Abstract:

The Turkish- German migration movement did not start with the recruitment agreement in 1961. However, with this agreement, migration from Turkey became a new dynamic. As migration is usually accompanied by return migration, we may also say that the TurkishGerman migration movements have not been only characterised by the migration of Turkish citizens to Germany, but also by their return. Consequently, we can observe different types of return migration parallel to the changing nature of migration movements to Germany in the last 50 years. Today, more than 50 years after the recruitment agreement, the population with Turkish migration background has significantly changed. For immigrants with Turkish background in Germany, we can identify several aspects, such as rising age, the increasing number of naturalisations and the rising educational level of the second and particularly the third and fourth generations. As a result, the type of people returning to Turkey has also varied: A rough segmentation reveals three types of returnees today: i those retirees who decided to live their retirement days in Turkey, ii those retirees who spend half of the year in Germany and half of the year in Turkey and iii those second and third generation young and educated people who come to Turkey for job possibilities. In particular, the last group- the young and highly educated- cannot be called returnees as such as they were born in the country where their forebears settled. However, this group of young and educated migrants is often lucky in the sense that their professional skills correspond to the needs of the Turkish labour market. While previous returnees often drove taxis or delivery trucks, built rental houses or set up small businesses and became part of the service sector, they now work in many different sectors ranging from arts and culture to telecommunications, engineering, banking and are often involved in the global economy. In this article, we will first give an overview of the return migration from the 1960s onwards. Then we will refer to the return and reintegration policies of the Turkish state. By doing so, we will not only point to the changing nature of these policies in general, but particularly look at rather new developments, such as the introduction of the Mavi Kart Blue Card and the foundation of the Yurtdışı Türkler ve Akraba Topluluklar Başkanlığı Presidency of Turks Abroad and Related Communities for binding highly educated Almancıs to their parents’ or grandparents’ homeland.

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