The differential embodiment of home: Constructing and reconstructing identities among refugees

It has been twenty years since the first refugees moved to the new-built refugee estate in Tahtakallas, within the walled city of Nicosia, near Famagusta Gate. The attempt of the government in the 1980s was to renovate and rehabilitate the area. The present study¹ aims to explore the attitudes of these refugees towards their new place of residence eighteen years after their resettlement. Was a common place a sufficient factor to construct Tahtakallas as a new community in its residents' minds? This question is rigorously analysed in this paper following interviews taken from twenty-five Tahtakallas' residents aged from nine to eighty-six years old.