Perceptions Towards Syrian Refugees Amid the Covid-19 on the Concept of Integrated Threat Theory

Canan Cetin
Lecturer in Department of International Relations, Eskisehir Osmangazi University

Abstract

The global refugee crisis, as it has shown its effects in many other countries, had significant effects in Turkey as the country with the highest number of refugees in the world. However, with the pandemic suddenly shaking the world agenda, the refugee issue was also taken into the secondary plan and issues such as state sovereignty, the health and welfare of citizens living within the borders were prioritized. The fact that the pandemic lasted for such a long time and its intense social effects undoubtedly brought the perceptions towards immigrants to a level that securitized. In this context, it is an expected behavior pattern, although it is not ethical, that local people show extra sensitivity to vaccines they obtain with limited access and are reluctant to share their resources on health issues. The integrated threat theory has been studied many times in the literature on different immigrant groups or minorities, as well as on Syrian refugees in Turkey. However, it has not yet been studied whether there is a change in the view of the local people towards refugees according to the integrated threat theory under the influence of Covid-19 as a deep-rooted and global variable. For this reason, the aim of this study is to examine multidimensionally the effect of the pandemic process, whose effects are still ongoing, but progress has been made, on the perspective of refugees. In this context, data will be collected by survey method in order to measure the perception of refugees. While collecting the data, it is planned to select 7 cities from seven regions of Turkey, to conduct an online survey of 30 questions with 100 people from each city, and to pay attention to the homogeneous distribution of variables such as age, education, income level and gender. The collected data will then be tested with the SPSS 24.0 program by performing t-test, Anova analysis, correlation analysis and finally regression analysis, to test whether the demographic characteristics of individuals affect their perceptions within the framework of realistic threat, symbolic threat and xenophobia scale.

Presentation