Please No Police Summary

1177 Words5 Pages

After the Second World War European countries were devastated and needed to rebuild. Unfortunately, these countries lacked the man power to in order to do so. To counteract this countries, like Germany, allowed vast numbers of migrant workers to their cross borders to help rebuild. To the Germans, these migrant workers were not a permanent option and were hoped to be temporary. Because of this, no effort was made to incorporate these migrants into the culture therefore the migrants became defined by the jobs they could do for Germany rather than who they were as people which ultimately led to their alienation from Germany. These sentiments are demonstrated from the Turkish perspective in the novella Please, No Police by Aras Ören who shows the life of Turkish migrant workers. These relationship struggles between countries and migrants are still a …show more content…

During the migration of these Turkish workers, migrants had to have police check their passport upon crossing the border. A simple task, but how a police would stamp a passport could decisively determine the future of the migrant. For example, if a police officer were to stamp ‘tourist’ these migrants were defined as illegal workers and can be out of work for months. This is demonstrated by Ali Itar who was out of work for seven months because of this stamp. This is doubtlessly problematic due to the fact that these migrants were brought in to the country to perform work and cannot do so as planned. Since they are not working they serve no purpose to Germany. As a result, according to Germans these people become nothing, they are not even viewed as people because, to their understanding, they have no value because they are not contributing to the country. Consequently, these migrants became defined by a stamp on their passport. They were not valued based on anything beside their