Migration and Literature: London’s Turkish Immigrants

This paper examines the link between the monocultural British education system and the struggles ofUK immigrants, with a focus on London’s Turkish community. Widespread hostility towards migrantsand foreign culture in British society is concluded to stem from the assimilationist ideology originally atthe heart of the education system and its policies. It is argued that monoculturalism itself is the mother ofracism, and that Britain’s monocultural education system has been feeding racial tensions for decades.Similar concerns regarding the education system are covered, such as institutional racism. Multiculturalism and its promotion of tolerance if not respect towards cultural differences is proposed as a solution toreplace monoculturalism. London’s Turkish community, it’s history and “self-sufficiency” is examined indetail, especially the causes behind widespread academic underachievement in younger generations. Ithas been advised that a middleman helps schools and parents communicate and cooperate, as lingual barriers and lack of parental involvement seem to be the biggest causes. On the literary side, the lack of newauthors in the Turkish community is attributed to poor academic success and lack of cultural cultivation,while the paucity of translated material is attributed to public disinterest in foreign works, again caused bymonoculturalism. Overall, it is concluded that the tendency of Turkish immigrants to rely on their networkof countrymen to get things done, as well as lingual, racial, and social barriers have all contributed to anunintentional segregation of the Turkish immigrants from the rest of British society.