SUBALTERN MIGRANT CHILDREN’S TACTICS TO LEAK THROUGH CRACKS IN EVERDAY LIFE: AN EXAMPLE OF A NEIGHBORHOOD IN ANKARA
Dr. Aytul Kasapoglu, Professor of Sociology and Director of Başkent University Migration Research Center, Turkey
Abstract
Turkey is one of the countries that feel the pressure of an intense and rapid irregular migration that started with the 2011 Syrian civil war and continued with Afghans in 2021. The main problem of this research is the relationship between forced migration and subalternity, in relational sociological terms, by avoiding a linear determinist view. In this context, the main question that the research seeks to answer is how Syrian children manage their daily lives in a foreign country. In de Certeau’s terminology, it is how they practice the art of making to do with or art of presence. The study was based on the assumption that immigrant children are subaltern as well as their parents, and each child's situation is unique. The importance of the study stems from the critical look at the strategy-tactics and time-space duality, which is frequently used with reference to De Certeau in the current literature. In addition, the fact that migrants or refugees are not viewed as passive and weak, but rather in a liminal status makes the study unique. In the article, the serious struggle policies developed by Syrian children at a level that cannot be seen only as tactics are tried to be understood and interpreted with a relational and reflexive point of view. In the study, while the grounded theory methodology was applied in all its stages as open, axial and selective coding, immigrants were narrated with the stork metaphor. It has been understood that subaltern children do not pursue tactics only by being cunning, on the contrary, they develop very serious struggle policies, and they are in liminal status when they leak from the cracks.
