Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
More than a decade since the start of the war in Syria, Turkey is home to almost four million of that country’s displaced citizens. Youth is one of the most vulnerable groups within the refugee population, as they struggle with language and education barriers and demands on them to assimilate while retaining their own culture. Lives in Limbo gives voice to the dreams of Syrian youth who have little hope of returning to their devastated homeland and explains why this generation’s future will shape how the region will develop. It explores how refugee youth create futures from the liminality of exile.
“The book does a very good job of looking at the experiences of Syrian youth living in Turkey. The authors explain complicated ideas and link them to the experiences of the people they are studying.” • Gülay Uğur Göksel, Istanbul Bılgı Unıversıty
“This is an impressive book whose originality and strengths lie in the following: the effective conjuncture of youth and refugeehood; the coherent structure and organisation; the depth and quality of the socio-ethnographic substance; richness of the analysis and argument.” • Roger Zetter, University of Oxford
Rebecca Bryant is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University and Visiting Professor in the European Institute of the London School of Economics. Her most recent books include Sovereignty Suspended: Building the So-Called State, with M. Hatay (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) and The Anthropology of the Future, with D. M. Knight, (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Maissam Nimer is a senior researcher at Özyeğin University, working on a Horizon Plus project on return migration. She also leads project funded by TÜBİTAK (the Turkish Research Council) on highly qualified migrants in Turkey. Her research has received awards from TÜBİTAK and the Turkish Science Academy (BAGEP).
Ayşen Üstübici is Assistant Professor at Koç University Department of Sociology and the Department of Political Science, affiliated with the Migration Research Center at Koç University (MiReKoc). She works on irregular migration, externalization of migration policies, politics of forced migration, and future aspirations.
Amal Abdulla is currently a research group team leader at a gender policy institution in Bahrain promoting evidence-based gender equality policies. She has a postgraduate degree in human rights and migration from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po).
Preface
Introduction: Syrian Pasts, Turkish Futures
Chapter 1. Expectation: The Struggle for Normal Lives
Chapter 2. Anticipation: Uprooting and Unsettling
Chapter 3. Rupture: Discontinuity and Disorientation
Chapter 4. Waiting: On Permanent Temporariness
Chapter 5. Uncertainty: Navigating the Higher Education Dream
Chapter 6. Homing: Potentiality, Hope, and (Be)coming Home
Chapter 7. Aspiration: Migration and Mobility
Conclusion: Growing Up and Moving On
Afterword
References
Index