This seminar was organised by the London Centre for Social Studies (LCSS). It was the third of the LCSS 2004/2005 Embracing the Future seminar series.
This seminar was organised by the London Centre for Social Studies (LCSS). LCSS is a registered charity that seeks to undertake, encourage, sponsor and contribute towards academic research, work and publication in the UK, findings of which will be of direct relevance and value to academia, charitable organisations, service-providing institutions and governmental and non-governmental bodies. LCSS seminars provide academics, professionals and students an opportunity to share and thereby test their research, ideas, thoughts and projects with others.seminar series.
Mehmet Ali Dikerdem ( Development Tutor at National Centre for Work Based Learning Partnership in Harringay Council and Lecturer at Middlesex University)
Biography:
Dr Mehmet Ali Dikerdem has worked at Middlesex and Bristol Universities in various capacities since 1984. He has taught a various range of social science courses including Development Studies, Policy Studies and was a founder of the Race and Culture Programme. He is currently Postgraduate Curriculum Leader at the National Centre for Work Based Learning Partnerships (awarded
Dr Dikerdem is a social scientist who has taught Development Studies, Race and Ethnic Relations and Social Policy since the mid-1980s. He is also a governor at a North London specialist school with a high percentage of Turkish-speaking pupils and liaises regularly with the Aim Higher Group at Middlesex University set up to encourage wider participation in higher education.Dr Dikerdem set the context for the panel by summarising the changing policies of the UK governments towards ethnic minorities. He covered the policies towards Black and Asian migrants in the 1960s to more recent migrants from various war zones in the world. He gave a comparative account of how some of the mafounder wn for the future of the Turkish speaking community.He mentioned that there were the two different states for an ethnic minority: segregation (from the mainstream society) and a ‘negotiated integration’. The latter is only possible if the ethnic community starts this negotiation within itself first in terms of assessing what it expects from integration and how it can achieve its aims. Two important aspects of this negotiation are (i) the social structure of the ethnic group itself – which in the case of the Turkish speaking community carries many resemblances to the structure in Turkey (e.g. in terms of interaction between different social classes) and (ii) relations with the mainstream society: whether or not there is institutional racism and the involvement of the Turkish speaking community in the UK public life and politics fall within this context.