Who do migrant associations represent? The role of ‘ethnic deservingness’ and legal capital in migrants’ rights claims in Turkey

Considering that established migrant associations often play an active role in migrants’ rights advocacy, the relationship between them and the growing numbers of irregular migrants needs careful scrutiny. Looking at the encounters between irregular Bulgarian Turkish migrants and associations established by their co-ethnics who hold Turkish citizenship in Turkey, our ethnographic evidence shows that co-ethnic migrant associations mobilise the legal frame of ‘ethnic deservingness’ with the intention of welcoming co-ethnics to the Turkish homeland. In the absence of other formal organisations for rights advocacy, associations’ appeals to this frame emerge as a civic resource for the irregular newcomers in their permanent residency claims. At the same time, the same frame hides unequal power relations within co-ethnic communities, that is, newcomers’ peripheral positions within associations and the economic costs of filing claims via associations. This situation creates a representational gap in the associational context between its active members with higher legal capital and irregular newcomers with lower legal capital. Tackling the problem of representation determined by the legal hierarchy, this study questions whether migrant associations should still be considered important political actors when undocumented/irregular migrants outnumber regulars—especially with regard to the immediate political/legal actions they require.     

One narrative or several? Politics,cultural elites,and citizens in constructing a ‘New Narrative for Europe’

ABSTRACT

European Union (EU) institutions have cultivated narratives of European integration for a long time. For its 2013–2014 ‘A New Narrative for Europe’ project, however, the European Commission for the first time explicitly used the ‘narrative’ label. Drawing on non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and qualitative discourse analysis, this article contrasts the drafting process and the resulting declaration’s narrative structure and content with its discussion by citizens in a web-based consultation. The analysis shows that participating citizens forcefully demanded a bottom-up debate and advocated pluralistic perspectives. In these circumstances, elite-driven attempts at strengthening European identity and EU legitimacy are likely to be ineffective.     

Diversity,rights or privileges? Denunciation of multiculturalism, ‘political correctness’ and anti-racism of the ex-Commander of Scotland Yard Ali Dizaei

The widely disseminated court verdict on the former Scotland Yard commander, Ali Dizaei, as a violent bully and a liar at the end of his first trial in February 2010, brought about a noted denunciation of multiculturalism as ‘political correctness’. The jury's decision on the abuse of power by the Iranian-born officer was used by the denunciators to condemn the politics of rights that aligned multiple ethnic and racial identities as equal. The denunciation is looked at as a contingent mobilisation of the apolitical subject that is loitering on the boundary of politics calling for the ‘end of politics’ marked by the exclusion of the Other. At the same time the trial revealed that by advocating a policy designed to subsume particular ethnic and cultural belongings within a universal exercise of rights Dizaei had been able to resume his cultural differences as a source of privileges among his compatriots. Drawing on the incident as a result of which Dizaei had to stand trial and later a re-trial, using various sources, the paper examines the tension between the exercise of rights and privileges built into multiculturalism. The pertinence of the sources used to highlight the tension remains largely unaffected by the questioned reliability of the main witness of the prosecutor and the Appeal Court judges’ decision to order Dizaei's re-trial. The paper argues that multiculturalism sets in motion the incompatible agencies of the citizen, the member of a political community, and Man whose role is inscribed within civil society. Thus, the exercise of equal rights calls for dis-identification of the subject as a social and cultural agent. Such dis-identification, however, is displaced when the subject asserts his identity as Man, the bearer of unequal relations based on class, gender and race. In making provision both for the exercise of rights as well as the assertion of identity multiculturalism becomes instrumental in the subsumption of cultural differences within rights and the resumption of these differences in the articulation of privileges. The mediation of multiculturalism in the realization of rights and privileges accounts for the Iranian-born officer's oscillation between subsuming his cultural differences within British citizenship and resuming these differences in asserting his identity as an Iranian among the diasporic community. Using the notion of cultural diversity Dizaei was able to keep at arm's length the two spheres of rights and identity that allowed him to claim ‘not to be one of them’ thus oscillating between claiming the rights of a British citizen and the privileges of an Iranian magnate. The noted disruption in his power game that brought Dizaei to sit in the dock was the result of a failed attempt by the Iranian-born officer to contain the growing tension in his advocated multiculturalism arising from his simultaneous resort to rights and privilege.