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

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2019.1668035

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.