Panopticon, gaze, and rupture in the fantasy: The Syrian refugee experience in Turkey

Abstract

Abstract This article aims to study how ‘seeing’ and ‘being looked at’ (the gaze) interplay in constructing citizens’ idealized-self and the refugee-other in Turkey. The theoretical part of the article conceptualizes the lateral panopticon and ontological status of the gaze in the context of migration and refugee studies. By using field data, the empirical part of the article discusses how the objectifying gaze leads to othering and silencing practices. It further applies Lacanian concepts of object-petit-a, lack, and the split subject to identify how the Refugee Gaze leads to dual ruptures in nationalist and Islamist fantasies in Turkey. A crucial finding of this research is that while the gaze assigns Syrians an objectified position by naming them ‘refugee’, this very marginalization, in turn, punctures the receiving community fantasy. This finding could open new ways to better comprehend receiving community-migrant/refugee integration. Eventually, the article calls for further field studies that examine experience through the gaze in migration and refugee studies to understand deep-rooted causes of ‘othering’ and new ways to examine receiving community and migrant/refugee interactions.