Atakan Durmaz – Paar-Net

Atakan Durmaz, Grantee of Virtual Mobility Grant in Grant Period 3

Bio:

I am a Professor of Economics at Samsun University (Türkiye), Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Economics and Finance, and a member of COST Action CA22167 PAAR-Net. My research focuses on migration and diaspora economics – in particular the transnational mobility, return tendencies and homeland ties of Turkey-origin migrants in Europe – together with international economics and labour markets. More recently, my work has extended towards the socio-economic dimensions of ageing among migrant communities, which is the direction this Virtual Mobility Grant has helped me to develop.

Grant supported actions and initiatives:

The PAAR-Net Virtual Mobility Grant supported a ten-working-day online collaboration (8–19 August 2026) entitled “Aging on the Move: Circular Mobility as a Livelihood Strategy Among Turkish-Origin Older Migrants in Germany”. The activity was carried out together with Ms Charlotte Gruber, a retired, non-academic expert-by-experience based in Germany/Austria, who took part as a genuine co-designer rather than a respondent. Over three synchronous videoconference meetings bridged by independent desk work, we jointly reframed the research problem – from “return migration” as a one-way decision towards circular, back-and-forth mobility as an active livelihood strategy in later life – and co-produced a field-ready participatory research proposal, an eleven-section structured survey with a semi-structured interview guide, an ethics, access and recruitment plan for the German field sites, and a funding-fit note mapping the study to a suitable external call.

Testimonial:

This Virtual Mobility was my first experience of designing a study from the very first day with an older adult as a full co-creator, and it changed the way I think about participatory research. Many of the questions in our survey – on income, care, seasonality and belonging – would simply not be there, or would be asked in the wrong way, without Ms Gruber’s lived experience and community knowledge. What she brought to the table was not “input” to be consulted, but knowledge of a different kind that reshaped the research aim itself. For an early-career researcher from an Inclusiveness Target Country, the grant also offered something rare: a protected space to build a cross-border collaboration that will continue into fieldwork and co-interpretation of the findings. I am very grateful to PAAR-Net for making this possible and for showing, in practice, what co-design with older adults can look like.