Escaping Exclusion: Confused Moralities and Syrian Unaccompanied Minors’ Search for Freedom in Turkey

With the start of the negotiation processes of the EU-Turkey deal in November 2015, the first batch of Syrian unaccompanied minors, residing in a child and youth support center in Istanbul under state care protection, were transferred to a refugee camp by the (Turkish) Ministry of Family and Social Policies as part of preventive measures taken to secure the European borders. After having to spend a few weeks in the refugee camp, some of the minors chose to escape from state protection, in which they would have otherwise been locked up until the age of 18. By accompanying the minors during the events taking place throughout the ethnography, I explore the diversity of state rationalities, tensions, and contradictions existing between conceptions of rights and duties. I argue that this ambiguous moral configuration within various state agents leads to greater confusions (Fassin 2015), and leaves an open space for minors’ agencies to emerge as a response, particularly at times of sudden structural changes. The state’s shifting treatment towards the Syrian minors and their overall relationship, will be observed from a perspective of what I will call ›confused moralities‹ practiced by the state — the police, social workers, gatekeepers, and teachers. Through youth participatory action research, I explore how seeking freedom has been exercised (Laidlaw 2002) by these minors in terms of their agency, in the context of escaping from exclusion (from becoming child soldiers, from imprisonment in Syria, and from detention in the refugee camp in Turkey) and in reclaiming their inclusion back into the institutions of state care through schooling