Queer Precarity, Moralization, and Housing Distress in a Collapsing Istanbul
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22416872 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Berkant Caglar (0000-0002-1199-2071, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2026-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | City & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0893-0465 • E-ISSN: 1548-744X |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ciso.70036 |
| OpenAlex | W7168023651 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 46 |
Housing distress is widespread among queer and trans residents in Istanbul, and there is no dedicated shelter for their specific needs. This article argues that housing distress and queer precarity are mutually influenced by the moralized distribution of welfare support and Istanbul's rise as Turkey's neoliberal urban hub. Morality plays a key role in overriding state responsibility and actual harm. Given that the ruling political party, AKP, heavily invests in the urban poor to sustain its voting base, the state's withdrawal emerges as an embodied social problem in the lives of precarious queer subjects when they need welfare support and continually live under the stress of housing. By tracing how moralization and precarity affect sexual minorities—in contrast to the class privileges that position them to bring capital flows to urban centers and to enhance gentrification—I explore how they experience housing distress and participate in community work amid exhaustion. From earthquake risks and collapsing housing infrastructure to gentrification and the securitization of political dissent, housing distress offers a valuable lens for urban ethnographers to analyze urban precarity, neoliberalism, and state governance.
Distress · Gentrification · Politics · Precarious work · Precarity · Public housing · Queer · Urban politics · Welfare · Welfare state · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Turkey's Politics and Society · Urban Planning and Governance
From Wards of the State to Subjects of Recognition?
The Sexual Politics of Empire
Life in Crisis
Paper Tiger
Passive Revolution
The New Homonormativity
Terrorist Assemblages
Friction
Collaboration gone awry
The Politics of Care in Turkey
Money, Mortgages, and the Conquest of America
The Demise of Queer Space? Resurgent Gentrification and the Assimilation of LGBT Neighborhoods
Shelters for Women Survivors of Domestic Violence
Urban Transformation’ as State-led Property Transfer
Colonial Lives of Property
Poverty and Citizenship
The Empire of Love
Political Islam and the Welfare (Refah) Party in Turkey
Emerging Spaces of Neoliberalism
Caring for solidarity? The intimate politics of grandmother childcare and neoliberal conservatism in urban Turkey
Imagining Transgender
The Security Archipelago
The Right to Maim
LGBTQ situated memory, place-making and the sexual politics of gentrification
Ordinary Refugees
Life in Debt
Underground Inscriptions
Care as social organization
Welfare Provision as Political Containment
On Affective Labor in Post-Fordist Italy
"The formation of a "model city in the Anatolian steppes
Behind the Scaffolding
In War and Peace
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |