Review: Semra Çelik (2006). Grenzen und Grenzgänger. Diskursive Positionierungen im Kontext türkischer Einwanderung [Borders and Border Crossers: Discursive Positioning in the Context of Turkish Immigration]

Abstract

The research project of Semra ÇELIK acts on the assumption that discourses are contested and that subjects are positioned in the middle of struggles around truth and power. Semra ÇELIK raises the question of the possibilities and limitations of the discursive positioning of Turkish immigrants within the context of discourses of national identities in Germany. Following FOUCAULT's discourse theory and Siegfried JÄGER's critical discourse analysis, in her empirical work ÇELIK makes a contribution towards the understanding of the entanglement of discourse and subject positioning. She conducted eight in-depth interviews with Turkish immigrants. By means of critical discourse analysis she analysed them with regard to self images in order to find out which discursive choices are available within the context of national discourses, which are drawn upon and which are not accessible or are refused. The research which is constructed as a pilot study shows that the interviewees—within an ambivalent space of enabling and limiting—(re-)produce the discursively ascribed identities but at the same time open up scopes—hybrid spaces—which are positioned beyond fixed images and national discourses. By means of the methodological combination of discourse analysis and interviews, the study offers interesting starting points for conducting research on the entanglement of discourse and subject positioning. Nevertheless, a deeper analysis—especially concerning the analysis of the discourses that are set into relation with the subject positioning as well as a theoretical foundation of the concept of hybridity—would have been beneficial for the informational value of the study. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0702266