Syrian Refugees in a Slum Neighbourhood: Poor Turkish Residents Encountering the Other in Önder Neighbourhood, Altındağ, Ankara
Syrian Refugees in a Slum Neighbourhood: Poor Turkish Residents Encountering the Other in Önder Neighbourhood, Altındağ, Ankara

Author(s): Tahire Erman
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Social Sciences, Geography, Regional studies, Social development, Social differentiation, Migration Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Ankara; Syrians; refugees; migration; Turkey;neighbourhood;
Summary/Abstract: The significance of space/place in the experiences of people is recognized and theorized in the literature, pioneered by Henri Lefebvre (1991). People not only are affected by the place they live in, but also, as active agents, they can create their own place. In this process, spatial clustering, either voluntary or forced, may have an enabling effect both in economic and cultural terms in the former, or create conditions of exclusion and poverty in the latter (Marcuse, 1997). The clustering of rural-to-urban migrants on the peripheries of big cities as they build their gecekondus is well-documented in the Turkish context (e.g. Karpat, 1976; Gökçe, 1993; Erman, 2012), with some attention paid to its gendered outcomes (Erman, 1998). Today we are witnessing a new phenomenon in Turkey, which is about the clustering of people of a different nationality such as Syrian refugees in the slum/gecekondu neighbourhoods of Turkish cities.

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