Longing in Belonging: The Cultural Politics of Settlement

145 Pages·2002·0.472 MB·English

by  Suzan Ilcan

LONGING IN
BELONGING
The Cultural Politics of Settlement
SUZAN ILCAN
LONGING IN
BELONGING
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Ilcan,Suzan.
Longinginbelonging : theculturalpoliticsofsettlement / SuzanIlcan.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0–275–96736–0(alk.paper)
1. Acculturation. 2. Groupidentity. 3. Human
settlements. 4. Immigrants. I. Title: Culturalpoliticsofsettlement. II. Title.
HM841.I53 2002
303.48'2—dc21 2001036703
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Copyright(cid:1)2002bySuzanIlcan
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ISBN:0–275–96736–0
Firstpublishedin2002
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CopyrightAcknowledgments
Theauthorandpublishergratefullyacknowledgepermissionforuseofthefollowingmaterial:
Excerpts from Transgressing Borders: Critical Perspectives on Gender, Household, and
Culture, edited by S. Ilcan and L. Phillips. Copyright (cid:1) 1998 by S. Ilcan and L. Phillips.
ReproducedwithpermissionofGreenwoodPublishingGroup,Inc.,Westport,CT.
Poetry by Fazil Hu¨snu¨ Dag˘larca used by permission of Kemal Silay, Editor of the Turkish
StudiesAssociationBulletin,IndianaUniversity.
For Dan, Norma and Bu¨lent
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 2: Migrant Nationalism 11
Chapter 3: Ethnographic Transits 35
Chapter 4: Border Passages 55
Chapter 5: Dwelling and Dispersion 75
Chapter 6: Subversive Movements 99
Conclusion: Mobile Relations 115
References 121
Index 133
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many debts have been incurred in developing and preparing this work. I
acknowledge with appreciation a research grant from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada that permitted me to carry
out this project. I would like to thank the University of Windsor for pro-
viding travel funds which enabled me to present chapters of this book be-
fore variousconferencemeetings,andforgrantingmeasabbaticalleavein
2000–2001, which made it possible for me to complete the project during
that extraordinary year. The University of Windsor’s Sociology and An-
thropology Department has provided a very supportive research environ-
ment for my work, and I am thankful for that.
Several people have generously contributed so much time, labor, and
stimulation in helping with the development of this project. I would like
to thank those people who, at various stages of the project’s becoming,
contributed to this book in different ways. I am extremely grateful to:
Selma Eren for her outstanding research contributions to the project at
many different stages, and for gently debriefing me on events occurringon
the “outside”; Alper O¨zdemir for his meticulous arranging and processing
of transcribed materials; and Debra Cady and Christiana Gauger for their
skilful acquisitions and excellent library research. Over the years,draftsof
many chapters have been discussed in seminars, workshops, and confer-
ences that make it impossible to name everyone who helped improve the
book. Nevertheless, a number of people should be singled out for notably
helpful discussions, or for constructive comments on earlier sections or
chapters of the book. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Tanya
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Basok, Anthony Davis, Glynis George, LynnePhillips,andRobShieldsfor
the intellectual challenges. I would also like to thank Dan O’Connor for
stimulating discussions over the years, and for his honestand criticalread-
ingofthemanuscriptwhichhasbenefitedinsubstantialways.IthankNira
Yuval-Davis for the insightful presentation that she gave at the European
SociologyAssociationmeetingsafewyearsagoandforherencouragement
of my work at the time, both of which impelled me to locate concepts of
migrancy and nation-building in the field of settlement practices. I would
also like to thank the many writers I acknowledge in the text for not only
inspiring me through their work, but for teaching me about the mobile
dimensions of culture, place, and knowledge.
At Praeger Publishers, I am thankful to Dr. Jim Sabin for his confidence
in the project from the beginning, and to David Palmer,SeniorProduction
Editor, who has remained very supportive and helpful throughout the ed-
itorial stages. Also at Praeger, I would like to extend my appreciation to
Jason Cook for the careful copyediting of the manuscript.
I acknowledge with great consideration the staff of many government
and academic bodies in Turkey who generously provided materials or
helped in other ways, and the Turkish authorities for granting me theper-
missiontocarryoutthefieldresearchcomponentofthisprojectduringmy
last visit in 1997. I remain indebted to Sema and Zeynep, and Ender G.
and Tulu G., for their generosity, hospitality, and kindness, and forgiving
me a home away from home which I shall not forget.
My deepest appreciation and heartfelt gratitude go to those womenand
meninnorthwesternTurkeywhosestories,struggles,andhistoriesgivelife
to the local and global ideas of settlement.
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The globalizing era of rapid economic and culturaltransformationhasun-
settled cultural locations and their settled ways. Those practices, beliefs,
and ideas that were once considered folk culture and defined as organic
expressions of locally lived experiences are, with ever increasingspeed,be-
ing unsettled by the interconnectedness of the global milieu. Partly as a
consequence of the expanded mobility of populations, and partly a con-
sequence of the shifting of boundaries, the ideas and practices associated
withbelongingareunderconstantchallenge.Thehome—withitsattendant
connotations of stability, constancy, and identity tied to the image of a
locus of origination and habituated social ties—has become a contested
and, for some, a mobile terrain. The mobility and mobilization of both
populations and territories raises questions about the nature of the ties
socialgroupshavetotheirplaces,aboutthedurabilityofthesetiesandthe
kind of settlement practices enacted for those on the move. In many cases,
thelocationsofcultureareimbuedwithuncertaintyandinsecuritybythose
who live a life of multiple border crossings (such as migrant workers, im-
migrants, and exiles), or those who inhabit the borderlands or who are
considered marginal to their place. For those at the crossroadsofdisplace-
ment,forthosewholeaveorwhoareforcedtoleaveonehomeforanother,
and for those for whom belonging has been superseded by longing, there
are risks involved. There are always risks associated with the journey of
longing to belong, of a road that leads toward places less appealing than
others and ends with the memories and losses incurred by the places left
behind and all the paths forgone. As Bauman suggests, one cannot help
2 LONGINGIN BELONGING
suspect that no final and unambiguous judgment on the advantages or
limitations of the journey chosen and followed will ever be fully obtained.
The distress associated with having made a wrong move will precede and
follow every step, now and in the future. While making one’sownchoices
may be a liberating activity, this activity is also infilled with the tensions
of “unsettlement” (1999, 160). For me, settlement is a practice without
firmboundaries.Itsenclosureisnevercompleteorfinalizable,asitsbound-
ariesareshotthroughwithanenduringandunsettlingtension.Thistension
is between being, and being otherwise. It takes the form of a longing that
lingers with and within belonging—a longing that is both the motive and
consequence of belonging and that which resists it. Longing is the inside
thought fromtheoutside. It isan outsidethoughtthatisinperpetualcom-
munication with the interiorities of settlement.
For people living with the tensions and consequences of globalization,
deterritorialization, and mass migratory movements, “belonging” to a
place,ahome,orapeoplebecomesnotsomuchaninsulatedorindividual
affair as an experience of “being within and in-between sets of social re-
lations” (Probyn 1996). This is not to suggest that the movement or dis-
placementofpeopletodayisanythingnew—peoplehavealwaysbeenfaced
with living within and on the margins of social relations whether through
pressure, choice, or contact with the forces of colonialism, modernity, or
advanced liberalism. What is significant is that analysts (such as Kaplan
1998; Malkki 1999; Lovell 1998; Stewart 1996; Appadurai 1996; Gilroy
1993) are developing new conceptual frameworks to come to terms with
theprocessesofdisplacementandhaveproblematizedconventionalnotions
about the relationship between people and territory, identity and roots,or
home and homelands. The idea of belonging to a “community,” for ex-
ample, is never simply the recognition of cultural similarity or social con-
tiguity. It is instead a categorical identity that is characterized by various
forms of exclusion and constructions of otherness (Gupta and Ferguson
1999a, 13). Similarly, the experience of being within and between sets of
social relations also contributes to the characteristic of “modularity” in a
multi-network society. Countering the ideal of homogeneous belongings,
Bauman suggests that “none of the groups [to] which we enter do we be-
long ‘fully’: there are parts of our modular persons which ‘stick out’ and
cannot be absorbed nor accommodated by any single group, but which
connect and interact with other modules” (1999, 161). This condition of
“modularity,” with its lack of bolts, clamps, and rivets fastening themod-
ules into a permanent shape, is a constant source of tension. The tension
is especially heightened for migrants and displaced peoples, and for those
who live in a world of diaspora. Belonging is integral to longing. On this
issue,IamremindedofthewayinwhichProbynraisesissuesofthevarious
longingsforbelonging.Forher,belongingcapturesboththedesireforsome
kind of attachment to other people, places, or modes of being, and the
INTRODUCTION 3
ways in which individuals and groups are caught within the interstices of
wanting to belong. Belonging is fueled by yearning rather thanby thepos-
iting of anidentifiable goal ora stablestate(1996,19).Thetensionwithin
belonging involves a generalized longing for a different way of life with
different attachments or relations. In a condition of generalized displace-
ment, longing remains diffuse and unstable and is therefore susceptible to
various settlement strategies and ideologies of home and place.
In Longing in Belonging: The Cultural Politics of Settlement, I inquire
into categories that are so often taken for granted, asking how and when
home and homeland, travel and migration, habitation and movement, be-
come critical cultural and political dimensions of people’s lives. Explicitin
this inquiry is an analysis of belonging and longing that takes nation-
building, ethnographic practices,dwelling,anddiasporaasmobilesitesfor
exploring the cultural politics of settlement. The term “settlement” tradi-
tionally resonates with particular groups who come and settle in a
“place”—such as refugee, migrant, and immigrant settlements or new
settlements formed through assimilation, population planning, and devel-
opment projects. However, no settlement is ever complete. It is always in
a process of settling, unsettling, and resettling.
A settlement is a place where we live for a time. It may houseparticular
groups, reflect patterns or practices of togetherness, and symbolize a past
orpresentwayoflife.Itshouldnotbethoughtofasapermanentstructure
that has no openings or interchanges with the outside. There are always
movements—of populations, of struggles, of ideas—that unsettle and re-
settle relations within, between, and beyond its borders. The mobility of
populations, whether this includes the movement of migrant, immigrant,
or refugee groups or the displacement of settled habits and beliefs, raises
critical questions about belonging to a place. Belonging to a place is not
an individual matter but an experience of being connected in and between
sites of social relations. We may think here of the ways in which some
groups “stick out” in a place and become involved in relations of social
exclusion. They belong to a place but are not always accepted by others
who live there. Their transitory tie to a place produces a longing in be-
longing. In this way, I think of settlement as involving forms of belonging
and longing that connote ways in which particular groups are involved in
settling in and resettling a place.
The emphasis on belonging and longing lends an urgency to questions
about the politics of people’s lives transformed in space andtime:Howdo
nation-statesplayaroleincreatingtheconditionsofbelongingandlonging
for certain groups? How do particular social groups, such as those char-
acterized asdiasporic,makesenseoftheirchanginglives,andhowdothey
articulate or challenge strategies of settlement?Howdowe,asresearchers,
understand and translate these articulations, and how do we connectthem
to other social events?Ifbelonging andlongingarealternativeconceptions