Sibel Karadağ is a Fulbright fellow in Political Science at Yale. She is currently pursuing her doctoral research at Koç University in Istanbul, where she is also a researcher at the Migration Research Center (MiReKoc). Her research interests lie mainly in critical migration and border studies, humanitarianism, sovereignty and citizenship, and social and political theory. She has presented her work at universities in the UK, Germany, Greece and Spain as well as at international conferences such as the International Studies Association (ISA) and the European International Studies Association (EISA). She received her BA in Social and Political Science and MA in European Studies from Sabancı University; and an M.Sc. in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) with the Jean Monnet Scholarship.
Could you tell me a bit about what your current work involves and what you’re up to at Yale?
I’m currently a PhD candidate at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. My research interests lie in migration and border studies. After 3-year long fieldwork on both sides of the Aegean Sea, I’m trying to finalize my doctoral research at the moment. I’ve considered questions about mobility and movement significant philosophical, existential and political ones since I did my masters. In my two master’s degrees, first at Sabancı University, and later at LSE, I studied the historical processes of securitization of migration since the 1980s within the European and Turkish context.
First let me mention why migration and border politics are important today. Since the 1990s and increasingly after 9/11 we’ve witnessed a process in which migration and security policies became merged. Immigrants became potential terrorists and threats to the security and societies of nations. However, this doesn’t mean that national sovereigns are trying to create walls that are guarded unilaterally. In fact, it’s just the opposite. In border politics today there are quite heterogeneous and transnational administrations, including outsourcing and offshoring techniques, cooperation between different sovereigns, involvement of private security companies and information technologies. So this is a huge assemblage, I would say. Also we know that borders today do not stand at the edges of territories. Rather, they are quite mobile filtering mechanisms and they are everywhere, including airports, checkpoints, visa procedures and so on.
My doctoral project particularly focuses on the geographical edges of territories and encounters between two sovereigns on the sea. So, I analyze the configuration of the sea border as a space, which is the Aegean Sea in my case, and how the spatial/temporal nature of the sea border shapes the practices of enclosure, surveillance, violence, as well as justification mechanisms and moral sentiments deployed in border politics today. In my approach, the constitutive role of the sea border shaping practices as well as producing particular subject positions is significant. Because, again, this is a huge assemblage. You have Greek, Turkish, European border officials, humanitarian rescuers, people on the boat, facilitators and smugglers, private security companies and non-human surveillance technologies within the same space. So, I look at how violent practices, humanitarian imagination and saving lives come together within the same space, and I situate this contextualized analysis of the Greek-Turkish border within the larger European context. So the question that needs to be answered is this: how will we understand captive populations at borders within the age of networks and neoliberal globalization?
For me, studying mobility and borders stands at the very center of other theoretical discussions such as about sovereignty, neoliberalism, class formation and labor, sexuality, colonial racism, and transformative politics today. So, this is actually what brought me to Yale. The political theory department at Yale was the best opportunity for me to intersect migration studies with political theory. There is a great community here focusing on a wide spectrum of philosophical and intellectual questions which extend and deepen my knowledge a lot. And, of course, having a chance to work with Professor Seyla Benhabib is a lifetime opportunity for me.
Why did you choose the Turkish-Greek region as your fieldwork site?
Well, the massive movement of Syrian refugees from Turkey to Europe triggered my political and intellectual interests and I started my fieldwork in 2015 during that movement. Also, since I’m from Turkey I’m very closely connected to the field, both to Turkey and to Europe, of course. So that geographical proximity also had an influence on my research. But I’ve actually been studying the securitization of migration within the European context since 2010, since my two Master’s degrees, and I moved to the critical border studies in my PhD.
What were your main takeaways from your field work experience and what challenges did you encounter?
There are thousands of events and endless stories. It was a terrific political and life experience. It took three years going back and forth, and I was able to capture the differences in processes over time. First of all, I should say what I am doing methodologically. It is the political sociology of borders, which does not just focus on formal international border politics, but also more broadly on informal daily practices and governmental techniques. The general tendency in studying borders is to analyze political, historical developments, legal documents, policies or secondary sources, such as reports. So adopting a practice approach is relatively new and you can imagine how hard it is to do fieldwork at border regions. I even went further and did ethnography work, which is quite exceptional, even in the critical border studies.
What exactly did the ethnographic work entail?
I was involved in a local, non-profit search and rescue NGO as a volunteer. As a volunteer/researcher, I was involved in the practices of spotting, landing — which means that you take people out of boats — provision of first aid, and running a temporary camp in the Northern Lesvos, the Greek Island which has been the main hot spot since 2015. So that is why it is an ethnography, it is a participant observation. At the same time, I conducted fieldwork on both sides of the Aegean Sea, including Hellenic and Turkish coastguards, Frontex members (EU border agency), members of international organizations and non-governmental humanitarian rescuers. Interestingly, I was the first volunteer doing ethnographic research in the Northern Lesvos and also the first Turkish volunteer there. At the beginning, it provoked a kind of suspicion in the eyes of humanitarians, because I was a researcher, and in the eyes of the Greek military because I was a Turkish volunteer.
So, every stage of my fieldwork was full of obstacles and challenges. Ethnographic work itself is full of ethical dilemmas but when it comes to borders it becomes even harder. Every day you witness violence, death and survival. In the news, or in reports, you generally see statistics or numbers of boats and people, or images of dead bodies. But when you are on the field, the story starts. The story of their long and deadly journeys, of their incredible struggle for life and admirable strength, as well as complex relations between militaries, humanitarians and people on the boat. So you are in the midst of all this but at the same time trying to keep your critical distance as a researcher.
What is the most surprising thing that you discovered or learnt during your fieldwork?
Visual images shape our imagination on certain phenomena. The impact of cartography is the same independently from your political and theoretical awareness. Reality teaches you to change your viewpoint substantially. Second, borders are spaces where every kind of human action gets practiced in its extreme version. I call borders as a kind of laboratory to test the limits of human beings, both in terms of struggle for life and also in terms of the banality of violence. And again, independent of your political and theoretical awareness, the field itself is a sharp encounter pushing the limits of your imagination. This becomes even more crystallized at the sea border, with its fluidity and boundless nature.
Currently I’m reading a recent book by David Farrell Krell, The Sea: A Philosophical Encounter. In that book, too, you see how throughout human history, the sea has been the subject of metaphysical, philosophical and mythological enquiries, referring to its life-spawning, mystic, boundless qualities, as well as its unknowable and dangerous nature. At the moment, I’m thinking about that a lot. These descriptions are not totally irrelevant when it comes to border politics. In Moby Dick, Melville calls the sea the “ungraspable phantom of life”. This is the case in border politics as well. Any time you look at the sea, you see its fluidity, infinite and unifying nature. But, at the same time, you see the constant effort and also failure of human beings to reestablish demarcations on this fluidity. And you see people who can cross these imagined lines freely or by showing documents, but at the same time you see the ones for whom crossing can cost their lives. So, every stage of my fieldwork was a sharp visualization of the differential evaluation of certain lives and very normalized inequalities within the value of life. Whose lives are more valuable and why — I asked this question every day.
I just wanted to quickly return to something you mentioned before. Given that you were doing ethnographic research and participating in volunteer work, how did you maintain that critical distance between your participation and your research?
It was hard. Ethnography is the kind of thing that you cannot learn from someone else. Before you start, you ask people who are experienced on the field lots of questions and try to get information from them, but nothing works. You learn fieldwork, during the fieldwork, and that’s the case for everyone. It took time for me too. For example, I was part of a humanitarian job there, and the other humanitarians there were my friends. At the same time, I shared the same habitus with Frontex officials and coast guards. It was definitely a strange environment to adopt and be a part of. Your critical distance towards military and border officials is not enough, you have to keep it towards humanitarians as well. You have to observe relations, positions, discourses and acts of different actors including yourself. And of course, you witness struggle of people on the boat every day which is the hardest part. You have many ethical dilemmas in front of you every day. So, fieldwork is a constant self-reflection to be distanced insider and informed outsider, particularly ethnographic work, because it is much more than conducting interviews.
Given that border politics is a ubiquitous issue, do you think any of your findings in the European context may also apply elsewhere, such as in the US?
Definitely. Especially in the years since 9/11, the securitization and criminalization of migration has become the major discourse and practice across the world. So, the policies of migration and security have become merged under the same jurisdiction and administration, both in the Global North and Global South. This is a kind of period of simultaneous opening and blocking — networked, transnational constellations but at the same time enclosure and captivity of certain populations and groups. This was always the case throughout human history but the point is to conceptualize the specifics of the current moment. What we are witnessing today in the European context is not unique. We can see similar patterns of the securitization processes everywhere, including the US. Particularly in the US, since 9/11 we have seen the merging of migration and security policies under the same jurisdiction, the Department of Homeland Security. Again, here the politics is shaped around the possible threat of immigrants to US society. Most recently, we know Trump’s threats to increase border patrol and close the Southern border with Mexico, and further increased military violence against migrants. This is happening everywhere: the enclosure of certain ‘unwanted’ groups and populations. And this is happening in the age of networks and globalization. Of course, every location has its contextualized history and politics, but it would be plausible to talk about an analogous political imagination across the world.
This next question may require some amount of speculation, but this growing enclosure of certain groups, is that something you see changing as we move forward, either getting more or less intense?
I think it is getting more intense, especially since the economic crisis of 2008. Some theorists associate the period after 2008 with neo-liberal authoritarianism, neo-fascism, or the rise of far-right populism. Whatever term you use, there have definitely been changes in the governance of unwanted mobility and dispossessed populations. In terms of a speculative argument, I think this practice is going to intensify unless there is a transformative politics and uprisings. This is the age of finance capitalism with incredible disparity in wealth, and the age of perpetual precarity, fear, exclusion and abandonment. And these are going to strengthen unless we manage to create an alternative imagination and courage.
Coming back to Yale, what specifically have you been up to in terms of your work and have you been enjoying your time here?
Joining the academic environment at Yale has been great. Since I’ve been here I’ve been trying to attend lots of workshops, seminars and conferences. The academic environment here is dynamic, collaborative and intense. My calendar is full of academic events affiliated with the MacMillan Center — it is almost impossible to keep track of all of them, but I try! Particularly within the context of political theory, we have weekly theory discussions featuring distinguished presenters. I sometimes try to join the meetings of the women’s writing group in which we share our works and receive feedback from women colleagues. These are great opportunities for a researcher to develop a kind of collective learning practice and engage in intellectual and academic discussions on a wide spectrum of fields, as well as develop one’s own research. I’m really happy, this is a great opportunity.
Is there anything that took you by surprise about the academic environment here?
The most inspiring thing that I observed here during workshops and conferences, which I think is kind of rare in other academic environments, is that people literally read every detail of the specific book, paper or article being discussed. This is important in any academic and theoretical discussion. People don’t just talk and express their own thoughts on certain issue; but simultaneously they try to locate their arguments within the given text. I really admire this text-based discussion. And also they modestly express if they do not know the answer of certain question, which is quite valuable.
What are your plans after leaving Yale?
After completing my visiting period at Yale, I’m planning to go back to Turkey, defend my thesis and publish it as a book. These are my plans for the near future. The contemporary circumstances of academia unfortunately do not allow you to make long-term predictions. But I definitely plan to maintain my academic research with further intellectual questions and curiosity on similar topics as well as different ones. That is what I’m sure about.
Interviewed by Zainab Hamid, Timothy Dwight College, Class of 2019