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| 1950. Along with schooling and literacy, labour migration is one major factor in these changes. And now most girls do not want to marry in the villages, still less into farming households. They become themselves a factor making for further household migration. [Incirlioglu 1993]. Migration: Two Distinctions I make a sharp distinction between `pendular' migrants and `household' migrants; I am unhappy about the logic of these words, but cannot find a better pair. I make a less sharp distinction between internal and international migrants. A pendular migrant is a man who leaves his household to earn in the town, with the intention of returning with his earnings, or of sending money back to his wife or his household head. I define such a man, as the villagers do, as a member of the household he has left behind and continues to support. But sometimes a man moves his whole household to town, wife and all. Such cases I call household migration; a household migrant is any member of such a household. The two cases are very different . In the first, the migrant remains part of a village household, from which he may be absent for months or even years, and uses at least some of his earnings for his household; commonly all of them, less rather variable personal urban expenses. In the second, the man separates from the village, normally for good, taking his village wife, or marrying one in the town. The bulk of his earnings go to his new urban household, and his children grow up as townsmen. This simple distinction of course leaves out men who leave the village as single men, but do not remit anything, and are lost to their household. Such persons are seen as delinquent, and are in fact very |
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| rare. I classify them as fragmentary migrant households. In fact, those who begin as pendular migrants, and then marry a woman in town, normally remain committed to their village household till their marriage. I have also assumed migrants are male. This is not purely chauvinist insensitivity. I know of no woman from these villages, or indeed this area, who migrated to town except as a member of a migrant household, or to join one. The only exceptions are two or three women - none from S - , who achieved professional education while still members of village households, and moved out to practice their professions. The second distinction is between internal and international. Beginning with a trickle in the late 1950’s, Turks began migrating as workers to Germany and other places in Europe. The flow gathered pace until 1973, when the oil crisis slowed down European economic growth, and official permission for labour immigration into European countries was more or less universally withdrawn. But only a few Turks gave up and returned; the majority held on to their legal rights and began to take their families to Europe, especially Germany, to set up households there. Berlin became the fifth largest Turkish city, after Adana. In the 1970’s, Turks also began migrating for work to the Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia [Abadan-Unat 1993, Keyder and Koç 1988]. In both cases of course, the lure was wages out of proportion to those earned in Turkey, where finding employment was in any case becoming more of a problem. A few returned as failures, not even covering their expenses. Most were more or less successful, a few very successful. At first, the majority lead exiguous lives, and sent, or took, one half to two thirds of their earnings back to Turkey; immediately or later. Those who later moved their families to Europe found saving much more difficult; |
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| unless they allowed their wives to earn, or had co- resident earning children. Saudi Arabia did not accept families. All the men were pendular migrants; most complained bitterly about the heat, the police, and the Arabs. A few seemed to find it congenial, or, as one cynical wife remarked, more congenial than being at home. Many men are both internal and international migrants at different points in their lives, especially pendular migrants. Some went abroad after they had moved from the village to Turkish towns. {They were thus at the same time internal household migrants and external pendular migrants}. For the European migrants, the cultural influences tend to be greater. Most regard Europe as temporary, even if they have stayed many years, and show no sign of returning. [Abadan-Unat 1981,1993] With some exceptions, those who work in Saudi Arabia, are little different from internal migrants, except for greater inaccessibility - though many now telephone regularly - and much higher savings. S Village (i). History of Migration The impact on me of my visits to S village in 1970 and 1971 after twenty years was powerful [Stirling 1974]. My emphasis on complexity, on process, and on labour migration as central goes back to that experience. The diagram which I constructed after that visit has many things wrong with it. I reprint it here, warts and all, as an appendix, to illustrate how difficult it is even to begin to specify this complexity on paper. {Emailing it is impossible. Copies to be found in Davis 1974, Hale 1976, and in Hann 1994} At some point well before 1950, S must have had enough land and animals to feed all its people and to |
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| occupy all its labour, including the landless. Yet it is clear that within living memory some men did leave the village to work and earn. Some went to town, mostly as unskilled labourers. Others went as annual tied labourers to join the households of land-owning peasants in neighbouring villages. In the 1930’s, men walked to Ankara, which took them two weeks, to find work. Two men from well to do households in S were experienced traders who told me that they had taken cattle from the area as far as Istanbul by train. Three or four households had recently moved out of the village altogether. Around 1940, two men are said to have become skilled plasterers, and to have initiated other young villagers into skills in the building trade, thus greatly enhancing their prestige and their earnings. By 1950, out of a population of 636, and a male working population of 171, I counted 39 skilled building craftsmen, 26 of them plasterers; 6 other men with simple jobs, 5 workers in the State textile factory in Kayseri, commuting weekly, and 27 unskilled labourers. At least 48 men derived most of their income from migrant labour, and at least 77 had migrated for work [Stirling 1965, p.55]. By 1971, things were very different. Virtually all normal young men went off at about 15 years old with elder kinsmen to the towns to learn a trade. Most of the young were learning to be tilers, since this was a comfortable job, better paid, more skilled and apparently in fair demand. Eleven single men, ‘pendular migrants’, were working in Europe, and sending cash home. The village was conspicuously better off materially. Besides all these, who were bringing money directly into their village households, 65 whole households had left the village and were resident in Adana, Antakya, Ankara, Kayseri and other places. Two tractors in the village had reduced working oxen from roughly 200 to 80. Men with small amounts of land had tractor owning neighbours work their land, by direct contract, or by |