CeMig Research Colloquium Winter Term 2020/21

This research project aims to explore and examine the social and institutional stratification of refugees in Jordan. The project will provide a case study of Sub-Saharan African refugees in Jordan who are subject to both social and institutional marginalization and negligence due to (a) their ethnicity, (b) visibility as refugees in Jordan amidst the high influxes of other refugees, (c) their visa status, and (d) the lack of global interest in funding their needs. The social and institutional exclusion imposed on Sub-Saharan African refugees put them in a dire situation where they are left, as a vulnerable group, without adequate support mechanisms that help them overcome the multi-faceted issues of discrimination, lack of opportunities and access to services, extreme poverty, fear of eviction, fragmentation of family bonds, forced deportation and negative coping mechanisms such as child labor. The research will adopt qualitative methods that include semi-structured interviews and focus groups and the research will present the case of Sub-Saharan African refugees as a case study of left-behind refugees in the Middle East. The interviews will be conducted with members from Sub-Saharan African refugees, UN agency representatives, NGOs and CSOs staff and representatives from the Government of Jordan.

The main aim of this project is to explore impacts and roles of the family narratives on ‘return’ migrants to Istanbul (a) backward migration decisions and (b) on their daily life after the return will be discussed. The aim of this study is to investigate the positive / negative impact transnational narratives of migration, immigration and source countries on the decision to live in Istanbul. This study consist of the families of immigrants participated in the labor force mobility as a result of the migration agreements signed between Germany and Turkey, their (a) precursor migration decision, (b) the migration process, (c) everyday family life, (d) personal narratives about the places they lived and (e) the decision of ‘return’ immigration and the concerns, expectations and hopes about it. A bilateral ethnographic study is foreseen in both Istanbul and Berlin.

The global spread of COVID-19 is likely to oblige every researcher to tackle with the present pandemic condition as a crisis. As an example, Pınar Şenoğuz will discuss the main assumptions and feasibility of her future study on forced migration and crisis within the context of im/mobile refugees from the Middle East. Drawing on her previous study on German asylum reception, she aims to examine the Coronavirus crisis as yet another conjuncture in which the national authorities, international bodies of migration governance and humanitarian organizations orchestrate their care and control functions in regulating the refugee bodies across the Turkey/Europe migration space. In this purpose, she engages the lens of home as an innovative method to produce a longitudinal and in-depth analysis of the ways in which the refugees reconstitute their lives within the post-pandemic context.

In her talk, Pınar Şenoguz develops a discussion on meanings of home as a space of care and protection, especially with the spread of COVID-19. Home has acquired a heightened focus, as the pandemic regime of social distancing introduced “stay at home” memes around the world as a primary response. The questions that are most relevant here are therefore: How (far) may the refugees on the move tactically cultivate a sense of home in order to cope with uncertainty, dramatically accentuated by the absence of homely living circumstances? How (far) may their everyday tactics foster alternative care resources? How might this knowledge contribute to our understanding of the agency and narratives of refugees from the Middle East?

We study the extent to which migrant inflows to the United States affect the political polarization of campaign donors and the ideology of politicians campaigning for the House of Representatives. Implementing various polarization measures based on ideology data derived from 16 million campaign finance contributors, our results show that migrant inflows causally increase the polarization of both campaign donations and leading political candidates. Our estimates hold over the medium-run, although the effects decline over time, suggesting an underlying process of acceptance. These effects are exacerbated if counties host migrants from more distant cultures (in accordance with contact theory), or if incoming migrants are similarly educated (in accordance with realistic group threat theory). Our main results hold when we focus on refugees as opposed to all immigrants on aggregate.

This intervention is founded on the ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in Sicily starting from 2016, investigating the border apparatus at its southern shores, especially the hotspot in Pozzallo, following the internal circulations of migrants on the move connected to agricultural work around Ragusa, Scicli and Vittoria, and in Catania, an important space of transit towards the penisola. I will at first briefly summarise the history and economy of migrations and border control in Sicily. I will then focus on the developments of the European border regime in the region and its most recent transformations. What type of circulations it produces? How we can find and make sense of them? In which ways the border and the movements it generates interact with local economies and labour markets? What is the impact of the current pandemic in this scenario? How do we face, as researchers, the ethical and methodological issues connected to investigating it?

Türkiyeli Trans Subjectivities in Germany: Negotiations on Identity, Intimacy and Space

This research deals with trans subjectivities, paying particular attention to intimacies, migration and self-expressions. I intend to explore the positionality of Türkiyeli trans “migrants” within social and institutional milieus of Germany (Berlin in particular), and what possible intersectionalities trans subjectivities offer to discussions on migration and identity politics while bodily and spatially transitioning. In this regard, I approach trans subjectivity as something diverse that might be recreated and co- constituted in relation to social interactions, intimacies and space, rather than a stable mode of being. From this perspective, I will investigate how Türkiyeli trans subjectivities are (re)shaped in terms of various forms of intimacy within social and medico-legal spaces of Germany, and what possible impacts their spatial trajectories have in recalibrating these intimacies and sense of belonging. In this presentation, I will share my initial research ideas on the ways in which subjectivities are diversified and mobilized in the experiences of Türkiyeli trans persons who currently live in Germany.


Practicing Borders: Kurdish Women's Body in Motion

How are gender and race/ethnicity constructed through borders? and how are borders constructed through the process of gender and race/ethnicity construction? With a focus on Kurdish women’s journeys from Iran to Europe, this research strives to study the construction of gender, race/ethnicity, and borders as well. Departing from a feminist geography standpoint, I aim to explore Kurdish women’s experiences of crossing borders. I adopt ethnography as a method approach to shed light on construction of gender and race/ethnicity through borders. The strategy for gathering data will be semi-structured interviews with Kurdsih women who came to Europe, without authorization.