It has been a busy week so far…
I just came to Istanbul a week ago and family visits were the first things to do along with my dear friend Can Nacar’s wedding.
This week is a brand new one with more academic orientation. There has been a two days conference at Koc University collaborated by IMISCOE and MiReKoc : `Migration and Settlement in Europe: Views from the East and South` I have attended Day 2 morning session and enjoyed the presentations. None of these presentations were from a political science perspective but especially Alistair Hunter (Univ. of Edinboro)’s presentation called `Getting One’s Bearings: Late-in-Life Returns and Re-integration to Communities of Origin in Morocco and Senegal` was particularly interesting in the sense that it touches upon the difficulties of return migrants’ life back at countries of origin. He is going to be someone that I follow in the future, too.
Aside from this conference at Koc, I have attended (thanks to skype) a conference at Binghamton on politics of immigration. It was part of Annual Dr. Han-Jyun Hou Conference series in Binghamton and organized by Olga Shvetsova, Michael McDonald and Barbara Kinsey. I was amazed by the level of papers presented at the conference and how quantitative research is helpful in migration studies. A paper of mine with Barbara Kinsey was also on the conference program and it was on incorporation of political candidates with immigrant origin in Belgian elections. It was hard for me to follow the whole discussion so I will get feedbacks from discussant later on, but I am glad that my interest in immigration studies coincided with growing attention from my department on politics of immigration.
Currently, I am working for several funding applications until end of the week and hopefully i will get back to my dissertation sometime soon. The weather is getting hot in Istanbul and ACs will be the best friend once again…
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