Residual Temporariness and The Limits of Citizenship for Syrian Refugee Doctors in Turkey

• In Event: 40468 - Refugees, Forced Migrants, and Stateless Populations

Abstract

Migration scholars often analyze how undocumented immigrants’ precarious status can affect the lives of co-ethnics with more secure statuses. The societal reverberations of temporary protection—a more secure but still precarious legal status—remain underexplored. This paper asks: how do temporary protection policies affect co-national refugees who have attained secure legal status in a host country? It considers the case of Turkey, where over three million Syrians are governed under temporary protection, while a smaller number have acquired residence permits or citizenship. Drawing on 38 interviews with Syrian doctors and dentists, 29 of whom had acquired Turkish citizenship, the paper examines how Syrian refugee doctors pursue their work in a broader policy context of temporary protection. It finds that delays in providing legal work opportunities, professional siloing into institutionally separate organizations, and bureaucratic impasses sustained by geopolitical tensions between the host and home state continue to push naturalized Syrian doctors into precarious, informal work. The paper argues that group-based temporary refugee policies produce institutional status spillover effects that forestall the professional integration of members of a national group, regardless of individual status. This creates an effect of residual temporariness, in which naturalized citizens’ inclusion is degraded by broader logics of temporariness.

Author

• Nihal Kayali, Brandeis University