Escaping Exclusion: Syrian Unaccompanied Minors and their agency as a response to the State’s confused moralities during the EU-Turkey Deal

Tibet, Eda Elif (3 March 2017). Escaping Exclusion: Syrian Unaccompanied Minors and their agency as a response to the State’s confused moralities during the EU-Turkey Deal (Unpublished). In: Childhoods in Motion: Children, Youth, Migration, and Education Conference. AAA Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group Council on Anthropology and Education, University of California. 3.-5.3.2017.

With the start of the negotiation processes of the EU & Turkey deal on November 2015, a first batch of Syrian unaccompanied minors, residing in a child and youth support center in Istanbul under state care protection, have been transferred to the Adana Sarıçam refugee camp by the Ministry of Family and Social Policies. After having to spend a few weeks and months in the refugee camp, minors have chosen to escape from state protection in which they would have otherwise been locked up till the age of 18. State`s shifting treatment towards the Syrian minors and their overall relationship will be looked from a perspective of “confused moralities” practiced by of the state-the police and the social workers. In the premises of Anthropology of moralities, throughout the paper I will explore how prior to the EU & Turkey deal –the state care facility firstly agreed on providing access to education and social services to minors and on how after the deal, denied their access to education and wealth generation by keeping minors outside the sphere of social intercourses. Hence, this paper will explore how minors respond to states’ temporary educational and social exclusion policies; in terms of “escaping exclusion” as part of their agency. Faced with various life threatening moments of imprisonment and of becoming child soldiers within Syria and their imprisonment into the refugee camp in Turkey, minors deploy various strategies for their inclusion to their hosting societies in Turkey; by schooling, informal laboring, gang forming, street resistance and family unification. By rejecting state protection, minors challenge and contest the current migrating children’s regime and follow various pathways in life, beginning at the age of 16. Life stories will be narrated throughout the making of a participatory radio show and photography, which allows minors to have their own self-representations within the ethnography.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Speech)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography > Geographies of Sustainability > Unit Critical Sustainability Studies (CSS)
08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography > Geographies of Sustainability
08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography

UniBE Contributor:

Tibet, Eda Elif

Subjects:

900 History > 910 Geography & travel
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology

Language:

English

Submitter:

Lisa Alvarado Grefa

Date Deposited:

30 Apr 2019 10:39

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:26

Related URLs:

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/126528

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