Reimagining the homeland: diasporic belonging among Turkish and Kurdish second generations in Italy

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the experiences of children of immigrants coming to Italy from Turkey. It does so by using in-depth interviews and looking at how they conceptualize their sense of belonging to their home country and the transnational ties that they maintain in relation to their parents’ experience. The participants in this research grew up in families whose intention was not to remain in Italy but to continue their journey to Germany. Like their parents, the second-generation members also want to build their lives in Germany, however, the meaning attributed to this place is very different. For these young people, Germany and its diasporas offer a source of identity. Put otherwise, in addition to what Germany can offer in terms of services and economic opportunities, they are also attracted to what diasporas can offer: being Turks and Kurds in Germany. By allowing them to reconnect with the cultural memories of their homeland and enjoy the opportunities and rights offered by a developed country, Germany becomes a diasporic homeland in which to plan a future, a place where, to quote one of them, “one feels at home in the heart of Europe”. The idea of a homeland, then, is not only transformed – it is duplicated.

KEYWORDS:

• Turkish and kurdish second generation
• transnational ties
• diaspora
• homeland
• Italy
• Germany

Acknowledgments

We thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which helped us to improve the manuscript and Inci Öykü Yener-Roderburg for her helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use a narrow definition of the term ‘second generation’: for our purposes, they are children born in the host country to two immigrant parents (King & Christou, 2010), or children who arrived in Italy before the age of 6 (Andall, 2002 as cited in King & Christou, 2010).

2 See Leonini and Rebughini (2010, 2012) for migration, family relationships and consumption practices.

3 In Turkish there are several words that correspond to homeland: vatan, memleket, anayurt, etc. The term memleket was used more in this research.

4 Bilateral agreements were signed with Germany in 1961, with Austria in 1964, and with France in 1966. Workers from Turkey were also admitted to Denmark, Switzerland, and the UK without any official labor recruitment agreement, whereas migration to Sweden was self-organized, as the agreement that was signed in 1967 never came into effect (Güveli et al., 2016).

5 Out of a population of 81 million Germans, 2.85 million have a Turkish-Kurdish family background. 1.5 million of these people have German citizenship and 1.35 million have a residence permit. They form the largest minority group in Germany, closely followed by ‘Germans’ from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics and Russia. A child born into a Turkish-Kurdish family has a right to dual citizenship, but must decide on one of them between the ages of 18 and 21. Application for citizenship requires participating in courses and passing an integration test (we would like to thank Professor Helma Lutz for this information).

6 PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party) is an armed organization based in Turkey and Iraq. Initially, its primary political demand was to achieve an independent Kurdish state (Stanton, 2016), but it subsequently changed it to a demand for equal rights and Kurdish autonomy in Turkey (White, 2015).

7 In line with the research question, the interview themes were based around perceptions and representations of the homeland. The means by which this perception was constructed is not the main focus of this study. For this reason, any social or other interpersonal networks through which the participants in the research developed the projective dimension of their homeland were not analyzed.

8 The first author is Turkish and all the interviews except one were conducted in Turkish.

9 While none of the participants were actively involved in politics, their migration aspirations were driven by both a lack of access to economic resources and the political-social environment in their country of origin.

10 See Van Bruinessen (1995) on the forced evacuations and destruction of villages, which resulted in large numbers of displaced people and Kurdish asylum seekers heading to European countries.

11 Almanya, Acı Vatan (Germany, Bitter Home) is a 1979 film directed by Şerif Gören, mostly shot in Berlin that portrays the dramatic lives of guest workers through a story of a marriage of convenience.

12 In 2020, the top 3 countries of origin were China, with 2,178 students (13.9% of the total number of international students), India, with 1,360 (8.7%), and Turkey, with 1,215 (7.7%). Young people from these three nations alone represent 30% of all international students in the Lombardy Region and its capital, Milan (Assolombarda Report, 2021).

13 During the interviews, several participants underlined the fact that in their homeland, the people who organize unauthorized migration to Europe charge different prices for different European countries, and Italy, among others, was one of the cheapest destinations. This situation also increases demand for Italy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gül Ince-Beqo

Gül Ince-Beqo holds a co-tutelle PhD in Sociology, Organization and Culture from the Catholic University of Milan and the Regent's University of London. Her research interests include, but are not limited to family migration, migrant integration policy and gender. Her articles are published on Migration Letters and Mondi Migranti. She conducted a year-long policy research at the CNEL (Italian National Council of Economics and Labour) analysing migrant integration policy frameworks in six European countries. Subsequently, she obtained a one-year research grant at the University of Bari as part of the ‘Prevenzione 4.0” project on migrant health protection in the Puglia Region. She is currently working as research fellow at the University of Urbino.

Maurizio Ambrosini

Maurizio Ambrosini, PhD, is professor of Sociology of Migration at the University of Milan, Department of Social and Political Sciences, and chargé d’enseignement at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France). He is also the editor of the journal ‘Mondi Migranti’, the Director of the Italian Summer School of Sociology of Migrations, and member of the National Council of Economy and Labour (CNEL). He is the author of more than 300 publications in the field of migration studies. His handbook, Sociologia delle migrazioni (2020, 3rd edition), has been adopted as the textbook in many Italian universities. In English he has published Irregular Migration and Invisible Welfare (Palgrave, 2013) and Irregular Immigration in Southern Europe. Actors, Dynamics and Governance (Palgrave, 2018). His articles have been published on several leading international journals.