Abstract:

Being an asylum seeker is an experience dealt in macro level and everyday life aspect is ignored. Yet, forced emigration is not only a subject related to boundaries of governments but also a process experienced by ordinary people in everyday life. This study studies the experience of being an asylum-seeker in everyday life in the context of intercultural communication in Gaziantep. The study mainly focused on two questions: the perception of residents (de�ined as Turkish citizens) about the foreigner who is coming from abroad as a result of forced migration. And how was the intercultural communication between those asylum seekers coming from different cultures and residents experienced in everyday life? The answers of these questions were examined within the framework of the residents’ perceptions of the foreigner in the context of banal nationalism, and the communication between the members of different cultural groups in everyday life in the contexts of intercultural encounters, social intercourse networks, the restraints of intercultural communication and the role of uncertainty and anxiety in intercultural communication. The �ieldwork of the study was conducted between 20th July and 20th December 2011 in Gaziantep, which is a designated satellite city for the asylum seekers coming to Turkey by the Ministry of Interior. The methodology used for the paper is participatory observation and informal and in-depth interviews both with the residents and asylum seekers

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