turkISh emIgrAtION ANd ItS I mplICAtIONS 123
A second aspect of the off icial policy of reintegrating the return migrants’
savings into the local economies was to support the creation of Village
Development Cooperatives. However, because many of them sought to
secure jobs for their members rather than to realise productive investments
in the villages through remittances, most of the cooperatives were really
used as a vehicle to facilitate more migration. A third method for attracting
the savings of the migrants was the establishment of the State Industry and
Workers’ Investment Bank in 1975. The bank advocated mixed enterprises
organised by the state and private capital, including workers’ remittances.
However, this effort was not successful, either for overall enterprises or
for channelling the investment resources into the less-developed regions.
Here it is important to indicate that, in the 1960s and 1970s, there was no
stock-exchange market in Turkey. Stock exchange became an option for
investment only after the 1980s, when some Turkish migrant workers in
Europe started putting in their savings.
3.3.2 Social and political consequences
As noted by Manderson and Inglis (1985: 194), ‘Migration is a process which is
frequently seen as having considerable potential for producing social change
because of the disruption it produces in the established patterns of social
life’. In other words, migration can have a powerful effect on social change.
Although there are some mixed conclusions drawn from previous studies
on the role played by international migration in fostering or retarding social
change in societies of origin, it is generally agreed that emigration from
developing to developed countries often results in moving the countries
of origin from a more to a less ‘traditional’ place. From this perspective,
migration to Western Europe has, indeed, become an important source for
social change in Turkey. Settlement and employment abroad have exposed
large numbers of Turks to modern economic, social and political processes.
Certainly, migrants’ own lives have been deeply inf luenced by the migra-
tory movements. Likewise, this movement affected their family members,
relatives, friends and local communities in Turkey.
One of the clear observations on the social level was that Turkish work-
ers often return home with changed attitudes and behaviours. The label
Almanyalı – which literally means ‘Turk from Germany’, as the local non-
migrant people call the Turkish migrants in Europe – is a product of these
perceived changed attitudes and behaviours (Atalık & Beeley 1993: 169).
There are also changes in generation and gender relationships within the
migrants’ more immediate personal-social environment. The most impor-