Macro-regional imaginaries of Turkish students: analysis of mental maps of macro-regions of belonging
Résumé
This presentation focuses on a study of macroregional imaginaries of Turkish students in 2022 with approaches in political geography and geography of representations. The analysis is based on the materials of an online mapping survey currently conducted through third and fourth year students in three university cities (Antalya, Ankara and Istanbul) and collected as part of a research project ANR-DFG IMAGEUN*. It focuses on students’ representations and practices of the world and particularly of macroregions they feel they belong to according to where they live. We seek to analyze imaginaries associated to a region of the world thanks to mental maps linked to a panel of questions that interrogate socio-demographic and geographic factors. We analyze mental maps responses according to various factors as students position in Turkey, their mobility background (migrations, tourism), social and studies background, media and cultural practices.
By focusing on their macroregion, we ask two main questions: what regional spaces and what scales of representation are meaningful to define the part of the world they belong to? How the current geopolitical situation – which has among other things repositioned Turkey as a main interlocutor in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict – might influence the positioning of their country among the regional spaces at stake in Turkish representations?