German Turks in Berlin: Social exclusion and strategies for social mobility

Abstract

Using the lens of transnational social fields of migration, this thesis examines and scrutinizes motivations, adaptations, transnational practices, and the lived experiences of Ethiopian migrants in Turkey and returnees in Ethiopia. The present day Ethiopian migration to Turkey is intricately associated with the broader domains of transnationalism such as economic, social, cultural, political fields, as well as historical processes in which Ethiopian migrants engaged in their daily activities. The thesis empirically and theoretically examines a fundamental and salient research question: how do Ethiopians, as individuals and group, perceive, act, and interact in the transnational social fields (most often unequally distributed) while living in Turkey and after returning home? The thesis is carried out based on the existing knowledge of socio-cultural anthropology of migration, multi-sited ethnographic research and qualitative approach. Tools such as participant observation and a variety of interviews were employed to collect data from a group of Ethiopian educatıon and labor migrants living in Turkey (Ankara and Istanbul) and returnees in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa).The research findings reveal that Ethiopians in Turkey maintained two ways of connection: adaptation/integration to the Turkish society and transnational attachment to homeland but with different level of adaptation, and transnational experiences & practices. The social fields in which Ethiopians engaged in transnational practices, the fields that they constructed, reconstructed, and maintained between host and home countries are unequally distributed as they do not have the same experiences, capacity, skills, opportunities, and legality to play. As Ethiopians moved to Turkey with varying motivations and aims, they did so return home with varying motivations, transnational experiences and capital. Returnees, adding new ones, maintained transnational practices that they created while living in Turkey, and with the capital and experiences they accumulated in Turkey and brought with them, they acted as agents of social change in their homeland.

Transnational lives, transnational marriages: a review of the evidence from migrant communities in Europe

“…He has made it. In these contrasting images, we find a major motive for why many migrants live transnational lives: why, even while they have acquired residence in a new country, they do not cut their old ties and networks (Çağlar 1995;Goldring 1997). An important stimulus is the status discrepancy that migrants experience.…”

Mobile phone parenting: Reconfiguring relationships between Filipina migrant mothers and their left-behind children

“…Yet, most decide to prolong their migration. This may be for the furtherance of economic and symbolic capital (Caglar, 1995), self--improvement and to gain respect. There may remain incessant demands from wider networks of relatives and friends which they can never fulfil.…”

Writing against Europe: On the Necessary Decline of Ethnomusicology. By Martin Greve. Translated by Férdia J. Stone-Davis.

“…Any disturbance in this unity is expected to result in crisis, breakdown or degeneration." 20 In general, the borders of a specific culture were not thematized further, the spaces between cultures were interpreted as historically unstable exceptions or as a movement from one cultural system to another. 21 This century-long taken-for-granted holistic concept of culture was increasingly brought into question in the 1990s-as was the de facto identification of ethnicity and (music) culture.…”