A plastic root of toxic survival

This paper investigates the entanglement of Syrian refugees with toxic agro-plastic waste sourced from agricultural fields along the Çukurova Delta, off the northeastern Mediterranean coast of Türkiye. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Delta over more than two years, from June 2021 to December 2023, the study documents embodied, sensory ways of knowing that arise through the circulation of agro-plastic waste, whether discarded, exchanged, burned, or leaking into farmland, air, and waterways. It argues that while the refugees experience worsening health signs under concentrated agro-plastic pollution through their bodies registering insight, their situated knowledge remains bureaucratically unregistered, and located as unknown, and outside the scope of administrative action. The widening gap between exposure to pollution and non-interference reflects a violence that is both situated and displacing, deepening deprivation and contamination, within which the refugees endure to survive.