Vintage (of) identities: Creation of immigrant identity in the third-generation immigrants from Gorno Vranovci to Izmir

This thesis investigates the identity building within the third-generation members of an immigrant community in Turkey, a group whose grandparents immigrated from the former Yugoslavia to Turkey following the Free Migrant Agreement of 1953. The focus community immigrated to Turkey without knowing the language; however, they lost their mother tongue, a dialect of Macedonian, within two generations and blended into the wider Turkish society. Nevertheless, the discourse of being immigrants is still prevalent even in the third generation. The existing literature on this topic concentrates on the reasons for Balkan immigration to Turkey and its effects on the lives of first-generation immigrants. Little is known about the impact of immigration on subsequent generations. With the analysis of the data I have collected through field research including in-depth interviews and participant observation; I have come to the conclusion that three main factors were visible on the narratives of immigrant identity younger generations have; the political environment during the time of immigration, exclusion, and discrimination that the first-generation faced when they immigrated to Turkey, and the current political atmosphere in Turkey.