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Pushing the Boundaries: Responses to Ethnic Conformity Pressure in Two Turkish Communities in Belgium

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Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that ethnic communities try to maintain ethnic boundaries through group pressure to conform to premigration cultural patterns, which mainly happens indirectly through social control. So far however, little attention has been given to how group members respond to this indirect ethnic conformity pressure, as well as to the factors that shape these responses. Drawing on in-depth interviews with second- and third-generation Turkish Belgians, we examine and explain different responses to ethnic conformity pressure and link these to ethno-cultural change and boundary change. We distinguish three negotiation strategies, namely conformity, creativity and disregard, and find that the choice for a particular strategy is first and foremost shaped by the agent’s gender, their embeddedness in the Turkish community, and the availability of an alternative support network, both of which are shaped by exclusion in the larger society. In addition, also the severity of the norm violation, the social structure of the community and parental expectations play a role. Findings are interpreted in terms of ethnic boundary dynamics, and implications for ethno-cultural change are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Wimmer (2013) introduces a more elaborate typology of boundary-related changes, but for our discussion the simpler typology of Zolberg and Woon suffices.

  2. Closure should not be understood here in the Weberian sense, but rather refers to the degree to which parents know their children’s friends and their friends’ families.

  3. Merry’s theory focuses on gossip, but can easily be extended to other forms of social sanctioning such as the loss of honor, social exclusion, or ridicule.

  4. Based on the national register, Schoonvaere calculated that in Ghent, the proportion of Turks (operationalized as people born with Turkish nationality) is between three and five times as high as in Belgium overall, and in the mining towns more than five times as high. Based on back-of-the-envelope calculations, this means that if about 1.5 % of the Belgian population had Turkish nationality at birth, between 4.5 and 7.5 % of people in Ghent have Turkish ancestry (not including the 3rd generation), compared to more than 7.5 % in the mining towns.

  5. Some of the shorter interviews were follow-up interviews with people who had already been interviewed before.

  6. All quotes used are translated from Dutch as literally as possible. Where anonymity or understanding was jeopardized, we made minimal changes to the text, signaled by square brackets. Unless otherwise stated, the quotes used to illustrate particular points represent remarks that were frequently made.

  7. We are indebted and grateful to one of the reviewers of this article for drawing our attention to the parallel between our strategy of creativity and code switching.

  8. Field notes, 11 January 2011, taken during an interview when recorder had to be switched off. Certain details have been left out to ensure anonymity. It is debatable whether or not it is ethical to include this excerpt, considering that the informant asked to have the recorder switched off before telling what is reflected here, because she was afraid people would be able to identify her through her story. Given that the story is so telling of the point we wanted to make, we thought it was important to include it, but only after being sure that no one would be able to identify her through it. Therefore, we left out specific information, such as her age, occupation, the city they moved to and her family composition. Considering that we had heard similar stories during our research, we were confident that the phenomenon was not so unique that it would jeopardize her anonymity.

  9. The only exception here maybe is homosexuality.

  10. Ten people out of the 51 research participants were in a long-during relationship with a non-Muslim. Given that for men interreligious marriages are not much of an issue, there is no clear relationship with how they deal with social control. For women however there is: Those who tend to disregard were all single or in a relationship with a non-Turkish person.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Ghent University, Korte Meer 5, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Klaartje Van Kerckem & Bart Van de Putte

  2. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Ghent University, Universiteitstraat 8, Ghent, Belgium

    Peter A. J. Stevens

Authors
  1. Klaartje Van Kerckem
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  2. Bart Van de Putte
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  3. Peter A. J. Stevens
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Klaartje Van Kerckem.

Appendix: The Use of Quotes as Vignettes

Appendix: The Use of Quotes as Vignettes

Vignettes were not used in the interviews until a first round of data analysis (on about seven interviews) yielded analytical and empirical observations that suggested hypotheses we wished to test and refine. Rather than explicitly ask respondents leading questions about phenomena relevant to ethnic conformity pressure if they did not mention them on their own, we opted to use vignettes based on quotes drawn from the already existing interviews:

Vignette 1—Ali talking about “ethnic conformity pressure”:

Turks say things like […]: “Assimilate, […] watch out for this, don’t do that. Try to stay Turkish.” In fact, that’s the biggest, um…, contradictory point of view. The Flemish want […] you to renounce your whole culture of origin. You know. To say: “I don’t have anything to do with that. I’m Belgian now.” If you’re in a situation like that […], you won’t be accepted—socially accepted—by the Turks. They don’t like it.

Vignette 2—Batuhan talking about “social control”:

I was walking with my girlfriend one day—my parents didn’t know about it. Holding hands… you know, a friend of my father’s saw it, and right away [he was telling him]: “You know what! Your son was walking hand in hand with a girl!” And my dad was, like…, you know… I come home and he says: “Well, it seems that…” And he knew about it after, like, ten minutes. You know… yes, in that community social control is pretty strict. And… one day I was smoking and my dad—again—ten minutes later he knew about it! And [he said]: “I hear you smoke!” I told him: “You’ve gotta go back to your source and tell him to shut up!”

Three considerations led us to use existing narratives rather than direct questions or hypothetical situations:

  1. 1.

    Legitimacy: The use of quotes gave us greater legitimacy in delving into the topic of ethnic conformity pressure. Since Belgian society often stigmatizes Turkish Belgians precisely for their high degree of group pressure, Belgian researchers could run the risk of giving offense merely by asking questions on the topic. By having informants reflect upon the comments of other Turkish people, we hoped to avoid being (seen as) offensive and stigmatizing.

  2. 2.

    Apprehensiveness: The language code of many of our informants was “restricted” (Bernstein 1964), so abstract concepts could not always be used (some of them, for instance, did not understand terms and concepts like “identity” and “social control”). We could have provided descriptions or explanations, but our wish to avoid the perception of a power imbalance ruled this out: even an interviewer with no intention of claiming power and enforcing rigid views can often be seen as more powerful, especially by informants occupying a subordinate position in society. Such informants seldom contest what the researcher says, even if they disagree. The use of actual narratives not only let us avoid using difficult terms, but also made it easier for informants to react to what was said in the quote, to contest it, or give it a new meaning.

  3. 3.

    Richness: Quotes in the vignettes touched upon different aspects of the topic, so asking informants to reflect on them helped generate rich answers and “thick descriptions.” If an informant overlooked part of a vignette, the interviewer could refer back to a quote to delve deeper into certain topics.

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Van Kerckem, K., Van de Putte, B. & Stevens, P.A.J. Pushing the Boundaries: Responses to Ethnic Conformity Pressure in Two Turkish Communities in Belgium. Qual Sociol 37, 277–300 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-014-9283-y

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