Travelling race and international students in Turkey: white ambiguities, Muslim differences and relational racial understandings

This study examines the complex ways in which international students in Turkey navigate and constructs their racial identities within a socio-political landscape that simultaneously aligns with and distances itself from Western conceptions of whiteness. Through a multi-scale racial analysis of international students with racially and nationally diverse backgrounds, the research highlights the complex and often ambiguous racial identities that emerge among students, particularly those from Muslim-majority countries. The three main findings: (1) the minimization of a racial awareness that nonetheless exposed racial perception with the conceptualization of ‘Brunette’ and white beauty ideals, (2) the construction of the ‘Syrian refugee’ vis-à-vis other Arab groups and (3) how anti-Blackness was negotiated through a Muslim identity – all point to the role of travelling racial processes, Turkey’s racial history and contemporary reality and multi-scale relational racial understandings. International student’s racial experiences in Turkey highlight the overlapping entanglements to racialization in non-Western contexts that are also always embedded in wider global forces, regional understandings and intersectional markers.