Transnational Spaces as Crossing Points between “Immigration” and “Movement”:

Based on the Life-Stories of Kurdish Migrants in Germany

Abstract

This paper examines how the process of migration and the transnational “national liberation movement” led by the PKK (Kurdistan Worker's Party) interact in the transnational spaces that migrants are involved in. While the radical protest actions of Kurdish people in Europe against oppression in their homelands has drawn the attention of scholars since the end of the 1990s, the impact of the movement on Kurdish communities and on individuals' lives seems to have been neglected. I will explore and discuss this interwoven process on the basis of the life-stories of Kurdish migrants in Germany. This enables us to see the not very radical nature of their “national” consciousness as Kurds, although women's liberation in the PKK as well as the individual's required devotion to the movement have an effect on the immigration process in which families experience reunification, unification and dissolution.