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Remembering across the border: Postsocialist nostalgia among Turkish immigrants from Bulgaria
Author(s) -
PARLA AYSE
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01208.x
Subject(s) - negotiation , turkish , communism , immigration , appeal , gender studies , face (sociological concept) , competition (biology) , sociology , political science , political economy , law , politics , social science , ecology , philosophy , linguistics , biology
“Postsocialist nostalgia” among Turkish immigrant women from Bulgaria is not just strategic performance to negotiate the challenges that face working women in Turkey but is also cross‐cultural analysis based on the migrants’ experiences of distinct gender regimes on the two sides of the border. I explore why the competition between established residents and newcomers over scarce resources becomes, in this instance, the ground for negotiation over proper gender roles. I also suggest that the migrants’ appeal to the communist legacy posits an alternative to either “normalizing” or “Orwellizing” communism and that it offers a more nuanced understanding of the norms and practices of gender and labor under communism, as experienced by this particular group of minority women.