Dr. Patricia Ehrkamp (she/her)

Research Interests:
immigration
transnationalism
Refugees
Europe
United States
Urban
Geopolitics
feminist geographies
Political Geography
Availability

Office hours fall 2023: by appointment only

Education

Ph.D. University of Minnesota
Diplom (MSci) Universität Bonn, Germany

Research

My research interests lie in immigration, citizenship, (refugee) geopolitics, and migrant transnationalism. As a political and feminist geographer I focus on the role of spaces of everyday life in these processes. 

My most recent project on 'The Geopolitics of Trauma' (with Dr. Anna Secor at Durham University and Dr. Jenna Loyd at University of Wisconsin-Madison) seeks to understand the role of trauma--often medicalized as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)--in the admission and resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the United States. We received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (BCS-1461615) for a multi-year project that studied the admissions screening processes in Turkey and Jordan, and the resettlement processes and refugee well-being in four sites in the United States. 

I also collaborated with Caroline Nagel at the University of South Carolina on a project on immigrants and religion in the United States. Our collaborative research project in Atlanta, GA, Charlotte, NC, and Greenville-Spartanburg, SC was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (BCS-1021907) as well, and investigated how communities of faith are engaged in the complex and changing geographies of immigration and belonging in the context of recent, rapid immigration and fervent anti-immigrant legislation in the U.S. South. 

My research has been published, among others, in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Urban Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Space & Polity, Environment and Planning A, and Social & Cultural Geography, and together with Helga Leitner I co-edited a theme issue on “Rethinking immigration and citizenship: New spaces of migrant transnationalism and belonging” in Environment and Planning A. I currently serve as Associate Editor of Political Geography and hold the office of Vice-President of the American Association of Geographers.

I teach courses at the undergraduate level on Immigrant America (GEO 221), A World of Migrants (HON 251), and qualitative research methods. At the graduate level I teach seminars in Social Theory (Democracy; War; Law, Sex, Family; Feminism/Post-Colonialism), Social Geography (GEO 722 Migrants & Strangers) and Political Geography (GEO 714: Immigration and Democracy; GEO 714 Immigration Geopolitics; GEO 714: Borders and Displacement; GEO 714 Feminist Political Geographies), GEO 705 Qualitative Research Methods, GEO 655 Publications Workshop, and GEO 743 Proposal Development. My graduate advisees work on related topics. 

Selected Publications:

Loyd, J.M., A.J. Secor, P. Ehrkamp, 2023, Geopolitics of disability and the ablenationalism of refuge, Geopolitics, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2023.2185139 (open access)

Ehrkamp, Patricia, Mia M. Bennett, Charis Enns, Kevin Grove, Filippo Menga, Antonis Vradis, and Olivier J. Walther, 2023, Small steps (January Editorial), Political Geography 102821, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102821

Secor, A.J., P. Ehrkamp and J.M. Loyd, 2022, The problem of the future in the spacetime of resettlement: Iraqi refugees in the US, Environment and Planning D: Society & Space, https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758221088865 (open access)

Ehrkamp, P., Loyd, J., and A. Secor, 2021, Trauma as displacement: Observations from refugee resettlement, Annals of the American Association of Geographers (special issue on Displacement), https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2021.1956296

Ehrkamp, P., 2020, Progress Report: Geographies of Migration III: Transit and Transnationalism, Progress in Human Geography, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132519895317

Ehrkamp, P., Loyd, J. and A. Secor, 2019, Embodied experiences of trauma geopolitics, in Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration, Katharyne Mitchell, Reece Jones, and Jennifer Fluri (eds.), London: Edward Elgar, pp. 117-129, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786436030.00017

Loyd, J., Ehrkamp, P. and A. Secor, 2018, A geopolitics of trauma: Refugee administration and protracted uncertainty in Turkey, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, https://doi.org/10.111/tran.12234

Ehrkamp, P., 2017, Progress Report: Geographies of Migration II: The racial-spatial politics of immigration, Progress in Human Geography, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132517747317

Ehrkamp, P., 2017, Nativism, nationalism, and the hardening lines of citizenship, Society & Space Open Site

Ehrkamp, P. and C. Nagel, 2017, Policing the borders of church and societal membership: Immigrant and faith-based communities in the U.S. South, special issue on Polymorphous Borders, Territory, Politics, Government 5(3): 318-331

Nagel, C. and P. Ehrkamp, 2017, Immigration, Christian faith communities, and the practice of multiculturalism in the US South, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(1): 190-208, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2016.1229489

Ehrkamp, P., 2016, Progress Report: Geographies of Migration I: Refugees, Progress in Human Geography DOI: 10.1177/0309132516663061

Nagel, C. and P. Ehrkamp, 2016, Deserving welcome? Immigrants and the contentious politics of belonging in the churches of the U.S. South, Antipode 48(4): 1040-158, DOI: 10.1111/anti.12233

Ehrkamp, P. and M. Jacobsen, 2015, Citizenship, Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Geography, (eds. Anna Secor, Joanne Sharpe, John Agnew, Virginie Mamadouh), pp. 152-164

Ehrkamp, P. and C. Nagel, 2014, 'Under the radar’: Undocumented immigrants, Christian faith communities, and the precarious spaces of welcome in the U.S. South, Special Issue on Migration, Annals of the Association of American Geographers104(2): 319-328, DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2013.858573

Ehrkamp, P., 2013, ’I’ve had it with them!’ Younger migrant women’s spatial practices of conformity and resistance, Gender, Place and Culture 20(1): 19-36

Ehrkamp, P. and C. Nagel, 2012, Immigration, places of worship and the politics of citizenship in the US South, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37(4): 624-638

Staeheli, L., P. Ehrkamp, H. Leitner, and C. Nagel, 2012, Dreaming the ordinary: Daily life and the complex geographies of citizenship, Progress in Human Geography 36 (5): 627-643

Ehrkamp, P., 2010, The limits of multi-cultural tolerance? Liberal democracy and media portrayals of Muslim migrant women in Germany, Space and Polity 14 (1), 13–32

Ehrkamp, P., 2008, Risking publicity: masculinities and the racialization of public neighborhood space, Social and Cultural Geography 9 (2), 117-133 

Ehrkamp, P., 2006,’We Turks are no Germans’: Assimilation discourses and the dialectical construction of identities in Germany, Environment and Planning A, 38 (9): 1673-1692

Ehrkamp, P., 2005, Placing identities. Transnational practices and local attachments of Turkish immigrants in Germany, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 (2), 345-364

Teaching