"Migration and especially irregular migration are politically sensitive and highly debated issues in the developed world, particularly in Europe. This book analyses irregular protection-seeking migration in Europe, with close attention to sub-Saharan migration into the EU, and emancipatory security theory"--
Abstract Status-seeking is ubiquitous in world politics, and the literature is currently dominated by state-centrism and rationalism, which is almost exclusively focus on state elites. This results in a thin and limited understanding of what 'status-seeking' is, where it works, and how it is effected. This article challenges the existing approaches by introducing a performativity framework and offers an overhaul of how 'status' can be studied. It suggests replacing 'status-seeking' with 'status performances' that are conceptualised as part of 'statecraft' process. Drawing on post-structuralist and queer approaches as well as aesthetics in International Relations (IR), it is argued that status performances participate in the production of the state itself as a subject in world politics, so all states are 'status-seekers'. This subject-production process occurs in multiple political sites, including the academic IR discourse in a country and visual presentations in the media. It is concluded that there is no 'status' beyond the subject, and status can never be achieved because it always needs repetitive performances. The argument is illustrated by an analysis of the production of 'Turkey' as a humanitarian state and demonstrates how this is effected in state-elite pronouncements, IR scholarship in Turkey, and visual representations.
This paper is in closed access until 07/12/2019. ; This article explores why and how authoritarian regimes become resilient in the face of strong resistance of counter-hegemonic forces to neoliberal social and economic projects. The discussion is illustrated in the case of Turkey. The political subjectivities produced by authoritarian neoliberalism and the AKP government's attempt to reassert its hegemony through consent production are analysed by revisiting the Gezi Park protests and the 'National Will' meetings in 2013. I argue that once the AKP's neoliberal he-gemony was challenged by the Gezi protestors, the government appropriated the Turkish right's existing 'national will' narrative with a neo-Ottomanist and neoliberal makeover. To unpack this argument, the article (1) retraces the Gezi protestors' own accounts to explore how the resistance to authoritarian ne-oliberalism materialised; (2) examines how the AKP government attempted to reproduce its hegemony through consent generation at the 'National Will' meetings through analysing discursive strategies of the government and pro-government media.
This paper is in closed access until 17 Jan 2020. ; EU/ropean political community's reaction to irregular migrants is ambivalent. On the one hand, mi-grants are produced as people to be pitied, rescued and saved. On the other hand, they are feared, despised and left to die. The article looks at this ambivalence from a gender perspective and asks how sovereign masculinities are produced through emotional performances in the politics of migration con-trol and management. It will be argued that emotions such as fear, disgust, and compassion are per-formed in the biopolitical security governance of irregular migration by producing a 'socially abject' life as its object. This is a life that is to be killed, despised, and saved. Encounters between the irregular migrant and a European border security actor constitute a neo-colonial masculinity. During the moment of the encounter with the other's life, sovereignty is produced through emotional performances of border security actors. The discussion concludes with illustrations of how racialized bodies and lives are produced as objects of fear, disgust and compassion by producing the European neo-colonial masculin-ity. The article speaks to the debates in the literature of masculinities in global politics, emotions and politics, and critical border studies.
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Routledge Handbook on Mediterranean Politics on 2017-08-14, available online: http://www.routledge.com/1138903981 ; This handbook provides an overview of the political processes that shape the Mediterranean region in the contemporary context.
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Mediterranean Politics on 4th January 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13629395.2015.1128671.
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Global Affairs on 9 May 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/23340460.2016.1154350. ; This article proposes a conceptual guideline with the objective of understanding the political, economic and social complexities of contemporary street/square protests. It will be argued that contemporary protest movements can be understood from a conceptual perspective that effectively integrates individuals (their minds and bodies) and spaces to the approach of "multitude". This guideline consists of three moves: conceptualizing individualistic dimension; space dimension; and collective dimension. In the first section, resisting individuals as cognitive and material beings with the acknowledgement of their multiple subjectivities will be discussed. As the second pillar of the movements, the relationship between resisting individuals and space of resistance will be unpacked. It will be highlighted that the contemporary resistance movements develop a novel relationship with the space they occupy by respatializing it as "home of resistance". Finally, the multitude approach will be discussed in relation to the radical democratic approach in order to conceptualize the collective dimension of the movements.
The objective of emancipatory security theory is to examine the insecurities of individuals and social groups that stem from oppressive power processes, relations, and structures. However, the image of power in emancipatory security studies does not correspond to such a normative and analytical motivation. This renders the theory susceptible to substantial criticism on the grounds of inadequate analysis of resisting individuals as agents of security in their own localities. To address this issue, the present article conceptualizes 'emancipatory power'. In this exercise, Hannah Arendt's understanding of power, enriched by Judith Butler's concept of performativity and feminist insights, will be used as the theoretical foundation to tailor collective power based on trust in a 'moment' of emancipation. Collective power will be illustrated by references to the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2011.