Dr Kevin Yildirim

Kevin Yildirim is a social anthropologist whose research focuses on migration, citizenship, work and labour, moral life under capitalism, and the anthropology of Turkey and the Middle East. His forthcoming book, Nativism at Work: Migrant Labor and Moral Authority in Istanbul’s Recycling Economy (Stanford University Press), is based on long-term fieldwork in Istanbul’s recycling sector and develops an ethnographic approach to nativism as a social relation. Set in recycling workplaces and public urban space, the book examines the relations of moral authority that structure encounters between citizens and non-citizens and among citizens of different ethnic backgrounds. It argues that claims to moral authority allow people to assert social precedence and legitimacy over others when political and economic guarantees are insecure, and that nativism is one of the most consequential forms this takes today. The book shows that nativism operates not only through overt xenophobia but through a broader range of orientations, including seemingly inclusive gestures, toward ethnic and political others.

He is currently working on a new ethnographic project on how long-term drought affects migration, economic mobility, and perceptions of the national interest in central Turkey.

For 2026–27, Kevin is a Departmental Lecturer in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography and College Lecturer in Anthropology at St John’s College. From 2023–26, he held a Research Fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in 2023. 

Publications

Yildirim, Kevin. Forthcoming. Nativism at Work: Migrant Labor and Moral Authority in Istanbul’s Recycling Economy. Stanford University Press. 

Yildirim, Kevin. 2025. "Waste Donations: Shopkeeper–Waste Picker Relations in Istanbul and the Limits of Hospitable Giving." Cultural Anthropology 40(3): 383–409.

Yildirim, Kevin. 2025. "The Denial of Moral Complexity: Accusations against Migrant Waste Pickers by Turkish Scrap Dealers in Istanbul." Journal of Cultural Economy 19(5): 738–752.