RE-MEMBERING GERMANY AT HOME: TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF RETURN MIGRANTS THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHS AND LIFE STORIES

Download

Irmak_Evren_PhD.pdf

Date

2023-3-31

Author

Evren, Irmak

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

317
views

417
downloads

Turkish migration to Germany that started in the early 1960s was essentially a response to a call concerning demand for labour on a temporary basis. By the time economic crisis hit and followed by a further recruitment ban,an act in 1983 was officially introduced as a return incentive to mainly unemployed migrants in Germany. Since the myth of return eventually turns into a reality, Turkish migrant workers return rather than being a rupture in the migratory cycle, becomes a continuation of migration, endowed with transnationality which emphasizes on the individual links that returnees forge with host country that stretch to their post return lives. In this regard, questioning returnees ties with hostland, this study focuses on the mnemonic links of eleven first and second generation Turkish return migrants from Germany to understand the role of host country in their present setting. As traveling memories, narration of a past reproduces their ties with the country left behind through incorporating its memory image in homeland, constructing usable pasts that allow for their translation into practices, mentality, ideas that inhabit present setting, while shaping their sense of belonging to both home and hostland selectively. In addition, as vehicles of memory, family photo albums of returnees would be used since they are dynamic in sense of interpreting past, most commonly expressed through articulation of the past, comparison between there and here, negotiation incorporating past into present, unravelling what they represent in returnees imaginary. Therefore, this study mainly draws upon life story interviews with a thematic on hostland and photo elicitation method to understand the memory work of the returnees that unfolds their multiple relations with Germany.

Subject Keywords

Transnationalism, Return Migration, Memory, Photography, Life Story

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/102773

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Home Country Parliamentary Representation of Diasporas: The Case of Turkey Yedekçi Schelhaas, Ayşe; Ayata, Ayşe; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2021-10-25) Turkey’s diaspora in Europe, constituting around five million citizens, has been central to Turkish domestic politics since the early days of mass labour migration in the 1960s. The Turkish Parliament, as the ultimate representative body, has played a crucial role both in shaping diaspora policies and defining who “the diaspora” is as individual MPs and party groups have placed diaspora-related issues high on the agenda, integrating these issues into various legislative processes. This dissertation looks at...
Labor Market Experience in a "Pseudo-Home" Country: Turkish Immigrants in Northern Cyprus Besim, Mustafa; Ekici, Tufan; Guven-Lisaniler, Fatma (2015-07-03) In this study we analyze the labor market experiences of Turkish immigrants in Northern Cyprus. Northern Cyprus presents a unique example for Turkish migrants, as many traditional obstacles (language barrier, cultural and ethnic differences and non-transferability of human capital) for immigrant laborers are not applicable since Turkish immigrants have ethnic and cultural similarities to native citizens and Turkey is considered the motherland of Northern Cyprus. Nonetheless, significant differences between ...
Return migration to Turkey: identity problem and changes in the concept of nation Kayıhan, Bahar; Yalvaç, Faruk; Department of International Relations (2011) This study examines the changing concept of nation and the identity problem for the workers that turned back to Turkey. Starting from 1960s, lots of workers migrated to European countries as a solution to the problem of unemployment in Turkey. The migrants brought their families with them and got accustomed to living abroad. However statistics prove that a group of migrants returned back to Turkey. Eventually, an identity problem emerged for the returned migrants and they experienced a confusion and ambigui...
Savings motive in immigration: An empirical analysis Kırdar, Murat G. (Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (Ankara, Turkey), 2007-6-1) This paper reviews the literature on the causes of migration decisions and examines the Turkish and ex-Yugoslavian guestworker migration to Germany in this context. The literature and empirical facts strongly suggest that the most important cause of immigration for these groups of migrants was the savings motive. Using a rich longitudinal dataset on these groups of immigrants, I establish this connection between migration and savings behavior using empirical methods.
Brain drain from Turkey: an investigation of students' return intentions GÜNGÖR, NİL DEMET; Tansel, Aysıt (2008-01-01) The emigration of skilled individuals from Turkey attracted greater media attention and the interest of policymakers in Turkey, particularly after the experience of recurrent economic crises that have led to an increase in unemployment among the highly educated young. This study estimates a model of return intentions using a data set compiled from an Internet survey of Turkish students residing abroad. The findings of this study indicate that, as expected, higher salaries offered in the host country and lif...

Citation Formats

I. Evren, “RE-MEMBERING GERMANY AT HOME: TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF RETURN MIGRANTS THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHS AND LIFE STORIES,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2023.