Afghans Ante Portas

Abstract

Bauman's approach, conceptualised as ‘strangers at out door/ante portas', requires a relationship that requires us to look at immigrants from inside the door. This study focuses on how Afghans, who are collectively expected to be hated as the new ‘dangerous' strangers, appear in Turkiye. The images provided by Google searches become a sufficient ‘peephole' through which to collectively see and imagine Afghans. This is because the ‘peephole' metaphor encompasses a symbolic context in which the fear of the ‘strangers at out door (ante portas)', the desire to see/observe them, and the parallax effect can be symbolically represented at a common root. In the study, by typing “Afghans” and “Afghan Migrants” in Turkish into the Google search bar, the visual (photographic) search results are used to establish relationships with alienation and otherness in the visual representation of Afghan identity.