Identification and (Ethnic) Self-Attribution
The experience of two different social horizons of reference also raises the question concerning definitions of one’s own identity and "ethnic-cultural" self-attribution.
Students of Turkish descent at a Berlin school. (© picture-alliance/dpa)Both the findings of the quantitative TASD study by Sezer/Dağlar (2009) and the qualitative studies of Pusch/Aydın (2011), Hanewinkel (2010), and Sievers et al. (2010) point to individually very different, many-faceted patterns of identification, which, however, suggest the conclusion of a trend toward "hybrid" identities. Thus, the emigrants interviewed call themselves, for example, "German Turks", "Germans with Turkish roots", "Germans with Turkish language skills" [1], "a Turkish woman with a German passport" [2], or – leaving behind nation-state frameworks – "Europeans". [3] These self-attributions are not static but rather change situationally. One of Hanewinkel’s interviewees impressively demonstrates this very playful attitude toward one’s own identity:
- "When I now get worked up about something Turkish, suddenly I am the absolute German, speak only German then and get worked up in German. The same thing happens in Germany [...], then I am suddenly a Turkish woman: ‘So you don’t want us at all!’ [laughs] [...] I am also really happy about doing as I want, and when I want to, can change sides. [...] In other words, I actually like this back and forth." [4]
This text is part of the policy brief on "The Emigration of Highly Qualified German Citizens of Turkish Descent to Turkey".
