Migrants and non-migrants in Kücükkale: Consumption and cultural differentiation in the transnational community.

Connie Carøe Christiansen

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    When villages are marked by extensive out-migration and become transnationally extended, the dividing line between migrants and non-migrants becomes salient. But how deep do divisions run? In a cluster of Kurdish villages in central Turkey, notwithstanding continued social bonds, divisions between migrants and non-migrants are not least in existence when it comes to the cultural style of consumption practices, behaviour and manners. The mutual stereotyping of migrants and non-migrants seems to confirm that at least one version of the meaning made locally of migration is that it has deepened the social divisions of the village. But non-migrant villagers also point out that migrants have degraded themselves morally in order to obtain their material well-being. This is contested by migrants who find that non-migrants, too, are morally degraded, since they have lost their initiative and become dependents. Thus the transnational village has become a space for contesting how social status is acquired—in material wealth or in moral comportment—indicating the social suffering that migration has brought to the local sending society.
    Translated title of the contributionMigranter og ikke-migranter i Kücükkkale: Forbrug og kulturel differentiering i det transnationale samfund
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
    Volume39
    Issue number1
    Pages (from-to)161-178
    Number of pages17
    ISSN1369-183X
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2013

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