Conclusions

This concluding chapter reflects on the book’s central arguments regarding African migrants in Türkiye, whose lives are shaped by prolonged uncertainty, bureaucratic temporariness, and racialised exclusion. It considers how these experiences are structured by conditions of imposed stillness, and how waiting functions as a socially imposed, racialised phenomenon that shapes access to mobility, rights, and opportunities. The chapter synthesises the analyses presented throughout the book, showing how racialised waiting emerges at the intersections of race, class, gender, migratory status, and religion. It emphasises how temporal processes operate as mechanisms of exclusion, structuring inequality, precarity, and limited social participation. By reflecting on the structural and social forces that shape migrants’ lives, the chapter encourages readers to reconceptualise waiting not as an individual or neutral experience but as a socially embedded, racialised process that governs access to resources, rights, and opportunities in Türkiye.