Intergenerational consequences of migration

Socio-economic, Family and Cultural Patterns of Stability and Change in Turkey and Europe

Ayse Guveli, Harry Ganzeboom, Lucinda Platt, Bernhard Nauck, Helen Baykara-Krumme, Sebnem Eroglu, Sait Bayrakdar, Efe K. Sözeri, Niels Spierings, Şebnem Eroğlu

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137501417
• eBook ISBN: 9781137501424
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Social Sciences

This book analyzes the impact of migration on the lives of multiple generations of 2000 Turkish families. Exploring education, marriage, fertility, friends, attitudes and religiosity, it reveals transformations and continuities in the lives of migrants and their families in Europe when compared to their non-migrant counterparts in Turkey.

Part I

1

Introduction: The Origins of Migration

A short history

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 Acısu, a village in Akçaabat. 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.

After working for several years in a tin can factory, Osman was injured while trying to rescue the misplaced cans under the machine; he lost two fingers of his left hand. He then found a job as a kitchen cleaner. Osman’s brother in Germany returned to Turkey for good in 1978, but Osman stayed in the Netherlands. He bought a house and brought his family. His son worked in the tin can factory for ten years before losing his job. His son married a distant relative from Turkey and is still living in Deventer. Of his four children, three are living in the Netherlands: one is a medical doctor, one is a poet, and one plays soccer. The fourth moved to work in Istanbul as project manager after she obtained her Master’s in Engineering.

Osman’s older daughter lives and works in Deventer in a beauty specialist shop; she married a Turk she met at high school. One of her four children has completed his studies to become a lawyer and all others are still studying. Osman’s younger daughter was sent back to Turkey to study in a Koran school to fulfil a cherished dream of guest workers: ‘We will go back one day’, they say. After completing her degree, she went to the Netherlands to do her Master’s and PhD. She then moved to the US as a university professor. Three of the husbands of Osman’s granddaughters are Turkish in origin, and one is a native Dutch man.

Osman bought a small piece of land and built a little house in Görele, a town in the west of Turkey. After his retirement, Osman and his wife cultivated olive trees there and moved back and forth between Deventer and Görele. They often wondered whether they would have had a hard but peaceful life had Osman stayed in Akçaabat. Osman died in 2000 at the age of 62.

Introduction

This short history is typical for many Turks in Europe. A majority of studies show that labour migrants from poorer countries and their descendants tend to end up at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder in countries of destination, and their cultural, political and religious incorporation remains slow, even in the second generation (Brynin and Guveli 2012; Fleischmann et al. 2012; Gungor et al. 2013; Guveli and Platt 2011; Kogan and Kalter 2006; Kristen, Reimer and Kogan 2008; Phalet and Heath 2010; Platt 2005b; Platt 2007; Platt 2009a; Platt 2009b; van Tubergen 2006a).

Reading these studies, we would be forgiven for thinking migration has no positive impact on migrants themselves. So if migration does not improve migrants’ lives or the lives of their children, why do they move, leaving the country and social networks behind? Would it have been better for them and their communities if they stayed put? Alternatively, these conclusions may derive from a tendency in the migration literature to focus on the ‘wrong’ questions from the point of view of identifying the gains and impacts of migration from the migrant’s own perspective.

Many studies miss an important aspect of international migration. The prevalence of return migration, the transnational character of today’s migration, and the complexities of migration chains are often studied as separate fields of interest, not as factors that complement studies of international migration. In addition, many studies ignore the comparison with and consequences on those who stay behind (Castles, De Haas and Miller 2014; Harzig and Hoerder 2009; Koser 2007). These lacunae in our knowledge of migration derive from a fundamental flaw in much migration research, particularly research driven by policy concerns (Amelina et al. 2012; Harzig and Hoerder 2009) which limits its perspective to those who arrive and, among these, to those who stay in their new country. The experience of this settler population is interesting and policy relevant, of course, but is limited for explaining migrant outcomes.

If we want to account for who moved, who stayed and who returned, and to map out the consequences of the migration decision on both the migrants and those left behind, we need to start from the population of origin. Most migrants move to improve their life chances and the life chances of their families compared to what they would have been without migrating. This calls for a causal analysis of migration in a counterfactual framework, asking what the migrants’ situation would have been had they decided not to migrate. We must also ask whether migrants, their children and grandchildren continue to display the behaviours and beliefs of their non-migrant counterparts or develop distinctive trajectories in response to the migration experience and destination context. To answer these questions, we develop a unique perspective and make two novel comparisons: first, a comparison across three family generations and second, a comparison of migrants and a control group of non-migrants in the origin society Turkey. Our unique findings allow us to answer the questions posed above.

This book investigates multiple domains of experience and intergenerational transmission, including education, occupation, entrepreneurship, marriage, fertility, friendship, religion, attitudes and identities. These central topics are contextualised by an overview of migration patterns and a detailed discussion of the regions from which the research design and sample derives. The various chapters approach the key question of the volume from different angles, testing relevant hypotheses derived from a general theoretical perspective (dissimilation from origins) developed below; they also draw on theories specific to the topic under discussion and to dominant disciplinary debates. In what follows in this opening chapter, we discuss the limitations of international migration studies and note the contribution of our study and its theoretical framework. Next, we discuss the potential of Turkish migration in Europe to fill the gaps in international migration studies. We conclude by outlining the topics of the individual chapters.

Limitations in migration research and our contribution

Scholars are searching for new perspectives across migration research. On the one hand, the limitations in our often-used theoretical and empirical approaches to understand migrant incorporation in destination countries have been the subject of heated debate, with calls made for a new theoretical understanding of the incorporation trajectories of different migrant groups and contexts. On the other hand, numerous discussions consider the new challenges in migrant transnationalism and note the problems of methodological nationalism in international migration studies. Many call for new methodologies to understand the causes and consequences of migration, rather than answering questions for policy purposes.

Another new perspective entering social mobility and transmission studies is the impact of one’s grandparents on one’s socio-economic attainment, attitudes and values. Generational change has been an important element of international migration studies, although these studies have often used migration and family generations interchangeably and both are predominantly based on two generations. This study extends analysis of family generations to at least three generations, allowing the incorporation of grandparental influences, among both migrants and non-migrants, as detailed below.

Search for new theoretical perspectives

Even though Thomas, and Znaniecki (1918) offered alternative explanations as early as a century ago, most studies on migration to Western Europe or the US have taken an assimilation (or ‘integration’) perspective, asking questions about the situation of migrants and their offspring in destination societies, especially the extent to which they become economically, culturally and socially indistinguishable from natives. To this end, they are compared to natives or to other migrant groups assumed to be on the same pathway to integration (albeit at a different stage).

Assimilation theory has recently been revived to incorporate the wider dynamics of American society (Alba and Nee 2003) and, additionally, segmented assimilation theory was developed to address some of the limitations of this theory (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). While the former claims differences between natives and migrants will fade linearly over time and generations, the latter asserts that the pace of acculturation and incorporation depends on the paths migrants and their descendants follow and on the context of reception (Portes and Zhou 1993). The importance of group characteristics has also been given weight in this theory, but explanations of assimilation mechanisms remain within the borders of destination countries.

A major criticism of both theories comes from European scholars noting their limited application to the European context. Schneider and Crul (2010) assert these assimilation theories were developed in and for the US. However, Europe comprises many destination countries with different policies on migration and migrant integration with a range of institutional and contextual diversity across countries (Ersanilli 2010; Koopmans, Michalowski and Waibel 2012). Crul and Schneider (2010) propose and test an alternative ‘comparative integration context theory’ in their study of the European second generation. Although this development encompasses the diversity of receiving country contexts and of sending countries, it does not bring a country of origin perspective to bear on the study, nor does it explain the changes experienced by the first generation.

Furthermore, theories in migration literature commonly approach migrants and the second generation as ‘people without history’ (Vermeulen 2010: 1224), implying the ‘baggage’ migrants bring from the origin countries and pass on to their children is not accounted for sufficiently in existing international migration studies. At the beginning of the 20th century, Thomas and Znaniecki (1918) focused on both destination and origin country contexts and individual characteristics to understand social change among migrants and those left behind. The inclusion of origin country characteristics has recently made a comeback in large-scale quantitative studies; yet these studies predominantly include fixed-time characteristics of the origin country to explain change in migrant lifestyles in the course of assimilation in the destination countries, as if the origin context were static. Of course, social change has also been taking place in the origin countries among those left behind, but this has rarely been taken into account in these studies on a large-scale.

Search for new empirical perspectives

Discussions of methodology and the search for research designs have mainly focused on transnational migrants and methodological nationalism. Since the last decades of the 20th century, studies of transnational migration have been popular (Waldinger 2013). Many researchers limit themselves to discussing the importance and magnitude of transnational activities, especially with respect to migrants’ locations in the destination countries (Guarnizo, Portes and Haller 2003; Levitt, DeWind and Vertovec 2003; Morawska 2003; Ostergaard-Nielsen 2003; Portes 2003; Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt 1999; Waldinger and Fitzgerald 2004). Such studies shed light on the substantial consequences of globalisation in migration processes and its effects on individual migrants (Levitt, DeWind and Vertovec 2003; Levitt 2003; Levitt 2007).

Cross-border connections and transnational activities are not new, but their conceptualisation is a relatively new perspective in migration studies (Portes 2003; Waldinger and Fitzgerald 2004). Many acknowledge the novelty of the transnational perspective in migration studies but argue scholars exaggerate the impact of transnational activities on migrant incorporation in destination and origin societies. Studies show, for example, that in the US, migrants’ transnational activities are marginal but this varies for different migrant groups (Portes 2003; Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt 1999; Waldinger 2013).

Transnational migration studies tend to be overwhelmingly limited to qualitatively oriented research and although there are some novel empirical studies (Levitt 2007; Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt 1999), they mostly represent small-scale, ethnographic work. Large-scale surveys are scarce, resulting in a lack of representative data to reveal the scale of cross-border activities. Hence, it is hard to draw conclusions about their impact or relevance to migrants’ lives. Simply stated, there is an ongoing need for large-scale research on transnationalism. Although our study is not solely on transnationalism, our unique research design enables us to include transnational activities in our investigation of different domains of interest in order to understand the implications of the whereabouts of migrants and their offspring.

Another key methodological discussion in migration research is found, for instance, in the work of Amelina and Faist (2012) and their colleagues (Amelina et al. 2012; FitzGerald 2012; Horvath 2012; Meeus 2012; Schrooten 2012; Shinozaki 2012; Zirh 2012). These researchers take a critical look at studies on migration and point out the need for new research designs to capture the pathways of causal relationships in international migration. They highlight two key limitations in existing studies.

First, they discuss the difficulties involved in capturing the complexity of international migration and floating populations using limited time and resources to include people who are moving across borders and who do not show up in registers (Meeus 2012; Shinozaki 2012; Zirh 2012). For example, if we only rely on destination country surveys, undocumented and return migrants cannot be found with samples taken from registers or obtained by scanning specific high-density regions. Studies on migration need to include origin, destination and possibly various other sites to examine undocumented and return international migrants and to cover a longer time span if the complexities of international and internal migration are to be unravelled (Meeus 2012). Our study locates men¹ within a fixed birth cohort in multiple sending sides and follows them and their offspring in various destinations.

Second, they note that the nation-state and its policies are at the centre of research on migration, and migration processes are generally explained using the terminologies...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part  I
• Part  II
• Part  III
• Part  IV
• Part  V
• Appendices
• Notes
• References
• Index