Ethno-cultural encounters and social acceptance: Everyday life experiences of refugee children in Konya

Everyday life can provide researcher with a deep perspective to see what lies behind the ordinary stories of ordinary people. By taking advantage of this power, this research examines the everyday life experiences of Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi and Sudanese children living in Konya. Starting from the question of how children experience their everyday lives as "refugees" or as "aliens" of the society, it analyzes the ethno-cultural pattern of the social environment they live in, and the mutual social acceptance of ethnic groups. Methodologically combining the strengths of ethnography and grounded theory, in this research in-depth interview, participant/nonparticipant observation, and focus group interview were used as data collection methods. The research was carried out in four different refugee dense neighborhoods and two different religious secondary schools. During research period of approximately one-year, in-depth interviews were conducted in the neighborhoods with 65 refugee children, 50 refugee adults from the families of the children, and 12 children and 18 adults from the local community members including Turkish, Kurdish, Roman and Abdal persons. Apart from these, in-depth interviews were conducted with 27 schoolteachers, and 6 separate focus group interviews were conducted with 41 students in total visited in the two schools within the scope of the research. In-depth observations were also made in all these spaces. As a result of the analysis, it was observed that the categories of "experience spaces", "border generation" and "children's identity dialogues" mutually feed each other. The nature of children's experiences in certain spaces necessarily places them within certain ethnic groups. The way the children position themselves in society reversibly determines the type of spaces and experiences. As a result of this cyclical relationship, the research argues that despite the weakness of social acceptance in the community, refugee children construct transnational identities instead of being imprisoned in their ethnic identities. Keywords: refugee children, everday life, ethnicity, identity, social acceptance, integration.