How do Turkey-origin immigrant workers in Germany represent themselves through trade unions and works councils?

Abstract

This article analyses the representation of Turkey-origin immigrant workers in trade unions and works councils in the Ruhr region (Germany). Based on a field study in the Ruhr including surveys, in-depth interviews and focus groups between November 2015 and January 2016, this study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics of immigrant–native/citizen relations. The article demonstrates the importance of trade unions and works councils in the integration of immigrants and stresses the adverse outcomes of trade unions’ persistence to maintain their ‘German, white and male’ character. It also discusses how the internal polarisation among immigrants from Turkey affects workplace level relations. Based on the experiences of Turkey-origin immigrant workers, whose history of immigration to Western Europe spans nearly 60 years, the research focuses on the role of social organisations for the representation and participation of immigrants within the democratic system alongside natives/citizens.

Post-crisis precarity: Understanding attitudes to work and industrial relations among young people in the UK

“…In order to achieve this form of analysis, we utilise a series of focus groups, plus an online ‘community’ exercise, which works like an online focus group conducted over a longer period of time. Focus groups are an increasingly popular methodological tool for understanding the views and experiences of labour market actors (see Hurrell et al, 2012; Korkmaz, 2018; Roche et al, 2014) and were deemed highly appropriate for our study for two principal reasons. Firstly, our interest in the ‘normalisation’ of novel forms of work and industrial relations represents a rather embryonic empirical agenda, and focus groups were deemed to be an efficient mechanism for developing our understanding of attitudes to precarity among a particular age cohort.…”