Categories that Blind Us, Categories that Bind Them: The Deployment of the Notion of Vulnerability for Syrian Refugees in Turkey

Abstract In policy projects on refugees, the concept ‘vulnerable populations’ is treated as self-evident and any policy intervention about vulnerable refugees is seen as inherently positive. Before all else, such interest in ‘the most vulnerable of the vulnerable’ recalls the most virtuous aspects of heavily criticized humanitarianism. The category ‘vulnerable refugee’ has escaped from critical scrutiny by academic literature. The existing studies rely on preconceived notions of vulnerability in line with scholars’ normative predispositions, which makes us blind to already existing vulnerabilities on the ground. This article focuses on how the ‘vulnerable refugee’ category is constructed, appropriated and enacted by self-identified local humanitarian actors regarding Syrian refugees in Turkey. It argues, first, that various humanitarian actors’ notion of ‘vulnerable refugee’ is formed at the crosscurrents of various discourses (e.g. global securitization and global humanitarianism, and nationalism, Islamicism, secularism). Second, local humanitarian actors uniformly present Syrian ‘women and children’ as the most vulnerable; yet, their identification of particular ‘vulnerable women and children’ is informed by and enhances their own gendered, ethnonational, religious, political ideologies. This situation results in leaving out some refugees (as those whose vulnerabilities do not count) while exposing and binding the designated vulnerable into contradictory political ideologies and local faultlines. In the end, Syrian refugees may become not more resilient, but more vulnerable.