2nd Global Conference
Wednesday 3rd September - Saturday 6th September
2008
Mansfield College, Oxford
Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 8a: Migrants: Culture, Politics and Inequality
Chair: Sunny Lam
Gender, Migration and the Denationalization of Citizenship: Kurdish Women Migrants’ Life Strategies in Turkey
Nese Öztimur
KMN Consultancy and Research Company, Bursa, Turkey
As a unique character of Turkish experience, “state” is the main agent of the modernization process in Turkey, and citizens are the symbolic carriers of this process. As well, persons who have identities that overlap with the state’s popular ideology are widely accepted citizens. Being a “Turkish”, “Muslim” and “men” are the parameters of this widely accepted situation. In this context public sphere is considered as the space in where state induced modernization model has been realized by citizen actors.
However with the impact of migration process from rural to urban areas and with the enlargement of global-capitalist relations, state induced homogeneous public sphere imagination was declined. Different identities, (such as radical Islamic identity and Kurdish identity) appeared at city spaces, and struggled for respect and recognition as well as struggle for getting more rights at the economic, cultural, political and education spheres. This identity struggles may contribute to the enlargement of Turkish democracy in terms of its potential for the denationalization of citizenship and development of multicultural public sphere.
The main argument of this paper is to discuss these possibilities by focusing on migrant Kurdish women’s life strategies at the urban areas of Turkey. Within the scope of the paper following questions will be investigated by using data basis of the field work that includes 60 in-depth interviews with women of Kurdish origin who migrated from Eastern and South Eastern regions of Anatolia to Bursa - one of the most important industrial metropolises of Turkey : (a) how Kurdish migrant women re-establish their lives at the newly arrived settlements in Turkey (b) how their gender and ethnic identity are affected by this migration process (c) how and by which mechanisms do micro politics of everyday interaction with ‘others’ affect their ethnic, citizenship and civic identity formations? (d) how citizenship is ‘denationalized’ by migrant Kurdish women while they are demanding economic, social and cultural rights at the city space (f) and finally how this process may contribute to the development of democratic multicultural public sphere and citizenship in Turkish society?
Recent Chinese Migrations to South Africa: New Intersections of Race, Class and Ethnicity
Yoon Jung Park
Centre for Sociological Research, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
The Chinese population in South Africa has experienced considerable growth in the past two decades. Boasting the African continent’s largest Chinese population, there are approximately 250,000 to 350,000 Chinese from ‘three distinct Chinas’ ranging from wealthy Taiwanese industrialists, to educated middle managers from Beijing and Shanghai, poor migrants from rural Fujian province, and a mostly professional class of local second-, third-, and fourth-generation Chinese South Africans.
While most South Africans conflate these various groups of Chinese into one, there are myriad intersecting lines of distinction and division which separate them, including: generation, culture and ethnicity, language, legal status, education, residential space, class, occupation, and identity. Research has revealed simmering social and political tensions between the various Chinese communities as well as between Chinese and South African communities. Even notions of Chineseness are contested. However, recent fears of xenophobic attacks and increasing crime against Chinese, together with pride in an increasingly powerful China, periodically serve to bring these disparate communities together. This paper explores the contestations and alliances. Further, it attempts to position the various Chinese communities within a still-racially divided democratic South Africa and identify key concerns, including: the Chinese and affirmative action; Chinese as targets of bribery attempts, economic crimes and violence; and growing anti-Chinese sentiment.
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The Portrait of New Lithuanian Emigrants: Integrative Model of Psychological & Social Factors
Laura Seibokaite, Aukse Endriulaitiene & Rasa Marksaityte
Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
This study explores the individual differences of new Lithuanian emigrants. We argue that there must be migration favouring factors related to individual and hypothesize that new Lithuanian emigrant has different personality profile than those who stay to live in their home country.
Big Five personality traits, values, risk taking propensity and social factors were investigated in three groups of participants using cross-sectional survey: Lithuanians who want to live in their country of origin (N=101), Lithuanians who want to emigrate (N=41) and Lithuanian emigrants living in Ireland (N=124).
Results indicated that new Lithuanian emigrants tend to be more extroversive, more open to experience and have higher emotional stability. No differences in value orientation were revealed. Consciousness, neuroticism and extraversion were predictive in the group of women. Emigrants have lower education, lower satisfaction with quality of social welfare. The revealed differences in personality profiles suggest further explorations not only of migrant personality, but also of citizens who express intention to emigrate. Risk taking propensity differed between non-emigrants and people with intention to emigrate; emotional stability and openness to experience more differentiated group of emigrants and non-emigrants. The results show that explaining emigration solely by social, cultural, economical and political variables is inadequate.