Mine KARAKUŞ YETKİN and Bilhan KARTAL Daily Life Experiences of Asylum Seekers in the Context of Disaffiliation and Social Contacts 1 (original) (raw)

In this chapter within the framework of discussions on disaffiliation, it is attempted to shed light on the asylum seekers’ contact and interaction with the local people in the everyday lives and on the power relations reproduced during these everyday life experiences.In short, as the product of state-centric understanding, the notions of asylumseeker and refugee normalize the state. In this context, citizenship is presented as the only way for existence in a geographically bound nation-state which deepens the distinction of “we” and “the other,” “normal” and “abnormal,” namely “citizen” and “non-citizen” in the society. In this way, states can reproduce the dominant nation-state ideology by accepting the individual either as a citizen or as an “abnormal” in need of protection. Therefore, official refugee definitions and asylum practices actually aim to prevent the threat posed by non-citizen foreign individuals against the homogeneity of member citizens. Within this theoretical framework, it can be inferred from the narratives of asylum seekers coming from Iran, Afghanistan and sub-Saharan African countries and waiting in Eskişehir to be settled in third countries, that the distinction of being citizen/ foreigner is decisive in the participants’ everyday life experiences, in their social conditions and in their contacts with local people. This decisiveness indicates a sort of power relation based on state affiliation that is built upon citizenship In general, the main areas that the participants problematize in times of interaction with the locals are being subject to questions posed by strangers, the way they perceive the questionings and the exclusionist reactions that the participants say they face during these contacts. Even though these moments of individual experiences of social exclusion are referred to as exceptional cases by some of the participants, it can be suggested that these moments constitute a significant place in the worlds of meaning of the participants and also influential in the lack of sense of belonging to the society they are currently living in. Another important point that emerges in the narratives of the participants is the continuous state of liminality as reflected in their discourses. Participants have expressed their state of liminality in various forms during the interviews such as being in-between the future and the past, trauma and nostalgia, uncertainty and hope, and to leave and to stay. The way the participants narrate the past by praising what they have left behind followed by the narratives of experiences of oppression and threat, the way they complain about uncertainty right after they share their plans for the future can be evaluated as a manifestation of liminality.