Details

Subject(s)

• Turks—Germany (West)—Social conditions [Browse]
• Foreign workers—Germany (West)—Social conditions [Browse]
• Racism—Germany (West). [Browse]
• Turks—Migrations [Browse]
• Germany (West)—Ethnic relations [Browse]
• Germany (West)—Race relations [Browse]
• Germany (West)—Emigration and immigration [Browse]
• Turkey—Emigration and immigration—History—20th century [Browse]

Series

Publications of the German Historical Institute [More in this series]

Summary note

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.

Notes

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 04 Jun 2024).

Contents

• Introduction: The woman with the German house
• Sex, lies, and abandoned families
• Vacations across Cold War Europe
• Remittance machines
• Racism in Hitler's shadow
• The mass exodus
• Unhappy in the homeland
• Epilogue: The final return?

Show 5 more Contents items

ISBN

9781009486682 (ebook)

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