Some fled following World War II, and travelled east by train to Istanbul with no more than a suitcase. And yet 50 years later, one of their migrant associations was second only to the Red Crescent in providing aid to the urban poor of Istanbul.Frances Trix analyses the development of the oldest such association, originally founded to welcome new migrants as they arrived from Skopje after World War II, and shows how Islam is central to its structure and practices. Her wide-ranging study variously focuses on its leadership, the growing role of women in the organisation, and the importance of music and poetry in coping with exile. In so doing, she raises wider questions concerning the preservation and articulation of identity amongst migrant communities. Urban Muslim Migrants in Istanbul is a rare ethnography of an Islamic urban group based on extensive archival research and interviews in various languages across Istanbul, Skopje and Kosovo. Trix's unique approach brings a human element to the study of forced migration, conflict and trauma and it is an important book for academics and policymakers interested in the Balkans, the Middle East, Turkey and migration studies.

Some fled following World War II, and travelled east by train to Istanbul with no more than a suitcase. And yet 50 years later, one of their migrant associations was second only to the Red Crescent in providing aid to the urban poor of Istanbul.Frances Trix analyses the development of the oldest such association, originally founded to welcome new migrants as they arrived from Skopje after World War II, and shows how Islam is central to its structure and practices. Her wide-ranging study variously focuses on its leadership, the growing role of women in the organisation, and the importance of music and poetry in coping with exile. In so doing, she raises wider questions concerning the preservation and articulation of identity amongst migrant communities. Urban Muslim Migrants in Istanbul is a rare ethnography of an Islamic urban group based on extensive archival research and interviews in various languages across Istanbul, Skopje and Kosovo. Trix's unique approach brings a human element to the study of forced migration, conflict and trauma and it is an important book for academics and policymakers interested in the Balkans, the Middle East, Turkey and migration studies.

Although Turkey is a secular state, it is often characterised as a Muslim country. In her latest book, Lejla Voloder provides an engaging and revealing study of a Bosniak community in Turkey, one of the Muslim minorities actually recognised by the state in Turkey. Under what circumstances have they resettled to Turkey? How do they embrace Islam? How does one live as a Bosniak, a Turkish citizen, a mother, a father, a member of a household, and as one guided by Islam? The first book based on fieldwork to detail the lives of members of the Bosnian and Bosniak diaspora in Turkey, A Muslim Minority in Turkey makes a unique contribution to the study of Muslim minority groups in Turkey and the Middle East.

Baba Rexheb, a Muslim mystic from the Balkans, founded the first Bektashi community in America. This is his life story and the story of his communities: the traditional Bektashi tekke in Albania where he first served, the displaced persons camps to which he escaped after the war, the centuries-old tekke in Cairo where he waited, and the Bektashi community that he founded in Michigan in 1954 and led until his passing in 1995. Baba Rexheb lived through the twentieth century, its wars, disruptions, and dislocations, but still at a profound level was never displaced. Through Bektashi stories, oral histories, and ethnographic experience, Frances Trix recounts the life and times of this modern Sufi leader. She studied with Baba Rexheb in his community for more than twenty years. As a linguistic anthropologist, she taped twelve years of their weekly meetings in Turkish, Albanian, and Arabic. She draws extensively on Baba's own words, as well as interactions at the Michigan Bektashi center, for a remarkable perspective on our times. You come to know Baba Rexheb and his gentle way of teaching through example and parable, poetry and humor. The book also documents the history of the 700-year-old Bektashi order in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Balkans and Egypt and its transposition to America. It attests to the role of Sufi centers in Islamic community life and their interaction with people of other faiths.

Research study of living conditions in three urban area slum human settlements in Turkey, serving as the basis for an examination of the economic implications and social implications of rural migration - includes the historical background of internal migration, and examines social integration, family and community relations, political participation in the new settlements and relations with the village of origin, etc. Bibliography pp. 272 to 284, references and statistical tables.

This book brings together essays by established and emerging scholars that discuss Pakistan, Turkey, and their diasporas in Europe. Together, the contributions show the scope of diverse artistic media, including architecture, painting, postcards, film, music, and literature, that has responded to the partitions of the twentieth century and the Muslim diasporas in Europe. Turkey and Pakistan have been subject to two of the largest compulsory population transfers of the twentieth century. They have also been the sites for large magnitudes of emigration during the second half of the twentieth century, creating influential diasporas in European cities such as London and Berlin. Discrimination has been both the cause and result of migration: while internal problems compelled citizens to emigrate from their countries, blatant discriminatory and ideological constructs shaped their experiences in their countries of arrival. Read together, the Partition emerges from the essays in Part I not as a pathology specific to the Balkans, Middle East, or South Asia, but as a central problematic of the new political realities of decolonization and nation formation. The essays in Part II demonstrate the layered histories and multiple migration paths that have shaped the experiences of Berliners and Londoners. This analysis furthers the study of modernism and migration across the borders of, not only the nation-state, but also class, race, and gender. As a result, this book will be of interest to a broad multidisciplinary academic audience including students and faculty, artists, architects and planners, as well as non-specialist general public interested in visual arts, architecture and urban literature.

The recent influx of Albanian migrants into Michigan is a result of both the nationalist upheavals in the Balkan region as well as the breadth of opportunities that Michigan affords. The diversity of Michigan's people is reflected in the Albanian community itself, as Christians and Muslims strive to maintain religious, ethnic, and linguistic identities in their new communities. Frances Trix explores the ways in which Michigan's Albanian community has forged an unusual cohesiveness and unity, and thus has remained more traditional in its orientation than have large, immigrant Albanian communities in other parts of the United States. These characteristics make the Albanian experience in Michigan unique.