This book examines a series of tandem language classes which apply the principles of Intergroup Contact Theory (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew, 1998). Native Germans and Turkish immigrants taught each other their respective mother tongue. Statistical analyses reveal reduction of prejudice for course participants relative to a group of non-participants.
Essay from the year 2006 in the subject History of Europe - Newer History, European Unification, grade: 2.1, University of Manchester (School for Languages, Linguistics and Cultures), language: English, abstract: Nuri Sahin loves playing Football, and the 17 years old young man is fortunate, for he can actually make a living from this love. He is Germany's youngest professional player. Pundits regard the Borussia Dortmund forward as one of the greatest German footballing talents ever. However, if Turkey had qualified for the final round, Nuri Sahin would have been playing for them in the World Cup 2006 tournament in Germany. Although he was born in Germany and grew up in the small German town of Lüdenscheid, he still has decided to remain a Turkish citizen and play for Turkey rather than for Germany. “I am one hundred percent Turkish”, said Nuhin in a newspaper interview1, “although there is undeniably a part of me that is German.” He is by no means the only one. Other members of Turkey's national team who were born and who are still living in Germany have also decided against playing for the country of their birth. Born in Germany, raised in Germany, educated in Germany and growing old in Germany, but still feeling Turkish rather than German – that sums up not only what Nuri Sahin sees as his identity, but also the way a significant proportion of the 1.76 Million2 Turks currently living in Germany feel about themselves. Turks constitute by far the largest group of immigrants in Germany. In the following text I will take a closer look into the situation of the Turkish Community in Germany, the way it has established itself and the problems and conflicts it experiences within German society.
Contributors Introduction 3 1 Islamophobia and Muslim Recognition in Britain 19 2 Islam in France: The Shaping of a Religious Minority 36 3 The Turks in Germany: From Sojourners to Citizens 52 4 Islam in Switzerland: Fragmented Accommodation in a Federal Country 72 5 Integration through Islam? Muslims in Norway 88 6 From "People's Home" to "Multiculturalism": Muslims in Sweden 101 7 Globalization in Reverse and the Challenge of Integration: Muslims in Denmark 121 8 Muslims in Italy 131 9 Islam in the Netherlands 144 10 Islam and Muslims in Europe: A Silent Revolution toward Rediscovery 158 11 Muslims in American Public Life 169 12 Representation of Islam in the Language of Law: Some Recent U.S. Cases 187 13 Interface between Community and State: U.S. Policy toward the Islamists 205 14 Multiple Identities in a Pluralistic World: Shi'ism in America 218 15 South Asian Leadership of American Muslims 233 16 Continental African Muslim Immigrants in the United States: A Historical and Sociological Perspective 250 17 Crescent Dawn in the Great White North: Muslim Participation in the Canadian Public Sphere 262 18 Mexican Muslims in the Twentieth Century: Challenging Stereotypes and Negotiating Space 278 Bibliography 293 Index 311.
This book examines the construction and articulation of diasporic cultural identity among the Turkish working-class youth in Kreuzberg (Little Istanbul), Berlin. This work primarily suggests that the contemporary diasporic consciousness is built on two antithetical axes: particularism and universalism. The presence of this dichotomy derives from the unresolved historical dialogues that the diasporic youths experience between continuity and disruption, essence and positionality, tradition and translation, homogeneity and difference, past and future, 'here' and 'there', 'roots' and 'routes', and local and global.
Turkish Guest Workers in Germany tells the post-war story of Turkish "guest workers," whom West German employers recruited to fill their depleted ranks. Jennifer A. Miller's unique approach starts in the country of departure rather than the country of arrival and is heavily informed by Turkish-language sources and perspectives. Miller argues that the guest worker program, far from creating a parallel society, involved constant interaction between foreign nationals and Germans. These categories were as fluid as the Cold War borders they crossed. Miller's extensive use of archival research in Germany, Turkey and the Netherlands examines the recruitment?of workers, their travel, initial housing and work engagements, social lives, and involvement in labour and religious movements. She reveals how contrary to popular misconceptions, the West German government attempted to maintain a humane, foreign labour system and the workers themselves made crucial, often defiant, decisions. Turkish Guest Workers in Germany identifies the Turkish guest worker program as a postwar phenomenon that has much to tell us about the development of Muslim minorities in Europe and Turkey's ever-evolving relationship with the European Union.
In Cosmopolitan Anxieties, Ruth Mandel explores Germany’s relation to the more than two million Turkish immigrants and their descendants living within its borders. Based on her two decades of ethnographic research in Berlin, she argues that Germany’s reactions to the postwar Turkish diaspora have been charged, inconsistent, and resonant of past problematic encounters with a Jewish “other.” Mandel examines the tensions in Germany between race-based ideologies of blood and belonging on the one hand and ambitions of multicultural tolerance and cosmopolitanism on the other. She does so by juxtaposing the experiences of Turkish immigrants, Jews, and “ethnic Germans” in relation to issues including Islam, Germany’s Nazi past, and its radically altered position as a unified country in the post–Cold War era. Mandel explains that within Germany the popular understanding of what it means to be German is often conflated with citizenship, so that a German citizen of Turkish background can never be a “real German.” This conflation of blood and citizenship was dramatically illustrated when, during the 1990s, nearly two million “ethnic Germans” from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union arrived in Germany with a legal and social status far superior to that of “Turks” who had lived in the country for decades. Mandel analyzes how representations of Turkish difference are appropriated or rejected by Turks living in Germany; how subsequent generations of Turkish immigrants are exploring new configurations of identity and citizenship through literature, film, hip-hop, and fashion; and how migrants returning to Turkey find themselves fundamentally changed by their experiences in Germany. She maintains that until difference is accepted as unproblematic, there will continue to be serious tension regarding resident foreigners, despite recurrent attempts to realize a more inclusive and “demotic” cosmopolitan vision of Germany.
One of the foremost scholars on Turkish migration, the author offers in this work the summary of her experiences and research on Turkish migration since 1963. During these forty years her aim has been threefold: to explain the journeys made by thousands of Turkish men and women to foreign lands out of choice, necessity, or invitation; to shed light on the difficulties they faced; and to elaborate on how their lives were affected by the legal, political, social, and economic measures in the countries where they settled. The extensive research done both in Turkey and in Europe into the lives of individuals directly and indirectly affected by the migration phenomenon and the examination of these research results further enhances the value of this wide-ranging study as a definitive reference work.
TURKISH MIGRATION POLICY, edited by Ibrahim Sirkeci and Barbara Pusch, aims to shed light on changes in migration policy, determinants beneath these changes, and practical implications for movers and non-movers in Turkey. Nevertheless, one should note that Turkey has only recently faced mass immigration and the number of foreign born has more than doubled in less than five years. Such sudden change in population composition warrants policy adjustments and reviews. Policy shift from "exporting excess labour" in the 1960s and 1970s to immigrant integration today is a drastic but necessary one. Nevertheless, Turkish migration policy is still far from settled as several chapters in this book point out. Despite the exemplary humanitarian engagement in admitting Syrians, Turkey is still at the bottom of the league table of favourable integration policies with an overall score of 25 out of 100. Turkish migration policy is likely to be adjusted further in response to the continuing immigration.
