Village associations as migrants' formal organizations : an empirical study in Mamak Ankara

Abstract

This thesis attempts to understand village associations as migrants’ formal organizations primarily based on field research carried out in Ankara, Mamak. It aims to contribute to urbanization and migration studies in Turkey by describing village associations’ organizational structure and the motivations of establishment and values attached to village associations by members who established them and the interests represented through the association. By utilizing the studies on migrants’ hemşehri networks, Turkish associational life and urbanization studies, this thesis highlights that migrants form formal networks that they join by their own choices and utilize associations for their own interests. Village associations in this thesis provide a case where migrants establish networks not only on patrimonial and clientalistic networks, but also on formal institutional grounds and that this formal ground has diverse establishment motivations. The description of this case is achieved through in-depth interviews in field research and a statistical analysis of village associations, where the former serves to describe the values of the founding members and the membership motivations, and the latter serves to describe the institutional presence of village associations in Ankara.