Mobile Ambivalence: Turkish Alevis in Australia

The idea of ambivalence has emerged as a particularly apt interpretive prism for analysing the experience of migration.  The co-existence of contradictory emotions it speaks of provides an illuminating frame for analysing the feelings of loss and new possibilities that are frequently part of migrants’ lives, and as analyses in the area have shown, the lens of ambivalence has lent itself to interpretive nuance, distinguishing among both objects of ambivalence (place of origin and place of destination) and responses to ambivalence (negative, positive and mixed). In this paper, I attempt to delineate further distinctions within this framework, exploring a case of ambivalence associated with denigration in a place of origin that has been transported into, and affected feelings towards, a place of destination.

The case is that of the Turkish Alevis in Australia. The Alevis are a socio-religious minority in Turkey with a long history of fraught relations with the region’s ruling regimes and Sunni majority. Their markedly heterodox traditions, originating in Anatolia and rooted in but going beyond Shia Islam, have been subject to repression and denigration since the 16^th century. Australia has been a significant destination for Turks emigrating in the postwar period, and Alevis are a significant proportion of them.  My research into transformations of Alevi collective identity in Melbourne suggests that ambivalence towards Turkey stemming from this historical experience is replicated in feelings of ambivalence towards the broader Turkish community in Australia, adding a further layer of ambivalence to Alevis complex relationship with their country of settlment.