Highly Qualified Immigrants and Refugees

How do highly qualified immigrants and refugees navigate integration into the labor market, citizenship, and broader participation in society? Based on examples of scholars, artists, doctors, journalists and many other qualified professionals from Syria, Georgia and Caucasus in Europe and Türkiye, the contributors analyze career paths, professional transitions, and available opportunities, as well as administrative, legal, and social barriers. The volume further considers the influence of diaspora and migrant communities, transnational solidarity, and political networks on their experiences. The focus is on the agency of immigrants and refugees, highlighting their socio-economic, political contributions to host countries.

Ergün Özgür Liy is a Gerda Henkel Fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient and a guest researcher at the Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a PhD in organisational behaviour and obtained academic degrees in global politics and international relations, banking, and public administration. She is a signatory to the ‘Peace Petition’ of Academics for Peace and has spent the past decade researching immigrants and refugees. Her research focuses on critical scholarship, culture and values, highly qualified individuals, diasporas, forced displacement, immigrants and refugees, and the Adyghe, Abkhaz-Abaza, Ubykh and North Caucasian peoples. She focuses on the Black Sea, Caucasus, European, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions.