Could Neighbourhood Ties Still Be Important for the Migrants in a Metropolitan City?

Abstract

Although neighbourhood ties have diminishing roles in people’s lives because the modern metropolis presents so much choice for its residents, they have not completely disappeared, especially for some groups. In metropolitan cities, migrants settle in the areas where other migrants from the same origin live. This situation represents more than socioeconomic factors, and the relationship forms that migrants maintain within and outside their neighbourhoods could be different from one migrant group to another. The aim of this study is to understand the importance of neighbourhood ties in the networks of the migrants in Istanbul, and to examine the type of ties by their geographical locations. According to the results of the analysis which demonstrates the concentration of different migrant groups in the districts of Istanbul, the focus is on the international migrants who came from Macedonia and old Yugoslavian countries (Sandzak region) and who live in Bayrampasa and Besiktas, and internal migrants who came from the biggest metropolitan city Ankara and its border city of Eskisehir and who live in Besiktas. By using personal network analysis, the study comparatively analyses the migrants’ neighbourhood ties by the characteristics of the migrants and by type of their local and nonlocal ties. The results reveal a difference between the migrant groups regarding their dependence on neighbourhood ties and the type of ties that are distributed along different geographical locations

Keywords

• personal networks of migrants
• local ties
• nonlocal ties
• network analysis