Introduction

This chapter introduces the theoretical framework of the book, linking concepts of waiting, temporality, place, and belonging with analyses of race and racism. It engages critically with scholarship shaped by methodological whiteness and methodological nationalism, which often overlook the experiences of Africans in Türkiye. The chapter explores how temporal processes, including waiting, intersect with social hierarchies of race, class, gender, religion, and migratory status, shaping patterns of inclusion, exclusion, and precarity. It traces the historical construction of racial identities from the Ottoman Empire to the modern Republic, examining how whiteness, Blackness, and Turkishness have developed in relation to Western modernity. The chapter also situates contemporary anti-migrant and anti-Black racism within these historical and social trajectories. By examining the intersections of temporality, spatial relations, and social difference, it frames the key analytical perspectives used in the book, setting up a discussion of how waiting and temporal experiences shape the lives of racialised migrants in Türkiye.