CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2008
| Author | Ozdil, Koray |
|---|---|
| Title | "To Get a Paper, To Get a Job": The Quite Struggles of African Foreigners in Istanbul, Turkey |
| Summary | Despite the high level of marginalization and their disadvantaged situation, considerate amount of African foreigners seek to establish informal mechanisms of incorporation in order to settle in Istanbul permanently. By considering the presence of new immigrant groups on the urban spaces of Istanbul as both reflective and constitutive of new forms of membership, I explore the struggles undertaken by the immigrant to ameliorate their lives and advance reassertion to urban life. Situating this study within the historical context of political and ideological currents of Turkish immigration regime, I examine the exclusionary aspects of Turkish citizenry, accompanied by the governmental mechanisms such as detention, criminalization, and police control. Rather than presupposing the transient form of immigrants’ stay as a given, I examine the ways in which the immigrants involve in the social and economic life of the city and claim rights in these multiple domains. I argue that the immigrants’ resistance to the problems related to exclusion from official citizenship rights takes the form of “quite struggles” on the basis of daily survival under the shadow of state surveillance and violence. Rather than engaging in collective forms of claim making and mass political mobilization their struggles aim to improve their lives and advance reassertion to urban life. |
| Supervisor | rajaram, prem kumaram; kowalski, alexandra |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2008/ozdil_koray.pdf |
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