Hopes in transition: An ethnography of African migrants in Istanbul

Abstract

Hopes in Transition offers an incisive ethnographic exploration of sub-Saharan African migrants navigating life in contemporary Istanbul. Grounded in rich, qualitative research, this book interrogates the political and economic conditions that compel transnational mobility, while centering the voices and lived experiences of those who have embarked on migration as an act of survival and self-determination. Challenging reductionist framings of migration as crisis or threat, the author theorizes migration as a profoundly human response to structural violence, economic disenfranchisement, and geopolitical instability. The work situates African migrants not as peripheral actors or passive recipients of global processes, but as agents actively engaging with—and reshaping—the socio-spatial landscapes of Istanbul. This ethnography invites critical reflection on the entanglements of race, borders, belonging, and precarity in a globalized world. It underscores the universality of migratory experience, positioning the migrant not as the “other,” but as a figure that reveals broader truths about the human condition under late capitalism and postcolonial modernity. A significant contribution to migration studies, urban anthropology, and African diaspora scholarship, Hopes in Transition expands the theoretical and geographic boundaries of contemporary ethnographic inquiry.