I have extensively theorised and empirically examined the socio-economic behaviours of poor households and migrant and left-behind populations, using qualitative or quantitative methods or both.

I am interested in understanding how households respond to poverty within the spheres of income generation, intra-household income or resource allocation (financial management & control), consumption and investment. I am also interested in exploring how micro and macro factors (e.g. individual and household characteristics, local and national labour market conditions and welfare policies) shape household responses, the composition of their resources portfolios (e.g. social, economic and cultural capital) and the outcomes for poverty from a multi-dimensional perspective. A particular area of interest hence concerns poverty measurement, and the methods used to combine its ‘objective’ and subjective dimensions. Another relates to the policy aspects of poverty reduction.

More recently, I have developed an interest in exploring the dis/benefits of international migration for migrants and their descendants. From a multi-site and intergenerational perspective that involves comparing migrants with their counterparts who returned to or never left their origin country, I have quantitatively examined migration-related effects on poverty, wealth, gender inequality, employment, occupational attainment, housing tenure and life satisfaction.

I am in the process of extending my poverty expertise to include its intersections with climate change and environmental sustainability.  

Current and recent research

• 2000 Families - NORFACE funded (€2.2.m) survey led by Prof Ayse Guveli then at Essex and with teams based in the UK, Netherlands and Germany. The Survey located guestworkers who moved from Turkey to Europe during guestworker years of 1960s and early 1970s and their peers who remained behind and followed up their families spread across Turkey and Europe up to the fourth generation. Datasets are archived in GESIS.

• Third Generation - ERC-funded (€2.75m) survey led by Prof Ayse Guveli at Warwick. The Survey is following up the grandchildren of the guestworkers in Europe and their peers in Turkey.

 Past research

• Poverty, Social Welfare and Household-Level Processes in Turkey - Independent ESRC-funded (£30K) Post-Doctoral Fellowship Programme.

• What Difference Do Resources Make? A Longitudinal Study of Household Responses to Poverty in a Gecekondu Settlement in Ankara, Turkey – Independent PhD research.

• Urban Survival Strategies: Ankara Case – A household survey of low-income neighbourhoods on which I worked as a researcher in the leadership of Professor Melih Ersoy and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tarık Şengül at the Middle East Technical University.

• World Bank Poverty Alleviation Project on Turkey – A qualitative study on which I worked as a researcher in the leadership of Assist. Prof. Dr. Galip Yalman at the Middle East Technical University. The research was performed within the poorest urban and rural parts of five provinces: Ardahan, Artvin, Diyarbakır, İstanbul and Urfa, and involved focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with inhabitants, municipal leaders and local representatives of government departments.