Home or Homelike?

Abstract

In the past 10 years, queer Türkiyelis in Germany have become more visible in the urban queer scene by delineating institutional and extrainstitutional spaces. How do they manage and negotiate these spaces with each other and in the context of interacting with people from different—that is, non-Turkish—backgrounds? And do the ways in which these spaces are managed have the capacity to work against prejudices both in the German queer community and among the wider Türkiyeli population? Queer Türkiyelis employ strategies of space management that resist fixed ideas of identities and bounded cultures that multiculturalist discourses and the media might otherwise enforce. In place of fixed identity politics based on ethnicity and national belonging, there are, instead, spatial management strategies at work that create homelike spaces.