Einstein Visiting Professor Fellowship: Özge Yaka

Einstein-Forscherinnengruppe "Migration, Flucht und Diaspora" am BIM

Forschungsvorhaben:
The proposed project investigates how recently arrived migrants to Berlin with a middle class background from Turkey deal with the realities of former migration waves from this country. Germany’s Turkish population is structured by patterns of labour recruitment shaping their sociodemograhic profile. In contrast to German Turks, recent arrivals tend to have higher education and often pursue a cosmopolitan lifestyle. As their European counterparts, they aim to live in Berlin's upcoming neighbourhoods such as Kreuzberg or Neukölln, which are home to significant numbers of Turkish immigrants of former waves of migration.

This established Turkish community presents both a problem and an opportunity for the newcomers. The dimension of opportunity was often emphasized in classical theories of migration, where newcomers benefit from ethnic networks of earlier cohorts. However, the new Turkish migrants are also highly aware of the public image of Turks in Germany, who have a rather negative reputation both in Germany and in Turkey. New Turks are thus caught up in a complex situation, in which they invent strategies to negotiate between their own prejudice, the ones they encounter in everyday situations or anticipated prejudices.

The proposed study will examine individual coping strategies (such as “passing” as European) and collective endeavors to construct a distinct identity (e.g. by (re-)creating social spaces such as certain famous bars from Istanbul, or through social media). These are conceptualised in the theoretical framework of strategies of “boundary making” (Wimmer). It will be of particular interest to observe whether or to what extent these processes also affect the image of Turkishness in the urban public of Berlin.