The use of cultural repertoires of everyday nationhood and citizenship in national identity boundary-drawing: The case of Syrian refugees in Turkey

Elaborating on salient contextual factors, such as historical conditions, national history, militarised masculinity, and language, this study looks at how repertoires of everyday nationhood are deployed in relation to boundary-drawing in the context of the recent refugee influx in Turkey. Drawing on ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with ordinary Turkish citizens in Adana, this paper sheds light on the complexities of everyday understandings of citizenship and nationhood with regards to the emergence of 'insider versus outsiders' notions. Results suggest that ordinary citizens evoke various notions of nationhood in everyday life in drawing boundaries against 'outsiders' (i.e., refugees) by deploying historically rooted national identity constructions (militaristic, unitary) and symbols (language, flag). This article, therefore, reveals a national identity boundary-drawing mechanism involving widespread adherence to a militarised sense of nationhood, related more to other ideas of belonging than ethnicity. It further indicates that ordinary citizens, in their narratives, link such constructions and symbols with historical and current political contexts (e.g., the conflict between Turks and Arabs during WW1, or; current military operations in Syria).

How happenings do (not) turn into events: A typology and an application to the case of 9/11 in the American and Dutch public spheres

Why do some happenings become incentives for cultural or political transformation (that is: turn into events), whereas others remain ordinary occurrences? The theoretical perspectives of cultural repertoires, cleavage structures, and discursive opportunities are prominent and fruitful approaches for explaining cultural or political behavior and attitudes, yet they do not have a satisfactory answer to this question. To fill in this gap, I introduce a typology that indicates how certain happenings merely reproduce existing trends, whereas other ones turn into motives to change them. This can be either because they are "focus events," which confirm dominant cultural or political patterns, or because they are "shock events," which form a break from them. I illustrate this typology by investigating the distinct meanings that 9/11 were accorded in the American and Dutch public spheres. This analysis shows that this happening became a "shock event" on the issue of safety in the American case, as it broke with the cultural repertoire of viewing the United States as a safe, militarily impenetrable nation. In contrast, 9/11 turned into a "focus event" concerning the issue of Islam in the Dutch case because it confirmed the discursive opportunities to problematize Muslims, which public actors in the Netherlands had already developed in the years leading up to 2001.

Lost in freedom: ambivalence on sexual freedom among Burundian adolescents living in the Nakivale refugee settlement, Uganda

This paper explores how Burundian adolescents in the Nakivale refugee settlement, Uganda, experience umwidegemvyo, loosely translated as "freedom", with regard to their sexuality. We draw on ethnographic research conducted between August and November 2017 with adolescents aged 13-19 years. Our research included in-depth individual interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observation. We present a context-sensitive appreciation of "freedom" and its social implications for adolescents' sexual and love relationships. We show how adolescents attribute their sexual experiences and practices, including experimental sex, stress-relief sex and transactional sex, to the freedom experienced in the refugee context. Yet they also view this freedom with ambivalence: while some degree of freedom is desirable, too much is referred to in terms of kutitabwaho n'ababyeyi, loosely translated as "parental neglect", implying a lack of parental involvement, care and provisioning.