Extranational Spaces and the Disruption of National Boundaries

• In Event: 549 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 10. Immigrant Mobilizations

Abstract

After the 1980 coup that shook Turkey and almost twenty years after the bilateral 'Guest Worker' treaty shifted Germany's demographic makeup, West German policy makers began to propose increasingly restrictive regulations on the ‘guest workers’ who had contributed so heavily to the West German economy. In this crucial historical moment, Turkish-language newspapers published in West Germany created a politically-motivated extranational public sphere in which they launched claims against both the West German and Turkish states. These claim shaped immigration and integration policy between the two countries, diasporic activism, and cross-national religious and political organizations. We examine two Turkish-language newspapers published in West Germany in the early 1980s and argue that the debates and conversations they hosted provide evidence of immigrant claims-making—even against “ethnoexclusivist” regimes like those present in West Germany—and that they gave rise to a variety of unexpected organizational outcomes that continue to impact both the now-reunified Germany and the Turkish Republic.

Authors

• Amy C. Foerster, Pace University

• Jennifer Miller, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville