Dissonant Voices

On the 50th anniversary of the labour recruitment agreement between Germany and Turkey, Turkish migrants in Germany continue to occupy a central position as the objects of the on-going public discussions on immigration and integration. This study explores, with a transnational perspective, how the discourses on migrant integration are formulated in the transnational Turkish language media in Germany, as well as, if and how those discourses differ from, comply with or resist the dominant integrationist discourse in Germany. To reach this aim, discourse analysis on empirical material consisting of 97 articles from the European editions of newspapers Zaman and Hürriyet, has been conducted within the theoretical perspective informed by the ideas of Michel Foucault. The study concludes that there are conflicting and overlapping discourses on integration manifested in the Turkish language media in Germany, which are in varying degrees resisting to and in conformity with the dominant integrationist discourse in Germany. The resistance and compliance occurs in a complex and transnational way, in the reflection of the political and ideological fault lines in Turkey