Thinking about one of her interviewees’ response to the question of German citizenship, Sarah Thomsen Vierra writes, “In one moment, he expresses sentiments common among many former West Germans in the wake of reunification, while in the next he sets himself unequivocally outside that community. What does it say about the situation of the Turkish population in Germany that a man like Keskin, after twenty years living in that country, could simultaneously feel himself to be both a part of and apart from that society? How did that conflicted sense of belonging come about?” (2). Vierra tackles difficult questions such as this throughout the book and does not take shortcuts. Drawing on Esin Bozkurt's conception of belonging as a multidimensional and dynamic concept that refers to emotional, spiritual, social, cultural, territorial, and political self-location over time and space, Vierra focuses on the ways the first-generation Turkish immigrants and their children experienced and constructed belongingness in the course of their daily lives.

As history writing in the last two decades has slowly moved away from traditional, state-oriented narrative history to transnational history as well as Alltagsgeschichte (the history of everyday life), a growing number of monographs on postwar migration history have come to explore the lives of immigrants and the relations between those migrant communities and the broader host society. Vierra's study builds upon this growing group of monographs on postwar migration history, and her book is distinct in that she looks at ordinary people from Turkey and their history in the Federal Republic of Germany from Turkey's inclusion in the guest worker program in 1961 to German reunification in 1990. She stresses, “Alltagsgeschichte (everyday history) necessitates a sharp focus to uncover and understand the historical significance of seemingly mundane and ordinary actions” (13). To that end, she explores the personal accounts of ordinary people. In addition to the sixteen interviews she conducted herself, she utilizes a collection of interviews by Ursula Truper, a Berlin-based historian and author, conducted in the early 1990s. She also draws on memoirs and unpublished interviews, as well as German state and nonstate documents.

Sprengelkiez, a neighborhood situated in the formerly West Berlin district of Wedding, is the focal point of her study. Building upon Henri Lefebvre's and Doreen Massey's understanding of space, Vierra argues that the Turkish-German community was actively involved in making a place for themselves within and at times alongside West German society by constructing spaces of belonging within the context of their daily lives (10). Vierra maps the complex dynamics of these spaces of belonging in her six chapters, which are thematically organized.

Chapter 1 examines the experiences of Turkish Gastarbeiter in the workplace. In this case study of the German workplace in the context of the Cold War, Vierra highlights the ambiguity men and women experienced in the course of daily life at work. Although there were many workers who told of their satisfaction with their jobs, “the companies’ consistent focus on and articulation of differences helped set the tone for an ambiguous status of Turkish residents in West Germany as simultaneously foreign and permanent” (57).

In Chapter 2, Vierra delves into how Turkish immigrants and their children used the home as a social space, the changing role of home and its meaning in the relationships between the first and second generations, and how it reflected both generations’ place in West German society (61). Chapter 3 helps to enhance further our understanding of belongingness and feeling at home in Germany by exploring the everyday experiences of immigrants in the neighborhood, which Vierra defines as “a primary site of integration, both spatial and reciprocal” (118). Vierra shows that both Turkish immigrants and their German neighbors worked together to improve their city, especially when an outside threat presented itself but national newspapers focused more on West Berlin's “foreigner problem” or “Turkish ghettos” as opposed to highlighting integration or a positive strong sense of community at the time (118).

Chapter 4 discusses the struggles, hopes, expectations, and responsibilities of Turkish-German students and examines the relations among students, teachers, parents, administrators, and politicians in “a space rife with contradiction”: the school (160). Although primary and secondary schools occupied conflicting roles in the lives of Turkish-German students, their parents, and teachers, the city of West Berlin's constructive efforts toward integration gave rise to grassroots efforts among teachers and parents to develop strategies that addressed some of the challenges faced by students and the community (144). The second part of the chapter is a case account of the Volkshochschule—adult education centers designed to equip the city's immigrant population and German residents with the knowledge they needed to lead productive lives. Vierra shows that the Volkshochschule “responded proactively to the changing composition and needs of its local community” as collaborative and creative spaces and shifted the borders of belonging in West German society (162).

In chapter 5, Vierra offers a comprehensive analysis of the mosque as “a religious, cultural, and social space for the Turkish Muslim community in the Federal Republic, focusing in particular on its contested location both apart from and within German society … and as the environment in which the first and second generations conducted their daily lives” (166). Using the insights derived from diverse written sources as well as interviews, this chapter enhances our understanding of how the local space influenced and was influenced by national and transnational contexts. Vierra points out that the 1979 Iranian Revolution was a turning point in how people in West Germany perceived Muslims, particularly Turkish immigrants. As the Turkish Muslim community expanded as a result of the military coup in Turkey in 1980, Turkish Muslims became more visible in the everyday landscape of West Germany with the perceived increasing radicalism and fanaticism of mosques. Vierra demonstrates that, in the 1980s, both West German and Turkish states as well as media “reinforced the identity of Muslims as foreign,” effectively encouraging the conflation of Turkish and Muslim identities (192). The story of the construction of mosques as both a physical and a discursive space seems to be a learning exercise for the Turkish immigrant community. At the institutional level, the mosque began to put Muslims as a community on more equal footing with German society. Perhaps analogous with the Turkish-German identity itself, mosques came to exist both within German society and on its margins.

In the sixth and last chapter, Vierra seeks to move beyond the Wedding locale. She offers a cogent overview of Turkish migrants to Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification, through the 1990s and early 2000s, which distinguishes her work from most studies that look at the history of migrants only until reunification. She points at the debates about what “ideal Islam” or “Euro-Islam” are, how to embrace pluralism and practice religious tolerance, as well as the political divide over the headscarf. Disputing the widely held belief that Turkish-German youth is getting more marginalized after reunification, Vierra stresses that second-generation Turkish immigrants are more open about religion than their parents were, and many among them have created spaces for themselves outside the realm of the mosque, where they explore, redefine, and practice Islam. She also argues that the second-generation Turkish-Germans have been taking an increasingly active role in articulating their challenges, working together with local activists to improve the social and economic conditions of their neighbors, and creating businesses by opening Turkish-owned workplaces.

By way of general conclusion, Vierra highlights integration as “a space making process that reflects the relationships within immigrant communities and between those communities and the broader host society within given historical contexts” (11). She concludes that by incorporating immigrants, “the host society itself changes and begins to reflect the identities of its newest members” (235). Although the majority of Turkish-Germans inhabit a more complicated space, they have come to be more reflective of their broader belonging in German society (239).

Overall, Vierra's book is a very well-argued addition to and a valuable intervention in the field of migration studies, gender studies, German history, and German studies. It is a great resource for students and scholars looking for a comprehensive historical narrative of Turkish immigrants in Germany. That said, it would be useful to bring a comparative perspective to the analysis of immigration and belonging in German society in the time period of the study and look at how other minority groups have framed space and belongingness and coped with similar challenges.