ABSTRACT
The Turkish work migration of the 1960s and 1970s into middle and northern Europe certainly was the largest migration the continent experienced after World War II. Although the psycholinguistic aspects of spontaneous second-language acquisition among the first-generation migrants, as well as those of their children’s bilingualism, have received some attention in the research literature, the repercussions this migration has had both on the Turkish language spoken outside Turkey, and on the linguistic repertoires of the various milieus of the receiving societies with which the migrants came into contact, has remained largely unexplored. Also, little is known about the status and prestige of Turkish in Turkish and ethnically mixed communities, which in some parts of Europe—particularly in the large cities—have consolidated into social structures that have long surpassed the level of the temporary or provisional.
