Are Syrians ‘Peers’, ‘Competitors’, or Both? Socioeconomic Boundaries Through the Lens of Native Employees in Turkey’s Informal Economy

This study applies the 'boundary-making approach' to examine the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey, a framework often used to analyze how boundaries are drawn, shifted, and blurred by social actors across various contexts and group types. However, multiple dimensions of the boundary-making process—particularly concerning the perceptions of dominant groups—remain under-explored in the literature. Additionally, there is limited understanding of how boundaries are drawn among individuals in the informal economy and the mechanisms or processes that trigger the (re)production of boundaries in everyday workplace interactions. Based on micro-level study in Adana, a secure economic hub in the proximity of the conflict region, this paper investigates how native employees engage with socioeconomic boundaries in the workplace in manual labour economic sectors in Turkey. More explicitly, it explores what makes Syrians as ‘peers’ in the eyes of Turkish employees in the informal economy; and how Turkish employees tend to position themselves differently from their Syrians peers in the workplace with regards to power differentials. By drawing upon ethnographic observations and semi-structured in-depth interviews with Turkish employees, this study finds that socioeconomic boundaries widely take place in the agenda of Turkish employees; however, drawing boundaries on the basis of socioeconomic factors come out in multiple ways. This study suggests that socioeconomic boundaries are not solely dependent on employees’ economic concerns; they are also very much linked with the way of how dominant group members legitimize their social position in the workplace compared to their Syrian peers.