Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

This paper reviews migration from Turkey to Germany, which started in 1961 when Germany signed a labour recruit treaty with Turkey. Even after more than five decades, Turks in Germany lack proper integration. They come last in the Berlin Institute’s integration ranking and the difference between them and the Germans is greatest they are worse educated, worse paid and have a higher rate of unemployment. And it doesn’t make much difference how long they’ve been living in Germany. There are two sides to integration. In the ideal case, there’s a majority that welcomes the immigrants and the minority that wants to become part of its new homeland. At a point, they stayed back in Germany and created parallel societies where they maintained their culture a, religion and social life. A sense of foreignness existed or still do exist in the minds of Germans as well as the Turks, and the main reason behind was the religious background, which is significantly different in cultural terms when compared with other migrants in Germany. The growing number of terrorists’ attacks and xenophobic attitude among people in Europe is not helping the situation at all. The cultural and religious backgrounds of the Turkish migrants in Germany are considered as the major reasons behind all problems and challenges which lie in the concept of their integration. Over the decades and generations’ situations changed they started to participate in the integration process, but their religious and cultural backgrounds is still obstacle their full integration.