Extant scholarship on ontological security in sociology has focused on the significance of home as a source of security. In this study I explore how conversion has become the most salient source of ontological security and provides a “sense of home” for Iranian asylum-seeking converts living in Sweden. The data on which this study is based are part of an ethnographic study of Iranian asylum-seekers who converted from Shi’a Islam to Christianity in Sweden. This ethnographic investigation thus contributes to the understanding of the significance of ontological security among migrant religious converts while examining the factors and processes contributing to the development of a sense of home and ontological security.
In this study, I argue that when mainstream primary institutions “cease to be the ‘home’ of the self’ (Berger et al. 1974, 86) Iranian asylum-seeking converts turn to Christianity to find the source of significance. This conversion has been the secondary institution shielding them from existential anxiety and homelessness, while the primary institution has become meaningless. The new home that the secondary institutions offer has increased their sense of ontological security and minimized their existential anxiety. Through conversion, they have become ‘at home’ in the secondary institution, and their self has been re-institutionalized.
Berger, P. L., B. Berger, and H. Kellner. 1974. The Homeless Mind. Great Britain: Pelican Books
In Berlin, October 2010, the German National Soccer Team comfortably defeated the visiting Turkish national squad in a 3-0 victory. This was not a typical "home" game for the Germans, however. Spectators of Turkish-descent packed the 74,244-seat stadium. Turkish names could be found on both rosters, including three Turkish-German athletes sweating for Turkey. The exceptional case was Mesut Özil, a third-generation migrant whose grandfather migrated from northwest Turkey to West Germany in 1970. He chose to play for the German national team a year earlier and received considerable scorn from the Turkish press for his decision. 79’ into the game, Özil got a through ball and scored it. Strikingly, he shot the ball with doubt. He did not celebrate the goal with mates. He did not do his typical fist-pump. He did not even smile. He seemed to be more sad than happy when he scored against Turkey.
Though overlooked by scholars of ethnicity and sport history, the choices and behaviors of soccer players can structure and reflect social relations and personal identities. In today’s meeting, we want to explore history along with individual and community observations, and examine how Turkish-German soccer players pick their citizenship, based on the 2000 German dual-citizenship restrictions, and their national team.
This presentation explores how and why Turkish-German players experience and attribute significance to the activity of playing for a national team. It explains that the players frame their social behavior against the backdrop of ethnic and cultural identity all the while the player and spectator relationships formed through the player’s specific choices and behaviors strengthen definitions of ethnic and communal belongingness. The analyses and cases derived from original and published data may well serve to the larger field of Sport and Ethnicity Studies a subtle reminder that the emotions and mechanics of athletes are constitutive and reflective objects of ethnic and communal identities. The second-generation athletes ultimately provide a unique lens though which to understand important and relevant themes regarding Middle East in Europe, including ethnicity, identity, laws, migration, and minorities.
Are some groups or individuals more prone to activism? How about the long-lasting effects of violent contentious politics on the members of these groups? It is more challenging for the members of certain groups to stay uninvolved or indifferent towards politics and pursue an “ordinary” life. Because of their collective history, they are more likely either to be pulled or pushed into activism for a temporary or long period of time. But not every member of such groups automatically opts for an activist career, just like not everyone who has joined persists in those movements. This is also true for the Kurdish people in the Middle East who have long been striving for civil and political rights and come to establish political as well as armed organizations.
The Kurdish population in the region has been divided up, by the establishment of national borders, between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. All these countries have at some point in their history been ruled by authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, in the hegemonic political discourses, Kurds have been considered a threat to the national unity of the respective countries and subjected to various forms of repression and violence. The level and extent of violent and repressive policies have been contingent on both the character of the authoritarian regimes and that of the Kurds’ socio-historical configurations in these countries. These repressive policies have often resulted in the migration or escape of numerous Kurds to Europe, and thus in the constitution of a large diaspora in Europe in general and in Germany in particular.
The social movement literature on the micro mobilization of individuals in political activism has mostly been limited to quantitative analyses focusing on factors such as “biographical availability” or belonging to certain political, social, or activists’ networks. This paper, however, adopts a social constructivist approach based on a procedural and relational analysis of individuals’ decisions and actions to reconstruct the processes leading to the formation of activist biographies.
Drawing on the biographical narrative interviews with the activist Kurdish migrant women in Germany, this paper attempts to identify patterns in the life histories of Kurdish activist women which play a significant role in their decisions to participate and stay engaged in political activism both in the countries of origin and also in Germany.
This paper suggests that the mobilisation of the Kurdish diaspora in support of the Kurdish political entities in Syria and Iraq during the battle against Islamic State paved the way for a type of Kurdish diaspora identity, which is best described as alter-territorial. This notion epitomises a certain diaspora inclination towards the homeland that arises from diaspora members’ loyalty and political relation to another part of the homeland than the one from which they descend. Thus, Kurds originating from various parts of the Kurdish homeland celebrated the victories of “our” people in Rojava or hailed the demand for independence put forward by “our” leaders in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
The phenomenon of identifying with another part of the homeland than the place of origin is not new, as a number of previous mobilising events tells. These include the transnational mobilisation vis-à-vis the defeat of Saddam Hussein forces in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 1991 and the capture of Öcalan in 1999. However, the formation of the two rivalling autonomous Kurdish regions, in Syria and in Iraq, which both claim to be the leading Kurdish political entity, calls for an adequate examination of the phenomenon. The paper argues that alter-territorial identification encompasses both de-territorial and re-territorial diaspora identification: a de-territorial identification with the transnational Kurdish community and a re-orientation towards the Kurdish homeland through political mobilisation and identification with the struggle of fellow Kurds within the transnational community.
The analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork among various diaspora groups in Denmark conducted as part of the author’s PhD research. The examination covers the Kurdish mobilisation from the attack on mount Sinjar and the siege of Kobane by Islamic State in 2014 to the independence referendum in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 2017 and the attack on Afrin by Turkey and Turkish backed rebels in 2018. The research draws on social movement theories, in particular on strategic interactionism, which allows the analysis to delve into the complexity of interaction between various players within the diaspora as well as between diaspora groups and players in the host- and homeland.
