Browsing by Author "Özçürümez, Saime"

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Open Access
The afraid create the fear: perceptions of refugees by ‘gün’ groups in Turkey
(Routledge, 2021) Özçürümez, Saime; Mete, Hatice
This study investigates the perceptions of the local female population towards displaced Syrians in Turkey. The research is based on the analysis of data from participant observation and discourse analysis of conversations in five ‘gün’ groups, which are informal, social, and fairly regular gatherings of local women, in Mersin in Spring 2018. Five common discursive patterns are identified: stereotyping, biased perceptions, ‘us’ vs. ‘them’, scapegoating, and discrimination. We conclude that local women’s discourses reveal marginalisation and discursive exclusion of displaced Syrians in Turkey, and argue that such othering originates not only from existing cultural differences, language barriers, and lack of trust, but also from lack of sustained social interaction between these groups. Further studies should facilitate both knowledge sharing about the additional vulnerabilities such attitudes create for displaced people and potential paths for meaningful engagement between local community members and forcibly displaced people.
Open Access
Avrupa entegrasyonu kuramlarıyla Türkiye'yi konu alan yazının etkileşimi: Avrupalılaşma araştırma programını Türkiye özelinde yeniden düşünmek
(2011) Bölükbaşı, H. Tolga; Ertugal, Ebru; Özçürümez, Saime
Bu makale Avrupa entegrasyonu çalışmalarının Avrupalılaşma yazını yönünde evrilmesiyle Türkiye’deki Avrupalılaşma çalışmalarının gelişimi arasında bir kopukluk olduğu gözleminden yola çıkmaktadır. Çalışma bu etkileşimin sınırlılıklarını tespit ettikten sonra, bu sınırlılıkların kavramsal, kuramsal ve yöntemsel kökenlerini incelemektedir. Söz konusu sınırlılıkların aşılabilmesi için Avrupalılaşma yazınıyla ortaya çıkan kavramsal, kuramsal ve yöntemsel yeniliklerin Türkiye’yi çalışırken etkin bir biçimde kullanılmasının gerekliliğine dikkat çekilmektedir. Bu tür bir uygulamanın Türkiye’deki dönüşümün üzerindeki AB etkisini diğer iç dinamikler ve dış faktörlerden ayırt etme imkânını yaratacağını vurgulanmaktadır. Bu değerlendirmeyi yaparken özellikle Türkiye’yi konu alan yazının kuramsal yaklaşımlar, kapsam, ara değişkenler, mekanizmalar ve araştırma tasarımı açısından gelişimini analiz edilmektedir.
Open Access
Barriers in access to care
(Routledge, 2012) Özçürümez, Saime; Wylie, L.; Bigot, G.; Dauth, R.
Open Access
The conceptualization problem in research and responses to sexual and gender-based violence in forced migration
(Taylor&Francis, 2020) Özçürümez, Saime; Akyüz, Selin; Bradby, H.
The conceptualization of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) has developed rapidly over recent decades and the understanding of SGBV in the context of forced migration continues to evolve. Based on a scoping review of scholarly work and reports by non-governmental organizations and international organizations between 1993 and 2018, this study identifies limitations to the current conceptualization of SGBV, and proposes a re-conceptualization. The paper argues that the existing literature overemphasizes the contexts of war zones and conflict and excludes post-flight settings, and focuses mainly on the victimization of women, excluding other at-risk groups. The tendency to focus on conflict zones and to underline the victim status of women constrains the usefulness of the conceptualization for informing research as well as protection and response. This review considers the multifaceted causes and consequences of gendered vulnerabilities and insecurities that are exposed in forced migration processes in order to make sense of SGBV as a gendered harm. Through a constructivist and de-essentialising theoretical lens, the study proposes to conceptualize SGBV in terms of continuities in forced migration occuring over time in interwoven territories and a variety of contexts from countries of origin to settlement.
Open Access
Conclusion: Crossing borders of states and border-crossing of rights
(Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008) Özçürümez, Saime; Schmidtke, O.; Özçürümez, Saime
Once the most intriguing scholarly question in the field of political science was: what is the state? The usual answer would begin by referring to territory, borders, sovereignty, and a nation. In time the inquiry became more complex, leading to questions along the lines of: What challenges the state? How does it do so, and why? One of the responses to these questions relates to the consequences of the increasing mobility of people crossing the borders of states—both literally and metaphorically. These consequences include but are not limited to people’s access to rights and status as border-crossing noncitizens. The central normative and empirical query of this volume is in this contested domain. On the one hand, the contemporary Western nation-state preserves legally its sovereign right to determine who has the right to cross its borders as well as to exercise the political, social, and economic rights within its borders. On the other hand, rising levels of migration and increasing numbers and diversity of noncitizens within the borders of the nation-state challenge the extent to which the state may strike a balance between providing liberal, universally applicable rights and preserving its inherently distinctive identity and sovereignty.
Open Access
The EU's effectiveness in the Eastern Mediterranean migration quandary: challenges to building societal resilience
(Routledge, 2021-04-30) Özçürümez, Saime
Under what conditions does the EU contribute to the prevention of governance breakdown and violent conflict in areas of limited statehood and contested orders by fostering societal resilience? This study seeks answers to this question by examining the EU's effectiveness in fostering societal resilience in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey while they have coped with risks emerging from cross-border mobility, mass influx, and prolonged stays of the forcibly displaced due to the Syrian crisis since 2011. The study argues that the EU has been constrained in building societal resilience. The findings suggest that the EU's effectiveness is limited by context-specific social, political, and economic risks in host countries; divergence among policy actors’ often contradictory preferences; and the impact of the EU's policies in outsourcing management of forced displacement. The study concludes that the EU needs to link the implementation of its short-term pragmatic programmes that primarily enable state resilience in crisis contexts with its long-term liberal vision for fostering high level societal resilience with democratic principles and institutions.
Open Access
Europeanisation of policy-making in Turkey and its limits
(Bristol University Press, 2018) Bölükbaşı, Tolga H.; Ertugal, E.; Özçürümez, Saime; Bakır, C.; Ertan, G.
Open Access
Expanding the boundaries of the local: Entrepreneurial municipalism and migration governance in Turkey
(Cambridge University Press, 2022-11-10) Özçürümez, Saime; Hoxha, Julinda
This study investigates why and how entrepreneurial municipalism is manifested in the case of Turkey despite limited local government autonomy and capacity in the area of migration governance. This article suggests four entrepreneurial strategies to understand and explain the variation in municipal practices: local networking, community engagement, organizational adaptation, and city branding. The most common strategies adopted by municipalities are local networking and community engagement often based on external funding alternatives that bring rapid and locally contingent, yet less durable and future-oriented solutions to challenges of forced displacement in urban settings. Against this background, this article highlights the importance of pathways that cultivate a culture of diversity and inclusion in the context of sustainable local integration by investing more resources in organizational adaptation and city branding. Finally, this study suggests redefining the concept of municipal capacity in terms of performance by focusing on the entrepreneurial strategies employed by local governments in their day-to-day practices.
Open Access
Exploring the impact of teachers’ past migration experience on inclusive education for refugee children
(Routledge, 2023-06-14) Özçürümez, Saime; Tursun, Özgün; Tunç, Ahmet
Teachers play a key role in shaping students’ experiences in the learning environment. Studies on inclusive education in forced migration contexts, however, rarely examine what determines teachers’ positive behaviour and attitudes toward refugee students. This study examines how teachers’ past migration and occupational experiences impact their attitudes towards students who arrived through forced migration and whether they rely on teaching practices stemming from their past experiences to ensure a more inclusive school climate. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we collected 228 surveys and conducted 9 focus groups with secondary education teachers in 11 public schools in 5 different cities in Turkey where students of Syrian origin who arrived through forced migration are registered. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ and ‘social capital’, this study argues that teachers’ past migration experiences enable them to create a more inclusive classroom experience for Syrian refugee children.
Open Access
Forced migration, sexual and gender-based violence and integration: Effects, risks and protective factors
(Springer Science and Business Media B.V., 2022-06-15) Phillimore, Jenny; Block, Karen; Bradby, Hannah; Özçürümez, Saime; Papoutsi, Anna
This paper is the first to use empirical evidence to directly examine the relationship between sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and multi-dimensional processes of integration of forced migrant SGBV survivors. While it is acknowledged that forced migrants are subjected to a continuum of violence, including SGBV, during the refugee journey, little is known about the long-term impact of SGBV and how it might be mitigated. Our paper, drawing on empirical evidence from 255 interviews with migrants and stakeholders in Australia, the UK, Sweden and Turkey, documented in detail the complex interactions between SGBV and integration using the Indicators of Integration framework. By bringing together the literature on the continuum of violence, SGBV and the Indicators of Integration framework, we identify, on the one hand, the impact of SGBV on integration, and, on the other, how the indicators framework can be used to identify protective and risk factors for forced migrant survivors. © 2022, The Author(s).
Open Access
Immigrants and participation beyond the nation-state: Opportunity-capability rift in EU immigration policy process
(Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008) Özçürümez, Saime; Schmidtke, O.; Özçürümez, Saime
Efforts at Europeanizing immigration policy in the post-Maastricht era were set against a backdrop of transformations in politics and governance in the European Union (EU). Commitments to increasing openness of, and participation in, the supranational policy process aimed to alleviate the democratic deficit in the EU through imagining an “ever closer union.” Accordingly, the tiers of EU policy making proliferated, the channels of participation into the EU policy process multiplied, and the policy actors diversified. As stakeholders, non-EU migrants themselves were the most recent newcomers to the emerging policy scene. In this chapter, I aim to investigate the supranational engagement of Turkish migrant associations in France and Germany in the EU immigration policy process: what explains similarities and differences in terms of forms and levels of participation by migrant associations in different national contexts as they engage in the EU immigration policy process? In addressing this question, I analyze the forms and levels of migrants’ supranational engagement by focusing on the combined impact of macro-level (EU institutional context) and micro-level (nation-state—level actors engaged in supranational collective organization) variables.
Open Access
Influence and impact: interacting factors in asylum policy-making and implementation in Canada and Turkey (1988-92)
(Routledge, 2020) Özçürümez, Saime; Hamer, Christina
With rates of asylum seekers increasing across decades worldwide, why do high- and middle-income countries persistently adopt more restrictive asylum policies? By analyzing data from the cases of Canada and Turkey (1988-92), this study shows that domestic policy preferences of decision-makers and refugee determination systems constitute the factors with the highest impact on restrictive asylum policy-making. Through the use of latent content analysis of primary historical documents and elite and expert interviews and an innovative application of the ADVIAN classification method of impact analysis, this study claims that interactions among institutions are critical for the changes a country's asylum policy. Conclusions of this study challenge existing research to move beyond monocausal explanatory schemes for understanding restrictive asylum policy trends and engage with complex frameworks accounting for interacting factors.
Open Access
International protection and psychosocial support services
(Routledge, 2018) Özçürümez, Saime; Hamburger, A.; Hancheva, C.; Özcürümez, Saime; Scher, C.; Stankovic, B.; Tutnjevic, S.
This chapter aims at answering the question: In what ways and to what extent are the psychosocial support services provided to the traumatised population linked to the socio-economic integration policies? For that purpose, it studies the case of Syrians under Temporary Protection in Turkey. Forced migration, caused by a humanitarian crisis, results in an emergency response effort in all countries receiving refugees. Humanitarian assistance remains at the core of such policy design in the form of meeting the basic needs of the arriving groups such as food, shelter, clothing and sanitation. As the duration of stay becomes longer, policy efforts extend to education and differentiated healthcare services, including psychosocial support. Based on a detailed examination of reports and key expert interviews from the case of Turkey, the chapter first reviews the policy response to the mass influx of refugees into Turkey since 2011, by examining the legal, administrative and institutional framework. Second, it presents and discusses the organisation and the content of psychosocial support services provided by different actors. Third, it discusses the barriers and best practices in the area of psychosocial support in a protracted humanitarian crisis.
Open Access
Internet and social media uses, digital divides, and digitally mediated transnationalism in forced migration: Syrians in Turkey
(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc., 2021-08-27) Jauhiainen, J. S.; Özçürümez, Saime; Tursun, Özgün
This article studied Internet and social media uses, digital divides (access, use, and impact of the Internet and social media), and digitally mediated transnationalism in forced migration with the case of Syrians in Turkey. The mixed method analysis is based on surveys with 762 respondents, 52 interviews, and participant observations among Syrians in Gaziantep, Istanbul, and Izmir provinces in Turkey. Digitally mediated transnationalism became the everyday strategy, practice, and resilience of Syrians in Turkey. The first- and second-level digital divides, that is, the differences in their access to and use of the Internet and social media diminished while many third-level digital divides (impacts) remained. Syrians in Turkey used information and communication technologies, the Internet and social media for accessing basic needs and services, to enhance their challenging psycho-social well-being, to maintain transnational bonding and bridging connections to Syria, the European Union and elsewhere, and some also to implement their mobility plans.
Open Access
Refugees in public policy and social representation
(Routledge, 2018) Özçürümez, Saime; Hamburger, A.; Hancheva, C.; Özçürümez, Saime; Scher, C.; Stankovic, B.; Tutnjevic, S.
Refugees move across borders and seek safe havens while they escape armed conflict, persecution and violence. Refugees suffer social trauma while they are in transit and in places where they arrive. The plight of refugees is complex because they may suffer different forms of trauma where they arrive, all the while aiming to avoid the trauma in their homelands. The 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol constitute the core international treaties for governing international protection. Around the world, 148 states are parties to either one or both of these international instruments. The legal and political framework for refugees is governed by international refugee law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law. States, while committed to these treaties, are constrained by their own means for providing humanitarian assistance to the arriving refugees. Nonetheless, all states provide after the initial displacement health care, food, shelter, water and sanitation. Whether the refugees are received in accommodation centres or reside in urban areas, attending to their psychosocial needs or trauma- induced ailments comes only later on the agenda of public institutions, international organisations and NGOs. Host communities also suffer from a similar oversight of their needs caused by the presence of refugees in their daily lives. This part of the book seeks answers to the question to what extent, why and how do receiving states and communities address questions around public policy and social representation. In order to do so, the chapters in Part I review the international legislation, the unfolding of legislation on international protection as implementing psychosocial support services, the discourse around trauma and healing in refugee settings, the role of the media in covering the refugee crisis in Europe and its interaction with the implementation of policy initiatives in receiving societies.
Open Access
Residing without settling: housing market and tactics of Syrian forced migrants in Turkey
(John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2023-08-09) Kurfalı, Merve Akdemir; Özçürümez, Saime
How do forced migrants from Syria cope with structural barriers to housing in urban centres in Turkey? More than 3.6 million Syrian refugees have lived in different cities in Turkey since the closing of the temporary accommodation centres in 2018. This study examines the agency of Syrians and their housing pathways in securing accommodation in a neoliberal housing market amidst increasing unwelcoming attitudes by the local population, no social housing, high dependence on rental housing prone to price hikes, and “temporary protection” legal status. Based on analysis of data from 34 semi-structured interviews with forced migrant Syrians and 20 expert interviews in Gaziantep, a city close to the Turkey-Syria border with a substantial Syrian population, the research identifies four tactics that characterise housing pathways of Syrian forced migrants: (1) acting through local community members, (2) working with a Syrian mediator, (3) settling down in Syrian-only buildings or informal settlements, and (4) purchasing a house through circumventing the legal ban on property ownership. The study concludes by highlighting that while these tactics are necessary for meeting forced migrants’ immediate housing needs, they are far from sufficient in preventing exclusion in the Turkish housing market.
Open Access
Strategies for change among institutional and civil society actors
(Routledge, 2012) Özçürümez, Saime; Wylie, L.; Falge, C.; Ruzza, C.; Schmidtke, O.
This chapter will first provide background on the political and regulatory frameworks of Germany, Canada and Italy, as this is the legislation that qualifies access to health services. This allows us to highlight how the essential regulatory frameworks are both a considerable constraint and opportunity for civil society and migrant organizations. They also allow us to show the dynamic nature of the relation between state and civil society-more specifically, between state and organized civil society. In each of the countries we consider, civil society develops in ways that are in part isomorphic and in part complementary to the structure of the state. Each of the states we examine support civil society in different ways and for different purposes, and in doing so shape the way pro-migrant associations operate. The first section of this chapter will illustrate these processes. We will then move to examine how civil society actors have become engaged in the field of health care and what strategies they have adopted in our national contexts. Finally, we will examine what policy lessons can be learned from our case studies, both in terms of access and in terms of policy effectiveness in the service delivery and advocacy functions.