobility, vulnerability, and political belonging. This work is based in California and the San Diego–Tijuana border region.

I analyze how climate change amplifies displacement pressures, how restrictive border practices create “manufactured immobility,” and how climate resilience initiatives can serve as alternative governance models.
As part of the Climate-Resilient California & Californians initiative, I contribute research linking extreme weather, displacement dynamics, and community-based adaptation.

3. Authoritarianism, Populism & Forced Migration

This strand examines how authoritarian and populist regimes generate displacement by criminalizing dissent, eroding rights, and targeting minority populations. I analyze how political repression turns citizens into refugees and how states instrumentalize refugee flows for domestic legitimacy and international bargaining.

Published work includes research on Kurdish and Palestinian communities, populist backlash, and political identity formation.

4. Knowledge Production, Inequality & Migration Data

I critically examine how migration research and global data systems reproduce inequalities across the Global North and South.
This involves interrogating:

• gender and racial measurement gaps

• survivor bias in migration datasets

• the absence of Global South data

• how international agencies produce, classify, and legitimize knowledge

This work aims to democratize data production and foreground marginalized perspectives in global migration governance.

Selected Publications

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

• Lost in Data Translation: A critical review of datasets on refugees. International Migration (2023). Click here to read

• With Gershon Shafir. Politics of Hope and Populist Backlash: Kurds in Turkey and Palestinians in Israel. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2022). Click here to read

• Forthcoming. Global South in Forced Migration Literature and Coloniality of Knowledge: A Meta-Analysis. (with B. Mackenna & T. Yu).

Book Chapters

Refugees in Global South, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Refugee Studies (Forthcoming, July 2024).

"Local and National: the rise of populism and foreign policy as a two-dimensional process in Turkey." In Populism and Human Rights in Turbulent Era, edited by Alison Byrsk. Edward Elgar..

Click here to read

With Mackreath, H., Gungor, M.U. 2017. "Civil Society and Syrian Refugees in Turkey: A Human Security Perspective." In Syrian Communities in Turkey: Today and Tomorrow, edited by I. Sirkeci, D. Eroglu, and O. Unutulmaz..

Click here to read

"Contributor or Barrier: The Role of the Kurdish Diaspora in Turkey's EU Accession Process." In Conflict, Insecurity and Mobility, edited by I. Sirkeci, J.H. Cohen, and P. Yazgan. Transnational Press London, January 13, 2016.

Click here to read

Book Reviews:

• Sağnıç, Şevin Gülfer. 2023. “Book Review: The Urbanization of Forced Displacement: UNHCR, Urban Refugees, and the Dynamics of Policy Change by Neil James Wilson Crawford.” International Migration Review, 0(0)

Click here to read 

• Sağnıç, Şevin Gülfer. 2024. “Book Review: Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Response to Refugees.” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees.

Click here to read

Research Summary

Across my agenda, I treat migration as an analytic lens into how states imagine and construct their political, demographic, and ecological futures. Whether examining refugee reception, minority exclusion, or climate-induced mobility, my work shows how states leverage population movement—and immobility—as a tool of governance.