Encounters between Native Peoples and Recent Syrian Refugees in Hatay, Turkey

Recent Syrian refugee crisis is fundamental issue not only the classic immigrant countries and the neighbours but also the other far countries and also the region as the European Union. The order people are not interested in the refugee just international or political subject. Rather, they encounter within everyday life, live and work together in same or next/closed neighbourhoods and places. Beside these, states take extreme security precautions to protect the borders. Border people and their practices are affected these precautions and required to take intersectional positioning.

In the Syrian refugee crisis, Turkey has applied and changed different refugee politics since the war started. Recently, it takes extreme precautions to prevent the refugee flows. The border people should deal with difficulties from these precautions on the Turkey-Syria border. Thus, both the natives and refugees have taken position to live and survive under new conditions. Cities on the Syrian border have different and difficult intersectional positioning in Turkey. This study aims to understand and explain socio-cultural and economic intersectional positioning in everyday life in Hatay as a Turkey-Syria border city.

This research aims to answer the questions: How and where the natives and the refugees come across in everyday life? How and what kind of relations emerge among them? What kind of positioning are taken by the natives and what kind of interaction are realized in Hatay?

This study scrutinizes the patterns of intersectional positioning and interaction in everyday life in Hatay. In this qualitatively designed ongoing research, data provided by 50 in-depth, 30 focus group, many spontaneous interviews, small talks and observation in the border villages and neighbourhoods of Hatay since July 2017. The findings are shared in the presentation. This study is supported by Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, Sceintific Project Foundation by the Project Number: 16776.