Precarious Hope: Migration and the Limits of Belonging in Turkey

Ayse Parla

Published by Stanford University Press 2019

Precarious Hope

Migration and the Limits of Belonging in Turkey

Ayse Parla

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503609440

Overview
Contents

About this book

There are more than 700,000 Bulgaristanlı migrants residing in Turkey. Immigrants from Bulgaria who are ethnically Turkish, they assume certain privileges because of these ethnic ties, yet access to citizenship remains dependent on the whims of those in power. Through vivid accounts of encounters with the police and state bureaucracy, of nostalgic memories of home and aspirations for a more secure life in Turkey, Precarious Hope explores the tensions between ethnic privilege and economic vulnerability and rethinks the limits of migrant belonging among those for whom it is intimated and promised—but never guaranteed.

In contrast to the typical focus on despair, Ayşe Parla studies the hopefulness of migrants. Turkish immigration policies have worked in lockstep with national aspirations for ethnic, religious, and ideological conformity, offering Bulgaristanlı migrants an advantage over others. Their hope is the product of privilege and an act of dignity and perseverance. It is also a tool of the state, reproducing a migration regime that categorizes some as desirable and others as foreign and dispensable. Through the experiences of the Bulgaristanlı, Precarious Hope speaks to the global predicament in which increasing numbers of people are forced to manage both cultivation of hope and relentless anxiety within structures of inequality.

Author / Editor information

Ayşe Parla is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Boston University.

Reviews

Lila Abu-Lughod:
"With stunning analytic precision, intellectual grace, and captivating ethnography, Ayşe Parla takes on key debates about precarity and hope. If the migrant is the quintessential figure of our anxious times, this magnificent book is the essential guide to thinking more politically and profoundly about her predicament."

Esra Özyürek:
"One leaves this book with a profound understanding of hope as a tool of governmentality, a way of being in the world, and a political act. Ayşe Parla shows us how deeply connected law, politics, and emotions are in the precarious lives of migrants."

Didier Fassin:
"Boldness is required in writing a book on contemporary Turkey from the perspective of hope. It is Ayşe Parla's remarkable achievement to have developed in such context an insightful critique of this affective relation to the world. Her fine-grained ethnography offers a profound reflection on ethnonational communities and their imagined futures."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
INTRODUCTION. Shielding Hope Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. THE HISTORICAL PRODUCTION OF HOPE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
2. ENTITLED HOPE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
3. PRECARIOUS HOPE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
4. NOSTALGIA AS HOPE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
CONCLUSION. Troubling Hope Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
EPILOGUE. A Note on Method, or Hopeful Waiting in Lines Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231

Language: English
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Keywords: hope; migration; belonging; citizenship; privilege; precarity; law; Turkey; Bulgaria

eBook

Published: August 6, 2019
ISBN: 9781503609440