Governing through Uncertainty Experiences of Being a Refugee in Turkey as a Country for Temporary Asylum

• Published in: Social analysis Vol. 59; no. 1; pp. 57 - 75
• Main Author: Biehl, Kristen Sarah
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Berghahn Journals 01-04-2015; berghahn journals; Berghahn Books, Inc
• Subjects: Analysis; Asylum, Right of; Borders; Bureaucracy; Certainty; Conventions; Governmentality; Knowledge; Migration; Political asylum; Reference (Semantic); Refugees; Security; Social aspects; Society; Turkey; Uncertainty; Turkey; Eastern Europe; refugeeness; Turkey; governmentality; waiting; securitization approach; asylum seeker; uncertainty; asylum regime
• ISSN: 0155-977X; 1558-5727
• DOI: 10.3167/sa.2015.590104

This article addresses the question of how to theorize the relation between uncertainty and governmentality with regard to displacement and its consequences. It explores the experiences of asylum seekers in Turkey and the bureaucratic processes of refugee status determination, local dispersal, and third country resettlement, illustrating two main points throughout. First, 'protracted uncertainty', characterized by indefinite waiting, limited knowledge, and unpredictable legal status, is a central element of the experience of being an asylum seeker in Turkey. Second, this uncertainty serves to demobilize, contain, and criminalize asylum seekers through the production of protracted uncertainty, which in turn is normalized as a necessity of bureaucracy and/or security. The article invites readers to question the governmentalities of asylum and border regimes that not only discipline refugees' everyday movements but also determine the uncertainty of 'refugeeness'.