Publication: Racial otherness, citizenship, and belonging: experiences of "not looking like a Turk"
Program
KU-Authors
KU Authors
Co-Authors
Advisor
Publication Date
2021
Language
English
Type
Journal Article
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
How does "not looking like a Turk" affect belonging and exclusion in contemporary Turkey? Perceptions of skin colour have the power to transcend socio-economic and national boundaries through experiences of racial otherness. This paper illustrates racialization by focusing on diverse groups of "outsiders". Foreign-born professional athletes navigate a media field that mark them as permanent others, as demonstrated by media controversies around soccer player Mehmet Aurelio. Irregular migrants and African Turks undergo cumulative reminders of non-belonging in everyday encounters. This paper examines how a sense of racially motivated exclusion run through these experiences by (a) distinguishing legal citizenship from an immigrant's symbolic belonging, (b) assigning immutable differences based on skin-colour perceptions, and (c) colonizing everyday life through microaggressions in both face-to-face and mediated interactions. Racialized microaggressions feed from a combination of historical residues - including Ottoman slavery and whiteness campaigns in the formation of Turkish identity - and contemporary global cultural flows.
Description
Source:
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Publisher:
Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd
Keywords:
Subject
Ethnic Studies, Sociology