Insider/Outsider/Transsiders of Transnational Migration Alevi Families, Belongings and Being in Motion and Transformation From Diasporic Grandchildren's Perspective

ABSTRACT Migration is individually and collectively a challenging but also a transformative praxis and process. In my proposal, I present these in the context of transnational migration of two multigenerational families whose pioneers originally migrated from Turkey to Germany. Based on my long‐term multilingual and multi‐sited ethnographic doctoral research project on identity processes of multigenerational ‘guest worker’ families, I inquire here on the example of the family Cem and, as a post‐doctoral field research, the refugee family Azad, the identity works and coping strategies from the grandchildren's perspective in transgenerational, transcultural and transnational space. As carriers and currently the last ring in the chain of the cultural, religious and social heritage of family (migration) knowledge, they represent as actors in present in their identity work the individual, family and societal transformation in process in transnational migration space. What makes this family migration research specific in addition is the ethnic–cultural–religious–social marginalised status or intersectional outsider positionality of the two families in their national origin and diasporic context, firstly by their original affiliation to the religiously Alevi faith and linguistically the Zazaki or rather Kurdish‐speaking community. In that case, the first family Cem is originally a Zazaki speaking Alevi ocak family from East Anatolian Dersim region. And the second family Azad is originally a Kurdish‐speaking Alevi talip family from south‐east Anatolia. In the transnational interconnection in and between Turkey and Germany as states of nationality and countries of migration with originally homogenous dominant identity concepts, the family members get into a paradoxical insider and outsider, a double minority and intersectionally discriminated situation or rather positionality. As a result, this research shows that the family members studied are dealing and coping in intersectional and transnational regarding social situations and conditions on the one hand living in cultural and identity plurality and diversity in originally ethnic–cultural–religious homogeneous constructed national states and on the other hand confronted with othering, marginalising and discrimination, this not only outside their families and communities but also inside. Exemplarily on these two families, I would like to present and discuss in this work especially from the perspective of the diasporic grandchild generation the challenging and conflictual but also creative and transformative practices, coping strategies and processes of identity and empowersharing work with a focus on Alevi knowledge, belonging and being in move and change in transnational and transgenerational family, community and migration spaces. Out of their experiences and negotiation practices and processes in insider and outsider positionalities emerges as third the transsider positionality ‘in‐between‐spaces’. Exemplarily, I introduce and discuss this here as an individual, familial and social empowersharing practice in process against the background of the central question of transmitting, appropriating, refusing and redefining and by that transforming Alevi knowledge, being and belonging.