Perceptions, contestations and negotiations on race, ethnicity and gender: the case of Sub-Saharan African migrants in Istanbul

Abstract

Drawing from ethnographic material collected during fieldwork in İstanbul between 2007 and 2009, this article departs from the increased presence of nationals from Sub-Saharan African countries in Turkey, and in three sections looks at how ethnic relations, conceptualised as processes of boundary-making, play out between these migrants and the Turkish majority population. Grounded in a constructivist paradigm and applying an intersectional perspective, the first section looks at how the discourse of the Other in the mainstream is perceived, internalised, made sense of and to some part resisted. The second section 'returns the gaze' and gives room for my interlocutor's' perception of the mainstream's ethnicity, while the last section looks at how whiteness is perceived when it becomes gendered. Apart from race, ethnicity and gender, research participants also regarded religion and legal status as dominant markers of identity and difference in the Turkish context.