“We are Waiting for Justice”

This chapter examines how racism shapes the lives of African migrants, focusing on how waiting functions as a mechanism of racialised control. I argue that the dehumanisation of African migrants is part of a long-standing pattern of power rooted in the continuities of colonialism and racial capitalism, in which waiting is not simply a migrant practice but a socially imposed condition structuring access to rights, justice, and recognition. Drawing on empirical narratives, the chapter traces how racism operates across institutional and everyday contexts, from discrimination in state interactions to broader social exclusion. It highlights the intersections of race with class, gender, religion, and migratory status, showing how these dynamics produce compounded vulnerability. The chapter also examines the criminalisation of African migrants, revealing the entanglement of racialisation and migration status in public and institutional discourses. By framing waiting as a racialised temporal mechanism, the chapter demonstrates how inequality is reproduced, legitimised, and normalised, shaping suspended futures and precarious lives in Türkiye.