Diasporas and Limits of Citizenship

My work on diasporas goes back to 2000 and continues to be an important aspect of academic engagement. This line of inquiry allows me to ascertain the limits of citizenship discourses and practices and systemic violence against exiled communities. This subject led me to several mount undergraduate and graduate courses and to undertake several Ph.D. supervisions, as well. Notably, my former students Balca Arda and Erkan Ercel's work on diasporic modes of existence are outstanding in this regard.

In my paper titled "Markers of Turkish Cypriot History in the Diaspora”, while attending to the diasporic experience of Turkish Cypriots settled in the UK within the larger context of the relationship between memory and history, I addressed two competing accounts of modern Cypriot history.[6] The first is the rendition of the events of 1974 by leading cultural and political organizations in the Turkish Cypriot diaspora community. The second is the narration of the same events produced by the individual memories and choices of the lay members of the diaspora. The friction between these two accounts is symptomatic of the tension between official national history and individual memories and perceptions of the past. Throughout my work on diasporas, including Muslims in Canada, Rohingyas in South Asia, and, Kurds and Alevis in Europe, I examine key characteristics of diasporic identity formation in relation to an individual's sense of self combined with the social and political dynamics of the same process, which include references to both home and host societies' relations with the diaspora community. The core of the debate I push forward concerns the role of history and perceptions of the past in the mediation of communal and individual identities on the one hand and between diasporic and other forms of national identities on the other, all of this is addressed within globalized geographies and histories of violence.

I also published widely and worked with the Canadian government as an expert concerning the main characteristics and organizational structures of contemporary ethno-national diasporas, communal strategies and tactics used by diasporas, opportunity structures for diasporas in the postmodern and trans-state social, economic, and political systems. Specifically, in my work on Muslim diasporas in Canada, which I conducted in collaboration with key scholars in the field and shared at various platforms (academic and otherwise), I posit that the liberal citizenship models’ purported aims of respect for difference, institutionalized tolerance for disagreement, and legal protection of freedoms of expression and choice are fraught with formalized ossification of diasporic identities.[7] As an extension of this work, I also provided a critical voice for over ten years in terms of Canada’s reception of Muslims as refugees and asylum seekers. Whether Canada is prepared to address the needs of asylum seekers, particularly those coming from the Middle East and seeking to be admitted as refugees according to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, remains a troubling question. Although Canada has a strong track record in resettling refugees produced by crises in the Middle East, there is a weak relationship between parts of the Canadian refugee regime and the humanitarian objectives frequently articulated in Canadian foreign policy. In this context, I make a strong case for improving the system for determining the status of inland refugees—those who claim refugee status after entering the country— by using the information provided by refugee advocacy organizations and landmark appeal cases. Refugee organizations have already raised a number of specific problems with respect to Canadian procedures of inland refugee determination. In addressing the causes of Middle Eastern refugee flows, such as authoritarian regimes and widespread political violence, the systematic observation of problem areas in inland refugee determination and appeal processes must complement current Canadian practices, which rely only on official monitoring processes. I furthered this line of argument in my work on Syrian refugee settlement in Canada in 2018.

In 2009, I brought together a distinguished group of scholars who work on the Jewish diaspora, and the result of that workshop was published as The Jewish Diaspora as a Paradigm: Politics, Religion and Belonging (2014, Libra Press). This work continues to be widely used in progressive Jewish Studies circles.

In my more recent work on diasporas, such as the treatment of Syrians in the Middle East, I highlight the connections between neo-liberal and neo-developmentalist labour regimes, asylum and immigration management, and the exploitation of undocumented, refugee, and migrant women, based on the experiences of Syrian refugee women in Turkey. The concept of precarity is explored as a selectively applied strategy by states to people who lack “status” or who are unable to benefit from “membership rights.” Forced migrants, illegal migrants, and asylum seekers are directly implicated in highly precarious work experiences at the bottom end of labour markets across the Global South, becoming trapped in forced labour and human trafficking arrangements. In particular, the article establishes a link between extreme forms of migrant labour exploitation in precarious life worlds and gender-based profiling of life chances.[8]

On the other hand, my work on Rohingyas in South Asia and the new waves of ethnic violence in the Arakan (Rakhine) state of Burma/Myanmar leading to both internal displacement and continued exodus of the Rohingya Muslim minority to neighbouring countries, including Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Thailand, reflects on the dual moment of being a diaspora at home, and denial of diaspora status in exile. Both Burma/Myanmar, which the Rohingyas claim as their ancestral land and Bangladesh, where the majority of the Rohingyas now live as unwelcome and/or undocumented refugees, deny the Rohingyas citizenship rights. And both Burma/Myanmar and Bangladesh insist that the displaced Rohingyas are the responsibility of the other state. My examination of the current crisis pertaining to the Rohingyas retells the story/history of how the Rohingya identity has been shaped and reshaped while living as a suppressed minority, then living along the borders, finally living as refugees, continually struggling to exist in the midst of political sovereignty claims and across a social and economic space that exists in-between and across borders.[9] This work is undertaken, again, through synergies established with scholars, activists and advocates working in South Asia. It is the voice from the Global South, looking back at the Global South.

Diaspora studies as a trajectory allow me to posit that shifting our emphasis from borders to relational geographies is the first step towards undoing the pre-existing ‘containment thinking’ that historically framed debates on citizenship. Examining power practices within the bordering process itself and underlining the relational geographies demarcated by different types of boundaries illustrate why trans-border activities could not be addressed only with reference to the geopolitical dimensions of the border. This line of work also creates a space to argue for the relevance and importance of post-colonial theory to the study of not just migration and mobility but border maintenance and surveillance. Specifically, I suggest three possible interventions in this regard: stretching the boundaries of the spaces that encompass the post-colonial state, paying closer attention to the spatial connections forged between seemingly disparate places through migration and trans-border activities and challenging hierarchical notions of identity and/or place in terms of effected populations’ citizenship status.

In another register, my work on diasporas insists that the term itself begs question in the midst of a canopy of different loyalties and a relatively dubious conception of citizenship as a form of belonging. In that sense, post-colonial independence had nothing much to offer to those who are not in a position to declare it in the name of the nation and who have to the means to resort to violence in order to control its results. That precondition translates into military bureaucratic classes, aristocratic elements, westernized bourgeoisie and the elite, and such other conglomerations, who extend the promise of Eden on earth to the suffering masses in return for supporting or taking part in the revolutionary turnover. And yet, however coherent their objectives may appear, and however ideologically sound their methods may be, post-colonial statehood nonetheless reflects a serious societal malaise that needs to be addressed with regard to ‘casting out’ those who do not befit the grid. That constitutes the essential link between nation building, forced migration and dismemberment. It also is one of the clear points of continuation between colonial/imperial and post-colonial forms of statecraft. In this sense, it transforms the meaning of diaspora into an interlocutor between debates on political volence, memory, identity, responsibility and utopian longings.