ABSTRACT
Certain semi-private spaces, the deployment of particular signs and various practices play an important role in the making of a 'diasporic home' in the city. This chapter constructs a figuration of such a home through interrogating a series of spaces and practices. Social life for men revolves around the kahve whereas for women it circulates within domestic space, in the homes of friends and family. The kahve can be described as a type of trans-local space that mediates in the assemblage of relations between the local and the global, or between a number of different localities. The phrase, 'kahve talk', often used disparagingly within the Turkish-speaking community to dismiss the types of discussions that occur in a kahve as cyclical and never-ending, could also be the key to the functioning of the kahve as 'diasporic home'. The dispersed, informal networks that constituted the space of the kahve required constant work to sustain and nurture them.
