Deniz Yükseker (Sociology Department, Koç University, Turkey)
Laleli, Istanbul as a Borderland in the Transnational Shuttle Trade Network
During the 1990s, Istanbul became a major node in the transnational informal trade network between former Soviet republics and Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of people from Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and other former Soviet republics visited Istanbul every year for short periods of time in order to buy consumer goods (especially clothing) for selling back in their homes. Laleli, a neighborhood on the historical peninsula of Istanbul, turned into a marketplace for the informal shuttle trade.
This presentation focuses on the social relations that sustained shuttle trade. In the absence of state regulation of this transnational informal economic space, the personal strategies by and the social relations between the shuttle traders and their Turkish suppliers provided a framework for the carrying out of business. The shuttle trade market, and particularly its physical location the Laleli marketplace, were built through the agency of its participants. I describe Laleli here as a metaphoric borderland, a place where people from different countries and ethnicities came together for doing business, but also built social relations. In discussing these issues, I will draw on the findings of the ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in the late 1990s in Istanbul and Moscow.
This presentation focuses on the social relations that sustained shuttle trade. In the absence of state regulation of this transnational informal economic space, the personal strategies by and the social relations between the shuttle traders and their Turkish suppliers provided a framework for the carrying out of business. The shuttle trade market, and particularly its physical location the Laleli marketplace, were built through the agency of its participants. I describe Laleli here as a metaphoric borderland, a place where people from different countries and ethnicities came together for doing business, but also built social relations. In discussing these issues, I will draw on the findings of the ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in the late 1990s in Istanbul and Moscow.
