Border Crossing

Front Matter

2023-06-28

Front Matter

Changing Numbers, Living Conditions, Unchanging Biopolitical Problematic: Syrian Refugees in Turkey

Hatice Yaprak Civelek — 2023-01-06

Five years ago, the study titled “Biopolitical Problematic: Syrians Refugees in Turkey” was the second chapter of the book, “Turkey’s Syrians, today and Tomorrow” published and its argument was found remarkable and got good feedback. This study aims to update the recent statistics belonging to the Syrian refugees and revise the new developments in connection with the discussed biopolitical perspectives. It is obvious that with its nationalist character, Turkey continues to give its citizens some moral and respectable codes to save and to defend, which also defines civil types of human behavior and relations, which are all the time culturally and politically approved but put a kind of fear inside people. Therefore, nothing has changed on the theoretical ground, but the reader can find out new references problematizing the integration issue. Syrians' noticeable presence in almost every region and mostly negative narratives of the locals, their integration strategies, and the government's policies have been supported by recent literature and, recently most of the reaction appears because of the thought that “they are not actually guests.” However, rising of such a belief is not enough to change the theoretical framework constructed for the previous study: Agamben’s concepts of the camp, bare life, and state of exception, Foucault’s opinions on the relationship between security, territory, and population as associated with the socio-political practices, and Furedi’s culture of fear is still the key concepts of the theoretical process.

CSOs Addressing Women in Agri and the Pandemic: On Actions, Issues, and Solutions

Ceren Avcil — 2023-01-10

The beginning of 2020 witnessed the global spread of COVID-19, a non-traditional threat that has since affected every part of life in all countries. In response to this non-traditional threat, national and international governments and bodies have toiled to implement targeted measures to contain the spread of the pandemic, causing many official activities and events held online, the notable example being education institutions and civil society organizations outright opting to conduct their programs online for about a year. This entire process has created challenges for each sector; however, CSOs have been faced with a distinct set of difficulties arising from this non-traditional threat in terms of their practical functionality due to the conventionally central role of face-to-face interactions in their organizational activities.

This study determines the current state of two civil society organizations working to address the needs of women in Agri along with the issues they have encountered and the solutions they have come up with during the pandemic. The study employed semi-structured interviews held during face-to-face meetings with the presidents of both CSOs. The interviewers asked 10 questions to them. The study primarily found that CSOs had suffered a negative impact due to the pandemic.

Not Only A Man’s World: Women Also Cross Borders

Maryam Liman — 2023-01-12

The migrants from Niger Republic move into the neighboring Nigerian communities in numbers in search for greener pastures. Previously, research in the region has shown migration to be male dominated (Liman, 2021). However, a new wave of women participation was noticed hence the need for literature update. The study was conducted at Daura Local Government Area, Katsina state in Nigeria. The study area shares with Niger Republic a manned border at Kongolom and unmanned borders throughout the expanse of its several remote villages making the influx of both human and animal resources uncontrolled. Women, just like men move freely into the study area yearly. In order to understand the reasons behind the decision by these women to cross the borders, four (4) Focus Group Discussions were conducted with the 35 migrants using a checklist as a guide. Four (4) Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) also held with their hostesses. Qualitative data was therefore collected and reported in descriptive narration. The results of the FGD show all respondents were female within the age range of 12-56years. Some were married, some widowed, a good number divorced and the rest were spinsters. None of them had formal education but some had basic Islamic knowledge. They engaged in farming, post harvest activities, domestic chores such as cleaning, cooking and babysitting and others street begging. Findings reveal that economic gains were the major reason for coming to Nigeria. For some respondents, this is the first time of partaking in migration, others have had the joy of returning yearly thereby making them circular migrants. These ladies and others practicing this migration type are commonly referred to as ‘Yan Tabiradi. Information gathered from the 3 of 4 of the hostesses, who were elderly women, all widowed and lived in 2-3 room houses explained that some migrants pay a token fee to stay (N150-N200 monthly/less than 50cents) for accomodation. The fourth hostess, relatively younger, entertained her relatives at no cost. Finally, it can be concluded that, women from southern Niger Republic do partake actively in short distance, seasonal, circular migration in parts of northern Nigeria. They come due to availability of work, a good network of family and friends that secure the work and accommodate them and also the ease of crossing the border.

Nations, Shadow Borders, and the Production of Gender in the Present

Noah Allison — 2023-01-20

How do borders, real and imagined, influence conceptions of gender? This paper answers this question by analyzing written materials produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project, namely “The Secret Prison that Keeps Migrants Out of Europe.” This is achieved by making sense of how bordering tactics impact people fleeing their homes in Africa on their dangerous journey to Europe. In doing so, it engages an intersectionality lens when analyzing the processes and consequences of externalized border technologies that emerge from laws, surveillance, and ransoms. Finally, this paper adds new perspectives to migration and border scholarship by specifying how African border-making are places and processes that reproduce gender.

To Be Mobile to Stabilize and to Return to Enjoy: Safety, Cultural Familiarity and Inner-self in the Context of Mobility vs. Migration

Tuba Ardic — 2023-05-01

Return is discussed mostly in the context of migration, not in regard to mobility. When it comes to return of the EU citizens, it is not seen as much of a return but retro-mobility. However, there are also great differences between member-states regarding return patterns. These patterns are influenced by socialization, work cultures, and concepts such as safety, family and the self. These differences, which do not seem very crucial at first, can result in return, rather than permanent migration. In order to understand the dynamics of return, I focus hereby in two women’s lives where I conducted two interviews with each: one during mobility and another before their return to their home countries, namely to Iceland and Spain. I argue, in this paper, that the motivations for return are complex and cannot be easily categorized as one specific factor. Rather, they are a combination of multiple factors which vary during diverse periods of mobility. These factors can be examined in the context of macro, meso and micro which are the themes that emerged from the interviews as safety, cultural familiarity and inner-self. The inner-self makes the last decision to return whilst ideas on safety and cultural familiarity are facilitating factors for return. Hence, every return is a biographical story and one has to consider the biographies of each migrant and/or mobile person before they examine the reasons to understand return in its full complexity.

Perceptions of Teacher Candidates Toward Syrian Refugees: A Metaphor Study

Aysun Dogutas — 2023-06-27

The aim of the study is to identify the perceptions of teacher candidates, who are studying at different department and different grades of education faculty, towards Syrian refugees through metaphors. Phenomenology approach, one of the qualitative research methods, was used since it is the most appropriate method for studies studying individual’s perceptions through metaphors. The study group of the research consists of 264 university students who are studying teacher education at a university in Turkey. The sentence “Syrian is like ……. because ……….” were given to teacher candidates and they were asked to complete the sentence during data collection process. The process of analyzing and interpreting the metaphors is done in five stages. These are as follows; “naming stage", " Sorting (clarification and elimination) stage", " Sample metaphor compilation and categorization stage", " Establishing the inter-rater reliability rate" and “Analyzing the data quantitatively”. According to the result of this study, teacher candidates have mostly (117) negative thoughts about Syrian refugees and immigrants. Following the negative thoughts teacher candidates have, they mostly have opinions about Turkey and Turkey’s condition with refugees. In fact, these teacher candidates (63 of them) are worried about the Turkey’s and local people’s future. Another result of the study is that some of the teacher candidates (38 of them) have pity thoughts about refugees.

Examining the Differences in Psychological Wellbeing of Turkish Immigrants in Germany Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparative Study

Elif Duygu Cindik-Herbrüggen — 2023-06-27

Migrants are considered a vulnerable group during the COVID-19 outbreak due to low socio-economic status, discrimination, and language difficulties. Thus, they have experienced increased rates of anxiety and depression during the pandemic (Xiang et al., 2020; OECD, 2020). The participants of this research were mainly first and second-generation Turkish immigrants. They were pre-screened for a previous history of mental disorders and screening was performed with SCL-90-R. Of all 177 participants who completed the questionnaire between October 7, 2019, and February 2020, they were recruited again between August 10, 2020, and December 10, 2020, during the pandemic. According to the findings, a significant difference was found for depression (t=-5.36, p<.001), anxiety (t=-3.01, p<.001), and hostility (t=-3.70, p<.001) between the mean scores of the participants before and during COVID-19 pandemic. It was found that the increase in depression and anxiety symptoms during the coronavirus pandemic was higher among participants with low-income levels (p<.001). The mental health of our study participants worsened during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Turkish immigrants reported having higher depression, anxiety, and hostility scores in comparison with previous test scores conducted before the outbreak. Participants with low income were at the highest risk for COVID-19-related depression and anxiety.