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ROTTMANN, Susan Beth

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Susan Beth

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ROTTMANN
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Now showing 1 - 10 of 22
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    Cultivating membership abroad: Analyzing German pre-integration courses for Turkish marriage migrants
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    Addressing research on migration governance, this article examines German pre-integration courses offered to Turkish marriage migrants in Istanbul. The courses were implemented in response to growing concern about the perceived poor integration of Muslim migrants and a high number of forced marriages. I argue that these courses are a micro form of biopolitical governance. Specifically, they are an attempt to generate internalized ways of being and knowing that are desired by the state, which I call 'membership cultivation.' As such, the courses are not precisely aimed at restricting migration as in other pre-integration measures, nor are they mainly reinforcing symbolic boundaries and teaching liberalism as in post-migration German civic integration courses. Rather, the courses attempt to re-make migrants with regards to morality, culture and gender. Using participant observation and in-depth interviews, this research examines the disciplinary mechanisms targeting migrants' transformation to enhance our understanding of the biopolitics of pre-integration governance.
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    Embracing vulnerability in writing migrant lives
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Sayer, R.; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    In this paper, an anthropologist and a life writer examine the implications of an ethical and political practice of vulnerability with regards to writing migrant lives. Drawing on research with migrants in Turkey and Australia, we argue that it is useful to use vulnerable methodologies, vulnerable relationships and vulnerable writing.
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    Citizenship ethics: German-Turkish return migrants, belonging, and justice
    (Sage, 2018-08-01) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    This article examines citizenship for German-Turkish return migrants attending monthly meetings of the Rückkehrer Stammtisch (Returner’s Meetings) in Istanbul. Meeting attendees call themselves “world citizens” and remain deeply concerned about disrespect and inequality they experience as ethnic minorities in Germany and as citizens in Turkey. Drawing on the anthropology of ethics, this research demonstrates the importance of ethical relationships for understanding these migrants’ experience of citizenship. Moving beyond work that views citizenship primarily in terms of state power and legal disciplining, this research demonstrates that citizenship for these migrants is focused heavily on an ethics of care and responsibility developed in the course of personal interactions with fellow citizens. This article also adds ethnographic specificity to the concepts of belonging and justice. It analyzes how ethical relationships established among meeting attendees confer feelings of comfort, intimacy, and a sense of shared humanity that structure migrants’ inclusion in national spaces.
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    Forced migration and the politics of belonging: Integration policy, national debates and migrant strategies
    (Sage, 2023) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    This research note examines the politics of refugee belonging in Germany, Sweden, Austria, United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Specifically, it explores how migrant belonging is impacted by integration policies and national political debates on immigration in these countries. Prior research suggests that refugees have little knowledge of policy, but that national political or media debates strongly impact a feeling of inclusion. Our research shows that both policy and national/media debates affect belonging. Despite widely differing legal and national contexts, the countries studied largely base integration on principles of cultural assimilation that can be hostile to “outsiders” and lead to insecure and contradictory belonging. The article also examines the strategies migrants adopt to forge belonging, depending on the national context. We find that in some contexts, migrants emphasize that they take individual responsibility for integrating and in others they build belonging on cultural and religious similarities with the host community. Thus, this research shows that the national policy environment not only impacts belonging, but also shapes the strategies migrants adopt to achieve it. The research is based on a long-term study conducted as a part of an EU Horizon 2020 project, RESPOND.
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    In pursuit of belonging: Forging an ethical life in european-turkish spaces
    (Berghahn Books, 2019-01-01) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    Belonging is a not a state that we achieve, but a struggle that we wage. The struggle for belonging is more difficult if one is returning to a homeland after many years abroad. In Pursuit of Belonging is an ethnography of Turkish migrants’ struggle for understanding, intimacy and appreciation when they return from Germany to their Turkish homeland. Drawing on an established tradition of life story writing in anthropology, Rottmann conveys the struggle to forge an ethical life by relating the experiences of a second-generation German-Turkish woman named Leyla.
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    Language learning through an intersectional lens: Gender, migrant status, and gain in symbolic capital for Syrian refugee women in Turkey
    (Walter de Gruyter, 2020-07-13) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Nimer, M.; Humanities and Social Sciences; Piller, I.; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    This paper sheds light on Syrian refugee women’s negotiation strategies in language learning classrooms and in their broader social contexts from an intersectional perspective. Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus groups complemented by participatory observation in language classes, we use a post-structuralist approach to examine gendered language socialization. Our research combines an intersectional framework and a Bourdieusian perspective on symbolic capital to show how women perform gender and negotiate their roles in classrooms, within families and vis-à-vis the host society. The findings demonstrate that being a woman and a migrant presents particular challenges in learning language. At the same time, learning language allows for the re-negotiation of gender relations and power dynamics. We find that gender structures women’s access to linguistic resources and interactional opportunities as they perform language under social pressure to conform to prescribed roles as mothers, wives and virtuous, and shy women. Yet, these roles are not static: gender roles are also reconstituted in the process of language learning and gaining symbolic capital.
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    Cultivating and contesting order: 'European Turks' and negotiations of neighbourliness at 'home'
    (Berghahn, 2013-12) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    This article examines how Turks returning from Germany to Turkey self-fashion as 'orderly neighbours'. By maintaining aesthetically pleasing homes and gardens, keeping public spaces clean, and obeying rules and laws in public, return migrants believe they act as modern 'European-Turks' and exemplify good neighbourliness. Many neighbours, however, feel these actions are unnecessary or even disruptive to Turkish communities. In conversation with the burgeoning anthropology of ethics, this research explores how local, national and transnational assemblages foster reflections and debates on neighbourly ethics. Further, this study highlights anxieties about individualism, reciprocity, 'modernity' and 'European-ness' in today's Turkey.
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    ‘We can’t integrate in Europe. We will pay a high price if we go there’: Culture, Time and Migration Aspirations for Syrian Refugees in Istanbul
    (Oxford University Press, 2021-03) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Kaya, A.; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    In popular media, it is often assumed that Syrian refugees wish to reach Europe by any means necessary but, during field research in 2018, we found that many Syrians hoped to remain in Istanbul, despite their tenuous legal and social situation. The article examines how migrants established cultural intimacy and strong community social networks over time, and became increasingly sceptical about the life they imagined they would have in Europe. Addressing research on migration aspirations, we show that migration decisions are strongly affected by experiences in a transit country. Most research on aspirations stresses economic drivers and rational choices, but here we highlight the importance of emotions, the qualitative feeling of acceptance and safety, temporal effects and the growing feeling of being home over time. Prior research with Turkey's Syrians has pointed to the significance of culture and social networks for creating a sense of being at home. This research explores these issues in more detail to show how culture, religion and gender are interlinked in migrant imaginings, how social networks evolve and how Europe is imagined.
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    Logistification and hyper-precarity at the intersection of migration and pandemic governance: Refugees in the Turkish labour market
    (Oxford University Press, 2022-03-23) Nimer, M.; Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    This article analyses the governance of migration and the Covid-19 pandemic on precarious Syrian refugees in Istanbul. Drawing from a review of state policies and interviews with refugees before and after the pandemic, we argue that the intersecting governance of migration and the pandemic compounded inequalities. While refugees initially lost their employment without notice in lockdown periods, their partial lifting revealed unequal expectations towards their labour, as they were reincorporated within even more hyper-precarious labour relations. Unlike citizens who were somewhat protected by the state, refugees were under the limited care of international funders and subject to the whims of the market. Pandemic governance resulted in increased hyper-precarity and the need to rely on individual coping mechanisms for refugees. This research shows how shifting inclusion and exclusion shapes refugees' hyper-precarity related to Covid-19 governance, transforming Syrians into 'market buffers' to prevent or delay bankruptcies.
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    Introduction
    (Springer, 2023) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan Beth
    Just after the local elections in 2019, irregular migrants in Istanbul faced a months-long crackdown. The Ministry of Interior from the Justice and Development Party government (known as AK Party or AKP) gave Syrians until 20 August 2019 to return to the cities in which they were first registered. Although the time period was eventually extended, the internal controls for migrants became stricter. Migrants found themselves frequently stopped by police, and officers visited registration addresses to check if they were occupied. If irregularities were discovered, the official directive was that Syrians should be returned to the cities in which they were first registered. For non-Syrian migrants without registration, the result of police stops was often being confined to pre-detention centres. According to the Head of the Directorate General Management of Migration (DGMM) of the time, Abdullah Ayaz, “Operations in Istanbul target irregular migrants such as Afghans and Pakistanis. Even if Syrians are found without registration at all, they are not deported, unlike the claims in the media. It is not possible to issue deportation decisions legally about Syrians due to the conditions in Syria” (AA 2019).