Project description
A closer look at Turkey’s changing diaspora
Back in the 1960s, Turkey promoted emigration as a tool for development and growth – to decrease unemployment and benefit from capital inflows through remittances. Today, the total population of Turkish people living abroad exceeds 6.5 million, with the majority in western Europe. The EU-funded DIASPORALANDS project will study Turkey’s evolution of diasporic landscapes in view of the democratic decline and regime change in Turkey over the past 10 years. The project will focus on Turkey’s diaspora communities in Germany and the United Kingdom. It will investigate how Turkey’s descent into authoritarianism has impacted diaspora spaces. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the project will bring together bottom-up voices with top-down narratives. It will shed light on the relationship between Turkey, its diasporas and host countries. The findings will increase our theoretical and empirical understanding of diaspora politics in Europe.
Objective
DIASPORALANDS investigates the continuities and changes in Turkey’s diasporic landscapes during the last decade, which coincides with the democratic decline and regime change in Turkey. By using Turkey’s diaspora communities in the United Kingdom and in Germany as case studies, it investigates how the authoritarian drift in the homeland affects diaspora spaces and how host countries respond to authoritarian states’ engagement with their diasporas in their territory. It proposes a novel methodology which combines qualitative and quantitative methods, bringing together bottom-up voices with top-down narratives in order to present a comprehensive picture of the triadic relationship between Turkey, its diasporas and the host countries. It focuses not only on elite-level political processes but also on domestic transformations and their transnational impact on the everyday lives of diaspora communities in Europe, thus revealing visible and invisible effects of transnational authoritarianism on diasporic landscapes. DIASPORALANDS is interdisciplinary and draws on theoretical frameworks from various fields including political science, international relations, sociology and migration studies. The specific focus combines discussions on diaspora studies, foreign policy analysis, democratic decline, the international relations of authoritarian regimes as well as multiculturalism and opportunity structures in host countries. It aims to significantly advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of diaspora politics in Europe with its comprehensive approach and methodological innovation. The novelty of the project comes from the application of a mixed methods strategy, which has not been previously used to study the recent waves of migration and diasporic landscapes of Turkey after the coup attempt in 2016.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
CV1 5FB Coventry
United Kingdom