Transferring social capital from Turkey to Germany - opportunities and consequences for the employment of Turkish women?

Abstract

This study aims to shed light on social issues concerning Turkish and German communities. Within this scope, our interest is on social capital, which is an important aspect of social life and has significant effects in the formation of cross-country differences. Originally in this paper, we enquire into the causes of the evolution of social capital by paying special interest to the role of immigrant women. Having started to settle in the 1960s, the Turkish community in Germany would constitute a suitable sample for understanding how social capital evolves in different social settings. Specifically we aim to understand whether Turkish women have a substantial effect on the transformation of excessive "bonding social capital" to a more valuable "bridging social capital," which can create opportunities for their employment. At this step, we used a mixed-method approach including both semi-structured interviews and secondary data analysis to provide an indepth understanding of the social capital phenomenon for Turkish women in Germany. The main findings indicate that Turkish women possess both bonding and bridging social capital but the quality and the quantity can change over a lifetime due to various reasons. The social network composition of Turkish women in employment presents a more diversified structure; however, this does not create a distinctive composition in terms of trusting and reciprocal attitudes between employed and unemployed women. © 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.