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Monday, June 7, 2010

Ostrava, Czech Republic : Impact of migration [Part 4] - Contribution of the Turkish Team

Turkey

THE SOCIAL IMPACTS OF MIGRATION IN TURKEY

Migration is a very important phenomenon in urbanization process and mostly has negative effects and this movement brings a lot of new kinds of problems to urban life.The movement related to rapid increase in population is one of the general characteristics of developing countries.Since Turkey is a developing country,too she becomes face to face with many problems.Because of migration towards cities, different settlements occured and are still occuring in the centres and surrondings of cities. As a result these movements spoil the general structure of urban with new social problems carried by them.

Migration:
  • turns cities to villages in physical and social aspects
  • increases the crime rate and criminal attempts in cities
  • increases the problems in municipal services
  • causes a decrease in health services ,which is already inadequate.
  • causes loss of productive power and capital in rural areas
  • adds more problems to existing ones
  • causes problems generating from different life styles
  • creates demand for a better life such as housing,jobs,schools…etc.And this demand puts urban life out of order and disintegrates the urban system.
  • Cities started to be something like a big station. People are coming and going. No one knows each other, no friendship, no relationship.
  • Difference between the urban and the rural is about to disappear.
  • That the old population resist the idea of migration and that they don’t want to leave their homeland result in the families shattering or the old people becoming introverted and isolated from social life.


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    The Social Impacts of The Internal Migration in Turkey

    Tending to crime is one of the most important results of internal migration in Turkey. The sharp rise of crime in Turkey for the last decade is mainly from high growth of population and local immigration. Unemployment and deprivation have caused dense local immigration with separated families and confused people. Dwellings without planning permission gathered multi-background people in the ghettos of metropolitan cities where crime is flourishing.
    The individual who is enough for neither himself nor his family finds solution on bag-snatching,stealing, even terrorism. He tries to be of service by this way. All of these make the family links deteriorate as well.
    The people, who have difficulty in living on, aim at feeding themselves. After the basic needs are provided, an individual gets family-love, faith and such kind of superior values. The school-aged children are forced to work facing any kinds of danger in the streets.An immigrant father who has a lot of difficulties to live on may have to force his children to beg to steal or even prostitution and as a result of this concept “family” becomes just blood bonds and the member of the family regards each other as only the people who has a part of division of labour to live on.
    The injustice about the income distribution in the cities makes the growing migrant children rebellious, moreover makes them tend to crime.
    e.g. The population living in the shanties in Izmir is 40-45% 75% of the children involved in crime are living in these shanties.
    e.g. 15% of the population live in Istanbul which takes Turkey’s top migration and 25% of crime is seen in this city.

    The rates of the crimes in 2006 in Turkey.

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    5 % bagsnaching
    4 % stealing automobiles
    44 % burgling the houses or shops, usurpation and various stealing
    47 % fraud, insult, gambling, encouraging to prostitution, murder, injuring

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    According to the results on the table, in Turkey there are more crimes committed in large, developed cities and they have a high urbanization rate, greater population density and get more immigrants.İstanbul,Ankara,İzmir and Bursa, are the most industrialised cities in Turkey, and are experiencing a high level of local immigration.

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    Street Crimes in Turkey 2003 represented in thematic mapping, per 100000 person. Source: http://www.egm.gov.tr/asayis/istatistik2003_2004.asp

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    Street Crimes in Turkey 2004 represented in thematic mapping, per 100000 person. (Source: http://www.egm.gov.tr/asayis/istatistik2003_2004.asp)
    In 2003 the number of reported street crimes in Turkey was 321805 where it increased by 10% to 353692 in 2000

    SQUATTERS

    People migrating from rural areas demand houses to live in.As a result squatting increases and infrastructure problems arise.Squatter settlement is formed by arrival of several families from the same village or district to the empty areas around the urban. Later, the relatives and friends of these families join them. By time, settlement is homogenised by the comer from all over the country. As the population density increases the urban services get limited and scarce and consequently these areas become poverty districts . This issue is a social problem including family and economical values. This problem,which occurs as a buffer mechanism in housing phenomenon during migration from rural areas to urban is effective in the total development of the urban areas. This leads to a distorted urbanization structure, demolishing of green areas and speculations related to land ownership
    People,who migrate,worry about adapting to the new place.So,they are grouping with the other immigrants fellow immigrants and fighting the other while it seems to be in contrast with the deterioration of the family links,it has some sensible reasons.Despite the deteriotion of the family,the fellow townsmen regard each other as the “fate friends” and give support to each other against the place which threatens their existence.They turn their backs to the people who exclude or want to change them, even to the other immigrants.We can see a lot of patterns of the groups who keep on their rural lifestyle in the city neighbourhood. Or we can see a lot of associations such as “…village/people from… soludarity associations”in the big cities.These grouping movements make urbanization impossible and cause “the rural in the urban”.

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    The people who migrated to the big cities – especially the youngs - search for identity.This search forms basis to ethnic, political or religious grouping.Urban life provides a new point of view to the immigrants.Immigrants who decide to stay in the urban areas become city men. After a short while it is understood that there is not a unique way to become a city man and the period of half villager and half city man identity starts.At the end of this process, which is defined by urban sociologists as “incomplete urban structure” and/or “urban areas becoming villages”, in urban areas different cultural structures with very weak communication and interaction emerge.
    The population in the urban areas after migration faces not only with unemployment, housing,transportation, health and education problems but also goes through a conflict and trembling period due to a new cultural environment . The roles of the women in internal migrations become worse. Their limited lifestyle is restricted much to their rural lives, that’s to say that they are jailed at home,frustrated by the housework.They become aggressive,insecure and aimless person in their broken life.The members of the families appear to be in conflicts with each other and domestic arguments and violence rises. The one who is unhappy, dissatisfied and underdog in the city commits violence to prove himself strong. Each one of the spouses and the children prove their own superiority by commiting violence to each other.
    The distribution of the country’s population loses the balance. For instance the women population in the places giving migration is high while the men population is high in the new places which recive migration.

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    Uncontrolled population increase has negative effects on economic development and environmental quality. High birth rate in the region and migration from rural areas to cities and from cities to big cities increase population, people who migrated do not want to return though their life quality is not as good as they used to be. They either want to stay in the city,they are settled, or preparing themselves to move to a bigger city.

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    The traditions of diffrent regions are carried by the immigrants to the places which they migrate to.
    e.g. The cooks from the Black Sea Region generalise making cakes. The cooks from Gaziantep generalise baklava. The people from Manisa generalise Mesir Paste and raisin throughout the country.Migration phenomenon brings out its own kind of music also.The music called “Arasbeque music “ in Turkey,related to the history of the migration in Turkey.And by migration new words and concepts have joined the language.
    Gecekondu => shanty and Dolmuş => minibus are two of them+
    Migration phenomenon which has an important part in the Turkish social history has deeply impacted the culture and art.Such that,from 1950 to present a lot of films,theatres,books,songs and pictures have appeared dealing with migration and some of them are among the most important Turkish achievements.
    The Social Impacts of Immigrations to Turkey
    • Othering because of the prejudices among the local people in the new places where they migrated to.
    • Language problem hindering adaptation process.
    • The new hybrid culture formed by the relationships with the local culture like ( clothing,food,buildings and etc.)
    • The cultural richness of the country increases with migration.
    • The improvements in social,cultural,economical relationships between Turkey and the countries where they come from ( such as Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece..) can be accounted for the social impacts of the immigrations to Turkey.
    The Social Impacts of The Refugee Migrations
    Turkey is a country , which sometimes receives refugees from some regions such as Africa and the Middle East, is usually the gateway for illegal migrations. The problem caused by this situations are:
    • The medical problems such as death or epidemic due to the unhealty conditions during the migration.
    • Political crisis between the countries because of the illegal trip.
    • There is a relationship between organized crime and the illegal migration of labor. Since organized crime organizes human trafficking and illegal employment. , they are generally tend to illegal jobs because they are abused for the illegal works such as terrorism or spying … etc ( the reason is usually that they are very poor).
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    Especially in the earlier years of migration most of emmigrants who are mostly uneducated cannot adapt the new cultures and cultural shock arisen after being face to face a new and different culture in point of language, religion, lifestyle.Because there is really a big generation gap between the local people and emmigrants.
    .International migration has a great potential to bring about a variety of social mobility to the migrants as well as to their relatives, friends and their communities at large.
    Emigration has greatly affected the employment status of Turkish migrants in the receiving countries, and in Turkey upon their return.
    Women are particular examples: migration enabled many of them to participate in labor force for the first time in their life,or took them from agricultural sector to manufacturing and service sectors. Such changes increased their economic well-being, which raised their social status. Turkish migrant women joined the mainstream social life in Europe.
    The modernizing effect of emigration is very obvious for the individuals and their families.
    Upon their return to Turkey many migrant women have wanted to settle in urban areas, and they have often tended to acquire more authority within the family.
    For the men, traditional symbols of status that are based on age, kinship, devoutness, or ownership of land were replaced by modern indicators such as income, qualifications, skills, and knowledge of a Western European language. The roles and relationships of parents and children have also changed as a result of migration, which was perceived rather negatively by the parents, fathers in particular, as they began to lose their traditional authority over children. In short, emigration was one of the factors that pressurized the extended family and traditional familial relationships. Emigration also affects the migrants’ perceived social status. While in Europe, Turkish workers are generally accorded a very low social status, but their social standing in Turkey improves markedly both in rural and urban communities.
    When earlier Turkish emmigrants went to Germany, almost all of them had poor jobs as cleaning, painting, construction working. As time goes by they started to get money and bought some property. After they lived for years and became a citizen of German government, they began to get jobs such as public service. So their life conditions get better in this way and they get accustomed to living in Germany. As a result of this, most of them don’t want to return to their homeland. As time flies, they lose their identification and become half Turkish half German. They live between Islam and Christianism, Turkish and German traditions. Even some of them forgets to speak Turkish and sometimes we see babies with German names although both parents are Turkish.
    Turkish workers often return home with changed attitudes and behaviors: in fact, the label of “Almanyalı(Alamancı)”, which literally implies “Turk from Germany” as the local non-migrant people call the Turkish emigrants in Europe with this expression, is a product of these perceived changes in attitudes and behaviors
    The reintegration of returning emigrants and their families in Turkey also is a complexity. For those who returned in the 1960s and 1970s, the return and integration question was not critical. They were engaged in temporary labor migration, many anticipated their eventual return to Turkey, and acted accordingly. Also, these early returned migrants were mainly single men who had emigrated alone.
    On the other hand, returning migrants in the 1980s and 1990s were more likely to be families with adolescent children. Fearing that they might not be able to go back to Europe at a later time, many of them left a younger member of their family behind to retain their link with Europe. They could not decide whether to permanently settle in the host country or resettle in Turkey. Such indecisiveness together with the adjustment difficulties of their children who had already spent their early socialization period abroad aggravated the reintegration process of these return migrants. The children of returnees had serious problems in adapting to the very different social,culture and educational environment of Turkey again.From a survey of Turkish emigrants in Germany in the early 1960s shows that Turkish emigrants are transformed to a European life style: 20 per cent of the respondents ate pork, 38 per cent saw observing Ramadan incompatible with modern life, and only 23 percent fully fasted during Ramadan (Abadan-Unat 1964).
    The economical,social and cultural links came into existence between Turkey and the countries which receive emigrants.Germany,where most of the Turkish people emigrate, is one of the main country that we export ,import goods and receive tourist.
    Another positive impacts of migration is solving the cultural integration problems with the works on art,sport,politics and economics of the 2nd-3rd generation Turkish people.
    e+g+The footballers Serdar Taşçı and Mesut Özil who play for the German National Football Team and also Fatih Akın who is one of the well-known moviemaker in Germany are Turks.
    Also migration has had highly positive contributions to Turkey's economic and social settings.It was a result of emigration that Turkey's unemployment problem was partly solved with three million expatriate Turkish citizens working in Europe; their remittances had financed two thirds of the country‟s trade deficit in the 1990s; and they took on the bridging role between Turkey and the EU.

    BIBLIOGRAPHY


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