1,720,986 research outputs found
Beyond legal status: Exploring dimensions of belonging among forced migrants in Istanbul and Vienna
No full textMigrants with precarious legal statuses experience significant structural exclusion from their host nations but may still feel partial belonging. This article explores two dimensions potentially relevant for this group’s sense of belonging: city-level opportunity structures and public political discourses. Specifically, we examine perceptions of belonging among forced migrants with similarly precarious legal statuses located in Istanbul and Vienna. Drawing from semi-structured interviews, we argue that opportunity structures in the cities provide a minimal sense of social normalness within a period of life otherwise considered anomalous or exceptional. Any articulations of belonging in this context however remain inherently tied to the conditions of legal limbo at the national level. With regard to public political discourses, migrants display a strong awareness of the role of religion within national debates on culture and integration. In a context where religion is discussed as a mediator of belonging, we found explicit affirmations of such discourses, whereas in a context where religion is discussed as a marker of difference, we found implicit compliance, despite feelings of alienation. Overall, this article shows the importance of differentiating belonging, and of cross-regional comparisons for highlighting the diverse roles of cities and public political discourses in facilitating integration.European Commission Joint Research Centre European Community (EC)Publisher versio
In pursuit of belonging: Forging an ethical life in european-turkish spaces
No full textBelonging is a not a state that we achieve, but a struggle that we wage. The struggle for belonging is more difficult if one is returning to a homeland after many years abroad. In Pursuit of Belonging is an ethnography of Turkish migrants’ struggle for understanding, intimacy and appreciation when they return from Germany to their Turkish homeland. Drawing on an established tradition of life story writing in anthropology, Rottmann conveys the struggle to forge an ethical life by relating the experiences of a second-generation German-Turkish woman named Leyla
Introduction
No full textJust after the local elections in 2019, irregular migrants in Istanbul faced a months-long crackdown. The Ministry of Interior from the Justice and Development Party government (known as AK Party or AKP) gave Syrians until 20 August 2019 to return to the cities in which they were first registered. Although the time period was eventually extended, the internal controls for migrants became stricter. Migrants found themselves frequently stopped by police, and officers visited registration addresses to check if they were occupied. If irregularities were discovered, the official directive was that Syrians should be returned to the cities in which they were first registered. For non-Syrian migrants without registration, the result of police stops was often being confined to pre-detention centres. According to the Head of the Directorate General Management of Migration (DGMM) of the time, Abdullah Ayaz, “Operations in Istanbul target irregular migrants such as Afghans and Pakistanis. Even if Syrians are found without registration at all, they are not deported, unlike the claims in the media. It is not possible to issue deportation decisions legally about Syrians due to the conditions in Syria” (AA 2019)
At the unsettling limits of collaborative life writing: A memoir of an ethnography-memoir
No full textThis chapter uses a memoir to examine the limits of anthropological collaboration. I draw on 12 years of friendship and fieldwork that culminated in my writing an ethnographic life story of a German-Turkish return migrant (Leyla) and publishing it together with Leyla’s own original memoir. In recent years, anthropologists have rightly celebrated collaboration as the latest incarnation of engaged, public or activist anthropology. Yet, while reflecting on my collaborative project with Leyla and moving forward with further ones, I have found that collaboration is limited in ways that have not yet been fully explored. Researchers have tended to focus on barriers to collaboration stemming from unequal power dynamics, appropriation of an other’s story and the revealing of ethnographic secrets. In this chapter, I argue that important challenges for collaboration lie with the ethics of reciprocity in the ethnographic encounter and specifically with issues of authority, readership and publication goals; the limited training of anthropologists to engage in co-authorship; and the highly fraught nature of friendship itself under the pressures of late capitalism and professional academic anthropology
Cultivating membership abroad: Analyzing German pre-integration courses for Turkish marriage migrants
No full textAddressing research on migration governance, this article examines German pre-integration courses offered to Turkish marriage migrants in Istanbul. The courses were implemented in response to growing concern about the perceived poor integration of Muslim migrants and a high number of forced marriages. I argue that these courses are a micro form of biopolitical governance. Specifically, they are an attempt to generate internalized ways of being and knowing that are desired by the state, which I call 'membership cultivation.' As such, the courses are not precisely aimed at restricting migration as in other pre-integration measures, nor are they mainly reinforcing symbolic boundaries and teaching liberalism as in post-migration German civic integration courses. Rather, the courses attempt to re-make migrants with regards to morality, culture and gender. Using participant observation and in-depth interviews, this research examines the disciplinary mechanisms targeting migrants' transformation to enhance our understanding of the biopolitics of pre-integration governance
Cultivating and contesting order: 'European Turks' and negotiations of neighbourliness at 'home'
No full textThis article examines how Turks returning from Germany to Turkey self-fashion as 'orderly neighbours'. By maintaining aesthetically pleasing homes and gardens, keeping public spaces clean, and obeying rules and laws in public, return migrants believe they act as modern 'European-Turks' and exemplify good neighbourliness. Many neighbours, however, feel these actions are unnecessary or even disruptive to Turkish communities. In conversation with the burgeoning anthropology of ethics, this research explores how local, national and transnational assemblages foster reflections and debates on neighbourly ethics. Further, this study highlights anxieties about individualism, reciprocity, 'modernity' and 'European-ness' in today's Turkey
A crisis within crises: Narratives of food insecurity and coping for syrian refugees in Türkiye
No full textSyrian refugees in Türkiye face significant challenges in accessing adequate and nutritious food, a situation exacerbated by their precarious living conditions and recent external shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic, economic crisis, and the 2023 earthquake. Yet, little research has examined how these refugees perceive their food needs and cope with food insecurity. This article fills this gap by utilizing the Food and Agriculture Organization's framework for studying food security, which encompasses availability, access, utilization, and stability. Through 27 semi-structured interviews, the study explores how refugees handle food insecurity, including by limiting food quantity and diversity, borrowing money and food, and prioritizing children's nutrition. Furthermore, the study highlights the governance dimension of food security, demonstrating how policies and market forces affect refugees' vulnerability to hunger. By adopting a qualitative approach focused on migrants' narratives and experiences, this article provides a nuanced, micro-level understanding of food insecurity. It examines the cultural and social aspects of this issue for refugees, while also offering recommendations for policymakers and humanitarian organizations who aim to mitigate this crisis within a crisis.TÜBİTA
Everyday agency: Rethinking refugee women’s agency in specific cultural contexts
No full textThis article proposes an interdisciplinary approach to refugee agency – the capacity to act within structural conditions – using the example of Syrian women rebuilding family and home in Turkey. Our broader objective is to prompt a re-thinking of refugee women’s everyday agency for scholars researching migration. The dominant manner of studying agency tends to be centered on refugees’ efforts to change their particular situations. Drawing on the latest theoretical propositions of cultural psychology (collective coping and the cultural coping model), we argue that agency can also be observed through examining how refugees rebuild their lives in the face of the many changes and challenges they have experienced. Guided by the cultural coping model, we describe stressors and coping strategies in context. With this approach, we can escape the trap of viewing refugee women in dichotomous ways, either as traumatized victims or as liberated from “traditional patriarchy.” A total of 33 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Turkey with Syrian, Arabic-speaking adult women. Interviews aimed to obtain comprehensive narratives on acculturation, daily stressors, coping strategies and everyday experiences of uprootedness. We used constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) to identify significant themes (initial coding) and then code for more conceptual units of meaning (focused coding). The findings are structured around context specific themes: stressors and coping strategies. The study revealed three important types of stressors: family-related, role-related and place-related stressors. Each stressor can only be understood within the cultural context of inter-dependent agency, motherhood and neighborhood belonging, which are highly valued lived experiences of the refugee women. The study also identified three coping strategies: faith-based, home-making and identity building strategies. Our research shows that relying on Islamic understandings, creating the routines of a happy home and forging neighborly ties are important gender and culture specific manifestations of agency. The value of this research is that it provides migration scholars a useful model for designing research with female refugees. By identifying and writing about these specific and contextual forms of agency, researchers can provide better support to refugee women in their daily lives, while also challenging the image of passive “womenandchildren.”European Union’s Horizon 2020 ; Priority Research Area Society of the Future ; Uniwersytet Jagielloński w KrakowiePublisher versio
Embracing vulnerability in writing migrant lives
No full textIn this paper, an anthropologist and a life writer examine the implications of an ethical and political practice of vulnerability with regards to writing migrant lives. Drawing on research with migrants in Turkey and Australia, we argue that it is useful to use vulnerable methodologies, vulnerable relationships and vulnerable writing
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