Notes from a refugee protest: ambivalences of resisting and desiring citizenship

Abstract

In 2014, Afghan asylum-seekers and refugees in Turkey staged the longest refugee demonstration thus far in the country’s history. They protested the UNHCR’s office in Turkey and its decision to suspend new registrations, an action that they perceived to be discriminatory, and demanded the right to mobility. In the process, multiple forms of citizenship were enacted, illustrating refugees’ ‘ambivalent’ relation with citizenship. Instead of dismissing this multiplicity as merely contradictory, this paper attempts to focus on it as a lens into reflecting on the relationship between citizenship and political subjectivity. I argue that citizenship reveals various embodiments of political subjectivity and that neither regressive nor progressive qualities can be read into citizenship independent of the particular spaces that activate these varying embodiments.

Keywords:

• Refugee protest
• ambivalences of citizenship
• political subjectivity
• Afghan refugees
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

I thank the Afghan refugees I met in Kayseri and Ankara for allowing me into their lives and struggles. I also would like to thank the editors for their valuable comments and patience as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Notes

1. I use the term ‘refugee’ for everyone who self-identifies as such. This means my usage includes both those with the legal status and those without it. I use the term ‘asylum-seeker’ only when it legally matters, in order to indicate where a person is with regards to the refugee status determination process.

2. For an analysis (in Turkish) of these conjunctural factors by asylum experts, please refer to http://multeci.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=340%3Aneden-afgan-snmaclar-&catid=31%3Agenel&Itemid=1&lang=tr.

3. For an analysis of the UNHCR’s broader policies regarding Afghans in the region, especially in Iran and Pakistan, see Scalettaris (2010).

4. A report (in English) by the Coordination of Afghan Refugees in Turkey on the conditions of Afghan refugees can be found at his link: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/526d9d22e4b00a92c90783d8/t/52fd72aee4b0eb1e3593f58d/1422447099428/Afg+report.pdf.

5. Here is the link to their website in Farsi. Their name appears differently on the website: http://afgrefugees.com/.

6. An opinion piece in Turkish, arguing that the UNHCR discriminates against Afghan refugees, can be found at this link: http://www.multeci.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=299%3Ansanln-en-guezel-goerevi-adalet-datmasdr&catid=46%3Azkira&lang=en.

7. I could not attend this protest but talked on the phone to one of its organizers. The link to the press release (in Turkish) can be found on the website of this NGO, which used to be a part of a national coordination of NGOs working on refugee rights: ankara.mazlumder.org/tr/main/faaliyetler/basin-aciklamalari/1/mazlumder-ankara-subesi-afganistanli-siginmac/12004.

8. The declaration was distributed both in Turkish and English. Quotes here are from the original text in English.

9. For more on how the UNHCR combines care and control through paternalism and such paternalism’s pedagogical effects on refugees, see Barnett (2011).

10. Another organization that gave its support to the protest was Migrant Solidarity Network. Here is a link (in Turkish) to their demonstration in Istanbul: http://bianet.org/bianet/goc/156013-afgan-siginmacilara-insan-yasam-hakki-taninsin.