Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Ethnography
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Parla, A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Other

Marking Time Along the Bulgarian-Turkish Border

Ayse Parla

New York University, USA, ayseparla{at}yahoo.com

As a minority group, the Turks of Bulgaria faced a cruel paradox: in Bulgaria during 1984-1989, they were persecuted by the government because they were ‘Turkish’; in Turkey, the symbolic homeland to which they migrated en masse in 1989, they were marginalized by the local population on account of being ‘Bulgarian’. More than 300,000 Turks fled Bulgaria in 1989, and, although more than half of those immigrants have returned back to Bulgaria after the downfall of the Bulgarian communist government, economically induced migrations from Bulgaria to Turkey have continued apace in the 1990s. This article offers an ethnographic account of these transborder movements and their shifting meanings centered around three immigrants whose crossings have followed different paths: a post-1989 migrant looking for temporary work in Turkey who plans to return to Bulgaria in a couple of years; a 1989 immigrant who left Bulgaria because of the assimilation campaign and settled permanently in Turkey; and a migrant who was forced to leave Bulgaria in 1989 and decided to go back after nine months in Turkey. These narratives of arrival and return, timed by a complex configuration of personal desire, political and economic necessity, and national border regulations, tell tales that complement but also complicate standard accounts of migration conveyed by dates and numbers.

Key Words: migration • border-crossings • ethnic minority • diaspora • narrative • Bulgaria • Turkey

Ethnography, Vol. 4, No. 4, 561-575 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/146613810344004
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?