WHOSEMISAFIRS?NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCE ALONG THE TURKISH–SYRIAN BORDER

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the figure of themisafir(guest) as it personifies the combined domains of everyday and institutional hospitality in Hatay, a contested border province annexed to Turkey from French Mandate Syria in 1939, and home today to over 400,000 displaced Syrians. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2012 in Hatay's administrative capital, Antakya, I focus on the perspectives of the region's bilingual (Turkish-Arabic) Jewish and Christian populations about the officialmisafirstatus of the first Syrian arrivals. I argue that the sudden transformation of Syrians from familialmisafirs to governmentalmisafirs in the early days of the Syrian conflict ruptured the hierarchical domains of reciprocity that have historically shaped the cross-border relations between these communities. In this process, Antakya's religious minorities recognized and negotiated the limits of their own residence, difference, and citizenship in Turkey, and invoked the lived practices of hospitality that exist beside but also transcend ethnoreligious and national identities. By examining how historical articulations of religious and national difference along the Turkish–Syrian border are entwined with the figure of themisafirat the interpersonal level, this article contributes to debates on hospitality in scholarship on the Middle East and in migration literature.