@article{2018,title={Bulgarian Migrants Transnationalism and Reproduction of “Muhacir”},abstractNode={Current studies addressing Bulgarian immigration focus on migration itself or the changes in migration rather than cause and effects of migration that have already taken place. This causes the studies to accumulate around the topics of voting, dual citizenship, and EU membership, in other words, explaining the notion of migration with political motivation. This study rejects the idea that transnational relations are merely political relations and hypothesizes that it has its sources in different factors. The problem of not being able to give exact numbers of Bulgarian immigrants in Turkey causes problems in determining the population. Sampling is also difficult for the same reason. However, for the sake of reliability in the study, 385 people were planned to be included in the study, but 356 surveys applied to the sample were evaluated in the study. The results of the survey suggest that Bulgarian immigrants can experience being transnational in reality as well as symbolically. Bulgarian immigrants experience Bulgaria in reality by visiting their homeland and symbolically by bringing/importing and/or consuming/using Bulgaria/Balkans originated products. The immigrants carry on their pre-migration lifestyles, flavors they were accustomed to and their likings to their post-migration lives by means of consumer products. The easiest way of carrying old experiences into a new life is obtaining foods, drinks, clothes, and every-day-tools. Bulgarian immigrants have products and imageries upon which they assign a meaning through their visits to Bulgaria or “macır pazarı” (special markets where they can find those products imported), markets and create a symbolic Bulgaria in Turkey. This helps Turks from Bulgaria to become contemporary transnational immigrants. The fact that they live Bulgaria in Turkey and keep the values and their memories of Bulgaria in Turkey –including the young into this process- both reinforces being a “transnational immigrant” and reproduces being “muhacir” -an immigrant- in conventional meaning.},author={Selda ADİLOĞLU-- Sercan EKLEMEZLER},year={2018},journal={Journal of Turkish Studies}}