Remembering across the border: postsocialist nostalgia among Turkish immigrants from Bulgaria

This paper views “postsocialist nostalgia” among Turkish immigrants from Bulgaria not just as strategic performance to negotiate the challenges they encounter in Turkey as working women but also as cross-cultural analysis based on migrants’ experiences of distinct gender regimes on the two sides of the border. I explore why the competition between older residents and newcomers over scarce resources becomes, in this instance, the ground for negotiation over proper gender roles. I also suggest that the migrants’ appeal to the communist legacy posits an alternative to either “normalizing” or “orwellizing” communism, and offers a more nuanced understanding of the norms and practices of gender and labor under communism as experienced by this particular group of minority women. [Turkish migrants from Bulgaria, postsocialist nostalgia, gender, honor, Turkey]