Patricia Ehrkamp’s research interests span the subfields of urban, political, social, and cultural geography, with three thematic foci:

Her research is interested in the relationship between identities and space in the context of immigrant incorporation.  Her work in Germany seeks to understand how immigrants from Turkey create a home for themselves in German society and space by pursuing politics of belonging in their new and old homes.  She has argued that in order to fully understand processes of immigrant incorporation, social relations need to be theorized as a dialectical process in which both immigrants and non-immigrants negotiate their identities and positions in society, in and through urban space.  This research is based on ethnographic research in a neighborhood of Germany’s old industrial Ruhr conglomeration.

Patricia’s other research is interested in the changing geographies of citizenship in the context of migrant transnationalism.  This aspect of her work conceives of citizenship as multi-scalar social and urban practice. She is interested in the meanings of citizenship that immigrants construct as they participate in multiple public spheres and different polities.  This project is a collaborative endeavor with Helga Leitner at the University of Minnesota.

Most recently, Patricia’s research has examined political and public discourses demanding assimilation of immigrants.  She argues that such discourses need to be incorporated into conceptions of identification and identity politics.  This work reconsiders assimilation as a highly politicized discourse that not only sets the context for immigrants, but also shapes behaviors and attitudes in the host society towards immigrant groups.  This work is based on textual analysis of political debates about citizenship laws, and about immigration and immigrant integration policies in Germany.

Patricia earned her Ph.D. in geography from the University of Minnesota in 2002 and held an appointment as Assistant Professor of geography at Miami University, Ohio, before joining the University of Kentucky in August 2006.