An Ethnography of Turkish-German Adolescent Girls in Berlin, Germany
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING, BICULTURAL CITIZENSHIP, AND IDENTITY: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF TURKISH-GERMAN ADOLESCENT GIRLS IN BERLIN, GERMANY BY HILLARY ANNE MELCHIORS Submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY August 2014 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of Hillary Anne Melchiors candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Committee Chair Atwood D. Gaines Committee Member Jill E. Korbin Committee Member Eileen A. Anderson-Fye Committee Member Kenneth Ledford Date of Defense 3/10/2014 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. 2 This dissertation is dedicated to the six participants in this project. For your generocity, honesty, and kindness I will be eternally grateful. 3 Table of Contents List of Tables 5 List of Figures 6 Acknowledgements 7 Dissertation Abstract 8 1. Introduction 11 2. Background 25 3. Research Design and Methods 112 4. Location of Study and Participants 122 5. Subjectivity and Bicultural Citizenship 161 6. Subjective Well-Being: Expectations and Problematic Encounters 205 7. Citizenship Law, Integration, & Counting 243 8. Identity and Representation 282 9. The Future 318 10. Conclusion 336 Appendix A: German Citizenship Law (In German and translated into English) 348 Appendix B; Interview Schedule 322 Appendix C: Video Diary Instructions 321-325 Works Cited 352 4 List of Tables Table 1 Total Immigrant Population in Germany ages 11-19 87 Table 2 Total Immigrant Population in Berlin ages 11-19 89 Table 3 Berlin Resident Population 91 Table 4 Benefits from Hartz IV/1,000 in Berlin 92 Table 5 Selected Neighborhood Populations in Berlin by Country of Origin 94 Table 6 Selected Neighborhood Populations in Berlin by Migration Background 95 Table 7 Marriages Between Germans & Foreigners 244 5 Figures Figure 1 Modified Bronfenbrenner Model 83 Figure 2 School Graduation Rates by Migration Background 232 Figure 3 Collage 282-284 6 Acknowledgments Along the path toward my dissertation I have had a tremendous amount of support from a number of people that I would like to recognize. First is my husband Andrew Melchiors, without whose support none of this would have ever been possible. His encouragement and compassion have allowed me to reach heights that I never imagined without him, and I am eternally grateful to him for his help in all things. My children Annika and Mayzie Melchiors have also been a great help to me, especially in remembering what is really important in life when I felt despair during my academic journey. They are the lights of my life, and I cannot imagine navigating graduate school without them along for the ride. My mother Deborah Wilson is my consummate and constant cheerleader who never let me forget that I have great potential. My father Ron Vogt’s ear has been bent more than a time or two along the way, and I am so grateful for his reminding me that education is something that no one can ever take away from you and is a true achievement to be proud of. The entirety of the rest of my family has also been extremely supportive through this whole process, even if they didn’t really understand what the heck I was doing most of the time. Thanks goes especially to Kim and Fred Melchiors, Valerie Vogt, and Justin and Nicole Vogt who have all supported me without reservation for my entire graduate school endeavor. I would also like to thank my astute advisor Atwood D. Gaines and the rest of my committee Jill E. Korbin and Eileen Anderson-Fye for their invaluable insights and patience with me throughout this process. Their expertise and guidance has been indispensable for funding proposals, fieldwork freak-outs, dissertation research breakthroughs, and career path advice. Thank you for all of the letters of 7 recommendation and comments on my writing that I received, and I feel extremely lucky to be able to now call you my colleagues. It would not have been possible to have survived getting my PhD without the help of some amazing friends. Thank you to Kristi Ninneman for always listening and helping me work through my issues. Thank you to Sarah Rubin for helping keep me sane and always being willing to have a work date with me. Thank you to Stephanie McClure for keeping me humble and our great conversations on your back porch. Thank you to Meg Winchester for porch talks that I never wanted to end. Thank you to Meghan Halley and Nadia El-Shaarawi for showing me how to make it happen with a smile on my face. Thank you to Amy Rezac, Anna Fiskin, Jonathan Metcalfe, Prisca Fall, Stacey McKenna, and Aura Newlin for being part of the best cohort I could have ever imagined. Lastly, thank you to Ruth Magtanong who was also in our cohort, for being there for our family when we couldn’t be together and for being our live-in nanny in Germany for a month. To all of my friends, a big thank you for many late night conversations and shared life moments that I will never forget from my time during graduate school. 8 Subjective Well-Being, Bicultural Citizenship, and Identity: An Ethnography of Turkish-German Adolescent Girls in Berlin, Germany by HILLARY ANNE MELCHIORS Abstract Turkish-German adolescent girls have been held up as symbols of non-integration for the more than fifty years that Turks have been in Germany. Due to a change in German immigration and naturalization law in 2000, children born to Turkish parents now receive German citizenship at birth and must choose whether to keep it and renounce their Turkish citizenship by the time that they are twenty-three or to keep their Turkish citizenship and give back their German passports. The historical context of Turks in Germany is extremely important for understanding the ways that immigration and integration debates are framed in Germany today and the ways that Turkish-German adolescent girls are currently viewed in Berlin by both themselves and outsiders. Based on twelve months of ethnographic research in Berlin, Germany, this dissertation explores the subjective experience, expressions of citizenship, and subjective well-being of six second and third generation Turkish-German girls ages thirteen to seventeen. This work explores the experiences of these girls as foreigners in both Turkey and Germany, and their subsequent bifurcation of Turkey as their homeland and Germany as their home. This dissertation introduces the concept of bicultural citizenship, as these girls simultaneously belong to Germany and Turkey in two different allegiances: legal citizenship and cultural belonging. This scholarship is theoretically grounded in an integrated approach to subjectivity and identity, exploring these concepts through the bicultural lenses of Turkish-German adolescent girls. Through thick-description of the 9 cultural place where these girls have grown up, bicultural citizenship will be further explored as an environmental influence on their personal and cultural identity. The internalization of German so common that they have grown accustomed to and expect them, articulating “you just get used to it.” The policy implications of this research extend beyond immigration and integration and into education and other arenas as well. By looking at the history of German immigration policy and how it has played out in the lives of these second and third generation immigrant girls, this research contributes to the larger discussion of how policy plays out on the individual level and the unintended long- term consequences of exclusion. 10 Chapter 1: Introduction According to the United Nations, there are almost 214 million migrants in the world (2009). In Germany alone there are more than ten million migrants, making up 13.1% of the total population (UN 2009). With such a huge number of people affected around the world, immigration and integration issues are some of the most important in need of addressing. In addition, depression is the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease and leading cause of disability around the world, with 121 million people affected worldwide (World Health Organization 2010). Beginning in the 1960s, some eleven million temporary workers from the Mediterranean region migrated to Western Europe for work (Wolf 1997). Turks coming to Germany were one of these groups. Many of these “temporary” workers stayed for generations in Germany, such that the country is now seeing the fourth generation of Turks in Germany. Changes in German policy, over the course of many years, have constructed Turks first as guests and more recently as citizens by choice, but it remains unclear whether these policy changes have affected the experiences of the second and third generation adolescent girls identified in this study. Specifically, the citizenship laws were reformed in 2000 to include Turks, among other minority populations, born in Germany. This reform made a formerly purely jus sanguinis (right of blood) nation into a partly jus soli (right of soil) country, but has not been without controversy. Since 2000, children born in Germany to foreign parents have been granted dual citizenship until the age of twenty-three when they must choose which they would like to keep. If it is German citizenship, then they must apply to keep their German passport and renounce all others. These reforms were controversial at the time they were passed and have continued to be 11 part of the on-going immigration debate and discussion in Germany. They have since been revised several times, as I will discuss in a further chapter. This research project looked specifically at the history of immigration and citizenship policy to understand the changing political landscape surrounding the current debate.