Turkey Book Talk

Turkey Book Talk #265 – Michelle Lynn Kahn, associate professor of modern European history at the University of Richmond, on “Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration and Turkish-German History” (Cambridge University Press).

Migration from Turkey largely started with West Germany’s “guest worker” scheme, introduced in 1961. Since the 1970s, Turks have been Germany’s largest ethnic minority and today there are around 3 million people with Turkish heritage in the country.

Using sources in both countries and both languages, as well as in-depth conversations with former guest workers and their children, ”Foreign in Two Homelands” gives a kaleidoscopic overview of experiences on both sides. Uniquely, it also focuses on the experiences of migrants to Germany who returned to Turkey, many of whom ended up feeling socially alienated in both environments.

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Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

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