Paper details

Paper authors	Can Cinar
In panel on	Taking ideology out of humanitarianism? The everyday, corporate interests and the politics of global solidarity
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Keeping forcibly displaced people in the region where they come from has become a central approach to managing protracted humanitarian situations. Labour-focused solutions have thus been advanced in response to the forced displacement of Syrians who fled towards Europe. This working paper engages with the politics of solidarity in labour markets towards and among forcibly displaced people. Facing the unbridled labour market in Turkey for over a decade, Syrian refugees have developed mechanisms and modes of solidarity to organise and increase their bargaining power in the informal sector. From establishing social media networks to discuss and compare their salaries and working conditions, to organizing mass wildcat strikes against summary dismissals, Syrian refugees in Turkey have adopted various horizontal solidarity tactics. Based on a combination of preliminary findings from interviews and analysis of macroeconomic data, this paper explores these methods and the mechanisms that lead to the emergence of solidarity within the informal sector, in spite of and against risks of exploitation. Our contributions are twofold: 1/ we enhance the small body of literature on the agency of refugee labour by reconsidering their relative power in the Turkish informal economy and; 2/ we advance IPE critiques of vertical interventions to integrate refugees through labour-focused approaches that rely on foreign business actors.

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