Urban governance of the displaced and emergency rules
Urban governance of the displaced and emergency rules
Journal: The Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City is dedicated to advancing our collective knowledge about how race and ethnicity shape our cities and neighborhoods and inform urban experiences on a global scale, and, in turn, how urbanization contributes to the social construction of race and ethnicity. The journal provides a venue for scholars, irrespective of discipline, to contribute to the resolution of these societal challenges through consistent discourse, and development of new ideas and understandings of racial and ethnic dynamics in human activities. More on the Journal can be found here.
Date of Publication: June 25, 2026
Author: Ayșe Çaglar. Çaglar is a university professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna. More on Çaglar can be found here.
The article can be found here, and a PDF of the article can be found here.
Abstract: This article situates the growing importance of cities in migrant and refugee emplacement within the mutations and contestations of neoliberal urbanism and shifting forms of state power under the changing conjuncture of neoliberal capitalism. Drawing on ethnographic research on temporary protection regime for displaced Ukrainians in Vienna and extractive reconstruction following urban warfare in Nusaybin it examines how governing the displaced through top-down emergency laws and regulations has become a key arena for reshaping urban and state power. It explores the tensions between municipal and central authorities to scrutinize the ambiguous role of urban governments and the ways in which the governance of displacement is mobilized to establish new urban orders with particular attention to the increasing involvement and control of state authority. The article highlights how racialized hierarchies and ethnicity are entangled with the expansion of authoritarian rule in governing the cities and the displaced of populations.
Why ISSE Is Including This Article
The article examines an important but often overlooked dimension of emergency governance: the way extraordinary legal authorities can restructure relationships between national governments, municipal institutions, and displaced populations. Through comparative case studies from Austria and Turkey, the article demonstrates that emergency frameworks frequently outlast the crises that gave rise to them, altering administrative authority, governance structures, and institutional accountability in lasting ways. Particularly significant is its analysis of how emergency powers become embedded in ordinary systems of urban governance through legislation, executive administration, and centralized control rather than through formal constitutional emergencies alone. For ISSE, the article broadens the study of states of exception by illustrating that exceptional governance often operates through the everyday management of cities, migration, and displacement, making these domains critical to understanding the contemporary evolution of executive power.
