The institutional maintenance of inequality: Organizational structures of disadvantage in the Syrian refugee crisis

This study provides a multi-level understanding of how the inequalities that characterize the lives of refugees are maintained. We develop understanding of the relational and material dimensions of institutional work to analyze how the inequalities of Syrian refugees are constituted and nurtured by a web of employers, the state, and local workers that contours how the refugees are able to construct their lives in Turkey. We find that the institutionalization of refugees’ positions in organizations is a collective endeavor by actors constituting a specific form of relational work in specific spaces. By identifying the mechanisms of silencing and distancing, we show how refugees are ostensibly involved in the co-construction of the system in which they are embedded, though in ways that are heavily determined by the context in which they are enmeshed. We thus further theory on how patterns of structural disadvantage are enacted daily within the increasingly salient context of refugee workforce integration.

Zoom link: https://eur-nl.zoom.us/j/93316881654?pwd=cm0rajdMd1ZDZTZ1clYrNlBHaytIdz09

Meeting ID: 933 1688 1654