Kevin Robins - Transnationalism, Migration and the Challenge to Europe

Our agenda in this book will be concerned with transformations occurring as a consequence of contemporary transnational (or globalising) developments. And specifically, it will consider transformations occurring with respect to Turkish migrations into Europe from the 1960s onwards. Of course, we will address the question of what this so-called transmigration means, or might mean, for the various Turkish populations themselves the ways in which they have been negotiating, and thinking about, their position vis--vis both their country of origin and their new European host societies. In so doing, however, we will inevitably have to take on board the question of what their translated presence means, or could mean, for Europe for the twenty-first century configuration of Europe, and for how Europe might now re-negotiate its own history, and its own historically accumulated sense of what constitutes its identity, its heritage, and the values that it stands for. We are interested in the contemporary challenges to European culture, and in how European states and institutions might respond to the new demands being put before them by their migrant minorities, in all their multiplicity and diversity. How, if at all, might Europe be capable of transforming itself in the new nation-questioning and nation-challenging context of the twenty-first century? Is it capable of dealing in a constructive and creative way with the presence of its very numerous Turkish (and other) minority populations?

The migrant question and the new European question are absolutely interdependent. For Turkish migrants, their new European locations provide the context within which both possibilities towards a new life, as well as distressing constraints, are now being experienced and engaged with. We begin this book, then, with a discussion of the European side of the equation with the Europe that must receive and accept its new migrants, which is the same Europe that also constantly and resentfully fights against open-mindedness and consequent reconstitution and realignment. Europe is not an abstract or static phenomenon or concept. It is always in motion and maybe the changes it is experiencing at the present time are particularly dramatic. We want to consider the Europe in transition or transformation that Turkish migrants are having to come to terms with, at the same time as they (but, of course, not they alone) are now in a position to disconcert and to undermine what seemed perhaps to be a settled and secure way of being.

A key objective of this chapter will be to draw attention to the significance of new transnational and transcultural developments in Europe. In order to do so, however, we have to first address Europe's national question which is what now stands in the way of the advancement of transcultural processes and practices. In order to begin thinking about transcultural possibilities, we first have to come to terms with the entrenched European national imaginary with the national frame of reference within which, in the modern era, cultural positioning has for the most part been elaborated. It is the nation and the nation state that have served as the primary context for cultural affairs and cultural location in the modern period. The central objective of European states has been to create and establish a sense of belonging and allegiance to the national territory and community. The institution of a culture in common has been the fundamental aspiration, valued as an integrating mechanism, binding the citizens of a country together as compatriots and giving expression, moreover, to the collective spirit, the character, the historical continuity the shared destiny even of an imagined-as-distinctive people.