An essay of meta-analysis on seeking identity of Euro-Turks

Abstract

The concept of ‘Double-Consciousness’ is a significant conceptualization based on a study named ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ published in 1903 by an Afro-American Sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois. He uses double-consciousness term for defining socio-psychological results of social and structural differences between black and white people in the USA. This concept stresses that black people consider themselves both in and out of the white society; therefore, as an identity they have double-consciousness or divided into two parts between their own identity and the one they are exposed in the society they live in. The term, which Du Bois brought into the social science literature, became very popular among other social scientists and used very frequently for analysing the immigration circumstances. In this paper, it is suggested that identity description of the first, second, third and other generations of Euro-Turks can be analysed within the context of one-consciousness, double-consciousness and one-consciousness conceptualizations by put-ting double-consciousness into the centre. In this analysis, meta-analysis method will be used in the light of the findings obtained in field research about Turkish immigrant population settled in several European countries such as Germany, French, England, Belgium and Denmark etc. In this context, it is thought that one-consciousness refers to the identity of the first generation brought from homeland, double-consciousness refers to the identity of the second and/or the third generation seesawing between two worlds and again one-consciousness refers to the identity of the third or the next generation losing their own ethnic culture and having a new identity in the host country. Each level of consciousness is thought to have different profiles due to several factors such as the social identity and belonging definitions of immigrant communities and their settlement, socio-cultural and economic status, civil organization style, integration process and culture of living together in the host country. Undoubtedly, to verify these conceptualizations it must be stressed that some more specific field research is strongly needed