Soziale Brücken und Grenzziehungen in der Stadt: Türkeistämmiger Mittelstand in Migrantenvierteln

Abstract

Social mixing in disadvantaged neighbourhoods is supposed to have various stabilizing effects. Hence, the moving out of middle class households is critically perceived. The question is, however, whether upwardly mobile middle class households “automatically” move out of disadvantaged neighbourhoods. It has been shown that there are different ways of integration for the second-generation immigrants. One difference might be found in the motivation to stay in or leave ethnically segregated neighbourhoods. In the German context, there is hardly any research so far that empirically deals with reasons of the middle class to stay in segregated neighbourhoods which are usually also characterized by social deprivation. In this paper, we argue that the staying of middle class Turkish migrants can be explained by their neighbourhood crossing-networks, as well as small-scale social and spatial boundary drawings within the neighbourhood. With this combination of bridging ties and boundary drawing, households are also able to use the potentials of their neighbourhood and at the same time access resources outside the neighbourhood, without having to relocate. The argumentation is based on qualitative studies in Berlin and Duisburg, which analyze neighbourhood choice of Turkish migrants. The main result is that staying can be explained with locally based family ties that provide everyday support. Moreover, we see that households do have diverse ties across neighbourhood borders, which facilitate their staying put, in spite of their spatial proximity to households of lower social strata. Small scale social and symbolic boundaries, as well as a clear focus on routinely used contexts outside the neighbourhood, point to the ambivalent effect the middle class might have as a stabilizing factor in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.