In this article, I examine my own experience-as a white, American woman, an experienced second language educator, and a novice scholar of forced migration-of becoming an immigrant to Turkey. Approached as a reflexive positionality statement in preparation for my dissertation research with Syrian refugees, I explore my shifting insider and outsider roles and how they inform the evolution of my research design and personal and professional identity. I draw on BOURDIEU’s theory of capital and use vignettes from my first year in Turkey to illustrate everyday struggles to navigate interactions through perplexing layers of access and exclusion; to gain social, cultural, and linguistic capital; and, ultimately, to build a life in a new country. In this way, I seek to illuminate the experience of transnational adaptation and integration from the perspective of both a language teacher and learner and a migration scholar and migrant. © 2019, Institut für Qualitative Forschung,Internationale Akademie Berlin gGmbH. All rights reserved.

Migration Turkey Bourdieu Positionality Critical autoethnography Insider/outsider research Intercultural capital

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