Powered by Secrecy: Contesting Imaginaries of Migration Governance in Turkey

Abstract

In light of a growing body of literature on migration and border governance engaging with the legal and institutional production of heterogenous forms of non-knowledge, this article aims to contribute to this scholarship by attending to the role of secrecy through the case of Turkey. This paper turns the spotlight on the migration governance in Turkey by investigating the ways in which secrecy is perceived, contested, and reconfigured by civil society actors. The article argues that the extensive use of secrecy engenders perceptions that vacillate between two opposing imaginaries: the central migration authority as an incompetent entity and as a security agency with an aura of omnipotence. By drawing on and subverting Luc Boltanski's notion of domination as a reality-stabilising function, we propose that the undecidable nature of the migration governance enables a form of domination hinging on the destabilisation of reality in the eyes of subjects that are paralysed, disarmed, and disabled to cope with the policies in practice.