Does education ‘trump’ nationality? Boundary-drawing practices among highly educated migrants from Turkey

ABSTRACT

Inspired by a super-diversity approach, this paper seeks to explore the influence of the ‘ethnic hierarchy’ of ‘old’ minority groups over the way ‘new’ migrants from Turkey negotiate their interaction in the daily life in three settings: Amsterdam, London and Barcelona. By focusing on highly educated migrants from Turkey who by virtue of their country of origin or religion are positioned at the bottom of ‘ethnic hierarchies’, it strives to understand the significance of these different sources of diversity in daily interaction. Applying boundary-drawing strategies developed for ethnic boundaries, this paper argues that education does not necessarily ‘trump’ nationality, but allows for substantial claims of difference. New migrants from Turkey carve out a space for themselves by on the one hand homogenizing Turkish or other Muslim communities through attributing ‘unwanted’ behaviours and on the other re-defining the boundaries of their individual identity with emphasis on different sources of diversity.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity
• migration
• boundary-making
• Turkey
• ethnic hierarchy

Acknowledgements

I am very thankful to the journal's editors and the anonymous referees for their constructive feedback. I would also like to thank the participants and organizers of the MiReKoc 10th Year Symposium Borders, Mobility, Diversity: Old Questions, New Challenges where I presented an earlier version of this article on 21 November 2014. I am most grateful to Zeynep Ülker Kasli, Elif Keskiner and Julia Martinez-Ariño for their encouraging words and helpful suggestions on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Council Directive 2009/50/EC of 25 May 2009 on the conditions of entry and residence of third country nationals for the purposes of highly qualified employment, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:155:0017:0029:EN:PDF.

2. See for two examples, British Prime Minister Cameron's speech: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/1575; or the former president of the EU Commission Barroso's speech: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/1575; http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2011/10/10/david-cameron-immigration-speech-in-full (Accessed 26 August 2012).

3. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Main_countries_of_citizenship_and_birth_of_the_foreign_foreign-born_population,_1_January_2013_%281%29_%28in_absolute_numbers_and_as_a_percentage_of_the_total_foreign_foreign-born_population%29_YB14_II.png (Accessed 4 April 2015).

4. See the note 3.

5. See note 3.

6. Author's own calculation on the basis of national and regional statistics institutes: www.ons.gov.uk; www.cbs.nl; www.idescat.cat (Accessed 13 October 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the KU Leuven Research Council within the framework of Impulsfinanciering.