Abstract:
In this article I will analyse the way in which Islam becomes an identity discourse for the Turkish immigrant in Germany. It aims to show how the Turkish Muslim immigrant is constructed in relation to a variety of other identities already conferred upon him or her. That is, Muslim Turkish immigrants have already been discursively elaborated according to their ethnicity, their ‘Third Worldness’, their underdevelopment, their traditionality, or their oppression of women. These discourses are constituted by a subject who has the power to know and act upon an object, the Turkish guestworker. Speaking from positions of authority, the different voices of the social scientist, bureaucrat, nationalist or developmentalist converge and act upon the problematized Turk. In other words, the scientist knows the East, the Third World, Islam, and nationhood; one ethnic group knows the Other; West knows East; and the woman (of the West) knows the woman (of the East). All these types of knowing define the Turkish immigrant in Germany and, in a dialogic relation to all these ‘knowings’, guestworkers know themselves, in this case through an Islamic identity.
Details / PDF:
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