“We Support Each Other in These Social Spaces”

This chapter examines the practices of solidarity, social networks, and transnational ties among African migrants in Türkiye, highlighting the spaces they create to navigate exclusion and racism. Focusing on social, religious, and informal gathering places – such as churches, communal dinners, shared flats, and public meetings – it shows how these sites are produced, inhabited, and transformed through everyday practices of coordination, care, and mutual support. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews, the chapter demonstrates that solidarity emerges not as an abstract ethical stance but as an embodied, relational practice responding to racialised waiting, prolonged uncertainty, and marginalisation. It explores how African migrants negotiate experiences of discrimination, develop emancipatory practices, and sustain hope and dignity through collective life. By examining both local and transnational networks, the chapter highlights how solidarity spaces enable relational belonging, foster mutual aid, and shape settlement processes, showing that solidarity functions as a dynamic, lived strategy for enduring temporality, constraint, and systemic exclusion in the Turkish migration context.