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

Abstract

Abstract How do refugees perceive the regulations of government officials in their neighbourhoods? To answer this question, I introduce the concept of everyday regulations and define it as all practices, formal and informal, implemented by local authorities to manage, organise, and control refugees’ daily lives within neighbourhood spaces. I support my concept with an empirical analysis based on 40 semi-structured interviews with Syrian shop owners and shop workers in Bursa, Turkey, conducted in September and October 2019. I analyse perceptions related to two types of everyday regulations: (1) Syrian shop visits by the municipal police (Zabıta) and (2) handouts distributed in the neighbourhood by the provincial directorate of security (Emniyet Müdürlüğü). My findings reveal that Syrian shop owners perceive everyday regulations as both discriminatory and acceptable. Those with discriminatory perceptions assess these regulations in terms of exclusionary treatment by local authorities, while those whose perceptions label encounters with government officials as acceptable associate these interactions with learning Turkey’s customs and laws. By detailing the differences in refugees’ perceptions of local refugee governance, this study unveils potential explanations for why some local refugee policies are perceived better than others.