Taylan Acar

Türkiye’de son on yıldır aile yapısında önemli değişikler gerçekleşmektedir. Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu’nun 2020 yılı için yayınladığı istatistiklere göre kadınlarda ilk evlenme yaşı 25,1’e, erkeklerde 27’ye çıkmıştır. Toplam doğurganlık hızı (doğurganlık çağında olan kadın başına düşen çocuk sayısı) da yenilenme seviyesinin çok altında kalarak 1,77’ye gerilemiştir. Elinizdeki çalışma ülke genelinde temsil kabiliyeti olan bir örneklem kullanan 2018 Türkiye Nüfus ve Sağlık Araştırması (TNSA) verilerine dayanarak bu değişimleri kadınların ve eşlerinin eğitim durumu üzerinden anlamaya çalışmaktadır. Çalışmanın bulgularına göre, yüksekokul veya üniversite mezunu kadınlar diğer kadınlardan hem evlenme yaşı hem de doğurganlık davranışları olarak çok önemli farklılıklar göstermektedir. Öte yandan hem kadın hem de kadının yükseköğretim mezunu olduğu evlilik tipinin geri kalan tüm evlilik tiplerinden farklı davranışlar gösterdiği bulgusuna ulaşılmıştır. Ayrışan kaderler (divergent destinies) ...

This article focuses on educational attainment in the family formation processes in Turkey, specifically the in- crease in women's age at first marriage. Using the women's questionnaires from 2008 and 2013 Turkey De- mographic and Health Surveys (TDHS), the findings reveal that women with some college or college education marry significantly later than those with less education. More importantly, husband's educational attainment has positive associations with women's age at first marriage if women are also equally and highly educated. Attitudes toward gender equality also play an important role in marriage behavior. Women who do not perceive domestic violence as legitimate and those who are more supportive of gender equality tend to marry moderately but significantly later than others. The findings of the article indicate that in a context of increase in women's access to higher education, educational attainment of both women and men is the primary determinant of family formation processes in Turkey. In addition to logistical factors that late graduation leads to later marriages, the article also claims that higher educated women's expectations from marriage would transform accordingly. These findings also implicate that for women with some college or college education the marriage markets would shift to university campuses.

This article focuses on educational attainment in the family formation processes in Turkey, specifically the in- crease in women's age at first marriage. Using the women's questionnaires from 2008 and 2013 Turkey De- mographic and Health Surveys (TDHS), the findings reveal that women with some college or college education marry significantly later than those with less education. More importantly, husband's educational attainment has positive associations with women's age at first marriage if women are also equally and highly educated. Attitudes toward gender equality also play an important role in marriage behavior. Women who do not perceive domestic violence as legitimate and those who are more supportive of gender equality tend to marry moderately but significantly later than others. The findings of the article indicate that in a context of increase in women's access to higher education, educational attainment of both women and men is the primary determinant of family formation processes in Turkey. In addition to logistical factors that late graduation leads to later marriages, the article also claims that higher educated women's expectations from marriage would transform accordingly. These findings also implicate that for women with some college or college education the marriage markets would shift to university campuses.

This study examines the educational aspirations of immigrant students, who are descendants of eight different immigrant communities in Germany. First, the article shows that compared to native German students, the educational aspirations of students with migration origin vary substantially. Challenging previous narratives of immigrant optimism and information deficit, the article suggests that the students of Turkish origin develop a conscious appraisal of obtaining an academic high-school qualification (AHSQ), even if they realize they will not be able to receive one by the end of the high-school. The study also shows that the duration of their stay in Germany plays a significant role in attenuating the high educational aspirations of most immigrant communities. However, Turkish students constitute an exception to this finding as they maintain high idealistic aspirations from first- to third-generation. The return migrant students from the former Soviet Union are the only group who...

Neoliberalism has been one of the most used concepts as a short-cut reference for the growing socioeconomic inequalities over the past two decades, which dramatically worsened in the aftermath of the 2008 finan- cial crisis. In framing the edited volume Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State: Inequality, Exclusion, and Change, Fernandes carefully examines the term neoliberal in order to avoid ahistorical uses of the term and chal- lenges the term becoming an overdetermined and empty signifier that presumably explains everything (chapter one). Fernandes conceptualizes neoliberalism as an extension of long-standing historical processes and a useful analytical marker of discontinuity.

This study examines the educational aspirations of immigrant students, who are descendants of eight different immigrant communities in Germany. First, the article shows that compared to native German students, the educational aspirations of students with migration origin vary substantially. Challenging previous narratives of immigrant optimism and information deficit, the article suggests that the students of Turkish origin develop a conscious appraisal of obtaining an academic high-school qualification (AHSQ), even if they realize they will not be able to receive one by the end of the high-school. The study also shows that the duration of their stay in Germany plays a significant role in attenuating the high educational aspirations of most immigrant communities. However, Turkish students constitute an exception to this finding as they maintain high idealistic aspirations from firstto thirdgeneration. The return migrant students from the former Soviet Union are the only group who re...

What factors influence Turkish society’s attitudes toward Syrian asylum seekers? The present study
focuses on this previously underexamined question. Using data from a KONDA Research and Consultancy survey on attitudes toward Syrians and other administrative data, this study directly tests the intergroup contact and group threat theories in this context for the first time. The results reveal that in relation to the size of the Syrian population, in provinces closer to the Syrian border, negative attitudes are above the national average. Furthermore, in line with the premises of intergroup contact theory, everyday exposure to Syrians alleviates negative attitudes as long as the proportion of the Syrian population in the province is small. Contact increases negative attitudes, however, if the relative population of Syrians in the province is above 10 percent. However, group threat theory is only explanatory in provinces such as Hatay and Şanlıurfa, where both the relative population of Syrians and the unemployment rate are high. Finally, the role of political party preferences is conditional on whether a participant anticipates an economic crisis.

What factors influence Turkish society's attitudes toward Syrian asylum seekers? The present study focuses on this previously underexamined question. Using data from a KONDA Research and Consultancy survey on attitudes toward Syrians and other administrative data, this study directly tests the intergroup contact and group threat theories in this context for the first time. The results reveal that in relation to the size of the Syrian population, in provinces closer to the Syrian border, negative attitudes are above the national average. Furthermore, in line with the premises of intergroup contact theory, everyday exposure to Syrians alleviates negative attitudes as long as the proportion of the Syrian population in the province is small. Contact increases negative attitudes, however, if the relative population of Syrians in the province is above 10 percent. However, group threat theory is only explanatory in provinces such as Hatay and Şanlıurfa, where both the relative population of Syrians and the unemployment rate are high. Finally, the role of political party preferences is conditional on whether a participant anticipates an economic crisis.

This article shows that professional skill level of employees is a key factor in the formation of employee responses to subcontracted forms of employment. In addition, the proportion of employees hired through temporary staffing arrangements compared to the core workers determines the employees’ capacity for collective action. This article uses observational and interview data from a public university hospital, where both skilled health care professionals and janitorial workers are hired through temporary staffing arrangements. The findings reveal that skilled health care professionals develop more individualistic responses to cope with the subcontracting practices, and the co-employment of subcontracted and permanent workers undermines solidarity among them. Lacking the professional skills and positioned at the bottom of the hospital hierarchy, janitorial workers opt for collective action against the hospital administration. Finally, the analysis of counter-responses of the hospita...

Neoliberalism has been one of the most used concepts as a short-cut reference for the growing socioeconomic inequalities over the past two decades, which dramatically worsened in the aftermath of the 2008 finan- cial crisis. In framing the edited volume Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State: Inequality, Exclusion, and Change, Fernandes carefully examines the term neoliberal in order to avoid ahistorical uses of the term and chal- lenges the term becoming an overdetermined and empty signifier that presumably explains everything (chapter one). Fernandes conceptualizes neoliberalism as an extension of long-standing historical processes and a useful analytical marker of discontinuity.

Using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), this study provides a quantitative overview of educational achievement and opportunities among Turkish youth in Germany. The findings show that students with a Turkish background are the most disadvantaged group at the fifth and ninth grade level in the fields of German and mathematics. Moreover, proportionally, they are the least-represented group among academic high school track students; the track provides opportunities for admission to universities and universities of applied sciences. Fifty years after the first migration from Turkey to Germany began, Turkish youth have had problems regarding using German in everyday life, friendship networks, and residential segregation. According to the segmented assimilationist perspective, different immigrant groups experience different levels of accommodation in destination countries. In the German context, data show that other immigrant communities gradually adapt to German society one way or another, whereas the problems of Turkish accommodation are passed on to younger generations.

This study examines the educational aspirations of immigrant students, who are descendants of eight different immigrant communities in Germany. First, the article shows that compared to native German students, the educational aspirations of students with migration origin vary substantially. Challenging previous narratives of immigrant optimism and information deficit, the article suggests that the students of Turkish origin develop a conscious appraisal of obtaining an academic high-school qualification (AHSQ), even if they realize they will not be able to receive one by the end of the high-school. The study also shows that the duration of their stay in Germany plays a significant role in attenuating the high educational aspirations of most immigrant communities. However, Turkish students constitute an exception to this finding as they maintain high idealistic aspirations from first- to third- generation. The return migrant students from the former Soviet Union are the only group who report high educational aspirations, when asked about both their idealistic and realistic aspirations. Finally, the findings indicate that the position of the particular immigrant groups within the German social status hierarchy is a strong determinant of the educational aspirations of immigrant students and their parents.

Peer networks are key aspects of experiences of immigrant youth in the destination countries. They provide opportunities for immigrant students to develop social ties with native peers, and acquire destination country language proficiency. In this article, I analyze the associations between ninth grade immigrant students’ peer networks and preferences for socializing with people from their own immigrant community and their educational performance, measured as reading and math scores. Using nationally representative data drawn by the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), I analyze the role of these social network characteristics across five largest immigrant-communities in Germany: the classical labor migrants from Turkey, former Yugoslavia and Mediterranean countries, and the return migrants from Poland and former Soviet Union. My findings point to a two-tiered structure of educational integration between descendants of labor and return migrant groups, represented by Turkish and Polish student group, respectively. Most interestingly, I show that the school-track moderates the associations: test scores of the students from labor migrant groups who are successful enough to be placed on the academic–Gymnasium–track suffer the most from increasing proportions of immigrant schoolfellows and classmates, as well as homophily for socializing with co-nationals.

School and classroom composition is key to understanding the educational disadvantages the immigrant and minority students face. In this article, I examine the associations between immigrant composition at the school and classroom level and the educational performance of immigrant students in ninth grade, measured as reading and math scores. Using nationally representative data of ninth graders drawn from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), I analyze the immigrant composition of peers among children of the five largest immigrant communities in Germany: labor migrants from Turkey, former Yugoslavia and Mediterranean countries, as well as recent migrants from Poland and return migrants from the former Soviet Union. My findings suggest that within the highly differentiated secondary school system in Germany, the immigrant composition of schools and classrooms plays a limited role on the test scores of immigrant students. The major determinants of immigrant students’ performance appear to be students’ individual socioeconomic status and country of origin, which in turn determine the school type and context the students attend. In these schools and classrooms, the proportion of immigrants plays at most a small role.

Dissertation Abstract

This dissertation examines differential modes of integration among immigrant groups in Germany, by focusing on the educational performance of immigrant youth in high school, in light of the social and historical context of their arrival. In the German context, educational integration is the key mechanism for social mobility among immigrant youth. The analyses focus on students who are descendants of the five largest and politically most relevant immigrant communities: labor migrants from Turkey, the former Yugoslavia, and the Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece), as well as recent migrants from Poland, and return migrants with German ancestry from the former Soviet Union. I use a nationally representative sample of ninth-grade native German and immigrant students from data drawn by the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS).

The first empirical chapter shows that the political economy of immigration has important implications for differences between early labor migrants and recent migrants, whereas Turkish students still constitute the most disadvantaged group with patterns of social immobility. Recent migrants enjoy a positive reception at the time of their arrival; however, the educational performance of return migrants with German ancestry suggests that this supportive context might not translate into educational success.

The second chapter shows that a higher proportion of immigrant students among peers has differential associations for the five immigrant groups. These associations also vary by school track; negative associations are larger for labor migrant students in academic tracks. However, controlling for mean-achievement in schools leads to a considerable weakening of the test score- peer network relationship for Turkish students, indicating that they are more likely to attend low achieving schools.

The third chapter finds that secondary school track placement plays a significant role in attenuating the educational aspirations of immigrant students and their families. Turkish and Yugoslavian immigrant groups have the highest aspirations; that achievement-aspiration paradox applies to groups who come from the most disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and from countries with the lowest rates of higher education enrollment.

Overall, with its growing young and young-adult immigrant population and an aging native population, German society still faces challenges of providing educational opportunities to immigrant youth.

In the last two weeks of February 2015, the University of Wisconsin System and UW-Madison administration has gone on the defensive against the hemorrhaging of state support for higher education recently proposed in Governor Scott Walker’s Biennial Budget—including $300 million in budget cuts to the university (the largest cut in the 44-year history of the UW System). However, in order to more clearly understand the situation, the current proposed budget cuts and university restructuring need to be analyzed within a larger historical and political context—one in which a push for privatized education has happened not simply due to partisan divisions at the state Capitol, but also because of financial and material incentives for the UW System. While the unprecedented proposed to cuts can be viewed as part of a nationwide trend of the contraction of state educational funding, they should also be viewed alongside the university administrations’ ongoing attempts to gain more control over construction projects and the student fees that pay for them. Recent theorists of financialization and capital accumulation within the university have focused on the increasing investments in high-cost construction projects, which are meant to attract wealthy, out-of-state student "consumers." These investments require more easily allocable, or what Brian Whitener and Dan Nemser (2012) have called ‘unrestricted,’ capital than the state is willing to provide. Thus, while university administrators position themselves as defenders of public education who are losing control of state financial support, we argue at the outset of our article that it is quite evident that they have been complicit—if not proactive—in seeking further separation from the state in order to gain the "flexibility" to access and increase the student tuition dollars necessary to remain competitive within an academic capitalist market.

This article shows that professional skill level of employees is a key factor in the formation of employee responses to subcontracted forms of employment. In addition, the proportion of employees hired through temporary staffing arrangements compared to the core workers determines the employees’ capacity for collective action. This article uses observational and interview data from a public university hospital, where both skilled health care professionals and janitorial workers are hired through temporary staffing arrangements. The findings reveal that skilled health care professionals develop more individualistic responses to cope with the subcontracting practices, and the co-employment of subcontracted and permanent workers undermines solidarity among them. Lacking the professional skills and positioned at the bottom of the hospital hierarchy, janitorial workers opt for collective action against the hospital administration. Finally, the analysis of counter-responses of the hospital administration points to the dynamic nature of workplace relations, and the capacity of employers to reshape the responses of workers.

The empirical object of this paper is the Wisconsin protest movement of February-March 2011—more specifically, the brief occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol building during that span. Underlying this empirical object is a fourfold theoretical object. First, we aim to understand the Capitol occupation as a “social world,” as initially conceptualized by Chicago School ethnographer Paul Cressey and later theorized by Second Chicago School sociologist Anselm Strauss. Second, we aspire to build on Andrew Abbott’s more recent theoretical insight that the Chicago tradition’s primary contribution (including by extension its work on social worlds) has to do with its “understanding the arrangements of particular social actors in particular social times and places.” Third, we aim to show how power, contestation, and conflict matter in shaping temporal and spatial dynamics in social worlds. Finally, we aspire to carry the analysis of social worlds, a largely interactionist endeavor, deeper into the heart of social movement theorizing, which for decades has inclined more in a structural direction. The social worlds concept provides insights for understanding movement strategies and tactics and allows us to examine how movements sustain solidarity—classic questions in social movement scholarship.

In Antalya, Turkey the workers of the Supramed GmbH, members of the Petrol-İş Union (Petroleum Chemical Rubber Workers Union of Turkey) called a strike on September 26,
2006 following an unresolved six month long bargaining process. Supramed belongs to the German multinational corporation Prescription Medical Corp (PMC), and is located in the Antalya Free Trade Zone. At the time, PMC was running its operations in 12 countries around the world, controlling over 40% of the hemodialysis filters market in Europe (Pazartesi 2007). What makes this strike interesting is the fact that 83 of the total 85 strikers were women, as well as the fact that the strike aimed to bring a trade union into an anti-union free trade zone environment (Gallin 2001). The Supramed strike lasted 448 days; in the end it resulted in the certification of the union and a considerably successful collective bargaining agreement. Over the course of the struggle, the framing of the strike extended from a labor issue to a women’s liberation issue, articulating the classical unionist narratives with the gendered aspects of free trade zone employment. Over
time, with frame extension, the collective identity of women workers as “Supramed Workers” transformed into “Supramed Women” as a result of a diffusion process from the workers to
feminist organizations.

İşçi/emekçi kavramı, hâlâ öncelikle fabrikayı, atölyeyi, kısacası modern endüstriye özgü üretim ve çalışma ilişkilerini çağrıştırıyor. Büyük sanayi üretiminin yerini yeni teknolojilere bırakıyor olmasının, işçi sınıfını önemsizleştirdiği hatta sona erdirdiği yanılsaması, biraz da bu çağrışımdan destek alıyor. Oysa, tek varlığı emek gücü olanların sayısı artmakta.
Kapitalizmin esnek üretim örgütlenmesinin emek “piyasasında” yol açtığı büyük ayrışma, parçalanma ve çeşitlenme, global düzeyde oluşan “amele pazarını” görmeyi güçleştiriyor.
Özellikle istihdamdaki payı gitgide artan hizmet sektörü, kitlesel emek gücünün çevrimine dayanıyor. Bu sektördeki birçok işte çalışanların eğitim ve formasyon itibarıyla orta sınıftan sayılması, onların işçi olduklarının “farkına varılmasını” (çoğu zaman kendilerinin de bunun farkına varmalarını) zorlaştırıyor.
Zamanımızın amele pazarı olgusunu belirleyen etken, güvencesizleşmedir.
Ekonomik ve sosyal hak kaybının yanı sıra, çalışmanın insanlara sunabildiği aidiyet ve sosyalliğin de kaybına yol açan bir süreç, güvencesizleşme.
Çalışanların zamanları ve hayatları üzerindeki hâkimiyetlerini sıfırlayan bir süreç...
Ayşe Buğra’nın hazırladığı derleme, genç araştırmacılar Taylan Acar, Esin Ertürk, Özgür Burçak Gürsoy, Ebru Işıklı, Aysun Kıran ve Sevecen Tunç’un katkılarıyla, Türkiye’de emek ilişkilerinin (ve sömürüsünün) çarpıcı manzaralarını gözler önüne seriyor. İşçi/emekçi deyince hemen akla gelmeyen işçiler: Mevsimlik tarım işçileri, sinema emekçileri, futbol emekçileri, öğretmenler, sağlık çalışanları, ofis çalışanları ve onların “işçi olma” deneyimleri...