Affiliate Spotlight: Gülce Şafak Özdemir

My research focuses on urban inequalities, particularly how irregular migration is governed and experienced in cities, with attention to the multiple ways visibility and invisibility are produced in everyday life. I currently hold a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Global Fellowship under Horizon Europe, funded by the European Commission (Grant No: 101201247) for 2025-2028. I am affiliated with the University of Birmingham and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, where I serve as a postdoctoral researcher in the Weatherhead Scholars Program(2025-2027). My project, (In)Visibility of Illegalized Migrants in Urban Settings (VIMUS), investigates how legal and policy infrastructures interact with intersecting social identities to shape migrants’ everyday negotiations of visibility and invisibility, including processes of marginalization, stigmatization, and recognition.

 During my PhD at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain), I examined urban approaches to irregular migration, tracing how local policy frameworks shape migrants’ lived experiences. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Barcelona, I explored how legal status intersects with race, gender, and class, shaping the everyday experiences of illegalized migrants. This work resulted in three peer-reviewed articles: Urban solidarity typology: A comparison of European cities since the 2015 refugee crisis; Why do some cities support irregular migrants? A qualitative comparative analysis of municipal activism in 13 European global cities; and Intersectional (In)visibility: Experiences of irregular migrants in Barcelona. Across these publications, I examine how municipal policies are formed and contested, and how they are experienced on the ground by migrants living with precarious legal status. Building on my doctoral work, VIMUS extends my research by applying qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to intersectionality across multiple cities. The project examines how migrants experience marginalization, stigmatization, and recognition in Mexico City, Madrid, and New York City, aiming to develop a systematic understanding of urban inequality and inclusion.

In addition to this work, I serve as an elected Executive Committee member of the Council for European Studies and co-chair of its Immigration Research Network. I am actively involved in international migration and urban studies networks, including IMISCOE, and collaborate with research initiatives in Europe and North America. I am also an affiliated researcher with the Soli*City network and the MunMigra project.

Gülce Şafak Özdemir, Ph.D.