Youth Transitions among Descendants of Turkish Immigrants in Amsterdam and Strasbourg:

Front matter

IMISCOE Research Series

Elif Keskiner

Youth Transitions among Descendants of Turkish Immigrants in Amsterdam and Strasbourg:

Contents

2 Prolonged Transitions: Early Tracking and Its Implications for

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Chapter 1 A Youth Transitions of Descendants Geek for of Turkish Immigrants

Writing this, I am sitting at a table in the library of a tertiary vocational school in Zwolle, a medium size Dutch city. I am surrounded by the descendants of immigrants from Turkey. They have no idea I am writing about them, much less that I understand, and admire, how they are talking in a creative half-Turkish half-Dutch argot. I catch their discussions, which are about everything ranging from the exams next week to the annoying boss at a bijbaan'; from worries about finding an apprenticeship to Turkish TV heartthrob Kıvanç Tatlitug’s acting in last night’s episode; from the latest iPhone features to plans for next summer’s holiday in Istanbul; plus a whole lot of gossip about friends in between. Listening in on these conversions, I cannot help but wonder why doubts about these young people’s integration dominate current public debates rather than questions about their daily realities: the obstacles that they encounter at school and on the labour market; how they navigate these barriers and how they negotiate the multiple frames of references that enrich their lives. This book seeks to answer these questions, which have indisputable present-day urgency though actually began being asked decades ago.

In 1980, Gündüz Vassaf, a prominent Turkish scholar of psychology, spent a sabbatical in Europe, first in the Netherlands and then in Germany and conducted one of the first studies on the children of immigrants, the findings of which he published in the book Daha Sesimizi Duyuramadik: Avrupa’daki Türk Işçi Çocukları? The title was inspired by something a descendant of a Turkish immigrant told him: “We are not a lost generation, nor are we stuck in between; we just haven’t had our voices heard.” Vassaf called attention to the problems that children of Turkish immigrants were facing and warned that negligence by both host and home countries would have serious consequences for the futures of these

'Dutch for ‘side job’. ? We Still Couldn’t Make Our Voices Heard: The Children of Turkish Workers in Europe (Vassaf 1983).

© The Author(s) 2019 1 E. Keskiner, Youth Transitions among Descendants of Turkish Immigrants

in Amsterdam and Strasbourg:, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11790-0_1 individuals. His study was unique in highlighting the perspectives of immigrants and their children rather than the worries of the host countries or home societies.

Nearly 40 years later, the descendants of immigrants are at the forefront of public debate, garnering attention not only in social science research, but also in government policies and the media. However, in many Western European countries, the public discourse reflects a population largely deaf and blind to the concerns and struggles of these young people, still seeking to apportion blame for their perceived lack of integration. Media reports on integration emphasize the lower educational attainment and higher unemployment rates among the descendants of immigrants, and even overgeneralize some groups’ involvement in criminal activities. Negative labels such as ‘immigrant’, ‘ethnic’, ‘allochtoon’ and ‘foreign’ cast these youth as outsiders, even when they are native-born citizens of their host countries. Considered in this light, the debate around integration appears to mask a systemic unwillingness and/or inability to meet the needs of immigrants and their descendants and embrace their realities; instead, it superficially frames observed inequalities in terms of these groups’ own attitudes or deficiencies. With Islamophobia recently dominating public and political discourses, descendants of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, such as Turkey, also suffer as subjects of suspicion. This has been amplified in the populist discourse of extreme right-wing parties, which have regained political traction in Europe in recent years.

As highlighted by Crul and Schneider (2010), the descendants of immigrants are the new natives of the cities into which they are born and raised. Their numbers are growing and they are transforming the mainstream constitutions of a super-diverse metropolitan world (p. 1257). During the last two decades, considerable research has examined the social and institutional realities faced by the children of post-war immigrants born and raised in various European countries and the United States (Kasinitz et al. 2008; Levitt 2009; Crul et al. 2012; Crul and Mollenkopf 2012). Among these groups, the native-born descendants of Turkish immigrants have been receiving plenty of attention since the early 2000s due to their widespread presence in various European countries (Caglar 1998; Kaya and Kentel 2005; Soysal 2001; Kastoryano 2002; Crul and Vermeulen 2003). Today, Turkish immigrants and their descendants are one of the largest ethnic minorities in Western Europe, and comprise a population of up to eight million people.

From the outset, the case of Turkish migrants has been considered ideal for cross-country comparison as guest-worker migration to various locations occurred around the same time (Crul and Vermeulen 2003). Pioneering comparisons included Kaya and Kentel (2005) who contrasted the integration pathways of Turkish migrants and their descendants in France and Germany and uncovered the role of different citizenship regimes and the host society’s institutional structures in shaping the integration outcomes. Another classical study by Kastoryano (2002) dissects the dynamics between state policies in France and Germany and immigrants’ demands, focusing on immigrants of North African origin in France and Turkish immigrants in Germany. Such comparative studies began to highlight the role of state policies and express the identity and recognition concerns of Turkish immigrants across different settings.

Turkish second-generation youth have also become an interesting focus group for social stratification research regarding their experiences in education and labour market settings. In general Turkish second-generation youth have been found to perform worse than their peers with native-born parents, mostly due to their parents’ lower education levels. Nevertheless their performance varied across distinct institutional settings in Europe (Crul and Vermeulen 2003). Heath et al. (2008) showed that native-born descendants of Turkish immigrants in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany performed worse in terms of educational outcomes compared to their peers with native-born parents; however, in the Netherlands and Germany, they attributed this to parental (lower) social class. Schnell (2012) provided a systemic explanation and showed that this group performed better in more comprehensive systems, such as those in France and Sweden, than in stratified systems, such as those in Germany and the Netherlands. Regarding meso-level explanations, Rezai and her colleagues (2015) disclosed the role played by parents and significant others in educational mobility and showed how parents (despite lower education levels) could provide different forms of support which turned out to be influential. Keskiner (2015) displayed that parents deployed varying strategies to influence their children’s education across distinct education systems; in countries like the Netherlands where their impact is restricted by the system, they could exert less influence on their children’s tracking choices. In Switzerland, Schnell and Fibbi (2016) found that young adults of Turkish and Western Balkan origin were more likely than their peers of native origin to be upwardly mobile in the education system (as opposed to starting high) and that parental monitoring and family cohesion played a significant role in regard to upward mobility.

It has also been shown that descendants of Turkish immigrants are affected by poorer labour market progression and higher rates of unemployment even when education levels have been controlled for in France (Simon 2003), Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria (Lessard-Philipps et al. 2012). These trends have persisted for many years in various countries. Using data from the first wave of the “Netherlands Longitudinal Life-Course Study’ (2009- 2010), Gracia et al. (2016) tested the ethnic penalty argument for second-generation Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands, taking into consideration not only schooling but also skills and social origins and found that ethnic penalties persist for Turkish second-generation migrants. For example, women of Turkish origin had a higher likelihood of being unemployed even after controlling for education, social origin and skills (ibid). Analyzing two waves of panel data, including a more recent wave, Witteveen and Alba (2018) have shown an increasing employment disadvantage for second-generation Turks and Moroccans and persisting ethnic penalties in hiring processes: after controlling for education background and demographics they found that the youngest cohorts of the second generation were significantly less likely to find employment compared to their peers with native-born parents. Hence the most recent studies showed that difficulties in finding employment after school continue to persist.

Another strand of emerging research examines the “successful” group within the Turkish second generation, thereby emphasizing that the entire group cannot be categorised as disadvantaged (Crul et al. 2017; Waldring et al. 2015; Schneider and Lang 2014; Keskiner and Crul 2017; Vermeulen and Keskiner 2017). Studies pursuing a more qualitative approach have identified the roles of institutional structures in education and the labour market in shaping the upward mobility of descendants of Turkish immigrants (Keskiner and Crul 2017; Konyali 2017). While successful in uncovering the mechanisms to achieve higher education levels, this stream of research does not account for those individuals who do not achieve upward mobility, nor the type of support mechanisms available (or not) to them. A more diverse sample would be needed to uncover the mechanisms that lead to different trajectories through and out of education, as well as into and in the labour market.

My own contribution to this debate is to provide a comparative analysis on the youth transitions of descendants of migrants. Previous studies have shown the relevance of cross-country comparisons in revealing the roles played by institutional structures, but these have mostly relied on survey data. Combining quantitative methods with qualitative research can help to detect the processes and mechanisms that can explain these general statistical trends. Previously, young people of Turkish origin have been studied within the cultural domain, for example hip-hop culture in Berlin has received considerable attention (Caglar 1998; Soysal 2001). Soysal’s study shows that while the general public is wallowing in senseless integration concerns, young people of Turkish origin have become active participants and producers of youth culture in Berlin (2001). As inhabitants of Berlin, they “contribute to the constitution of the city as a diverse, cosmopolitan metropolis in the new Europe” (Soysal 2001, 22). Such studies are crucial to giving a voice to the experiences of second-generation youth. In a more recent study Celik (2015) studied reinforced ethnic identity when faced with perceived discrimination and the experience of “systematic devaluation of ethnic culture”(p. 13). His study is valuable in making a connection between social disadvantage in education and the labour market and ethnic identification and in showing how the two are connected. The negative experiences of Turkish-origin youth in Germany and the effect of reactive ethnicity is very much in line with the recent trends on educational and labour market disadvantage.

To fill an existing gap in research on the education and labour market experiences of the Turkish second generation,’ I cover a more diverse sample and use mixed methods. Studies on youth transition put young people front and centre. The analyses emanate from the young people themselves, exploring reality from their perspective and bringing to light their relationships with society at large and its structures. Pursuing an outcome-oriented approach, social stratification research illustrates the disadvantaged position held, in general, by descendants of Turkish immigrants; youth studies concentrate on the processes leading up to such outcomes. As such, youth studies help generate self-serving research tools and theoretical concepts for understanding the complex lives of young people today.

5 tt î Throughout the book I use the terms “Turkish second generation”, “native-born descendants of Turkish immigrants’, “descendants of immigrants from Turkey” interchangeably.

1.1 Youth Transitions 5 1.1 Youth Transitions

Current labour market conditions have caused youth unemployment to skyrocket and insecurities in the labour market careers to intensify. The effects have been hardest on young people who are about to leave school and enter the labour market (Furlong 2009). This transition marks a critical point in the lives of young people. Traditionally, the transition has been considered to be the period “from the completion of full time education to entering into the labour market with a full-time job” (Mueller and Shavit 1998). In the last two decades, youth studies have promoted a new take on ‘transition’, moving away from its conceptualization as a single point in an individual’s biography towards an analysis of the dynamic interplay between multiple transitions that take place simultaneously (du Bois-Reymond 2009a). Today, young people leave their parental home and have children before getting married; they begin working while still at school and may go back to school after having worked for some time and started a family. There is no longer a clear-cut boundary or temporal linearity between work and study (du Bois-Reymond 1998; Wyn and Dwyer 1999). Accordingly, youth sociologists argue that these transitions have become prolonged and more complex (Furlong 2009). One major reason cited for this prolongation is the rising demand for credentials to satisfy the ‘knowledge economy’ of most Western European countries, compelling individuals to stay in school for longer and delaying their labour market entry (Bradley and Devadason 2008; du Bois-Reymond 1998).

The prolongation of education not only postpones entry into the labour market, but also leads to more complex transitions. The conceptualization of the “transition point” is becoming more and more blurred as people start jobs while still pursuing an education or return to school after having begun to work (Heinz 2009; Wyn and Dwyer 1999). Prolonged and complex transitions also affect perceptions of life course and age. The point of labour market entrance sways conventions about the acceptable age to be considered independent: in most Western European countries, young people are also delaying getting married and having children (Willoughby et al. 2015). Heinz (2009) wrote that “borders between all life phases are becoming fuzzy”; that age as a social marker is losing its significance and that transitions between certain life courses are less age-dependent and show greater variation across individuals, groups and countries.

Many researchers acknowledge the “changing” nature of youth transitions (Bradley and Devadason 2008; du Bois-Reymond 2009b; Furlong 2009; Heinz 2009). Yet, there remains room for discussion about the implications and consequences of these transformations on the lives of young people and whether they apply to all social classes and backgrounds. Tensions tend to arise around the interplay between structure and agency during transitions. Theories forwarded by Beck (1992) and Giddens (1991) have been influential in spurring debate on the individualization of youth transitions (du Bois-Reymond 1998; Evans and Furlong 1996; Furlong 1998). Beck (1992, 2007) argued that insecure labour market conditions, such as unemployment and precarious job contracts, generate a “risk society” in which people must “navigate” their biographies: this produces greater individualization in life practices and diminishes the significance of, and attachment to, forms of collectivity, such as social class, gender, marriage and family. In a similar vein, Giddens (1991: 72) observed that individuals are increasingly forced to be conscious of who they are, what they want and what they feel, thus becoming ‘the authors of their own autobiographies’: this renders them responsible for a “reflexive” process of building “themselves”. In life course studies, a life phase called “emerging adulthood” (Arnett and Tanner 2006) has gained prominence. This identifies a developmental stage between adolescence and adulthood and acknowledges that young people nowadays have more agency in navigating their biographies regardless of their social class, gender or ethnicity.

Such arguments that attribute greater agency to young people have their critics. Various scholars argue that today’s youth transitions are due to structural transformations, notably post-industrial economies in Western Europe, the booming service economy and growing neoliberal practices in both education and the labour market—none of which necessarily result in increased agency (Furlong 2009). Furlong and Cartmel (1997) found that while the rising role of agency has become more evident in youth discourses, inequalities along the lines of social class, gender and age have persisted. Studying early labour market careers in Bristol, Bradley and Devadason (2008) posited that non-traditional transitions were the result of economic insecurities, rather than young people’s own decisions to “navigate” their biographies in line with Beck (1992). Last but not least, Côté and Bynner (2008) and Cété (2014a, b) argued that the phenomenon of prolongation has been around longer than many people might think, and that it varies across countries and groups. Lacking empirical proof to make generalizations, they therefore oppose “emerging adulthood” as a universally applicable label. Citing evidence from Canada, Côté and Bynner (2008) emphasize the influence of structural changes, particularly technological transformations and economic globalization. They note that the responses to these changes is neither uniform nor universal, but varies according to social class and local conditions. While some individuals prolong their transitions into higher education, others obtain few educational qualifications and leave school at an early age to start work. Although a higher sense of risk and uncertainty has intensified young people’s reliance on social support mechanisms and their families, the extent to which they do so varies across settings. Côté (2014a, b) has called for a perspective based on the “‘political economy of youth” that pays more attention to material conditions than to subjectivities. He argues that young people are faced with considerably reduced earning power in comparison to adults and have become disadvantaged “as a class”. He urges researchers to pay attention to the structural conditions of youth transition and the differences among this group along the class, ethnicity and gender lines that continue to shape their chances. A perspective that is also taken on board in this study.

The research presented in this book not only puts an understudied group under the microscope, but also challenges some of the assumptions that have dominated—and perhaps also clouded—youth transition studies over the last decade. To understand the youth transitions of descendants of Turkish immigrants, we must see which

1.2 Conceptual Tools of the Study 7 trends apply to them and under what conditions. In fact, we must ask whether they do experience prolonged and complex transitions. And, if so, how? Delving more deeply, we can then ask if the descendants of immigrants are also delaying transitions (such as by postponing marriage), and examine the role played by gender, ethnicity and social class. Can these young people still rely on their family for support during transitions if they come from lower social classes, if their parents have relatively low education levels and a different ethnic background? Furthermore, how might gendered values in their ethnic community shape their transitions? At what age and under what conditions are transitions acceptable for second-generation youth?

Previous studies have presented the transition pathways of ethnic minority youth as different from those of the majority group, yet have struggled to interpret these trajectories due to insufficient ethnic minority data (Evans 2002; Lehmann 2007; Plug and Bois-Reymond 2006). For example, Plug and Bois-Reymond (2006) filed young Roma women’s trajectories under ‘other transitions’ since they married and had children earlier than the general population, although the processes or mechanisms that led to such transitions were not scrutinized. Other studies stressed unequal conditions, especially when discussing the transitions of “ethnic minority youth’ (Evans 2002; Evans and Furlong 1996; Lehmann 2007; Plug and Bois- Reymond 2006; Webster 2009). That term, however, lumps together both immigrants and their descendants, regardless of whether they were born in the host country or a parent’s country of origin. Although researchers have often emphasized the discriminatory practices and unequal resources such groups must contend with when transitioning from school to work, not enough attention has been paid to social class, gender and ethnicity, and how those factors shape transitions of immigrants’ descendants in different contexts.

This book explores when and how having immigrant parents influences young people’s transitions in different settings. Broadly speaking, it scrutinizes social structures to determine how they shape transition outcomes. It shows how immigrants’ descendants experience unique conditions and how their youth transitions differ from those of others, due to their ethnic community’s gendered values and their parent’s resources, often circumscribed by social class and ethnic background. The book uses a comparative design to highlight how social structures interact with institutional structures to present these young people with both opportunities and obstacles during their transitions.

1.2 Conceptual Tools of the Study

In analyzing youth transitions as both forms of practice and on-going processes in young people’s trajectories, I borrow some concepts from Bourdieu while also staying critical of his theory. Capital theory helps to order the social background of descendants of Turkish immigrants by exploring the forms of capital and resources they possess in relation to different fields. This is innovative since Bourdieu (1984) applied capital theory to study social reproduction among an advantaged middle class; I look at how forms of capital can be used to comprehend the reproduction of social disadvantage as well as ways of overcoming such disadvantage and become upward mobile. Migration and ethnic studies have mostly employed the concept of “capital” in terms of social capital. Zhou (2005) used the concept as “ethnicity as social capital”, a resource embedded in the Chinese ethnic community and Modood (2004) examined it as a resource embedded in the Pakistani community in the UK. These studies mostly looked at one dimension and operationalized capital as an asset in the community rather than a process that could be activated across the life course. This is mostly because they have used the “capital” as an embedded resource rather than studying forms of capital as a developmental concept in one’s social trajectory, which is where the innovative approach of this study lies. Taking into account social class, gender and ethnicity as main social structural dimensions; I study how different forms of capital, or the lack thereof, influence peoples’ transition trajectories.

1.2.1 Social Class: Parents’ Forms of Capital

One of the most common lenses through which to see and evaluate social class is occupational status (Crompton 2010). Most studies of educational achievement among the descendants of immigrants use variables that combine occupational status with educational level to control for the effect of parental background (Heath and Brinbaum 2007). Other studies take parental resources into account to help explain the role that parents play in educational attainment (Crul et al. 2012; Schnell 2012; Van de Werfhorst and Van Tubergen 2007). These studies repeatedly analyse and affirm the role of parental background and involvement in educational attainment. When controlling for parental background Van de Werfshorst and Van Tubergen (2007) found that the descendants of immigrants appeared more likely to succeed than those with native-born parents. Brinbaum and Kieffer (2009) showed that French immigrant parents had higher aspirations for their children than native-born parents with similar educational and occupational backgrounds. These studies highlight how, despite apparent similarities in education and economic status among immigrants, there are covert mechanisms and/or resources that significantly differentiate immigrant parents from each other and from native-born parents. Furthermore, youth transition research, still mostly entrenched in the individualization paradigm, can benefit from examining how parental social class influences transition processes. Although recent studies have found that economic insecurities force young people to rely more on family support mechanisms (Cote and Bynner 2008; Jones 2009), they do not specify which kinds of support are significant.

To capture the covert mechanisms of social class in young people’s lives, I apply a more detailed class analysis. Savage et al. (2005) proposed that by employing concepts such as capital, assets and resources (CARs)—notably including Bourdieu’s forms of capital—we might derive a better understanding of how class inequalities are formed at the micro-level. This approach is conducive to comprehending how

1.2 Conceptual Tools of the Study 9 social class works in practice rather than merely constructing a classification scheme. Savage et al. (2005) credited Bourdieu for providing a dynamic conceptualization of class due to the potential for accumulating or transforming various forms of capital.

For Bourdieu (1985b, 1987), social class is a social space where agents are distributed according to their relative capital and have the opportunity to share a similar habitus. Bourdieu (1985a) proposed four generic forms of capital: cultural, economic, social and symbolic. Capital comprises the material and non-material resources with which individuals are endowed for their struggle in different fields (Bourdieu 1985a). It is thus important to establish the relationship between capital and a field that bestows a symbolic value on it. For Bourdieu (2005: 44), the latter refers to “a field of forces and struggles in which the stake is the power to transform the field of forces”. In each field, struggles transpire between “the newcomer who tries to break through the barrier and the dominant agent who will try to defend the monopoly and keep out the competition” (p. 72). The conditions apply to all fields, including politics, religion, education and employment. It should not be forgotten, that the descendants of immigrants are newcomers to many fields where the rules of game are already set.

Forms of capital are not fixed, and their convertibility is a cornerstone of the theory; the forms can develop along the course of a social trajectory and convert into one other. They let us study social class dynamically, as a constant struggle wherein individuals develop and convert various resources in their social trajectories, rather than as a fixed status. Because Bourdieu (1984) initially used forms of capital to study the social reproduction of advantage among the dominant group, he is often criticised for being a theorist of reproduction rather than of change and transformation (Bennett et al. 2009; Friedman 2016; Jenkins 2002). Yet, migration scholars have used his theoretical toolkit to illustrate capital development (Keskiner 2015, 2017; Keskiner and Crul 2017) and intra-group variations of capital acquisition and production (Erel 2010). Erel (2010) showed how, over time, migrant women have developed different forms of capital in their migration trajectories and selectively turned to resources from their home country. In line with her argument, I study the differentiation of capital among immigrant parents to see how it impacts their children’s social trajectory, beginning with their education and into their transitions. Despite mostly originating from rural backgrounds in Turkey, the immigrant parents in my study experienced distinct institutional structures in their host countries and wide variations with regard to language acquisition, educational attainment, labour market conditions and exposure to migrant and/or family networks. I hypothesized that this would lead to capital development and conversion among the parents, that might not be directly captured by the statistical models controlling for their “educational level”. Erel (2010: 643) stated that forms of capital are “both the product of and productive of differentiations of gender, ethnicity and class within the migrant group”. To her list, I therefore add age and generation. Intra-migrant group differentiations of capital development also show variations across age and the generation of migration, since migrants are exposed to different structures at different times.

To reiterate, I analyze migrant parents’ forms of capital expressly in relation to their children’s trajectories. Yet, this book’s major contribution is to explain how the descendants of Turkish immigrants develop forms of capital in their social trajectories and how they do so across two distinct settings.

1.2.2 Social Class in the Making: Developing Forms of Capital Along Social Trajectories

In his book Distinction, Bourdieu (1984: 109) discusses the concept of social trajectory.

On the one hand, agents are not completely defined by the properties they possess at a given time, whose conditions of acquisition persist in the habitus (the hysteresis effect); and on the other hand, the relationship between initial capital and present capital, or, to put it in another way, between the initial and present positions in social space, is a statistical relationship of very variable intensity.

In this definition, Bourdieu suggests that individuals travel along a trajectory and they can, over time, diversify and augment their capital. Nevertheless, he argues, the available pathways and the trajectory one travels depend on one’s initial social position. The trajectory’s slope will thus be determined by parental resources and position in social space, and the capital available at the end of the trajectory will strongly correlate with initial parental capital. That is to say, young people do not move randomly in social space; their trajectories are structured by institutional settings, contextual factors and their parents’ resources. Yet, as Bourdieu (1999) later observed in The Weight of the World, educational systems have become major markers of success and can, to a great extent, affect students’ chances to succeed in life. In my study, a social trajectory is not restricted by parental background, and each structure has its own ways of shaping trajectories. In relation to these diverse structures, young people can develop various forms of capital, which may or may not facilitate achieving greater distance from their parents’ initial position in social space. Bourdieu’s social trajectory was also popular in youth transition studies in the 1980s, although came under fire for its structuralist emphasis. Revisiting the concept, my study argues that even though young people navigate their own transitions—and hence execute agency—their transitions are still bound by social and institutional structures.

In sum, my application of Bourdieu’s theories is both flexible and reflexive. On one hand, I use his concepts to articulate the relationship between capital and fields. On the other, his concept of social trajectory allows me to demonstrate that not all trajectories travelled by the descendants of immigrants reproduce their initial conditions. Understanding social trajectories is crucial to understanding the transitions of the descendants of immigrants without relegating them to possessing only their parents’ resources or binding them to institutional conditions. Instead, I recognize how they develop certain forms and volumes of capital throughout their education and labour market trajectories.