Publications of Caglar, A.

European citizenship, the third-country nationals and the ruptures.

This papers aims to open a theoretical space to analyse the ‘acts’ of citizenship through which the third-country nationals become claimants of rights and implicitly or explicitly question the boundaries of the political and the nature of existing divisions upon which EU citizenship is grounded. After providing a critical overview of the social citizenship studies through the particular lens of migration scholarship, it concentrates on the mutual constitution of EU citizenship and third-country nationals (i.e. the citizens of non member states of EU) as the ‘outside’ of EU citizenship. The nature of the ruptures EU citizenship introduces to the fellow residents of EU are investigated through the application of International Private Law in Germany from the perspective of the subject positions it instantiates and the sites of contention it creates. In order to highlight the importance of temporal and spatial grounding of acts of citizenship, the following section approaches to such acts as contentious performances. The last section argues for the necessity to go beyond methodological nationalism and ethnic lens in migration scholarship in studying citizenship and the need for selection of sites and objects of research accordingly.

Migrant incorporation and city scale : towards a theory of locality in migration studies

The impacts of migration on the restructuring of locality remains neglected by both migration scholars and urban geographers, although the importance of global forces in structuring the flows of people, identities, subjectivities, and cultural production and consequent alterations in a time/space continuum is widely acknowledged. Yet migrants both experience and contribute to the forces of integration and fragmentation, as they participate in the rescaling of urban economies, politics and governance and the reshaping of geographies of representation. Consequently any analysis of the restructuring of urban social fabrics will be incomplete without considering the impact of migration and migrants.

Hometown associations, the rescaling of state spatiality and migrant grassroots transnationalism

Migration scholars have noted the recent growth of hometown associations (HTAs) in different parts of the world and have approached the topic within the nexus of migration, the increased flow of remittances and development. However, the question of the differential growth, spread and success of HTAs (even in the same national territory) is not addressed and/or remains under-theorized in migration scholarship. In this article I concentrate on how different genealogies, discourses and policies of migration in Europe and the USA gave rise to different trajectories of transnational migration scholarship, including the research on HTAs. Focusing on the blind spots created by these different paths of transnational migration research, I frame migrant HTAs in the context of the changing state-space relations of neo-liberal globalization. In this article I attempt to break the spatial indifference to state territory in migration research and to relate the dynamics of migrant formations to uneven spatial development, rescaling processes, the changing geographical organization of state intervention and the transformations welfare states go through in times of neo-liberal agendas. Finally, on the basis of a case study of a Turkish hometown association in Germany, I raise some questions about the narratives of power in transnational migration research.

Mediascapes, advertisement industries and cosmopolitan transformations : German Turks in Germany

Special Issue on: Multicultural Germany: Art, Performance and Media

Constraining metaphors and the transnationalisation of spaces in Berlin

This paper deals with the impact of the formal principle of membership on the public and scholarly narratives of immigrants' presence in society. It argues that 'ghetto' is a root metaphor of German political culture and explores how this concept, which situates minorities in stigmatised ethno-cultural sites in the city, confines the frameworks and the terminology of immigration debates and the representation of immigrants in the social imaginary in Germany. The ghetto trope of immigrant discourse in Berlin reduces the inscription of difference and belonging in urban space to a simple model of seclusion based on ethnic ties. This constructs a blindness to the transnational spaces of German Turks which provide an arena for the reimagination and negotiation of Turkish immigrants' sociality and belonging to Berlin beyond the given categories of ethnicity and community.

"Go Go Dog!" and German Turks' demand for pet dogs

Pet dogs are strongly incorporated into social life in Germany, but until recently, they did not enjoy much popularity among German Turks. Although there is no significant change in the general demand for pet dogs in Germany, German Turks have now started acquiring pet dogs. This article focuses on the dynamics behind German Turks' emerging desire and demand for pet dogs in Berlin and argues that their consumption patterns, life styles and tastes, as a transnational collectivity, can only be explained in the context of German society. The commodity aspect of pets is demon strated by the utilitarian relationship German Turks forge with their pets. This has serious setbacks for their aim of symbolic utility in a society where the commodity aspect of pets is highly suppressed.