Infrastructure of Transit: Practices of Afghan and Pakistani Recycling Workers in Istanbul within a Transnational Migration and Border Regime

When walking through Istanbul, one almost inevitably encounters informal waste pickers who clean up the city with their large, heavily loaded hand trucks. Many of them are male undocumented recycling workers from Afghanistan and Pakistan. This book analyzes their living and working conditions. Based on the results of ethnographic field studies, it examines how Afghan*Pakistani recycling workers are disenfranchised by the interaction of different border regimes between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and the EU. It scrutinizes how, in this situation, they negotiate the fine line between exploitation and vulnerability on the one hand and agency and solidarity on the other hand in a highly precarious setting. The study highlights how they (re)produce a specific recycling infrastructure of transit through their everyday practices that ensures their survival in the transit space of Istanbul and facilitates their potential onward movement to the EU. The author understands their migrant waste picking practices as part of urban border struggles and illustrates how the infrastructure of transit that they (re)produce contributes to constituting Turkey as a migration society.

Philipp Ratfisch is a sociologist and migration researcher. He obtained his PhD at the University of Osnabrück/Germany and worked as a researcher at its Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS). He is a member of the Network for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies (kritnet) and co-founder of “movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies”. His research fields include migration and border regimes, infrastructures of migration, transit migration, border struggles, informal economies, waste picking, humanitarianism and migration to and through Turkey. He co-edited the special issues “Contested b/orders: Turkey’s changing migration regime” and “Umkämpfte Bewegungen nach und durch Europa” for movements. He also published articles in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Peripherie, among others. After completing his PhD, he began working for the Bundesfachverband Minderjährigkeit und Flucht e.V. (Federal Association Minority and Flight) that advocates for the rights of minor refugees in Germany and the EU.