Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/14144
Title: Transnational media and migrants in Europe: The case of the mediated Turkish-Kurdish ethno-national conflict
Authors: Keles, Yilmaz
Keywords: Imagined communities;Banal-Nationalism;Concept of hegemony;Concept of the diaspora and transnationalism;Study of migrants in Germany, the UK and Sweden;Mediated Turkish-Kurdish ethno-national conflict
Issue Date: 2011
Publisher: Brunel University London
Abstract: This PhD examines the role of the transnational media in articulating and mobilizing different political and identity positions for migrants. It explores the complex linkages between Kurdish and Turkish transnational ethnic media and migrant communities. It is based on 74 in-depth interviews and 6 focus groups with Kurdish and Turkish migrants of diverse age, gender, political affiliation, occupation and length of migration in London, Berlin and Stockholm. Drawing upon the concepts of “imagined community” (Anderson 1991) and “banal nationalism” (Billig 1995), it seeks to understand how migrants make sense of the media representations of the ethno-national conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurds and how they position themselves in relation to these media texts. The thesis explores how the media impact differentially on migrants’ views and ethnic identities in the three countries. This study argues that transnational media speak on behalf of the nation to the nation, even if the members of these imagined national communities live in different places, connecting people across different geographical spaces and thus building transnational imagined communities. They create a sense of belonging to a meaningful imagined community defined as “our” nation. The mediated Turkish-Kurdish ethno-national conflict has contributed to this transnational imagined community. The analysis of interviews found that the mediated conflict has hardened ethnic-based divisions and differentiation between Kurdish and Turkish migrants in Europe. Transnational media have contributed to deterritorialization, differentiation and division among migrants. Kurds and Turks have developed distinct identities in Europe and cannot be viewed any longer as a homogeneous group. The thesis concludes by suggesting a three-way framework for the analysis of ethno-national identities of migrants, taking into account firstly the country of settlement, secondly Turkish and thirdly Kurdish media as significant in constructing imagined national communities.
Description: This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.
URI: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/14144
Appears in Collections:Media
Dept of Social and Political Sciences Theses

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
FulltextThesis.pdf2.47 MBAdobe PDFView/Open


Items in BURA are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.