Who are we now? A study of the cultural identity of Turkish migrant workers' children returning from western Europe

Abstract

54 Turkish high school students who have returned from West European countries after living as families of migrant workers completed a questionnaire in the month of May, 1983. The questionnaire consisted of questions eliciting background information plus the four scales assessing the following psychological characteristics of these children. 1. Interaction with the culture of the host country - A culture contact scale (a modified form of the scale developed and used by LeCompte and LeCompte and White) was used for assessment. 2. Traditionalism level of both the children and their fathers (families) LeCompte ~nd LeCompte Traditionalism scale was used to assess traditionalism. 3. Attitude toward the families - A new Family Evaluation scale wa~ developed. 4. Cultural identity in terms of both host and home cultures - Short-Form Adjective Q-Sort was used to assess the cultural identities. Except for the Family Evaluation scale, all the other scales had been previously developed and used in other research. They were indicated to be valid and reliable measures. The degree of contact the children had with the host culture was found to be best predicted by the Family and the School variables. The children from highly conservative families reported similar traditional attitudes on the seven different issues of the traditionalism scale. These children had lower culture contact scores indicating little exposure to the host culture. The children who were exposed to segregated public education and intense religious education were found to have had less contact with the host culture. The length of stay in the host countries failed to predict the degree of contact the children had with their culture, contrary to the expectations and the previous findings. In the case of the cultural identity variable, all of the independent variables turned out to be nonsignificant in predicting the Turkish identity of the children (expressed by the 'Self and Turk' scores) possibly, due to the lack of variance in the scale.