A home in the hicret: Morality, domestic space and belonging in a Turkish Muslim community in Brazil

Abstract

This article focuses on home-making practices in a Turkish Muslim community in Brazil. Following their religious leader’s exhortations to make hicret (migration) to spread their worldview and expand their religious movement, committed Muslims decided to emigrate from Turkey to Brazil. Initially enjoying a privileged economic, social, and political situation inside and outside their homeland, community members built an institutional and domestic structure in Brazil, which allowed them to build an extensive and solid social network in the country. However, the July 2016 failed coup in Turkey and the ensuing government measures engendered critical changes in my interlocutors’ lives. This ethnographic account comprehends that period of crisis and shows how community members have articulated hicret to make sense of exile, enabling a less provisional home in Brazil. Building on a literature on home and house, this article analyzes the processual and performative dimensions of communal practices and demonstrates how these practices become home in the hicret.