Embodied Geopolitics

The Discursive Construction of Refugee Men and Masculinities in Turkey

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3152808
AutoresDevran Koray Öcal (0000-0001-8505-5446, University of Bern), Banu Gökarıksel (0000-0002-2930-3131, Department of Geography and Environment, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, autor correspondente), Betül Aykaç (0000-0001-8952-7674, Department of Geography and Environment, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA)
Ano2024
Páginas1-29
Data de publicação2024-04-23
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2024.2342914
OpenAlexW4395041252
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas73

A new wave of displaced people from Afghanistan arriving in Turkey in August-September 2021 generated public debates about how the country would protect its borders while continuing to face the ‘problem’ posed by more than 3 million displaced Syrians. Much of these debates centred on refugee men and scrutinised their bodies and bodily acts to produce them as Other. This article analyses how the racialised and gendered depictions of refugee men in Turkey discursively produce geopolitical spatial hierarchies. Our analysis includes political leaders’ speeches, news articles, and opinion pieces published in mainstream media outlets and social media about displaced people from Syria and Afghanistan since 2016. We build on and contribute to feminist geopolitics and refugee studies by focusing on refugee men and masculinities, teasing out the contradictions in the geopolitical narratives centred on refugee men’s bodies, and analysing their implications for representing civilisational hierarchies. Using the concept of embodied geopolitics, we show how the dominant anti-refugee discourse in Turkey operates through a series of contradictory -but eventually complementary- geopolitical depictions of refugee men’s bodies, appearance, and behaviour that simultaneously masculinise and feminise them. These portrayals present refugee men either as fighters or cowards, as modern or backward. We argue that gendered and racialised refugee bodies animate geopolitical narratives and demonstrate that bodies are not simply territories with fixed meanings. Instead, they are constantly and simultaneously inscribed with multiple meanings that operate together and, ultimately, produce international hierarchies, ethnic boundaries, and the modern/backward dualism

Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Geopolitics · Political science · Politics · Refugee · Sociology · Gender Studies · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy · Turkey's Politics and Society