Healthcare beyond the humanitarian niche
Syrian refugee-led organizations in Turkey
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3217859 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nihal Kayali (0000-0003-4691-8645, Brandeis University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Problems (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-7791 • E-ISSN: 1533-8533 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/socpro/spaf060 |
| OpenAlex | W4414449359 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 62 |
In the wake of war and displacement, refugee-led organizations often emerge in host states to meet co-nationals' needs. How do the politics of refugee reception shape the operations and trajectories of these organizations? This paper analyzes the persistence of Syrian refugee-run health clinics in Turkey despite the country's provision of free Arabic-language healthcare to Syrians registered under temporary protection. Drawing on 64 interviews with actors in Istanbul's refugee healthcare field, the paper develops the concept of a humanitarian niche-a space that emerges in response to refugee needs that is shaped by both host country policies of reception and the human capital refugees bring to their organizations. Refugee-led organizations endure when they align with host state humanitarian and political objectives and accrue legitimacy and resources. Crucially, this alignment extends from the host country to the refugees' home country, encompassing a broader geopolitical field. Refugee-led organizations that successfully navigate these dynamics can leverage resources to become permanent fixtures in the host state's organizational terrain. The paper demonstrates how refugees actively shape and contribute to host state policy and service provider landscapes, even as their long-term integration remains uncertain
Geopolitics · Health care · Humanitarian aid · Legitimacy · Leverage (statistics) · Politics · Refugee · State (computer science) · Syrian refugees · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
Abductive Analysis
The Emergence of Hybrid Organizational Forms
Inside the Hybrid Organization
Organizations in Action
Discrimination and Delegation
Reluctant Reception
Matching opportunities with resources
Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship
Governing through Uncertainty
Shadows of the shadow state
The Politics of Syrian Refugees in Turkey
Does social cohesion solve forced migration riddles? Troubled concepts and constrained practices in Turkey
The Precarious Lives of Syrians
Navigating Uncertainty
Religious solidarity, historical mission and moral superiority
Hybridization and nonprofit organizations
To be or not to be registered? Explanatory factors behind formalizing non-farm household businesses in Vietnam
Hosting Guests, Creating Citizens
Religion, politics and social assistance in Turkey
Refugee-Run Grassroots Organizations
Governance, Governmentalities, and the State of Exception in the Palestinian Refugee Camps of Lebanon
The Making of an Immigrant Niche
Ascriptive Organizational Stigma and the Constraining of Pakistani Immigrant Organizations
Syrian refugees in Turkey
The transformation of the primary health care system for Syrian refugees in Turkey
Global Standards, Cultural Islam
Practicing in exile
A Faithful Alliance Between the Civil Society and the State
Non-Wars and Emergence of New Organizational Forms Combining States, Markets and Civil Society
Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism
Lebanon's response to the Syrian refugee crisis – Institutional ambiguity as a governance strategy
Islamisation of Turkey under the AKP Rule
Forced Displacement and Asylum Policy in the Developing World
Situating informal welfare within imperfect well-being regimes
Migrants’ access to healthcare services
Hybrid Political Order and the Politics of Uncertainty
Understanding Integration
Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship
Institutional Embeddedness and the Dynamics of Organizational Populations
Hybridity and Nonprofit Organizations
Deferred action and the discretionary state
Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits of Interviewing
On the Radar
Bridging, bonding, and linking? Syrian refugee-led organisations and integration in Berlin
Integrative Paradigms, Marginal Reality
Who is (un)deserving? Differential healthcare access and the interplay between social and symbolic boundary-drawing towards Syrian refugees in Turkey
Mixed Embeddedness
Studying Up Revisited
Impossible Futures? The Ambivalent Temporalities of Grassroots Humanitarian Action
The Niche as a Theoretical Tool
Refugees, Immigrants, and the State
Immigrant Organizations
Liminal Legality
There is no Future in Humanitarianism
The Organizational Niche
The Emerging Welfare Mix for Syrian Refugees in Turkey
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |