Gazing Toward and Beyond the Borders: Syrian Refugees and Organizations Supporting Them in Turkey

Izabela Kujawa and Izabella Main

Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2024, vol. 39, issue 6, 1161-1179

Abstract: We investigate the meanings of borders for Syrians based in Turkey and for the efforts of the civil society organizations supporting them. We look at how being placed within specific borderscapes determines Syrians’ everyday lives and CSOs’ activities in Istanbul and Gaziantep. The scholarly literature usually explores experiences of borders and the consequences of bordering practices for migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers while focusing solely on those of the country in which the foreigners currently reside. We point out that while people’s experiences and CSOs’ actions greatly depend on regulations, policies, and the implementation thereof, in this case, of the Turkish refugee regime, they also depend on people’s gaze at and beyond the borders toward Syria and Western countries; they are also affected by what was, is, or could be happening on their other sides. Rather than viewing borders as static lines, we approach them as an element of borderscapes and explore how they influence people’s general situation as well as their day-to-day social relations affecting their identities and group formation. We demonstrate that these borderscapes shape the processes of becoming and belonging even long after the physical border has been crossed and continually impress the work of the CSOs that provide the support in this field.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08865655.2023.2289105 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rjbsxx:v:39:y:2024:i:6:p:1161-1179

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rjbs20

DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2023.2289105

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Borderlands Studies is currently edited by Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, Henk van Houtum and Martin van der Velde

More articles in Journal of Borderlands Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().