At the event, Professor Ahmet Içduygu (Director of MiReKoc) will give a lecture on “The Intersections of Syrian Refugees’ Dilemma: Settlement, Onward Movement, and Return”.
Professor Içduygu's abstract for this reads: The international refugee regime and its national versions increasingly tend to offer a temporary protection mechanism that creates a “limboizing effect” on refugees’ lives. It also appears that these policies use temporariness as a political tool of governance. While these dominant international and national rulings ideally present the three choices of settlement (integration in the first country of asylum), onward movement (resettlement in the third country), and return (repatriation) as durable solutions to the refugee question, none of these choices easily become pertinent in the lives of refugees under their protracted situation and limitations of the international refugee regime. Consequently, refugees face with the challenges of living in an environment of uncertainties that is also labeled with the concept of permanent temporariness. In this presentation, I will refer to the concept of permanent temporariness, and try to answer the question of what are the role of international refugee regime and that of Turkey’s refugee policies towards Syrian refugees in the context of refugees’ aspirations for planning their future. I will also question the polarized nature of the structure-agency debate, emphasizing the synthesis of these two influences on refugees’ aspirations in the context of settlement, onward movement and return choices.
This event will be held online and you can register at the University of Vienna, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and by clicking visiting their website.
For any questions, please contact Ana Cukovic via email on: ana.cukovic@univie.ac.at
You can download the poster for the event by clicking here.
