Waiting as a Racialised Phenomenon
African Migration Between Hope and Suspension
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:18th Aug '26
£155.00
This title is due to be published on 18th August, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Waiting as a Racialised Phenomenon offers a powerful and original account of the lives of migrants from East, West, North, and Sub-Saharan Africa in Türkiye, grounded in rich ethnographic research. Challenging dominant understandings of waiting as a neutral or purely temporal condition, the book argues that waiting is a deeply racialised process shaped by migration governance, labour regimes, and spatial marginalisation.
Moving beyond conventional accounts of migration as a linear journey, it reveals how migrants live through prolonged periods of uncertainty, suspension, and constrained mobility. These experiences vary significantly, shaped by the intersections of race, migration status, class, gender, religion, and the social spaces migrants inhabit. In this context, waiting operates as a governance tool that reinforces inequality, shaping access to employment, housing, and participation in society. At the same time, the book foregrounds migrants’ agency, showing how they navigate these conditions by building networks of solidarity, care, and mutual support. Waiting thus emerges not only as a form of domination but also as a space where resilience and collective strategies of survival take shape. The book ultimately provides a new conceptual tool with which to explore the links between waiting and racism in the context of the global South, arguing that waiting is a racialised phenomenon which can lead to additional exploitation.
This innovative and timely book will appeal to academics and post-graduate students with interests in migration and borders, race and racism, temporality and the politics of time, anthropology, and international development.
"This extremely insightful and theoretically innovative book delves into how racism is produced and experienced not in the West, but rather in the non-West, especially within South-South migration contexts. The empirical contextualization of African migrants in Türkiye captures the (legal) precarity, the (public) invisibility, but, most significantly, the (punitive) waiting as they live their lives. Şimşek traces the historical origins of the relationship to the Ottoman slave trade, to the Afro Turks constructed during the Republican years, concluding with excellent ethnographies of contemporary African migrants. Her most significant contribution is her theorization of the social act/concept of waiting. Şimşek argues that while contemporary border regimes weaponize waiting to govern mobility, time, and futures, communal African migrant spaces in Türkiye also employ waiting to build solidarity and resistance against border regimes. A must read for global critical thinkers.”
Fatma Müge Göçek, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, USA
“Waiting as a Racialised Phenomenon offers an original and richly detailed ethnography of the lived experiences of racialised African migrants in Türkiye. Drawing on a spatial and temporal framework, it compellingly demonstrates how bureaucratically imposed waiting structures everyday life—from access to work and housing to migrants’ sense of belonging. The book’s strength lies in its ability to conceptualise waiting not merely as delay but as a form of structural violence embedded in migration regimes. Timely and incisive, this book makes a significant contribution to migration and critical race studies.”
Milena Chimienti, Full Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, School of Social Work, HES-SO
"This extremely insightful and theoretically innovative book delves into how racism is produced and experienced not in the West, but rather in the non-West, especially within South-South migration contexts. The empirical contextualization of African migrants in Türkiye captures the (legal) precarity, the (public) invisibility, but, most significantly, the (punitive) waiting as they live their lives. Şimşek traces the historical origins of the relationship to the Ottoman slave trade, to the Afro Turks constructed during the Republican years, concluding with excellent ethnographies of contemporary African migrants. Her most significant contribution is her theorization of the social act/concept of waiting. Şimşek argues that while contemporary border regimes weaponize waiting to govern mobility, time, and futures, communal African migrant spaces in Türkiye also employ waiting to build solidarity and resistance against border regimes. A must read for global critical thinkers.”
Fatma Müge Göçek, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, USA
“Waiting as a Racialised Phenomenon offers an original and richly detailed ethnography of the lived experiences of racialised African migrants in Türkiye. Drawing on a spatial and temporal framework, it compellingly demonstrates how bureaucratically imposed waiting structures everyday life—from access to work and housing to migrants’ sense of belonging. The book’s strength lies in its ability to conceptualise waiting not merely as delay but as a form of structural violence embedded in migration regimes. Timely and incisive, this book makes a significant contribution to migration and critical race studies.”
Milena Chimienti, Full Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, School of Social Work, HES-SO
ISBN: 9781032900872
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
196 pages