by Kristen Biehl
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University
Integration is perhaps one of the most discussed, theorized, politicized and institutionalized concepts in the migration field by scholars, politicians and practitioners alike, and has also been at the core of the Whole-CINN project aiming to improve local integration policies in small and medium-size towns and rural areas. In this short blog piece, however, I wish to reflect on an emergent concept in Turkey’s Syrian refugee context, that of social cohesion, which in recent years has been the subject of countless interventions and academic studies alike. While the scope and coverage of the concept certainly bears many overlaps with integration, it is also unique as it centers on the dimension of encounters and relations between host and refugee communities, which is also one of the focus areas in the Whole-Comm project.
Evolution of Turkey’s refugee response
In looking at the historical evolution of Turkey’s response to the Syrian refugee situation since 2011, it is possible to trace a gradual expansion in the intervention mechanisms and discourses. While the initial years were characterized entirely by emergency humanitarian assistance, from late 2014 onwards legal and institutional integration efforts started taking over, as Syrians in Turkey, now being recipients of a newly defined Temporary Protection Status (under the Temporary Protection Regulation passed on 13 October 2014) became granted extensive rights in areas of education, health, and access to employment. In this period, both the Turkish state and international actors, the EU most notably, launched intensive efforts to increase access to these rights, such as through expanding education and health service capacities, and promoting labor force participation through skills training, while also continuing to support humanitarian needs through cash assistance programs.
While such structural and institutional integration efforts were ongoing, starting around 2018 the notion of ‘social cohesion’ (sosyal uyum in Turkish) also started coming to the forefront. In other words, in addition to meeting the ongoing humanitarian needs of Syrian refugees and promoting their integration through improving access to rights, the need to also enhance interaction and relations between Syrians and the host community in a more positive way began emerging as a social phenomenon that needs to be managed through policies and projects.
‘Social cohesion’ as a new field of governance
Understanding the context, reasoning and impacts behind the emergence of ‘social cohesion’ discourses and practices in Turkey forms the crux of an ongoing research project I am coordinating at Sabanci University with the support of several colleagues. One component of our research involves looking at key documents published by national and international actors that have a founding administrative and financial role in governing Turkey’s refugee response mechanisms, including the United Nations, European Commission and Turkey’s Presidency for Migration Management.
Our analysis has shown that starting from 2018 social cohesion emerged as an overall program priority and/or strategic objective across multiple sectors, including protection, education, health, livelihoods, social assistance, municipal infrastructures, and the like. It also manifests in the form of countless ‘social cohesion’ programs, meetings, trainings, festivities and the like being implemented across the country by diverse state actors and non-governmental organizations, often with the support of international organizations. In parallel to this, we also see ‘social cohesion’ being presented as a direct output and/or performance indicator for impact evaluations, often measured in terms of the number of activities bringing together host and refugee communities and the numbers of participants.
A similar trend can be observed in relation to academic interest in the concept. In doing a review of journal publications centered on ‘social cohesion’ and migration/refugees/Syrians in Turkey, our research team detected that while there were no publications until 2016, there was a rather sudden and steep rise in interest, following again 2018. The focus in this literature varies greatly, some being more focused on policies, programs and projects related to ‘social cohesion’, others on the dynamics, perceptions and experiences related to inter-group relations at the local level.
The problem of the binary views framing ‘social cohesion’
When we look both at these institutional and academic discourses on ‘social cohesion’, most appear to share a similar binary approach in how they categorize groups and the relations between them. Namely the rising need for ‘social cohesion’ is often framed in reference to rising social tensions between host versus refugee populations, concerning increasing competition over limited resources and/or lack of opportunities and spaces for positive encounters.
In our project, however, we are aiming to reflect on the limitations, if not risks, of such perspectives. First, with the hosts versus (Syrian) refugees binary we are seeing the reproduction of what has long been critiqued in migration research as methodological nationalism. In other words, these binaries recreate lines of inclusion and exclusion along national lines and overlook the internal heterogeneity of each group, which can create diverse platforms for both affinities and differences. Likewise, the cohesion versus tension binary is problematic as it presumes that these are mutually exclusive (so if there is tension there is no cohesion, and if there is cohesion, there should be no tension). Finally, when looking at ‘social cohesion’ efforts there appears to be an emphasis almost entirely on local/micro level interventions that bring different group members together, without addressing how multiple scales (including the international and national) also shape local level dynamics, especially discriminatory and exclusionary perceptions by host communities.
The importance of understanding everyday co-existence
How can we then better understand and support processes of peaceful co-existence in contexts like Turkey where large numbers of diverse refugee and migrant populations are living side by side with equally diverse members of the host population? Our project we will be searching for answers through an ethnographically tuned understandings of group-formation processes and inter-group relations at the local level, by focusing on four different districts of Istanbul that are home today to significant numbers of Syrian refugees.
As countless studies taking such lenses have shown, in contexts of migration-led diversification there are often multiple discourses of social differentiation impacting everyday life. This is especially the case in in urban contexts involving numerous other histories of migration, which can complicate the definition of who is host and migrant/refugee. In our research we also emphasize the importance of looking at inter-group relations at an everyday level, and in a way that includes but also moves beyond perceptions, as proposed by concepts such as conviviality that focuses more on the tools, skills, practices and capacities for interaction.
Bringing ambivalence in social life to the center
Growing racism, tension and segregation related to Syrians in Turkey is certainly real and should not be underestimated. But as alluded to, there are also risks of focusing entirely on this dimension. For example, in recent years we are seeing the rapid emergence of a ‘return’ discourse and practice in Turkey, which is also becoming increasingly more politicized and institutionalized, such as in the form of residential restriction and deportation policies, as well as voluntary return programs, where lack of social cohesion and ‘ghettoization’ are shown often as legitimating factors.
Hence there is an urgent need to also understand and highlight how so-called ‘hosts’ and ‘refugees’ are actually managing to live together constructively at a local level. This does not mean celebrating ‘happy togetherness’, which is one of the common critiques raised against the conviviality literature. In fact, recent literature has put much emphasis on the ambivalence of inhabiting urban migration contexts, in showing how racism and civility, conflict and conviviality, inclusion and exclusion can co-exist. Our project also holds that understanding how people are trying to resolve this ambivalence in their everyday lives presents a more accurate representation of the messy social realities we are faced with in this increasingly more globalized and traumatized world.
Pic by Nick Night on Unsplash
