Browsing by Author "Kars-Unluoglu, Selen"

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Management Educators' Identity Play
(Sage Publications Ltd, 2026) Kars-Unluoglu, Selen; Guneri Cangarli, Burcu; Turner, Arthur; Kempster, Steve; Trehan, Kiran
This article critically examines how management educators navigate the certainty-emergence paradox through identity play in their work. Drawing on a 14-month collaborative autoethnographic study, we show how educators experiment with provisional selves to work through classroom tensions. Our analysis reveals that identity play enables educators to experiment with a spectrum of identities to traverse paradoxes without seeking closure in classroom practice. We surface the individual, institutional, and relational conditions that shape identity play. With this, we contribute to management learning and education literature by showing how identity play offers moments of agency and creativity in navigating paradoxes. We problematise this process by foregrounding the institutional insecurities, hegemonic logics, and subtle coercions that constrain the scope for genuine autonomy. Identity play emerges here not as a simple solution, but as a precarious, emotionally charged act of resistance - an ongoing negotiation with paradoxes that can expose educators to vulnerability and self-doubt. We redefine identity play as a fragile, contingent practice that enables situated agency rather than complete emancipation. We invite further inquiry into how identity play can be cultivated as a critical strategy for addressing institutional paradoxes in various educational and organisational settings.
Citation - WoS: 1
Citation - Scopus: 1
Migrants as Dissonant Harmony-Seekers and Migrant Life in Foam
(Emerald Group Publishing Ltd, 2023) Kars-Unluoglu, Selen; Cangarli, Burcu Guneri; Yurt, Oznur; Gencer, Mehmet
Purpose Migration of the Turkish new middle-class - high-skilled, well-educated, young professionals - has been growing in recent years. This paper explores their migration experience and discusses the role of physical and virtual bubbles in the formation of transnational communities and processes of adjustment to a new place. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on a qualitative inquiry collecting data via semi-structured interviews with 18 London-based Turkish migrants and a digital ethnographic study of three Facebook groups that bring together the Turkish migrant community in Richmond, London. Findings Findings indicate that the migration of the new middle class differs conceptually from existing typologies. The paper proposes the concept of dissonant harmony-seekers and elaborates on their interactions to demonstrate that, in the Internet age, the traditional image of migrants living in isolated localised bubbles is no longer accurate. Findings also indicate a pragmatic and functional engagement with the bubbles, with migrants sporadically interacting with the bubbles to meet their individual needs in information, education and employment. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature with the concept of dissonant harmony-seekers, which will gain more visibility in a world where the trend of democratic decline and rising authoritarianism will motivate a migratory move for people who confront a moral dissociation from the civil order in their homeland. The engagement of dissonant harmony-seekers with migrant communities challenges the conventional thinking that social identity is central to creating and maintaining bubbles. The other contribution of the paper to the literature is the metaphor of foam to capture the ephemeral and fugacious nature of the dynamics of migrant communities and practices.