A Place in the Homeland? : Turkish-German Return Migration

Explores the Turkish-German second generation's movement back to Turkey.

What happens when the second generation – the children of immigrants – moves to their parents’ homeland? A Place in the Homeland: Turkish-German Return Migration answers this question for the Turkish-German second-generation, sons and daughters of the Turkish guestworkers and political refugees who migrated to Germany in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Based on 71 in-depth narrative interviews, their life-stories of growing up in German industrial cities and then ‘returning’ to Turkey are traced through their experiences of childhood and socialisation, relocation to Turkey, earning a living, managing family and other relationships, adapting to an environment that many found challenging and developing new, hybrid identities in the ancestral homeland. The key finding is that ‘place matters’, and experiences are compared and contrasted between second-generation returnees in the megalopolis of Istanbul, the tourist city of Antalya and a range of provincial urban and rural environments in other regions of Turkey.