Pseudo-exiles and reluctant transnationals: disrupted nostalgia on Turkish satellite broadcasts

Abstract

There are currently 12 Turkish channels included in the satellite package offered to Turkish-Australians by the providing company UBI World TV. It is estimated that approximately 20,000 households have access to these new media. The channels range from religiously oriented stations like Kanal 7 and Samanyolu TV to Turkish Public Broadcasting Service's transnational enterprise TRT-INT. All of these channels, with the exception of TRT-INT, are privately owned commercial stations that broadcast nationally. Therefore, a 'very minimal percentage of the programs included in these broadcasts is targeted specifically for the Turkish-Australian viewer, or for any Turkish migrant audience around the world' (Karanfil, 2007: 64).The significance of transnational media within a diasporic context stems from an important recognition about the media themselves. At the centre of any given contemporary society and culture, media play a constitutive rather than a reflexive role (Hall, 1992). As Yu Shi notes: 'this gives questions of culture, ideology, and the scenarios of representation a formative and not merely an expressive place in the constitution of social and political life ' (2005: 56). As cultures are uprooted from places, ideas of culturally and ethnically distinct places become salient (Gupta and Ferguson, 1992). Diasporic individuals, living in cultural borderlands, cling to remembered or imagined homelands; they carry on practising authentic home cultures, wanting to make sense of the constantly changing subjectivities that stem from their migratory experiences. Media in general, and transnational media in particular -for diasporic subjects -act as agents through which identities are formed, reproduced and reformed rather than merely represented. This is an important reason why transnational media constitute such a crucial zone for diasporic

A semi-public diasporic space: Turkish film screenings in Belgium

“…This corresponds with earlier studies on Turkish diasporas elsewhere, for instance Ayhan Kaya's discussion of ethnic identity politics among the diaspora in Germany, that is the use of the "homeland" as a chief source of identity formation and articulation (Kaya, 2002). Researching the Turkish diaspora in Australia, Gökçen Karanfil (2009) observes that the "lost homeland" continues to serve as a point of reference to an authentic culture. According to Karanfil, this is put into practice on a daily basis by "Turkifying" the spaces in which diasporas live (2007, p. 61).…”

Rethinking Visiting Friends and Relatives Mobilities

“…A disjuncture between migrants' and non‐migrants' journeys is termed the ‘ossification effect’ by Levitt (). Returned migrants can be deeply disappointed when faced by changes (Hoffman, ; Karanfil, ), which stand in sharp contrast to images of the ‘old country’ conveyed by their parents (Jain, ). Hence, second generation migrants' ‘roots’ can be ‘lost’ when this other place is transformed from imagined to real (Wessendorf, , ; King et al ., , ; Jain, ).…”

Making Home through Cord-cutting: The Case of Korean Transient Migrants’ Postcable Culture in the United States

“…Research on transnational television consumption has so far analyzed the use of diasporic and home-county satellite television channels among immigrants (Aksoy and Robins 2010; Christiansen 2004; Georgiou 2006; Gillespie 1995; Hargreaves and Mahdjoub 1997; Karanfil 2009; Karim 2003; Kim 2011; Naficy 1993; Nikunen 2011; Ogan 2001; Panagakos 2003; Thompson 2002). These studies examine how new media technologies rejuvenate the diasporic community by allowing them to express and cultivate their ethnicities.…”