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Gilded Backdoors?: Purchasable Belonging for Iranians in Istanbul Post-2009
Abstract
Political precarity and increasing restrictions upon the mobility and civil rights of Iranians after a series of haunting domestic upheavals since 2009 have culminated in the increase of Iranians seeking ways to access better economic, civic, travel, business, and lifestyle opportunities abroad. Yet acquiring such “access” has meant that wealthier Iranians have sought ways out and around political constraints via citizenship and residence by investment schemes-- i.e., acquiring coveted second passports or “golden visas” through purchasing foreign real estate, capital investment, employment creation, and funds, for example, in a particular country. Iranians however are generally barred from applying for these schemes across the globe, save in Turkey and Dominica, where their huge sums of capital investment offer them an expedited highway to other citizenships given their “high-value migrant” status. Key to this study are questions germane to their distinction as non-refugees and the forms of “belonging” in such contexts that have arguably been facilitated through a purchasable commodity, such as a Turkish passport. Given the dearth of studies on how diaspora Iranians navigate political uncertainty and relationships through these means, this presentation seeks to unpack the circumstances, conditions, and contexts of Iranian women in particular whose legal migration is enabled through a geopolitical “hustle economy” via these “belonging-for-hire” schemes. In the “theatre of the hustle,” so to speak, what are the relations and dynamics that make it possible for Iranians to “become” legally Turkish and/or a Turkish resident? Moreover, when a price tag is placed on citizenship, what kinds of political and personal relationships are forged and disrupted between her as an individual and the political community of diaspora Iranians that she has purportedly joined in Turkey?
Discipline
Anthropology
Economics
History
International Relations/Affairs
Other
Sociology
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Iran
Turkey
Sub Area
None