2024
Doctoral Thesis: “Unaccompanied Minors and Youth Refugees Making a Family and a Future”

Since 2022
Head of the Regional Office of the University of Cologne in Cairo, Egypt. 
Responsible of the academic cooperation with the MENA-region 

Since 2022
Speaker of the DGSKA-Working Group on Migration

Since 2020
Project manager at the Global Responsibility Unit of the International Office

Since 2018
Lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne

2018 – 2023
Research associate and lecturer (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne

• Anthropology of (Forced) Migration
• Anthropology of Youth
• Critical Migration Studies
• Kinship, Emotions and Affect Studies
• Anthropology of Mediterranean & Middle East
• Denationalized Citizenship

This research examines the family- and future-making processes of a group of unaccompanied minors and young refugees who arrived in Germany during the so-called “refugee crisis” The research adopts a longitudinal fieldwork approach, following the key research participants over five years in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The research was conducted collaboratively with the participants, who helped shape the study's questions, focusing on their changing positionalities, generational roles, and experiences in the context of forced migration. It explores how the refugees navigate the absence of their natal families, the sources of emotional support, and their efforts to create a future for themselves and their families.

The study challenges the perception of forced migration as a temporary phenomenon, calling for a shift toward a long-term perspective that emphasizes future-making strategies. It also argues that "making a family" should be seen as part of "making a future," broadening the definition of family beyond legal and biological ties to include extended family and new kinship forms, as conceptualized in the New Kinship Studies. By analyzing the participants’ future-making processes, the research demonstrates the contributions of anthropology to understanding future-oriented strategies in the context of migration. 

Finally, this research aims to wipe the dust of the ‘refugee label’ from the key research participants’ feet by representing them as ordinary persons with their own rights and complexities.

DiaMiGo brings several institutes, research centers and Community Based Organisations (CBOs) together. These include: The Global Responsibility Unit, The Global South Studies Center (GSSC), Department of Languages and Cultures of the Islamicate World, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Integrationshaus e.V. from Cologne, and the Center for Migration and Refugees Studies, Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology, and Saint Andrew’s Refugee Services from Cairo, Egypt. 

The UoC contributes perspectives from anthropology and cultures of the Islamicate World, while the AUC focuses on public policy, development studies, sociology, and migration governance. Through online lecture series, research academies (involving professors, junior researchers, students and practitioners) in Cologne and Cairo, teaching staff exchanges, and research stays in both cities, DiaMiGo I (2023-2024) has focused on actor- and object-centered perspectives as well as governance perspectives on migration infrastructures. This has included topics such as recent changes in legal infrastructures and border regimes that implement policies and regulate various forms of mobility in the Mediterranean, as well as the movement of objects, ideas, and more-than-human (MTH) entities. 

For more information, visit our website: www.diamigo.net

In the follow-up project DiaMiGo II, we aim to address this topic by comparing divergent concepts of “integration”, inclusion, and exclusion through a decolonizing lens. We will analyse these concepts in relation to how they are understood, controversially discussed, and practiced both within Germany (as a representative European country) and Egypt (as an example of a Global South country, where the majority of the world’s migrants and refugees reside). 

While the integration of migrants and refugees has been widely discussed—and the related (public) discourse been criticized—in academic and policy circles in the Global North, it has not been a central focus of policy debates in the Global South, as these countries were not traditionally seen as destinations for newcomers to settle and establish new lives (FitzGerald & Arar 2019). However, despite the absence of formal integration policies in many Global South countries, migrants and refugees often find themselves in situations where they must develop their own strategies and navigate pathways for de facto “self-integration.” These integration models, based on “community social capital,” are typically informal and unrecognized in national and international policy debates (Ahmed 2024).

Given the lack of a universally accepted definition of integration and the absence of consensus on what successful integration looks like or how it can be measured (Phillimore, Morrice, & Strang 2024), a comparative analysis in the project DiaMiGo II will contribute to both migration studies and policy-making.