When the Government Comes to the Neighbourhood: Everyday Regulations and Syrian Refugees’ Encounters with Local State Authorities

Abstract

Introduction

Despite the existence of national refugee policies that regulate the lives of incoming and recent refugees, the rationale behind local authorities developing locally implemented policies that further regulate refugees’ lives may be less clear. My examination of this topic emphasises the role of formal and informal local policies that constitute the heart of local refugee governance in host societies, offering refugees rights and access to services while, at the same time, aiming to shape refugees’ actions and behaviours (Varsanyi and Nevins 2007; Varsanyi 2008).

Nevertheless, the existing literature has relatively understudied two crucial aspects of local refugee policies and their implementation. First, local refugee policies are mostly studied as regulations in government offices and the local extension of national policies of control and deportation, such as regular city-level identification checks for refugees (De Genova 2002; Broeders and Engbersen 2007; Gilbert 2009; Borrelli 2021). Yet, local refugee policies also involve regulations that aim to manage the neighbourhood spaces where refugees live, such as developing ordinances or curfews to designate which areas immigrants and refugees can access (Ambrosini 2013; Janmyr and Mourad 2018). However, the existing literature categorises these regulations as one and under ‘refugee policies’.

Thus, I propose that local refugee policies should be differentiated according to their operative areas, in other words, with respect to the differences in policy implementation areas. For instance, I argue that regulations in government offices (such as permit extensions or registrations) should be separated from management within neighbourhoods (such as regulations about refugee livelihoods or curfews implemented in public spaces). This differentiation will allow researchers and policymakers to characterise the type of local refugee policy aiming to regulate refugees’ lives while further detailing local policies concerning refugee governance. Accordingly, this paper will consider everyday politics, which ‘reconnects the citizen and the public life’ that is ‘rooted in everyday settings’ (Boyte 2005: 4), as a separate area to analyse within local refugee policies.

I will first address the role of regulations in everyday politics by introducing the concept of everyday regulations, which I have defined as all formal and informal practices implemented by local state authorities to manage, organise and control refugees’ daily lives and behaviours within neighbourhood spaces. Applying this concept allows me to distinguish local refugee policies according to their area of operation by involving the micro-politics of daily life (Goonewardena 2008; Bayat 2013). Under such an approach, even in the case of a policy that has been nationally implemented, I argue for focusing on the area of operation when considering the regulations covering the management and organisation of neighbourhood spaces. One example would be considering individual control within cities regarding refugees. Thus, I differentiate everyday regulations from refugee policies implemented in government offices since the primary focus of these regulations is their area of operation.

This differentiation of refugee policy implementation according to different issue areas offers two major analytical insights. The first goal is to further explain the variation in local policies at the local level and, eventually, reveal why these variations occur. For instance, everyday regulations could be implemented city wide or could alternatively be neighbourhood specific. Both cases can be used to demonstrate how everyday practices of refugee governance manifest themselves while highlighting the differences in the outcomes of the different policies. Therefore, the essential matter involves understanding the type of refugee policy that is implemented in certain areas at the local level rather than focusing on whether government authorities are implementing these policies. Second, along with highlighting formal refugee policies, this differentiation will also underscore de facto policies that are enforced as everyday regulations, encapsulating both formal and informal practices. Considering the increase in bottom-up refugee governance practices, this differentiation will enable scholars to categorise policy implementation in detail while examining informal as well as formal applications. Together, these two analytical insights offer a systematic approach as a contribution to previous studies on local refugee policies.

The second aspect requiring further exploration involves gathering input directly from refugees, especially concerning how local policies influence refugees’ habits in urban public spaces and their workspaces in their neighbourhoods. Earlier studies that analysed the implementation of local policies concentrated on refugees’ perceptions related to their interactions with street-level bureaucrats in border areas and government offices (Ellermann 2006; Carte 2014). I argue that the analysis of local policy implementation should be complemented by incorporating refugees’ perceptions of the local refugee policies that affect their everyday lives. Taking refugee input about local refugee policies into account can facilitate explaining why some local refugee policies operate better than others. Thus, the research question that this study seeks to answer is as follows: How do refugees perceive implemented everyday regulations?

Focusing on Syrian refugees in Turkey, my empirical case is set in Çarşamba in the Turkish city of Bursa. Predating the wave of Syrian refugees over the last decade, Bursa has experienced many incoming waves throughout its history. That said, in terms of magnitude, language differences and duration of stay, the arrival of refugees from Syria marked a different type of newcomer compared to earlier waves. Within Bursa, Çarşamba came to be known as ‘Little Aleppo’ when Syrians settled in this area near the city centre, changing its demographic makeup. These recent changes triggered local actors to implement regulations that intended to shape the everyday behaviours of refugees. Precisely because of the salience of such regulations in the area, I explore the case of Çarşamba to shed light on different forms of everyday regulations, which can be generalisable to the local refugee governance in the Global South.

I focus on two types of everyday regulations in Çarşamba that influence refugees’ lives: the municipal police (Zabıta) and the provincial directorate of security (Emniyet Müdürlüğü). Both actors have direct regulatory power over management, control and public order in everyday life at the local level. Municipal police oversee maintaining the public peace and order through pre-emptive control measures through regular neighbourhood visits and patrols. More specifically, I will examine the municipal police’s control of Syrian refugee-owned shops and signage. This practice is applied in different local contexts throughout Turkey (see Cetingulec 2019; Karasapan 2021). Highlighting this ubiquitous regulation implemented at the local level has enabled me to demonstrate an overarching everyday regulation targeting Syrians that aims at minimising Arabic language usage and ensures that they comply with existing rules without necessarily resulting from national refugee policy.

Concerning the provincial directorate of security, the civilian police force in charge of security and law enforcement, I analyse the handouts that provincial security forces have distributed in Çarşamba. This practice, to the best of my knowledge, was adopted in Çarşamba to regulate social order in the area. These handouts comprise instructions regulating Syrians’ everyday behaviours in urban public spaces and encouraging them to comply with the norms of the host community members (HCMs). Thus, the example of handouts demonstrates a type of everyday regulation that has been adopted in this area to control the everyday behaviours of Syrians.

By using one regulation that is known in other contexts in Turkey and one regulation that is enforced in Çarşamba, I can show the range of everyday regulations that are all-encompassing and representative of local state authorities’ efforts to manage, organise, and control refugees’ daily lives and behaviours within neighbourhood spaces. Building on the literature on regulations related to refugee governance, shaped by governmentality and the inner logic of everyday practices of control, I argue that within refugee governance, everyday regulations should be considered as a form of control adopted by the state to regulate the everyday behaviours of refugees in neighbourhood spaces, by which the state expands its authority and presence in the everyday lives of refugees.

To analyse refugees’ perceptions of everyday regulations in Çarşamba, I conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with Syrian shop owners and shop workers. Thus, my sample consists of refugees living at a certain income level and who have certain economic resources. This aspect of the sample distinguishes them from other groups of Syrian refugees in precarious economic situations. As Simsek (2018) has shown, some Syrian refugees in Turkey have the economic resources to achieve a certain level of security through the influence of their class on their refugee status, albeit they lack certain rights. Accordingly, the Syrian shop owners in this sample are ‘refugees with economic resources’.

My findings contribute to the previous research by showing that Syrian refugees perceive everyday regulations as both discriminatory and acceptable. In line with the previous research, I find that Syrians are critical of certain regulations that affect them. They show their criticisms in their perception that the exclusionary treatment of the local authorities during the implementation of everyday regulations is a form of discrimination. This treatment includes controls that target Syrian shops and preferences that demand replacing Arabic text on shop signs with Turkish. Nevertheless, some Syrians also have a positive understanding of these regulations. Those Syrian shop owners demonstrated that the everyday regulations helped them better understand and learn the HCMs’ norms and customs.

While addressing these variations in refugee perceptions extends the existing literature on the implementation of refugee policies, because the sample consisted of refugees with economic resources, I am unable to elaborate on the reasons behind the variation in the participating refugees’ perceptions of everyday regulations. A possible solution might involve a sample where refugees with different socioeconomic statuses would answer the same interview questions. My sample involved refugees with economic resources, yet the participants revealed both perspectives. Hence, I must highlight the demographics of this sample to distinguish the findings of this study from the previous studies that mostly consider refugees as a single group, predominantly coded as having a low socioeconomic status (one exception is Simsek 2018).

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. In the next section, I discuss the theoretical framework and the literature on regulations in local refugee governance. In the third section, I describe refugee governance in Turkey, case context and my methodology. In presenting my empirical findings, in the fourth section, I analyse Syrian shop owners’ and shop workers’ perceptions of these regulations. The final section concludes my findings and suggests further research areas.

Theoretical Framework and Regulations in Refugee Governance

Regulations within governance reflect why states pursue control as a way of imposing power that does not always imply the aim of limiting or restricting individuals; it also aims to maintain order through both upwards and downwards governing (Foucault 1991). Upward governing involves learning to govern oneself while governing the state, and downwards governing is about governing individual behaviour through policing, ‘a form of surveillance and control’ (Foucault 1991: 92). Thus, governing the individual becomes a primary way for the state to manifest its power.

In explaining the expansion of governmentality to everyday life, Nadesan (2008: 10) wrote, ‘Foucault’s work addresses how governmental operations are dispersed in the micro-practices of the market (e.g. factories) and in everyday practices and familial relationships (e.g. in schools and families)’. Hence, the states perceive the individual and the social realm around them as an area to be governed. In this article, I focus on the governing practices around individuals and their social realm concerning refugees. This rationale of control also approaches how states exercise power over refugee populations through refugee governance.

Refugee governance targets newcomers’ incorporation into a country or a city, access to rights and services, and reception policies (Sahin Mencutek 2020). The existing literature focuses almost on states’ and humanitarian organisations’ role in local policies concerning refugees, acting as an extension of national policies (Norman 2020; Abdelaaty 2021). The control element of refugee governance mainly entails how this control is exercised. Focusing on Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Janmyr and Mourad (2018) described state registration responses that shaped refugees’ access to rights and services through the labels assigned to them by the state. That study detailed the implications of these national refugee policies in labelling them and demonstrates the local implications of these labels in refugees’ lives.

However, these previous studies did not address the implementation of everyday practices of control of governance—including border control, controls on the lives of newcomers in cities, and settlement and integration policies that incorporate various actors from different levels alongside the regulations that shape everyday lives of refugees in cities. Thus, my developing argument bases my conceptualisation of regulation on Levi-Faur’s (2011: 7) description:

These rules will be considered as regulation as long as they are not formulated directly by the legislature (primary law) or the courts (verdict, judgment, ruling, and adjudication). In other words, regulation is about bureaucratic and administrative rulemaking and not about legislative or judicial rulemaking.

Therefore, in my analysis, I include all types of rulemaking to encapsulate regulatory rules that target refugees, such as local government policies and neighbourhood management between refugees and HCMs. Because I am focusing on everyday life at the local level, I do not include the regulations that refugees must follow in government offices, state offices or other offices of national and local authorities, such as those regarding residence permits.

The everyday aspect of regulations introduced by local authorities focuses on refugees’ lives during their settlement and integration period (De Genova 2002; Gilligan 2015; Meissner 2018). Here, I will consider two streams of studies. The first stream controls whether the migrants in cities are legally there, expands national state authority over immigrants, and aims to detect illegality that leads to deportation or maintains the threat of deportation as a control mechanism (Broeders and Engbersen 2007; Tervonen et al. 2018). Studies in this stream focus on the reflections of macro-level policies on micro-level controls over who is coming in and who falls under which reception criteria. A comprehensive example where perceptions of border control are reflected in everyday life is a study by Carte (2014) on a border region of Mexico, which details how low- to mid-level state authorities implement restrictions in the everyday lives of Central American immigrant women in Mexico. These restrictions involve ‘micro-aggressions, harassment, intimidation, arbitrariness, etc.’. As this example shows, the studies in this stream analyse how macro-level national regulations manifest themselves in subtle restrictions in the day-to-day lives of immigrants and jeopardise their lives.

The second stream of studies targets migrants settled in cities and in possession of the necessary papers but who are still regulated by authorities. Their policing partly extends the regulatory authority of border control forces, whereby they act as street-level bureaucrats in the cities, treated as ‘borders within’ (Darling 2017). The literature in this stream centres on immigrant management practices through ordinances that aim to regulate those going through the processes of settlement and integration. These mandates include rules that prohibit migrants from using certain areas in the city (Ambrosini 2013) or that control the exit and entry of migrants to their housing complex (Schrover 2019). Thus, local authorities implement policies regardless of the status of the affected refugees, aiming to manage and control the presence of new populations in their city (Caponio and Borkert 2010).

Gilbert (2009: 27) described the implementation of policies by local authorities as ‘imposing and dispersing new mechanisms of control into the everyday spaces and practices of those regarded as undesirable or ungovernable’. Along similar lines, Varsanyi (2008: 33) explained:

To formulate grassroots immigration policies as such, they do have explicit power to regulate and police public space within their jurisdictions via local land-use and zoning regulations, ordinances that regulate behaviours in public space (e.g., laws that criminalise loitering), and the enforcement of local and state laws (e.g., trespassing, traffic ordinances).

Thus, these controls over everyday life reveal that local authorities adopt ways to organise the areas within their jurisdiction to prevent or restrict the behaviours of immigrants, primarily to keep them under control by using the apparatuses available to them. Moreover, these apparatuses do not have to be developed through policies or legal means but can be implemented locally in response to demographic changes, such as in contexts with high numbers of refugees.

Together, these two streams demonstrate that local actors are enabled to draft local refugee policies that target refugees and dictate what they can do, where they can go, and which places they can use in the city. Most local refugee policies have been studied in relation to and as extensions of national policies. I argue that addressing these local policies requires separating nationally extended refugee policies from policies that regulate neighbourhood spaces as a crucial measure to expand scholarly knowledge of the types of local refugee policies, to fill the first gap in the literature.

The second gap is the lack of any examination of how refugees perceive local refugee policies operating in neighbourhood spaces, which I operationalise through agency. Migrants and refugees have been addressed as active actors with agency by shaping the dynamics at play at a local level (Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2009; Glick Schiller 2012). Refugees’ agency demonstrates how they make a living in their destination locations, including the strategies they develop. This agency is especially apparent in cases where migrants and refugees influence the areas where they live and the networks they belong to [see Balampanidis and Polyzos (2016) for urban spaces and Balcioglu (2017) for developing networks]. The agency of migrants and refugees emphasises their role and power over their present and future lives rather than portraying them as passive recipients.

The agency of refugees, as a concept, shows that an examination of refugees’ perceptions can potentially explain why individuals might perceive some policies as better than others rather than focusing on how they might mobilise against certain regulations. Hence, I argue that involving refugee perspectives in the implementation of regulations within local refugee governance can aid researchers and policymakers in assessing policies more effectively, both from the bottom up and the top down. This combined approach can result in more ‘effective and acceptable’ (Allen and Cars 2001: 2203) local governance structures in the long term, along with more sustainable policies. It may also shed light on how the target population assigns different levels of acceptance and welcome to the policies.

Therefore, to complement the ‘upward governing’ element of governmentality (Foucault 1991), I rely on the perception of refugees as a form of agency, through which refugees reflect on and react to the imposition of power through local refugee policies implemented by the government. My analysis will expand upon the topic of refugee agency by presenting how refugees’ perceptions and detail how refugees perceive governing practices manifested through everyday regulations that target individuals and their social realm.

Refugee Governance in Turkey: Case Context and Methodology

Currently, all cities of Turkey have Syrian inhabitants. Over the last decade, Turkey has experienced an influx of Syrian refugees, with percentages of Syrians varying in cities between 1 and 60 (Adali and Turkyilmaz 2020). That said, Turkey lacks a settlement policy that allocates Syrians to cities (Yildiz and Uzgoren 2016), meaning that Syrians who decide to live in urban areas of Turkey are self-settled, which has resulted in different numbers of Syrians living between cities and within cities.

Thus, the varying presence of Syrians and the initiatives undertaken by local authorities demonstrate that there is more to explore at the local level under the refugee governance framework in Turkey (Memişoğlu and Yavçan 2020). Scholars have emphasised the importance of municipalities and mayors in generating different local refugee policies concerning integration, access to services, etc. (Erdogan 2017; Betts et al. 2021). This led to a variation in the implementation of local refugee policies in Turkey. However, very little is known about the everyday influence of these implementations at the local level.

Currently, there are 177,095 registered Syrians in Bursa under Temporary Protection status, comprising 5.79 per cent of the province’s total population [Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM) 2020]. Bursa is the fourth-largest and the second-highest Syrian-inhabited non-border city in Turkey. The area of Çarşamba, within Bursa, became known as ‘Little Aleppo’ after the arrival of Syrians. The primary data for this study came from 40 semi-structured interviews conducted with Syrian refugees in Çarşamba in September and October 2019.

This period coincided with public scrutiny regarding the attempts of Turkey’s government to control Syrians (BBC 2019). For instance, the DGMM is a province-based system that allows Syrians to access services only if they reside in their registered province. During this study’s interview phase, the Turkish government required Syrians in Istanbul who were registered in other provinces to return to those provinces. This situation not only created increased individual controls for Syrians in Istanbul but also influenced Syrians in other provinces—a fact that must be acknowledged.

My sample consisted of 33 males and 7 females, constituting a gender bias; therefore, I do not claim that this is a representative sample. Still, the interviewees were able to provide insight into Syrian shop owners’ and shop workers’ perceptions of the regulations, which I aimed to uncover. The participants ranged in age between 16 and 57, with most having graduated secondary school. Among the background questions that I asked to establish the context of their residence in Turkey were queries concerning what year they arrived in Çarşamba, how much time they spent in Çarşamba, with whom, and what they did in the neighbourhood, including for work. I went on to gather information about these Syrians’ encounters with regulatory state authorities in their neighbourhoods, asking about their knowledge of the regulations concerning shop signs, handouts distributed in the area, and whether they had experienced encounters with local state authorities. These questions led to others about their experiences of regular shop visits and methods of handout distribution. On average, each interview lasted approximately 2 hours.

A research assistant from Syria helped me conduct the interviews because the native language of the Syrians in my sample was Arabic. Most of the interviewees were not particularly comfortable speaking in Turkish but had a basic communication ability in the language. I attended all the interviews, which allowed me to observe and take notes when they also wanted to address me in Turkish. I was in an ‘outsider’ position; I was not an explicit party because of my identity as part of the majority population by citizenship (Carling et al. 2014). My research assistant took an ‘insider’ position and was able to build quick rapport. Thus, I took being an outsider working with an insider into consideration during the analysis of the responses.

Because the field study coincided with increased scrutiny over Syrians (BBC 2019), I deliberately chose to take handwritten notes instead of recordings to increase the likelihood that the individuals would agree to talk to us. I adopted this approach to increase participation while offering each interviewee a safe and secure atmosphere. Also, due to the scrutiny, I relied on both random and purposeful sampling supported by snowball sampling. However, these Syrians’ reluctance to refer us to other potential volunteers led us to ask shop owners individually whether they would be interested in being interviewed. For the same purpose, I received verbal consent from everyone I interviewed by showing my interviewees how I coded them (respondent number, date, gender, age, education level, and the neighbourhood in which they resided, for example, S2-17092019-M-28-S-CIR) to guarantee confidentiality. Both policies proved helpful. Later, my research assistant translated the interviews from Arabic to English, whereupon we went over them to verify the accuracy of the translations sentence by sentence, and I coded all the interviews on Atlas.ti.

Everyday Regulations in Çarşamba and Syrian Shop Owners’ Perceptions

This section provides details about the concept of everyday regulations to support my analysis of local refugee governance. From among these regulations, I will focus on two practices of the local authorities: municipal police visits and handouts distributed by the provincial directorate of security. Both practices are exercised by local state authorities who use their organisation and management tools to regulate Syrian refugees in Çarşamba. Furthermore, both regulations affect everyday life in the neighbourhood; however, they vary in structure.

The municipal police visits to Syrian shops concern the regulations governing the use of Arabic on shop signs. Commercial signs featuring Arabic have been a hot topic of debate in all localities that have undergone a demographic change since the arrival of Syrians in Turkey (Cetingulec 2019). Language differences have been an issue, and a ‘language barrier appears as the major obstacle influencing all the aspects of Syrians’ lives’ (Ombudsman Institution of the Republic of Turkey 2018). This issue has intensified with the increased visibility of shop signs in Arabic, signalling that the shops belong to Syrian refugees. Like many other areas that have undergone similar demographic changes, local state authorities have developed further regulations to reduce the visibility of Arabic in shop signs and have tasked municipal police to enforce Syrian refugees’ compliance with these guidelines. This enforcement is practised in other localities too. For this study, I will analyse the municipal police visits in Çarşamba.

The second example concerns the provincial directorate of security and its distribution of handouts to regulate the everyday behaviours of Syrians in Çarşamba. The handouts describe the laws and collective social norms in Turkey and are printed in both Turkish and Arabic, side by side. Thus, they appear to target all residents in the area. They begin with a quote from the Anatolian philosopher Rumi: ‘Not the ones who speak the same language, but the ones who share the same sentiments agree’. The handouts include the following themed sections: declaration of residence address, opening a shop, burglary, begging, drug use and drug selling, being careful of one’s surroundings, and other essential issues.

In particular, the sections on ‘being careful of one’s surroundings’ and ‘other issues that need to be taken into consideration’ aim to regulate the use of both private spaces and urban public spaces. Nonetheless, the text has vague terms, such as, ‘Refrain from making noise or talking loudly in the streets, on public transportation, etc.’ and ‘Refrain from sitting or hanging out in large groups and smoking shisha’. Moreover, unlike the enforcement of shop signs, there are no fines for not complying with the handout’s regulations. However, at the end of the handout, the text states that ‘if people do not comply, they will be punished and deported’, which signals that Syrian refugees are the target population. In the following sections, I analyse the Syrian refugees’ perceptions of these everyday regulations.

Perceptions of Regulations as Discriminatory

The term discriminatory perceptions describes the participants’ statements about their perceptions of discrimination based on the local authorities’ treatment of Syrian refugees while implementing everyday regulations. For example, such perceptions emerging from municipal authorities’ shop visits tended to solidify the Syrians’ arguments about targeted control. For example, S1 described his encounters as follows:

When the municipal police came to my shop, they asked me, ‘What does your shop name mean?’ I said, ‘It doesn’t have meaning in Turkish’ and he told me that I have to take it down because it doesn’t have a meaning in Turkish, so I told him, ‘What about the other shops like LC Waikiki and Zara? Do they have a meaning in Turkish?’ He gave me one week to take it down. If I didn’t, he would give me a fine. When he returned the next week, I showed him that this name was officially registered with the government, so he couldn’t do anything. While he was leaving the shop, he said, ‘May God curse you people, you and the ones who brought you to this country.’ Of course, there are good people; I am not saying that all the police are bad; there are some who give us advice [on how to put the signs up so it won’t be a problem] and help us, but there are a lot of them who hate us and don’t like to help us, even if we have all the papers that they need.

Similarly, S29 stated:

I am fined without a warning period, while they give some time to Turks after a warning; they fine Syrians immediately without warning, but they go to Turks two days earlier to tell them what the law says and how it should be applied. And to apply the laws while allowing time because people don’t know all laws, [the authorities] must give time and a chance to Syrians to learn the law and then they can apply it. So, you have to give me a chance before you charge me; if your purpose is to apply the law, it should happen without racism.

These two quotations show that the Syrian shop owners saw such treatment by the local authorities as discriminatory. Shop control measures that are imposed by municipal police are a common practice that all shop owners in the area have experienced. However, the frequency of visits and targeting of Arabic text indicate that the officials were seeking to organise and manage Syrians rather than establish overall public peace in the area. The literature shows that in addition to using control to monitor illegality, this practice ensures the institutional presence of local authorities through these municipal police practices (McWilliams and Bonet 2015). These practices are carried out by way of random visits to the shops of refugee shop owners as part of controlling the refugee population within the scope of everyday regulations.

The perceptions of the local authorities’ discriminatory treatment of Syrian refugees manifest themselves through language differences and, eventually, communication problems. In 2018, the district municipality stated that shop signs that include Arabic should feature only 50 per cent Arabic and 50 per cent Turkish. In 2019, the regulation changed to mandate a proportion of 25 per cent Arabic and 75 per cent Turkish. However, the shop owners insisted that because their customer base was mostly made up of Syrians, having shop signs in Arabic was ‘for the Arab and Syrian customers, so they know it is a Syrian shop or that they speak Arabic’ (S36). S29 explained:

Although the law is against all languages, they are only against Arabic. Because my shop’s name isn’t in Turkish, they caused a problem for me. There are mistakes in the law; it [the shop sign] depends on my products and who my target is, and I write accordingly.

The participants’ responses in their interviews indicated that local authorities preferred Syrians to remove all Arabic from their shop signs. In fact, I observed this phenomenon at first hand during one of the interviews (S32). Two municipal policemen entered and started asking for the licence of the shop, tax registration details, etc. I told the policemen that if they needed help with translation, my research assistant could assist them. They then told me, ‘Tell him that it would be easier for him if he removes all Arabic letters from his shop signs’. They added that they would come the following week to check whether he complied with the warnings. After a week, I saw that S32’s shop sign was only in Turkish when we passed by the shop. This experience indicates that, regardless of the regulations, on an everyday basis, local authorities prefer to remove all Arabic shop signs and oblige the owners to comply with these regulations.

The perceptions of discriminatory treatment become more evident with some participants’ descriptions of the distributed handouts. To ascertain the knowledge of these Syrian shop owners, I asked them whether they knew about the handouts distributed in the area. I followed up on this question by asking for their thoughts on the handouts. S40 responded:

The brochure talked about how ‘throwing trash is forbidden,’ about the noises, and how we should behave in public places. When they distributed the brochures, they left them in front of the doors if nobody was in the shop. They distributed only in Çarşamba; I saw it as a normal thing, not a big deal … But, no, it is not a good thing. They should give it to the Turks and Syrians; we felt as if it was a warning for us. They distributed the brochures only to Syrian shops.

These handouts operate as ‘ordinances that regulate behaviours in public space’ (Varsanyi 2008). They are enforced through regular patrols in the area, which creates ‘psychological pressure’ (S39). This regulation and its method of implementation demonstrate how subtle ways of fostering certain behaviours operate on an everyday basis. This observation overlaps with the literature on reminders of deportation as a control mechanism (Tervonen et al. 2018). Thus, I argue that local authorities targeting Syrians through everyday regulations also work as a ‘reminder’ of control in their day-to-day activities. Operating at the level of the neighbourhood space brings Syrian refugees face-to-face with officials without having to go to the government offices. Consequently, the government’s imposing its presence on the neighbourhood establishes an important element of everyday control.

Perceptions of Regulations as Acceptable

The perceptions that some of the Syrian shop owners expressed showing that they found everyday regulations acceptable were related to an acknowledgement of the situation created by the Syrian refugees’ presence in another country. They framed these perceptions as an understanding of the reasons behind these regulations and their implementation. A common response on the part of Syrians who perceived everyday regulations as ‘acceptable’ was that regulations helped them in learning Turkish laws and customs.

In reference to the shop signs and distributed handouts, Syrians with acceptable perceptions acknowledged that they now lived in Turkey. For instance, S24 described having a shop sign in Arabic and then being confronted with a local requirement that compelled him to decrease the percentage of Arabic. He explained his understanding of the regulation, reflecting, ‘Writing in Arabic is to let Syrian customers know that it’s a Syrian shop, but it’s not the right behaviour to do because we are in Turkey; it should be in both Arabic and Turkish’. Thus, Syrians’ acceptance of the regulations underlines their willingness to improve communication with the HCMs. S23 linked this thought to the HCMs’ recognition of Syrians, saying:

It [on having shop signs only in Arabic] shouldn’t happen because we live in Turkey, and if you are unable to accept us living here, how do you expect people to accept you?

Here, the connection between understanding the regulations and the reasoning behind acceptance becomes clearer: the refugees recognised that although they were Syrians, at the same time, they were living in a foreign country; thus, they had to comply with certain rules. Consequently, although language and communication comprise reasons to write in Arabic, being in a foreign country with rules (S9, S13) and learning the law over time (S16) triumph over other explanations, resulting in acceptable perceptions.

Concerning handouts, acceptable perceptions became more tangible when the refugees were learning Turkish laws and customs. For example, S30 directly linked the handouts with a better understanding of the norms and customs of HCMs, explaining his perception in the following way:

The Syrians are the ones who gave me the brochure, and I hung it in my shop. It had a positive influence. Because it was for the noises and the gatherings of the Syrians, now they have lessened, and people have changed and become more committed to the laws, 80% of them, at least. And it is a good thing for the ones who don’t know the laws; they learn.

S33 agreed with the distribution of the handouts, saying, ‘I think it was a good idea; it was written in Arabic and Turkish’. Others also confirmed that these handouts increased Syrians’ awareness of HCMs’ norms and habits (S35, S37). Moreover, as in the case of the shop signs, addressing the communication issues between HCMs and Syrians, S34 said:

It was a good move from the Turkish [authorities]. Even in the mosques, the Syrian Imam talked about it. After the language, the main reason for the problems is miscommunication between the two sides. Now, we can understand the customs and traditions and the laws of the country.

These responses indicate that some Syrian shop owners saw these regulations not as a method of control or restriction but as a guide for social cohesion at the neighbourhood level.

One interviewee (S29) even linked the learning of customs and laws to authorities’ efforts to engage Syrians in learning these customs by acknowledging their presence. He interpreted these handouts as an indication of ‘care’ on behalf of the government authorities rather than perceiving them as a regulatory measure:

A brochure was given to me, and I hung it, and I gave some to others. This proves that they [the local authorities] care about the relations between Turks and Syrians. To raise awareness of how people should use public spaces. For sure, it affected positively, and it brought results for all the people because the words in the brochure were written in a good way. And this should be applied more widely, and it should be done for the Turks who live in areas with a huge number of Syrians. They must raise awareness.

According to S29, the handouts had a positive impact in terms of regulating everyday lives. He further stated that expanding this practice to other areas that had experienced similar demographic changes following the arrival of Syrian refugees might benefit the Syrians in terms of learning the laws and customs of the HCM society, thus connecting care with learning local norms. Linking this concept to similar regulations involving the HCM population and aiming to ‘raise awareness’ shows that everyday regulations can become vital for newcomers in areas that lack migrant civic integration programmes. Thus, evaluating the everyday regulations through refugees’ perceptions, considering that not all refugees saw these regulations in a negative light, can reveal the elements that are working while calling attention to those that need improvement.

Conclusion

In this article, I argued that local refugee policies should be differentiated according to their area of operation, as regulations concerning neighbourhood spaces and the everyday lives of refugees. My first step in supporting this argument involved introducing the concept of everyday regulations, thus broadening the categorisation of local refugee governance. Specifically, this concept entails local state authorities’ management and organisation of refugees’ everyday lives in neighbourhood spaces. By differentiating local enforcement from official policy, I detailed the dynamics of Syrian refugees’ daily lives, showing how they customarily experience local refugee governance that oversteps official government policies, in general, and what happens when the government comes to the neighbourhood, in particular.

Next, I gathered input from Syrian refugees and analysed their perceptions about the implementation of everyday regulations. My findings show that Syrian refugees see such regulation in two diverse ways: discriminatory and acceptable. Examples of the participants’ discriminatory perceptions included statements that revealed discomfort, a feeling of being threatened, and the sense of ‘being under control’ by local authorities. In contrast to findings in the existing literature, the participants’ alternative perceptions of everyday regulations as acceptable demonstrate that these Syrians understood the reasons behind these regulations. Notably, even those Syrians who perceived everyday regulations as acceptable described discriminatory treatment by local authorities. Therefore, the outcomes of this analysis should be approached with caution; moreover, an essential point to be emphasised is that the two perceptions are not mutually exclusive.

These findings also show that collecting and taking refugees’ input into consideration brings to light the previously unrecognised variations in their perceptions, potentially creating the opportunity to focus on regulations that their perceptions can inform the discussion about context-specific factors of local refugee governance to minimise the negative impact on the refugees. This demonstrates the importance of recognising the agency of refugees in the local policies that affect them. Addressing the differences in local refugee policies and meaningfully employing refugees’ input can unlock the success or failure of local refugee policies in terms of implementation and perception.

The study has a few limitations related to the study methodology and sample, suggesting two paths for future research. The first topic concerns the local state authorities’ treatment of refugees and whether refugees with acceptable perceptions had experienced positive encounters or refugees with discriminatory perceptions had experienced negative encounters. Thus, future research, once designed accordingly to measure the impact of treatment by local authorities on refugees’ perceptions, might explore to what extent the type of interaction between refugees and local state authorities influences the successful reception of everyday regulations to promote successful implementation.

A second limitation is related to the demographic makeup of the sample. Interviewing shop owners resulted in a sample comprising participants who were financially relatively better off than other Syrian refugees in vulnerable situations. Nevertheless, this sample contributes valuable additional insight to the literature in detailing the perceptions of this group of Syrian refugees. That said, addressing the perceptions of refugees in more vulnerable positions is an imperative topic for future study. Moreover, a comparison of the perceptions of refugees from different backgrounds may shed light on the extent to which refugees’ socioeconomic level determines their level of acceptance towards the local refugee policies targeting them. Thus, future studies that explore these topics will have the potential to provide valuable information for scholars and policymakers in the pursuit of equitable and effective local refugee governance.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Zahed Mukayed, who has been a great research assistant throughout this study. I want to thank Andrea Spehar, Basak Yavcan, Elif Naz Kayran, Deniz Inal, Goksin Ugur, Leiza Brumat, Peter Esaiasson, Prisca Jöst, and Ricard Zapata-Barrero for their comments in different stages of the paper. I also want to thank the participants of SWEPSA 2020 Conference ‘Migration and integration: Structures, policies and actors’ Section, participants of POMEPS Workshop (26 March 2021), and the participants of IMISCOE/NoVaMigra 2021 PhD Workshop ‘Norms and Values in Asylum and Migration Bureaucracy’ Section for their able feedback. I am thankful to the two anonymous reviewers for their extremely constructive comments.

Funding

This work was supported by the Forskraftstiftelsen Theodor Adelswärds Minne (FSTAM) grant awarded on 6 October 2018.

References