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Waiting as a Racialised Phenomenon: African Migration Between Hope and Suspension book cover

1st Edition

Waiting as a Racialised Phenomenon African Migration Between Hope and Suspension

By Doğuş Şimşek Copyright 2027
208 Pages 10 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Waiting as a Racialised Phenomenon offers a powerful and original account of the lives of migrants from East, West, North, and Sub-Saharan Africa in Türkiye, grounded in rich ethnographic research. Challenging dominant understandings of waiting as a neutral or purely temporal condition, the book argues that waiting is a deeply racialised process shaped by migration governance, labour regimes,... Read more

1. Introduction  2. Africans in Türkiye: From Afro-Turks to African migrants  3. “We are waiting for justice”: Waiting as racism  4. Temporary Jobs, Timeless Waiting  5. “I risk my life in search of a better life”: Waiting to migrate to Europe  6. “We support each other in these social spaces”: Solidarity, social networks and transnational ties  7. Conclusions

Biography

Doğuş Şimşek is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology at Kingston University London, UK.

"This extremely insightful and theoretically innovative book delves into how racism is produced and experienced not in the West, but rather in the non-West, especially within South-South migration contexts. The empirical contextualization of African migrants in Türkiye captures the (legal) precarity, the (public) invisibility, but, most significantly, the (punitive) waiting as they live their lives. Şimşek traces the historical origins of the relationship to the Ottoman slave trade, to the Afro Turks constructed during the Republican years, concluding with excellent ethnographies of contemporary African migrants. Her most significant contribution is her theorization of the social act/concept of waiting. Şimşek argues that while contemporary border regimes weaponize waiting to govern mobility, time, and futures, communal African migrant spaces in Türkiye also employ waiting to build solidarity and resistance against border regimes. A must read for global critical thinkers.”

Fatma Müge Göçek, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, USA

“Waiting as a Racialised Phenomenon offers an original and richly detailed ethnography of the lived experiences of racialised African migrants in Türkiye. Drawing on a spatial and temporal framework, it compellingly demonstrates how bureaucratically imposed waiting structures everyday life—from access to work and housing to migrants’ sense of belonging. The book’s strength lies in its ability to conceptualise waiting not merely as delay but as a form of structural violence embedded in migration regimes. Timely and incisive, this book makes a significant contribution to migration and critical race studies.”

Milena Chimienti, Full Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, School of Social Work, HES-SO

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