A dwelling lens: migration, diversity and boundary-making in an Istanbul neighbourhood

ABSTRACT

In recent decades research on migration has taken a “diversity turn”, which focuses on exploring new complexities of social differentiation, people’s competences for getting along in everyday life despite growing differences, and the role of space in shaping these encounters. Recent scholarship, however, has also questioned some of its limits and oversights, particularly around how differences and space are studied and conceived. This article centres on an examination of boundary-making processes and proposes a “dwelling lens” for constructively engaging with these different critiques. It builds on in-depth ethnographic accounts of housing discourses in Istanbul’s Kumkapı neighbourhood, a place deeply impacted by migration driven population changes. In exploring what differences matter today in housing access and why, the article examines how dwelling, as both method and concept, contributes to a better understanding of the social and spatial impacts and dynamism of migration driven diversity in the contemporary city.

KEYWORDS:

• Super-diversity
• boundary-making
• dwelling
• housing
• migration
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the anonymous reviewer for highly insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Kumkapı is a historic and popularly used locality name but does not refer to an administrative unit with defined spatial boundaries. It covers roughly five administrative neighbourhoods with a total registered population of around 14,000 people, which doesn’t include the vast numbers of undocumented foreigners residing in the locality.

2 During the 1990s Kurds began migrating from their homelands in Eastern Turkey as families due to forced displacement caused by growing political conflict. And these were often very large families linked with high birth rates in their regions of origin.

3 For an overview of the different African migrations to Turkey, see 2013 special issue of SBF Dergisi 68(1), accessible online at http://politics.ankara.edu.tr/index.php?bil=bil_sbfdergisi&cilt=68&sayi=1

4 Zenci, which translates into English as black/black person, is distinct from siyah, also meaning black. Today, siyahi is used as the more politically correct term for denoting persons of black colour.

Additional information

Funding

The article draws from my doctoral research, which was supported by grants from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies.