Faruk İremet - Migration, Language, and Resistance: The Construction of Identity in Exile

Описание: Faruk İremet - Migration, Language, and Resistance: The Construction of Identity in Exile

The First-Generation Migrant Experience

This article examines the phenomenon of “labor migration” toward Europe—shaped by different historical periods and motivations—through the testimony of a first-generation migrant. Migration is approached not merely as spatial relocation, but as a process of class descent, identity disintegration, and cultural discontinuity. The forced transition of educated individuals into unskilled labor, the distinction between integration and assimilation, the erosion of Zaza identity within the context of migration, and exile as a form of “slow death” are critically discussed. The text deliberately combines academic analysis with a polemical register.

Migration Is Not a Movement, but a Rupture

In migration literature, migration is most often analyzed in terms of economic necessity, political oppression, or individual choice. Yet such definitions remain insufficient to explain the ontological rupture experienced by the migrant subject.

I left the country in May 1985. I have lived in Sweden since June 1986. This date is more than a biographical detail; it marks a threshold at which life is divided into two.
Migration is often presented as a “new beginning.” In reality, migration constitutes the first phase of social death. One leaves behind not only one’s country, but also one’s profession, language, social status, and sense of personal continuity.

Class Descent and Occupational Fragmentation

The most invisible yet most brutal aspect of migration is class re-positioning.
An individual who is a teacher, writer, journalist, judge, physician, nurse, veterinarian, lawyer, prosecutor, police officer, or soldier in Turkey becomes, in Sweden, first and foremost an unskilled worker.
I experienced this process in all its nakedness:
I worked as a bus, truck, and taxi driver.
I worked in cleaning services and washed dishes.
I became a CNC operator. I worked as a computer instructor. I worked in rehabilitation services within the state sector. And for twenty-five years, I held various positions within a Swedish state institution. During this time, I completed four different formal educational programs.

This diversity can be read as a “success story.” Academically, however, it represents a paradigmatic example of fragmented migrant labor. The migrant does not sell expertise, but endurance. The system demands flexibility, yet offers no continuity.

Integration or Assimilation?

Integration is a positively valued concept within European social policy. In practice, however, integration often functions as a softened form of assimilation.

First-generation migrants attempt to preserve language and culture. In the second generation, this effort is sustainable only if supported by strong collective structures. Otherwise, cultural transmission is disrupted.
Organized communities—through standardized languages, institutionalized traditions, and strong identity narratives—experience this process with greater resilience. For Zazas, the situation is markedly different.

Zaza Identity and Dissolution in Migration

Zazas often begin migration as trilingual subjects: Zazaki, Kurdish, and Turkish. In theory, such multilingualism constitutes an advantage. In practice, the absence of organization and the lack of political representation transform it into a disadvantage.
A tendency toward integration facilitates short-term adaptation but accelerates identity erosion in the long term.
In the second generation, the language weakens.
In the third generation, the issue is no longer integration, but loss.
Zazas who organize around religious communities or left- and right-wing political movements tend to be absorbed either into Turkishness or Kurdishness. Zaza identity dissolves silently between two dominant identities.
The “Expatriate” Image and Double Alienation
The migrant is a “foreigner” in the host country and a “guest worker abroad” in the country of origin.
From Turkey’s perspective, the migrant appears as:
financially better off but naïve,
naturally exploitable,
immediately recognizable by speech.

In the host society, the migrant is perceived as a potential “integration problem,” or at times as a silent surplus. This deepens the migrant’s condition of double alienation.

Exile, Struggle, and Slow Death

Yılmaz Güney defines exile as follows:
“For me, exile means a determined struggle to be able to return to my country.
For me, exile means establishing relations with the peoples of the world.”

Human beings are healthy not merely where they
But the person who preserves their language transforms exile from defeat into struggle.
Continue making history. ZAZAKÎ NÊMIRENA! (ZAZAKI VİLL NOT DIE!)

Faruk İremet
02 January 2026
#herkes #öneçıkar #farukiremet #zazaca #zazalar #zazapress #zaza_press