Speaker: Ayşe Parla, Boston University
This talk will track the unequal distribution of hope as a collective structure of feeling in relation to both the migrant condition and differentiated citizenship in Turkey. Parla explores the tension between ethnic privilege and economic precarity as experienced by ethnic Turkish migrants from Bulgaria for whom cultural and legal belonging has historically been promised. Turkish immigration policies have worked in lockstep with national aspirations for ethnic and religious conformity, offering this group of migrants in Turkey an advantage over others. At the same time, Parla asks what happens to the category of political hope when we simultaneously reckon with claims of inclusion based on ethnic kinship and the refusals of historically dispossessed citizens to participate in hopeful imaginations of a national future.
Sponsors: Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies & Department of Anthropology
No RSVP required - Seating will be on a first come, first served basis.
