Silence in turns: traces of discrimination in different generations of Turkish migrant families in Hamburg (1961–2021)

Following the labor agreement signed between Germany and Turkey in 1961, many Turkish families gradually settled in Germany, and narratives of discrimination became ingrained in these families’ histories and intergenerational memories from the very beginning. This study examines how discrimination experienced by families migrating from Turkey to Germany as guest workers was transmitted and manifested across different generations. In-depth interviews were conducted with fourteen members of seven families – including first-generation guest workers and their children – as well as with two teachers who witnessed the second generation’s schooling. The study explores discrimination encountered by different generations within the same families over time, and institutional practices that produced and perpetuated these experiences.The discrimination recounted by the first generation essentially encompasses the medical examinations required to become a guest worker, which also evoke colonial patterns, and the experiences of discrimination they faced in workplaces in Germany. Discrimination reported by second-generation participants occurred in both educational settings and workplaces.The family memory space for this generation’s experiences of discrimination is formed by schools known as Sonderschule. The disproportionately high placement of second-generation immigrant children in these schools – which are primarily for children with learning disabilities and carry exclusionary and stigmatizing connotations – has sparked debates on institutional discrimination. This research addresses the subalternizing effects of both the medical examinations and the Sonderschule system within the collective memory of Turkish guest worker families, manifested in intergenerational shame and silence. It also investigates how this shame and silence are reproduced via institutional mechanisms. As the findings show, individual acts of discrimination are collectively internalized by families, and institutions play a constitutive role in shaping these experiences.