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My first book, Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023 as part of its LSE International Studies Series. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork conducted in Berlin and Istanbul-- where I worked as an undertaker-- Dying Abroad offers an ethnographic account of migrants' end-of-life dilemmas, vividly illustrating how they are connected to ongoing political struggles over the stakes of citizenship, belonging, and identity in contemporary Europe.
"Meticulously researched and heartbreakingly told, Balkan's analysis of "death out of place" for Muslims of Turkish and Kurdish descent in Germany is original, important, and unforgettable." - Neda Maghbouleh, author of The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian - Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race "What happens to those who die "out of place"? Dying Abroad is a remarkable, eloquent, and extensively researched study in which Balkan demonstrates that death, dying, and posthumous acts of burial, bereavement, repatriation, and memorialization are contested processes for migrant Muslim communities in Europe, and constitute complex negotiations of social, political, religious, and cultural membership and belonging."
- Lisa Lowe, author of The Intimacies of Four Continents |
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I am currently at work on a second book project which explores how different countries commemorate and come to terms with acts of political violence and terrorism. Drawing on cases such as the Boston Marathon Bombing, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, a failed military coup in Turkey, and ongoing struggles over the place of colonial and confederate monuments in Europe and the United States, it investigates of public rituals of mourning help shape collective memory and identity.
My research has been funded and supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Please see my publications page for links to my writing. |
Photo: Protestors demonstrating against the burial of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston
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