A Comparison of Syrian Migrant Students in Turkey and Germany: Entrepreneurial Tendencies and Career Expectations

Ali Baltaci

doi:10.12973/eu-jer.6.1.15

Abstract

<p style="text-align:justify">Entrepreneurship has been an intriguing issue as an indicator of economic development and social welfare particularly being focused on last decades. Furthermore, the issue of immigration has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Nowadays, the quality of the workforce and it's training processes are not getting only progressively important but as well the participation of migrants in the labor market will be a great problem in the future. Migrant’s entrepreneurial tendencies and career expectations designation are the main objectives of this research. This research was designed as a comparative qualitative model, and the structured written interview technique was used in order to collect the data. Randomly sampling study groups were formed according to methods of maximum diversity. The sampling group was formed by the participation of 12 Syrian migrant high school students who live and get trained in Altindag, a district of Ankara, Turkey and 13 Syrian migrant high school students who live and get trained in Kreuzberg, a district of Berlin, Germany. The collected data were analyzed by content analysis technique. The results of the research reveal that immigrant students have a high level of entrepreneurship in Germany, the nonetheless low level of the expectations of future career prospects in Turkey. Thus, the absences of sociocultural and economic areas where they will use entrepreneurial tendencies are a serious obstacle to them. Moreover, participants argue that they do not want to stay in Turkey anymore, and most of them intend to emigrate to Europe or another country if they can do so. Unlike Germany, many of the participants in Turkey neither know what they want to be nor how they want to live in the future and nor have they made any career planning.</p>

Highlights

It is a fact that many countries have to confront the immigrant problem as a result of increasing wars, hunger, famine, global warming and various natural disasters in the recent times
Hereby, based on the opinions of the literature that living in distinctive societies may have unusual personality traits, this study aims to "examine the tendency of entrepreneurship according to the citizens of the same country who live in different countries." Studies on immigrant entrepreneurship seem to focus mostly on the negative effects of immigrants
This research utilizes a comparative qualitative survey model on account of exposition the views of immigrant students who lives in Germany and Turkey in circumstances of what is their entrepreneurial tendencies and career expectations

Summary

Introduction

It is a fact that many countries have to confront the immigrant problem as a result of increasing wars, hunger, famine, global warming and various natural disasters in the recent times. The immigrant phenomena are regarded as a social problem that is becoming increasingly widespread in the western countries and in other societies where immigrants are involved. It is difficult to identify and develop the work and entrepreneurial skills of middle and older generations, the work to be carried out for the younger generation is important for the society. Identifying entrepreneurial trends in younger generations and raising awareness about entrepreneurship, and even providing them with a positive orientation to their future careers, should be the primary goal of social systems (Kuratko, 2016). With the entrepreneurship tendencies found at an early age in pupils, societies cannot only ensure the adaptation of immigrants, but they can increase general welfare (Shane, 2003; Todres, 2016)

Objectives

Methods

Results