Umut Kuruuzum

The study investigates the emergence of an unsettling wastescape and its spatial, social, and ecological consequences as a more-than-human event on the north-eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It focuses on how the transnational waste trade, trafficking in toxic materials, and the influx of Syrian refugees and their cheap labor intermingle to create an economic geography of capital accumulation, dispossession, and ecological ruination across both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. By carrying out six months of intensive ethnographic fieldwork, the research aims to provide a relational understanding of a flourishing recycling market and its effects on the socio-material ecosystem.