Paper short abstract:

This paper scrutinizes policy failures regarding migration and examines their double-edged impacts: First, it investigates inadequacies of health policies and refugees' (in)access to health care system in Eskişehir, Turkey. Second, it discusses emerging solutions to compensate for policy failures.

Paper long abstract:

This paper scrutinizes policy failures regarding migration and examines their double-edged impacts in Eskişehir, Turkey. The discussion shows structural and political reasons underlying policy failures in the migration domain and their consequences for state institutions, civil society organizations, and individuals at the local level. The lack and ambiguity of health policies and regulations for implementing laws entail a state of despair not only for refugees but also for state institutions and humanitarian organizations. The state of despair, however, opens up avenues for institutions and individuals to utilize loopholes in laws and policies. At the same time, it allows developing a network of services among various actors that benefit from each other’s expertise. The paper calls these networks of exchange “spontaneous reciprocity”. Reciprocal services based on spontaneity become a norm at the local level in the absence of clearly defined, rights-based legislation and institutionalized policies that follow the principle of equity. Bypassing formal institutionalized context, these haphazard reciprocal activities modify state and non-state actors’ areas of duties while underpinning reconfigurations in health services.