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Identification and (Ethnic) Self-Attribution | Zuwanderung, Flucht und Asyl: Aktuelle Themen | bpb.de

Identification and (Ethnic) Self-Attribution

Vera Hanewinkel

/ 2 Minuten zu lesen

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" , "a Turkish woman with a German passport" , or – leaving behind nation-state frameworks – "Europeans". 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."

It becomes clear that one’s identity is constantly being actively (and in part rationally and deliberately) "manufactured." Common to many interviewees is that they have discovered their "Germanness" only after moving to Turkey.

This text is part of the policy brief on Interner Link: "The Emigration of Highly Qualified German Citizens of Turkish Descent to Turkey".