Files
Read More (8.9 MB)
Description
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 percent 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.
Michelle Lynn Kahn is Associate Professor of Modern European History at the University of Richmond. Her research examines post-1945 Germany and Europe in a global and transnational frame, focusing on migration, racism, far-right extremism, gender, and sexuality. She was awarded the 2019 Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize of the German Historical Institute and the 2022 Chester Penn Higby Prize of the American Historical Association.
ISBN
978-1-009-48671-2
Publication Date
2024
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
City
Cambridge
DOI
10.1017/9781009486682
School
School of Arts and Sciences
Department
History
Disciplines
European History | History | Political History | Social History
Recommended Citation
Kahn, Michelle Lynn, "Foreign in Two Homelands" (2024). Bookshelf. 401.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/401
Comments
© Michelle Lynn Kahn 2024
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, with the exception of the Creative Commons version the link for which is provided below, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. An online version of this work is published at doi.org/10.1017/9781009486682 under a Creative Commons Open Access license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 which permits re-use, distribution and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial purposes providing appropriate credit to the original work is given. You may not distribute derivative works without permission. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
When citing this work, please include a reference to the DOI 10.1017/9781009486682