The Incorporation of Syrian Healthcare Professionals in Turkey: Temporal Horizons and Partial Integration – Souad Osseiran – Thursday 28 March at 18.00 – Cezayir Toplanti Salonu

The Incorporation of Syrian Healthcare Professionals in Turkey: Temporal Horizons and Partial Integration

Souad Osseiran, Koç University

Thursday 28 March at 18.00 – Cezayir Toplanti Salonu

While much attention has been dedicated to the incorporation of Syrian refugees into the labor market in Turkey, there has been little focus so far on the integration of healthcare professionals. With the forecasted long-term presence of Syrian refugees, the Turkish government launched projects to formally integrate Syrian teachers and healthcare professionals into their respective domains. These processes are an opportunity to examine the temporal dimensions of this incorporation and how Turkish institutions adapt to the incoming professionals. In 2016, the Turkish Ministry of Health and WHO launched a project to train Syrian healthcare professionals in Turkey to enable them to work in state run Migrant Health Centers (MHCs). The project is innovative on multiple levels as it involved creating a new fast-track pathway to enable the hiring of these professionals. The MHCs are also a new addition to Turkey’s national healthcare structure. This research explores the experiences of Syrian healthcare professionals employed in MHCs across Istanbul. Drawing on interviews conducted with 21 healthcare professionals working at MHCs, the research argues that the MHCs and the fast-track system implemented create particular temporal horizons and ambiguities at the intersection of time and labor.

Souad Osseiran is a post-doctoral fellow at Koc University. She was a Stiftung Mercator-IPC research fellow for 2017-2018. She completed a PhD in anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2017.