Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

This study illustrates the place-(re)makings in relation to migration influx from Iraq and social integration process, within the streets of Demirlibahçe Neighborhood in Ankara. Starting from the early 2014, the neighborhood has faced with massive influx of immigrants from Tal’ Afar. While the immigrants have started to dwell in, the former inhabitants – Turks and Romanis – have discursively been othering their spatial practices in three streets of the neighborhood. Such discursive othering, however, distorts the previously established social cohesion between the Turk and Romani population. For these three identity groups are separately agglomerated in the three streets (Uzgorenler, Doganbahce, Demirkapi) the process of place-(re)makings in the neighborhood hampers possible social cohesion in the future. Therein, this research aims to display differing patterns of spatiality and mobility for three identity groups in the neighborhood by scrutinizing the question how otherness is constructed through discourses on women. By way of conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 Turks, 7 Iraqi and 5 Romani residents, the study compares and contrasts positive and negative discourses through which the otherness is constructed. In measuring social integration with regard to spatial and mobile patterns in the neighborhoods, the major findings of the research will be demonstrated by rhizome mappings of the social spaces. Therefore, the map as the output of the research, eventually lay out the followings; the residential and commercial agglomeration of three identity groups in three streets, the mobility patterns in the streets, the dialectical relationships between the men’s agglomeration areas and women mobility.