Maître de conférences
Associate professor
Université de Gaziantiep, Turquie
Biography
Pınar Şenoğuz teaches sociology in Gaziantep University, Turkey. Her dissertational work focused on the ways that border dwellers contend the state by engaging illegal cross-border trade associated with broader transnational networks and negotiate various meanings of wealth, work and economic distribution on the basis of their economic practices on the Turkish-Syrian border. She is one of the co-editors of a special issue on border studies with exclusive focus on state boundaries of Turkey for a Turkish social science journal. Her current areas of interest involve the governance of Syrian migrants in host countries and transnational mobility and humanitarian aid in the Middle East.
Research project
“A Transnational Perspective on the Experiences of Refugee-ness of Syrian Communities in Turkey and Germany”
This research proposal dwells upon the impact of migration policies aiming at controlling and managing the movement of displaced Syrians and the experiences of refugee-ness among the Syrian displaced communities from a transnational perspective. I particularly focus on the Syrian refugees with social, economic or intimate transnational ties, either with family members or friends left in Syria or moved to Europe. The aim of the research is to explore the ways in which these experiences emerge at the intersection of local, regional and transnational processes as the Syrian refugees strive to sustain their livelihoods by negotiating the boundaries of legal status and entitlements ascribed by the host governments. From the vantage point of transnationalism, I intend to highlight the maneuvering capacities of refugees in navigating these boundaries as they move across the Turkish-Syrian borders or the borders with Europe or as they draw on their social, economic and intimate ties not only helping their emplacement in different localities and contribute the economies of the household with remittances, but also inform their experiences of refugee-ness. I will draw on a multi-sited research conducted in the city of Gaziantep, at the border of Turkey-Germany and the three main cities of Germany where the Syrian communities maintain their transnational ties with their country fellows left in Gaziantep.
Keywords
Crossborder mobility, humanitarian work, solidarity networks, territorial sovereignty