Abstract
Using a mixed methods approach, this article analyses the nexus between migration and social positions drawing on recent survey data on migrants who have arrived in Germany after 1994 from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), as well as qualitative interviews with 26 respondents to the survey. Drawing on a Bourdieusian forms of capital approach (Bourdieu, 1986) and applying the method of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to the SOEP survey data, we highlight two dimensions structuring the nexus between migration and social positions in Germany: (1) capital related to legal status and multiple migration and (2) (trans)national cultural capital. Through a cluster analysis based on the MCA results, we then identify and describe four profiles of migrants characterised by distinct configurations of cultural capital (social class background, education and linguistic skills before and after settlement), legal status (citizenship and status at migration), experiences of multiple cross-border movements and social positions: the ‘foreign working-class,’ the ‘foreign middle class,’ the ‘adapted German migrants,’ and the ‘young highly educated urbans.’ The complementary analysis of the qualitative data allows us to go further in understanding some of the factors that may play a role in shaping migrants’ social position(ing) in the four clusters. In particular, we show that resources such as determination and perseverance can be crucial for some migrants to counter structural constraints related to their legal status in transferring or accessing cultural capital, and that linguistic skills are also used by some migrants as a marker of social distinction.
Highlights
The relationship between migration and social inequality is a complex one and migration literature has been able to demonstrate extensively that a range of factors influence the socio-economic incorporation of migrants into the country they settle in, e.g., education and language skills (Kogan, 2011), social networks (Wrench, Rea, & Ouali, 2016), duration of stay and discrimination, national origin (Drinkwater, Eade, & Garapich, 2009) and class (van Hear, 2014)
Using the method of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) we investigate which dimensions shape what we call the space of migrants’ social positions, i.e., the space structured by characteristics related to migration and to diverse resources, in particular cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986)
This article provides an analysis of the nexus between migration and social positions in a social differentiation perspective using a mixed methods approach
Summary
The relationship between migration and social inequality is a complex one and migration literature has been able to demonstrate extensively that a range of factors influence the socio-economic incorporation of migrants into the country they settle in, e.g., education and language skills (Kogan, 2011), social networks (Wrench, Rea, & Ouali, 2016), duration of stay and discrimination A few empirical studies take a more ‘global’ perspective by looking at how different types of spatial mobility (experiences of living in several countries, legal status, etc.) and the individual resources migrants had before migrating (education, class background, language skills) structure migrants’ social space, understood as the “space constructed on the basis of principles of distribution and differentiation” We mean the legal, economic and social characteristics of people involved in cross-border movements, as well as the specific transnational spaces that migrants are embedded in through movement. We assume that these different types of migrants are characterised by distinct social positions in the destination society. We draw on the qualitative material to show the meaning of language proficiency for social positioning and social distancing
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