This paper explores a new practice of citizenship, diffusing among middle and upper classes in Turkey. Making use of the tradition of birthright citizenship, increasing numbers of families from these classes choose to give birth to their children in the United States with the purpose of obtaining US citizenship for them. Based on interviews with these families, the paper approaches this practice from a class perspective and contextualizes it in the contemporary political and economic conditions in Turkey. These actors’ economic privileges are tied to the local context as they have benefited disproportionately from the consolidation of neoliberal market economies. Furthermore, the intensification of Turkey’s ties to international capital has contributed to their transnational experiences, as a result of which they can juggle identities and compare opportunities, national and beyond. The paper argues that the strategy of obtaining US passports for the children emerges out of these conditions, but is more the result of insecurities integral to them. On the one hand, despite their relatively comfortable existence, these actors constantly fear the loss of their class positions given the growing authoritarian tendencies of the government as well as the history of sudden economic downturns. On the other hand, these groups often feel trapped between their national consciousness and transnational opportunities, and experience; as a result, what Edward Said has called the “generalized condition of homelessness.” Thus, the children’s US citizenship works as an insurance against perceived political and economic risks in Turkey and is imagined as an exit strategy for the children in case families confront a significant loss of class position. The US citizenship is also a status symbol in the domestic context. The families envisage the US citizenship’s international advantages such as global mobility and protection as a marker that separates them from others in the local context, evidencing their membership in a transnational, upwardly mobile class. The paper concludes with a discussion on the ambiguities and limitations of this strategy, which neither resolves anxieties nor contributes to a meaningful engagement with the political transformations in the institution of citizenship in the context of the neoliberal turn.

Since the resignation of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, there has been a virtual absence in press discussions of the “marriage crisis,” which dominated public discourses in the final years of his reign. The term was used to refer to the supposedly large number of middle-class men (and women) who were unable to afford the staggering costs of marriage due to the dire economic state of the nation, namely, rampant unemployment and rising inflation rates. The near absence of a “marriage crisis” since the inception of the 2011 Egyptian “revolution” as the economic situation worsened suggests that the crisis served as more of a discursive space to critique Mubarak’s neoliberal policies than a reflection of widespread bachelorhood. In addition, recent sociological research reveals that in spite of the harsh economic results of Mubarak’s neoliberal policies, the marriage rate of middle-class men has remained steady and even increased during the apex of the so-called ‘marriage crisis’ on the eve of Mubarak’s fall. This paper analyzes the discursive representations of the crisis, the reasons offered to explain it, why it caused such alarm, and what those apprehensions reveal about Mubarak’s regime and its middle-class subjects. In doing so it makes three interrelated arguments. First, it proposes that public discourses of “the private realm” should be studied from a class perspective. Second, it shows that discourses of the marriage crisis have emerged whenever Egypt has been on the verge of tumultuous transition over the past century. This historical continuity discloses much more about middle-class subjects’ sociopolitical and economic frustrations than it does over their marital prospects. Finally, it shows that the ways in which this particular discourse has been adopted and abandoned over time reveals the complexities of these subjects’ political voices and their ambiguous relationship with the nation’s neoliberal policies.

The goal of this paper is to explore new middle class subjectivities and strategies that have emerged in contemporary Turkey as part of the neoliberal restructuring of the Turkish economy. Drawing on in-depth interviews with highly skilled professionals who work in transnational corporations in Istanbul, this paper investigates the political implications of meaning-making among the new middle classes as they talk about their careers. Turkey has experienced significant social class transformations since it was integrated into the global market with the neoliberal reforms of 1980s. The neoliberalization of the economy has meant, along with other things, increasing income inequality, the weakening of salaried and laboring classes, new consumption patterns and the rise of a professional class who works in finance and service jobs in multinational corporations. Educated and young, these new middle classes are integrated into global networks of business and consumption through their professional lives as well as their daily practices. This paper focuses on the meanings they attach to their careers and the transnational nature of the companies where they work. On the one hand, this career is seen as a guarantee of social mobility and class distinction from lower classes in the urban landscape. Enabled by their economic capital, these actors separate out their urban experience from lower classes in Istanbul. On the other hand, they see their work as a status symbol in and of itself. Working at a transnational corporation assumes a symbolic significance because of the specific connotations of being associated with ‘West’ in Turkey. In a context where global mobility and access to transnational social and cultural capitals are markers of distinction, working in transnational companies becomes a strategy to secure and solidify a “modern” global middle class status as well as a testament to it. Ironically, narratives of these particular career paths serve to simultaneously produce discourses of cosmopolitan identities and to enable global and local stratifications, which severe ties with other classes. This has significant ramifications for possibilities of political mobilization in contemporary Turkey.

What explains the ubiquitous emergence of political mobilization among middle class youth in the context of neo-liberalism and political authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)? And to what extent is the rise of youth organizations and popular protests linked to the fragmentation of what were, relatively cohesive and consolidated middle class-based Islamist social movements? Building on recent research conducted among youth-led organizations in Sudan, this paper examines two inter-related developments: the political and economic factors underlying the emergence of politically mobilized youth in the urban quarters of Khartoum, and what I term the increasing “disaffection” of middle class members of the Islamist movement engaged in contesting neo-liberal policies and authoritarian rule. At a general level of analysis, my paper argues that the relationship between neo-liberalism, the rise of youth movements, and the divisions within Islamist movements in MENA hinges on an analysis of factors long associated, albeit mistakenly, with the durability of Authoritarian regimes. These include the assumptions that Arab countries possess weak civil societies, have middle classes uniformly beholden to state patronage, and that opposition political organizations in the region are either too weak or simply non-existent. Indeed, while in a number of cases the path to democratization has stalled, it is also clear that the mobilization of the middle classes in civil society and variations in state response to street protests has crucially transformed the ideological character, organizational structure, and cohesiveness of youth politics as well as Islamist movements. Utilizing the case of Sudan, I argue that the new politics of youth requires an analysis that complements and challenges the literature on authoritarian “persistence” by focusing on both the enduring role of state coercion as well as the agency-driven response of social actors that have organized new forms of opposition to the implementation of economic austerity measures in the context of authoritarian rule. I demonstrate that the rise of youth politics is linked to a new political opportunity structured associated with divisions within the ruling Islamist Party and the disaffection among key segments of the Islamist oriented middle class with the regime’s ideological legitimacy and pro-market reform policies. However, the evolution and organization of the youth movement is crucially dependent on the nature of state coercion, as well as the perceived legitimacy of neo-liberal policies among less disaffected segments of the urban middle class.