Revisiting refuge through a critical perspective: A Marxist explanation of Syrian refuge to Türkiye

Existing refugee research has been mainstreamed in a liberal and normative perspective on the root causes of refugeeness, and the relationships and experiences of refugees. However, the multifaceted feature of refuge makes this mainstreaming insufficient to address historical-structural explanations. Therefore, this dissertation adopts a critical perspective through the case of Syrian refugees in Türkiye. The framework in this dissertation addresses the refugee phenomenon from a critical Marxist perspective to reveal overlooked and ignored terms through Syrian refugees in Türkiye. Based on a qualitative-descriptive approach, the dissertation analyzes the research on Syrians in Türkiye, identifies the main themes and missing points, and thus draws an overarching deconstructive framework for revisiting the Syrian refugee experience. In this context, the issue of Syrian refugees in Türkiye is discussed from a Marxist approach through the arguments of accumulation by dispossession, surplus population, class formation and struggle, and industrial reserve army. Asserting that the critical perspective is generally overlooked in the existing research on Syrian refugees in Türkiye and through a Marxist revisit, this dissertation reveals that the global capitalist structure is the main cause of refugeeness, refugees create the surplus population and emerge in the class formation and struggle, and dispossession from the means of financial and human capital forms an industrial reserve army; thus, refugees are exploitated under precarious working conditions. In particular, in the case of Syrians in Türkiye, it is argued that refugeeness is a process of dispossession, and it continues in a vicious cycle from dispossession to accumulation by dispossession.