Finding Home Between the Black Sea and the Welsh Coast – Hade's story  

I grew up in the northern part of Turkey, on the Black Sea coast, in a town that was small when I was a child but has grown over time. It was a green, rainy place, deeply connected to agriculture and community. I come from a large, close-knit family: four sisters, a strongly matriarchal household, and a wide extended family spread across Turkey. Those ties are still very strong, and they continue to shape who I am. 

At seventeen, I left home to study in Ankara. I spent eight years there, completing both my undergraduate degree and my master’s in urban politics at Middle East Technical University (METU). Ankara was intense in its own way, but after my studies I moved to Istanbul in 2006, and that is where my life became truly full. 

In Istanbul, I lived many lives at once. I was a PhD student, an activist in urban social movements, and I worked for an association monitoring the activities of MPs in the Turkish Parliament. My social and political life was intense, fast-paced, and deeply engaging. Istanbul was colourful, chaotic, and vibrant, a city of nearly twenty million people, and I felt completely embedded in it. 

I never planned to leave Turkey. But during my PhD, one of my professors, himself a former PhD student of Professor John Lovering at Cardiff University, connected me to a field trip programme between Cardiff and my university in Istanbul. As a PhD student, I helped organise field research visits, and through that work I met John Lovering and other academics from Cardiff University. 

John became a pivotal figure in my life. He was deeply interested in my research on urban politics and social movements in Istanbul, and he encouraged me to apply for a scholarship at Cardiff University. At that time, opportunities like this were more accessible. I applied, was interviewed, and with John’s support I was awarded a full scholarship. In 2009, I moved to Cardiff to continue my PhD. 

My plan was simple: finish my PhD and return to Turkey. All my networks, social, political, and academic, were there. I came to Wales as a student, not as someone intending to settle. But as we often say, life is what happens while you are making plans. During my PhD, I met my partner, now my husband, an English lecturer at Cardiff University who is from Wiltshire. We started at the university at the same time, and he was one of the first people I met. Our relationship grew, and in 2015 we married. That changed everything. 

Wales, unexpectedly, began to feel like home almost immediately. People often imagine Turkey as sun, beaches, and Mediterranean colours, but that is not where I am from. The Black Sea region is green and grey, rainy and coastal, much like Wales. When I arrived, the landscape reminded me of my childhood. After the relentless pace of Istanbul, Wales felt quiet, almost unsettling at first. Time moved differently. I did not have to rush. That slowness, over time, changed me. 

The transition was not easy. English is not my first language, and living, working, and socialising in a second language was exhausting. I developed a kind of conversation anxiety, something unfamiliar to me as an extrovert who had always been politically active and socially engaged. I had ideas, opinions, and stories, but often not the confidence or fluency to express them in the moment. Silence became a barrier. 

Yet I was fortunate. John was not just a supervisor but a mentor and a friend. He introduced me to his network, many of whom remain lifelong friends. Some of them were bilingual, and they understood the vulnerability of speaking in a second language. That compassion mattered deeply. 

Over time, I learned something invaluable in Wales: how to listen. Before, I was always speaking, organising, acting. Here, I learned to pause, observe, and develop deeper empathy. That skill, born out of language barriers and cultural difference, became one of my greatest strengths. I began to feel truly international, able to connect across cultures with care and understanding. 

I am very aware of my privilege. I am white, highly educated, from a secular family, and I have strong social capital. I had support networks many migrants do not. And yet, I am still a migrant. My accent gives me away the moment I speak. I experienced barriers in the labour market, applied for many jobs without success, and often relied on personal networks to find opportunities. Even with privilege, the path was not smooth. 

After completing my PhD, I chose to stay in Wales and build a life here. I worked for seven years at Chwarae Teg, a Welsh gender equality organisation. It was my first experience in a deeply Welsh working environment, and again language and accent were challenges, especially understanding humour, references, and shared histories. But professionally, it was transformative. I led in-house research, conducted six major studies based on primary data, and helped bring women’s voices into Welsh policymaking. I am immensely proud of that work. 

I now work at Oxfam Cymru, continuing my commitment to people and nature, the values that have guided me everywhere I have lived. Whether in Turkey or Wales, my work has always been about justice, care, and community. I believe this is what real integration looks like: not abandoning who you are, but transferring your skills, values, and care into the place you now call home. 

Wales is my home. I live in Barry. My son was born here, goes to Welsh-medium school, and speaks with a Barry accent. He says he is half Turkish, half English, and one hundred percent Welsh. That sentence means everything to me. 

What I want people to understand about my story, and about migration more broadly, is that it is never as simple as it looks. There are opportunities, yes, but also loneliness, barriers, and invisible struggles. Compassion makes the difference. Wales has a long history of migration, Italian, Irish, Eastern European, Somaliland and other parts of Africa, as well as South Asia and that history is woven into its language, labour, and culture. Migration has shaped Wales, and it continues to enrich it. 

I am grateful to Wales for giving me a home. And I am proud to give something back.