Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History

Michelle Lynn Kahn

doi:10.1017/9781009486682

Foreign in Two Homelands

Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History

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Michelle Lynn Kahn, University of Richmond, Virginia

Publisher:: Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:: August 2024
Print publication year:: 2024
Online ISBN:: 9781009486682
DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009486682
Creative Commons:: This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/creativelicenses

Subjects:: Middle East Studies, Area Studies, Twentieth Century European History, History, European Studies, Politics and International Relations, Middle East Government,Politics and Policy
Series:: Publications of the German Historical Institute

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What happens when migrants are rejected by the host society that first invited them? How do they return to a homeland that considers them outsiders? Foreign in Two Homelands explores the transnational history of Turkish migrants, Germany's largest ethnic minority, who arrived as 'guest-workers' (Gastarbeiter) between 1961 and 1973. By the 1980s, amid rising racism, neo-Nazis and ordinary Germans blamed Turks for unemployment, criticized their Muslim faith, and argued they could never integrate. In 1983, policymakers enacted a controversial law: paying Turks to leave. Thus commenced one of modern Europe's largest and fastest waves of remigration: within one year, 15% of the migrants—250,000 men, women, and children—returned to Turkey. Their homeland, however, ostracized them as culturally estranged 'Germanized Turks' (Almancı). Through archival research and oral history interviews in both countries and languages, Michelle Lynn Kahn highlights migrants' personal stories and reveals how many felt foreign in two homelands. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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