scholarly journals Urban Life Experiences of Syrians in Turkey: The Cases of Gaziantep and Izmir

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-208
Author(s):  
Sait Vesek ◽  
Nadir Suğur

The civil war in Syria resulted in a massive population influx into the neighboring countries since 2011. Geographical proximity of Turkey and its position as a gateway to Europe have made Turkey a host country for most Syrians refugees. Prolonging civil war in Syria and difficulties to get access to Europe compelled them to stay in Turkey. The reason why they have settled down in certain cities and difficulties that they have encountered in their everyday life merit attention to understand the very issue of refugee problems in Turkey. On that purpose, we conducted a sociological research on Syrians who settled in Gaziantep and İzmir. This paper tries to examine the degree to which Syrians are integrated into the local labour market and problems that Syrians endure in everyday life activities. The research is drawn from a fieldwork conducted on 30 semi-depth interviews in Gaziantep and 27 in İzmir. The results show that the reasons for Syrian to make a living in Gaziantep are its proximity to Syria, cultural familiarity and opportunities for Syrians entrepreneurs to do business. As for İzmir, Syrians stated its closeness to Europe, availability of jobs and better life prospect.

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 382-401
Author(s):  
Christiane Steckenbiller

With more than two thirds of Olga Grjasnowa’s Gott ist nicht schüchtern set in present-day Syria, the novel’s main objective is to convey to its readers a sense of the Syrian Civil War and its effects on individual lives. Grjasnowa goes to great lengths to describe the early days of the uprising, the atrocities committed by the Assad regime, and the slow but definite destruction and ultimate uninhabitability of the Syrian nation state. But the text also reveals the importance of coping mechanisms and strategies for survival and resistance. By foregrounding the quotidian spaces of everyday life and the often banal routines for navigating war and destruction, this article interrogates to what extent life under extreme conditions is still conceivable and explores what kinds of insights the depiction of war opens up for envisioning a more hospitable environment for newcomers in the host country.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-397
Author(s):  
Joakim Forsemalm

As discussed by planning researchers Jalakas & Larsson (2008), in Sweden, societal issues such as social sustainability, urban life and gender fails to travel from comprehensive documents in the urban planning system to the legislative ones (i.e. the “detailed development plans”). This might, as this essay argues, have to do with the absence of “cultural brokers”, i.e a kind of translator of the narratives told in a particular society. Can researchers act as such translators – increasing the precence of cultural and everyday-life experiences in legislative planning documents? This essay discusses problems and possibilities with an ethnography engageing with/in society.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 796-815
Author(s):  
Yang Wang ◽  
Sun Sun Lim

People are today located in media ecosystems in which a variety of ICT devices and platforms coexist and complement each other to fulfil users’ heterogeneous requirements. These multi-media affordances promote a highly hyperlinked and nomadic habit of digital data management which blurs the long-standing boundaries between information storage, sharing and exchange. Specifically, during the pervasive sharing and browsing of fragmentary digital information (e.g. photos, videos, online diaries, news articles) across various platforms, life experiences and knowledge involved are meanwhile classified and stored for future retrieval and collective memory construction. For international migrants who straddle different geographical and cultural contexts, management of various digital materials is particularly complicated as they have to be familiar with and appropriately navigate technological infrastructures of both home and host countries. Drawing on ethnographic observations of 40 Chinese migrant mothers in Singapore, this article delves into their quotidian routines of acquiring, storing, sharing and exchanging digital information across a range of ICT devices and platforms, as well as cultural and emotional implications of these mediated behaviours for their everyday life experiences. A multi-layer and multi-sited repertoire of ‘life archiving’ was identified among these migrant mothers in which they leave footprints of everyday life through a tactical combination of interactive sharing, pervasive tagging and backup storage of diverse digital content.


Inner Asia ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-114
Author(s):  
Anna Yur'evna Buyanova

AbstractThis article explores the repercussions of the demographic changes currently taking place in Buryatia. In particular, it concerns the mass migration of young rural Buryats to Ulan-Ude, in search of a higher education and, eventually, better career prospects. In-depth interviews with a sample of Buryat university students are used to reveal the challenges rural incomers face in adapting to urban life, and the differing strategies they use to overcome them. As these interviews show, the success of a rural Buryat's university career depends on their capacity to change their behaviour and aspirations to fit urban cultural norms.


2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 1026-1048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timur Dadabaev

This paper is a contribution to the debate about how people in Central Asia recall Soviet ethnic policies and their vision of how these policies have shaped the identities of their peers and contemporaries. In order to do so, this paper utilizes the outcomes of in-depth interviews about everyday Soviet life in Uzbekistan conducted with 75 senior citizens between 2006 and 2009. These narratives demonstrate that people do not explain Soviet ethnic policies simply through the “modernization” or “victimization” dichotomy but place their experiences in between these discourses. Their recollections also highlight the pragmatic flexibility of the public's adaptive strategies to Soviet ethnic policies. This paper also argues that Soviet ethnic policy produced complicated hybrid units of identities and multiple social strata. Among those who succeeded in adapting to the Soviet realities, a new group emerged, known asRussi assimilados(Russian-speaking Sovietophiles). However, in everyday life, relations between theassimiladosand their “indigenous” or “nativist” countrymen are reported to have been complicated, with clear divisions between these two groups and separate social spaces of their own for each of these strata.


This article advocates a new agenda for (media) tourism research that links questions of tourist experiences to the role and meaning of imagination in everyday life. Based on a small-scale, qualitative study among a group of seventeen respondents of diverse ages and backgrounds currently residing in the Netherlands, we offer an empirical exploration of the places that are of importance for people’s individual state of mind and investigate how these places relate to (potential) tourist experiences. The combination of in-depth interviews and random-cue self-reporting resulted in the following findings: 1) all our respondents regularly reside in an elaborate imaginary world, consisting of both fictional and non-fictional places; 2) this imaginary world is dominated by places which make the respondents feel nostalgic; 3) in this regard, the private home and houses from childhood are pivotal; 4) the ‘home’ is seen as topos of the self and contrasted with ‘away’; 5) the imagination of ‘away’ emerges from memories of previous tourist experiences, personal fantasies and, last but not least, influences from popular culture. We conclude that imagining and visiting other locations are part of a life-long project of ‘identity work’ in which personal identities are performed, confirmed and extended. By travelling, either physically or mentally, individuals anchor their identity - the entirety of ideas about who they are, where they come from and where they think they belong - in a broader, spatial framework.


Author(s):  
В.В. Хутарев-Гарнишевский

Публикуемый источник является отрывком из дневника депутата Московской городской Думы Н.П. Вишнякова (1844-1927). Автор лично не принимал участия в боевых действиях, но находился в самом эпицентре боевых действий между «красными» и «белыми», так как проживал с семьей в центре города. Именно эти события часто называют началом полноценной Гражданской войны. Его дневник отражает психологическое состояние мирного горожанина, оказавшегося заложником гражданского противостояния на улицах Москвы.Особый интерес представляют описания особенностей быта москвичей, циркулирующие среди них слухи, домыслы, их надежды и страхи, а также поведенческие стратегии различных социальных слоев. Особую ценность представляет то, что автор делал свои записи два-три раза в день, подробно фиксируя происходящее. Подобного рода источники крайне немногочисленны.Мемуарное и эпистолярное наследие Н.П. Вишнякова давно признано уникальным источником по истории общественно-политической, культурной и экономической жизни Москвы, но никогда не было опубликовано полностью. Лишь дважды публиковались небольшие отрывки.Данная публикация является частью работы по подготовке полного издания эпистолярного наследия Н.П. Вишнякова, который был вовлечен почти во все политические и экономические процессы Москвы времен правления императора Николая II. Он был депутатом (гласным) Московской Думы с 1873 по 1917 гг. с пятилетним перерывом в 1892--1897 гг., мировым судьей, известным ученым-геологом и краеведом.Для публикации были раскрыты многочисленные сокращения топонимов, а также расшифрованы индивидуальные, характерные для автора сокращения.Особую трудность представляет почерк Н.П. Вишнякова, подчас очень сложный для понимания и в отдельных случаях не поддающийся расшифровке.Эпистолярное наследия Н.П. Вишнякова весьма обширно, а сам дневник охватывает события с 1872 по 1918 гг. Published is an excerpt from a diary of N.P. Vishnyakov (1844–1927), a Moscow Duma deputy. Nikolay Petrovich has never personally participated in the events, but was in the epicenter of the October battles between the Red and the White movements, as he and his family lived in the centre of Moscow. Those events in particular are often referred to as the beginning of the real Civil War. His diary shows us the mental state of a peaceful citizen caught as a hostage during the civil confrontation on Moscow streets. Depicted are certain peculiarities of everyday life, rumors and doubts, hopes and fears of Moscovites, as well as behavioral strategies of different social groups.Most valuable is that the author made 2–3 diary entries a day, registering the events in details. Such sources are very few in number.N.P. Vishnyakov's memoirs and epistolary heritage have never before were fully published and were marked as a unique source on the history of political, cultural and economic life in Moscow between 1873--1918.This is a part of an upcoming publication of the complete texts of N.P. Vishnyakov's epistolary heritage. Nukolay Petrovich was fully engaged into almost every political and economical process in Moscow during the times of Nicholas II. He was a deputy of the Moscow Duma from 1873 to 1917, with a short break in 1892--1897, a magistrate judge, a well-known geology scientist and ethnographer.For this publication shorten forms of toponymies and some personalized abbreviations have been deciphered. It is sometimes very difficult to follow and understand N.P. Veshnyakov’s handwriting.


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