In this presentation, the authors will present two complementary papers that speak to a shared set of questions, concepts and observations. Both authors will make a brief input, to then engage with each other’s work and open up for discussion.
Hadjigeorgiou draws on her law background in order to address the following paradox: While in theory, Cyprus has the characteristics of a ‘big prison’ (it is an island not geographically connected to mainland Europe and, also, not part of the Schengen),[1] in practice, it is a popular destination country among irregular migrants and asylum seekers.[2] She argues that one explanation for this is the fact that the unrecognised state of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) acts as a ‘gateway to Europe’. People travel to the TRNC, often as a result of misinformation, expecting that they have reached Europe. When they realise that Cyprus is divided, the TRNC is not a recognized state, and EU Law is suspended there, they attempt to irregularly cross the demilitarized buffer zone and enter the Republic of Cyprus. Thus, the frozen conflict on the island has direct consequences on migrants, who are ‘nudged around’ from the de facto to the de jure part of Cyprus. This, in turn, affects the legal status of these individuals and increases their precarity under the law.
Klem will present a draft article (potentially aimed at PoLAR) based on fieldwork in the TRNC (and linked to a recent paper with Emmanuel Achiri in Migration Studies). This paper studies the dynamics around legal identity documents within the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and deliberately places (different kinds of) migrants and (purportedly) non-migrants into one frame of analysis. It explores the lived realities of the TRNC’s convoluted legal landscape by looking at legal identity documents and how they shape the life trajectories of the people who hold them. It presents life history narratives anchored in the constraints and affordances of diverse legal identities, including Turkish Cypriots of Cypriot descent, a Turkish Cypriots of partly Turkish descent, Turkmen labour migrants, and asylum seekers or Kurdish and other backgrounds. Depending on how one’s legal identity constellation plays out, Northern Cyprus presents itself as a hyper-connected modern European crossroads, a secluded liberal annex to Turkey, a disconnected but safe haven, or an open-air prison.
[1] Leandros Fischer, ‘“Cyprus is a Big Prison”: Reflections on Mobility and Recialization in Border Society’ in Johan Heinsen et al, Coercive Georgraphies: Historicizing Mobility, Labor and Confinement (Brill, 2020), 63-82.
[2] Compared with the population of each EU country, in 2023, Cyprus registered the highest number of first-time asylum applicants (13 per 1,000 people). The second highest number of first-time asylum applicants was recorded in Austria and Greece (6 per 1,000 people, each), with the EU average being 2 first-time asylum applicants per 1,000 persons. Information available at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Asylum_statistics&oldid=558844#Over_1_million_first-time_asylum_applicants_in_2023.
