Şebnem Eroğlu

2,000 Families: Identifying the research potential of an origins-of-migration study

ABSTRACT Despite recent advances, critical areas in the analysis of European migration remain underdeveloped. We have only a limited understanding of the consequences of migration for migrants and their descendants, relative to staying behind; and our insights of intergenerational transmission is limited to two generations of those living in the destination countries. These limitations stem from a paucity of studies that incorporate comparison with non-migrants – and return migrants – in countries of origin and which trace processes of intergenerational transmission over multiple generations. This paper outlines the theoretical and methodological discussions in the field, design and data of the 2,000 Families study. The study comprises almost 50,000 members of migrant and non-migrant Turkish families across three family generations, living in Turkey and eight European countries. We provide indicative findings from the study, framed within a theoretical perspective of “dissimilation” from origins, and reflect on its potential for future migration research.

Trapped in small business? An investigation of three generations of migrants from Turkey to Western Europe

ABSTRACT This article examines the self-employment behaviour of three generations of migrants from Turkey living in Europe to understand its implications for their economic adaptation into the receiving societies. It specifically investigates the likely generational differences in their propensity to engage in small businesses and the extent to which they are transmitted across generations. The research is based on the 2000 Families Survey, which draws parallel samples of migrant and non-migrant families from their origins in Turkey and traces them across Turkey and Europe over multiple generations. The data are drawn from a subset of personal interviews with 1743 economically active settlers nested within 836 families. The results challenge the assimilation theory but lend support to the disadvantage thesis by demonstrating that the younger generations, including the better educated, are significantly engaged in small, low-status businesses of their parents regardless of their language proficiency, citizenship status and country of residence.ABSTRACTThis article examines the self-employment behaviour of three generations of migrants from Turkey living in Europe to understand its implications for their economic adaptation into the receiving societies. It specifically investigates the likely generational differences in their propensity to engage in small businesses and the extent to which they are transmitted across generations. The research is based on the 2000 Families Survey, which draws parallel samples of migrant and non-migrant families from their origins in Turkey and traces them across Turkey and Europe over multiple generations. The data are drawn from a subset of personal interviews with 1743 economically active settlers nested within 836 families. The results challenge the assimilation theory but lend support to the disadvantage thesis by demonstrating that the younger generations, including the better educated, are significantly engaged in small, low-status businesses of their parents regardless of their language proficiency, citize...

Occupational Status Attainment

Over 50 years ago, large-scale Turkish migration to Western Europe started as institutionalised labour migration or the ‘guest worker’ system. At that time, factories, with the help of Turkish government agencies, started contracting Turkish workers to work in those industries suffering from a shortage of domestic employees. Turkish migrant workers took up jobs that were hitherto unknown to them and thus became occupationally mobile, almost by default. But little is, in fact, known about the distribution of the occupational and family backgrounds of these workers. The prevailing view is that recruitment was targeted at unskilled workers, predominantly with rural, if not agricultural backgrounds, whose occupational mobility after migration was, on average, upward (Castles and Miller 2009). However, in line with theories of migrant occupational mobility, the guest-worker system may have also attracted skilled and even professional workers, who gave up their initial calling in favour of better wages (but worse jobs) (Akresh 2008; Chiswick, Lee and Miller 2005). Using the 2000 Families study data, we can investigate how far Turkish migrants were positively selected by comparison with non-migrants from the same region, and even other members of the same families. This, in turn, will help us identify the implications for occupational mobility across generations (Ichou 2014).

Friends and Social Networks

This chapter addresses the impact of migration on the size and composition of migrants’ social networks. Social networks, including acquaintanceships and informal contacts, friends and kin based ties, are a source of extensive sociological research for their significance in social mobility and status maintenance (Coleman 1988; Lin 1999), as well as their role in social support (see e.g. Seeman and Berkman 1988) and wellbeing, broadly defined (see e.g. Christakis and Fowler 2013). As Bourdieu (1997) has famously argued, forms of capital, including social capital, are ‘fungible’; hence, social networks can both enhance and interact with economic resources and human capital (Boxman et al. 1991). These complementarities between social networks and other embodied or asset-based resources can potentially render social networks especially salient for migrants (Aguilera and Massey 2003). At the same time, migration is likely to disrupt and transform the scale, type and meaning of social contacts that can be accessed in the destination context. The extent of such disruption and transformation is the key question in the ensuing analysis.

The Five Regions of Origin in Turkey

The regions covered by the ‘2000 Families’ study are in five of the 81 provinces of Turkey: Acipayam (province of Denizli), Emirdag (province of Afyon), Kulu (province of Konya), Şarkisla (province of Sivas), and Akcaabat (province of Trabzon) (see also the discussion in Chapter 2). In this chapter, we introduce these five regions, discuss their locations, note the migration patterns in the 1960s and 1970s and comment on their previous and current state of development. This discussion provides a rich context for the analysis of migrant and non-migrant outcomes that follows in the book and paints the backdrop for the transnational links that persist to the present time.

Research Design and Data

The data on which this book is based were collected for the 2000 Families: Migration Histories of Turks in Europe project. The unique design of the study can be characterised as origin-oriented, multi-site and multi-generational. It is origin-oriented because we focus on migrants and their descendants in European countries alongside their comparators who stayed behind in Turkey. It is multi-site because it starts in five distinct origin regions and traces migrants in nine main European destination countries: Germany, France, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Finally, it is multi-generational because we start with the cohort of labour migrants, born between 1920 and 1945, who moved to Europe between 1961 and 1974. We identify them and their equivalent, non-migrant comparators and trace both lineages over generations, following their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren wherever they are on the globe.

Migration and Return Migration

Simply stated, the Turkish migrant population in Europe is large. In 2010, more than 1.6 million Turks lived in Germany, more than 450,000 in France, more than 370,000 in the Netherlands, and in excess of 110,000 in Austria. In total, more than 2.9 million Turks lived in the countries of the EU, with more than 56 per cent of these in Germany. These figures do not include naturalised European Union citizens of Turkish origin. Until 1973, when the period of labour recruitment by European countries ended, Turkish migration virtually equated to migration to Europe. Thereafter, it diversified considerably, first to Arab countries and then to other countries after 1990. Migration to Europe peaked at about 130,000 three times, in 1970 and 1974 just before and right after the stop of labour recruitment and again in 1992. Since 1992, Turkish migration has been continuously in decline (Icduygu 2008).

Introduction: The Origins of Migration

Osman worked in a tea factory in Turkey. He was married with three children, two daughters and a son. His father was dead and his brother had moved to Europe. They used to work in the tobacco fields in Acisu, a village in Akcaabat. But in the 1960s, the tobacco fields were badly damaged by blue mould, causing many men to look elsewhere for work. Osman secretly wanted to move to Europe; although his wife supported him, his mother was worried that her sons would lose their belief and get lost in a non-Islamic land. His application was initially declined because he was diagnosed as having anaemia; as luck would have it, the officer said they desperately needed workers, but gave him a very short time to prepare his move. He quickly convinced his mother and said goodbye to his wife and children.

Attitudes towards Gender Equality

Migration and integration debates in society and politics are focusing more and more on the issues of gender inequality in both origin societies and migrant communities (Ayers 2007; Crul, Schneider and Lelie 2013; Fekete 2006; Ghorashi 2010; Prins and Saharso 2008; Roggeband and Verloo 2007). Academia has shown increasing interest as well, in particular, in the role of Islam in shaping gender equality attitudes (Alexander and Welzel 2011; Crul, Schneider and Lelie 2013; Diehl et al. 2009; Huschek, De Valk and Liefbroer 2011; Norris and Inglehart 2012; Read 2003; Roder 2014; Scheible and Fleischmann 2013; Teney 2009). This growing literature, however, focuses on differences in support for gender equality between natives and migrants in destination societies, asking whether migrants have assimilated to destination country norms. It ignores how these attitudes are perpetuated from the origin society or how migration influences the reproduction of gender equality attitudes within the household or family. Yet the family as a site for social reproductions is particularly important in migrant communities, given the family-oriented cultures of many origin societies, including Turkey (Nauck 1989; Schonpflug 2001; Schwartz 1992; Spierings 2014).