Labour Migration, Postcolonial Nationalism and Class Politics beyond Borders: The Case of the Turkish Party MHP in Germany

Abstract

Literature on the politics of sending countries has burgeoned in the last decade (Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003a; Brand, 2006; Rodriguez, 2010), contributing to a focus beyond the politics of receiving countries (Soysal, 1994). It has been often discussed separately from the literature on borders and borderlands, although borders are not just constituted by what is conceived generally as the narrow field of border policies, but also by citizenship policies and the political and economic management of labour migration. Another approach, the one for autonomy of migration, proposed to debate borders in a more encompassing way (Moulier Boutang, 2007; Bojadzijev, 2008). It draws its case studies predominantly from the guest worker struggles of the 1970s, but also claims to be methodologically able to explain contemporary developments of borders.