Purpose This study aims to examine how Syrian enclave space is produced, sensed and interpreted through everyday practices and semiotic cues along Aksemsettin Street (Fatih, Istanbul) and propose a replicable street-scale method for translating multisensory observations into a social-semiotic framework. Design/methodology/approach A two-stage qualitative case study combined semi-structured interviews with 45 Syrian participants (30 regular users; 15 business owners) and field observation. Transcripts were analysed abductively using a shared codebook and an excerpt-to-code-to-theme audit trail, and 12 stores (S01–S12) were photographed and coded using a 3-domain sign list (outdoor visual, indoor visual and non-visual) across an approximately 250 m corridor (five 50 m segments). Findings Belonging is sustained through recurring routines (shopping, eating, praying and socialising) reinforced by Arabic script and speech, music, food aromas and Syrian-coded material cues. Participants also expressed ambivalence about crowding and stylisation/commodification and noted governance constraints shaping public-facing expression. Overall, the corridor functions beyond commerce as a socially anchored migrant retail formation where identity is negotiated through multisensory atmospheres and semiotic performance, supporting a hybrid transclave reading. Research limitations/implications As a single-corridor qualitative case, findings are context-specific and not statistically generalisable; the 12-store inventory is not a full Geographic Information Systems (GIS) census. Nonetheless, the framework offers a replicable protocol for coding multisensory semiotic cues at street scale, supporting comparative studies and informing design and governance. Future work should test the framework longitudinally and integrate spatial analytics. Originality/value The paper introduces a transferable three-domain sign list and sign schema that extend predominantly visual social-semiotic approaches and enable systematic store-to-store comparison in migrant retail corridors.
Çohadar et al. (Fri,) studied this question.