Spatializing diversities, diversifying spaces: housing experiences and home space perceptions in a migrant hub of Istanbul

Abstract

The neighbourhood of Kumkapi in Istanbul is a superdiverse space by all readings of the term. Having already been at the centre of varying migration flows for decades, its current residential population reveals substantial differences on innumerable fronts. In this article, I explore the role of space as both product and source in shaping the emergence and convergence of such multiple differences on the ground. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the historic socio-spatial transformation of Kumkapi, reflecting on the emergence of commonalities beyond ethnicity. I further suggest analysing these at a different spatial scale, moving from the neighbourhood down to the living spaces that migrants inhabit, exploring how variable differences materialize and become entangled in processes of where and how migrants access, use and relate to housing. In conclusion, I argue that superdiversity as an analytical concept carries the potential to understand new complexities in relations formed with and through space in the contemporary era.

Keywords:

• migration
• superdiversity
• space
• housing
• home
• neighbourhood

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and critical comments to earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to the valuable feedback provided by numerous colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, where I presented an earlier draft of this paper in a Work in Progress Seminar on 8 May 2014.

Funding

This research was made possible by generous grants from the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies (one-year studentship and six-month writing-up grant) and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (two-year doctoral fellowship).

Notes

1. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Kumkapi between August 2012 and October 2013, entailing informal discussions and/or interviews with over 100 residents and business owners in the locality, and participant observations through renting a room in an apartment building converted for migrant room rentals.

2. On 12 July 2014, numerous feminist networks in Istanbul came together to protest such gendered harassment and violence against migrant women in workplaces and homes, and on the streets in Kumkapi and its surrounding districts. The Turkish press release can be found at: http://www.sosyalistfeministkolektif.org/guencel/haberler-duyurular-basin-aciklamalari/890-goecmen-kad-nlar-yaln-z-degildir.html

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This research was made possible by generous grants from the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies (one-year studentship and six-month writing-up grant) and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (two-year doctoral fellowship).

Notes on contributors

Kristen Sarah Biehl

KRISTEN SARAH BIEHL is a Doctoral Student at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Centre for Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, and is currently Visiting Researcher at the Istanbul Urban Observatory of the French Institute for Anatolian Studies.