‘The Super Migrants’? Social Upward Mobility in the Context of Labor Migration

//‘The Super Migrants’? Social Upward Mobility in the Context of Labor Migration

Claudius Ströhle PhD Candidate,University of Innsbruck

In a column in the German magazine ‘Der Spiegel,’ titled “Die Super-Migranten” (‘The Super Migrants’), Samira El Ouassil criticized the overemphasis on the migration background of the scientists Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci. The “‘ Prussian-Turk’ couple” (The Guardian) are the founders of the biotech company BioNTech, which made a breakthrough in developing a Covid19 vaccine. Şahin, as the son of a so-called guest worker from Hatay; Türeci, as a surgeon-daughter from Istanbul. Turkey now appropriates their success because they are from Turkey. Germany does the same because they are Germans citizens and an example of successful integration. This situation is remarkable and problematic. On the one hand, the emphasis on an ascribed ethnic origin of the scientists marks a division into ‘good’ (successful, well-educated) and ‘bad’ (uneducated, working in poor jobs) migrants, fueling a meritocratic agenda.

On the other hand, their research performance is entirely out of sight. Finally, it rarely happens that migrants are simultaneously acknowledged in both the country of origin and settlement. In this blog post, I want to elaborate on this very issue of accumulating social status in transnational spaces.

Social Class and Capital in Transnational Spaces

In her much-noticed study “Gastarbeiter. Leben in zwei Gesellschaften” (1984), the Austrian migration scholar Elisabeth Lichtenberger stated that the so-called guest workers are performing their everyday life in two societies, but also in two-class systems: being underclass in the allegedly temporary host society, due to less-than-average education, residual working, and housing positions; and simultaneously moving socially upwards in the place of origin, due to the accumulated capital and status abroad. The latter was displayed through extensive exchange of remittances, namely sending money and commodities, purchasing land and building houses in the place of origin, and bringing gifts during the summer visits. But, how can social status be transferred in cross-border settings?

Van Hear recently argued that class had been eclipsed in migration studies by considering other forms of social difference, affinity, and allegiances such as ethnicity, gender, generation, and religion. But, “patterns and outcomes of migration are shaped by the resources migrants can mobilize, and those resources are largely determined by socioeconomic background” (p. 101). Both the resources and their potential mobilization can be explained with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital. He distinguishes between economic (economic resources and assets), social (networks one can mobilize), and cultural capital (family-based competencies like tastes, skills, education, or knowledge). These forms of capital can be converted and transmitted; if they are perceived and recognized as legitimate, they occur as symbolic capital, vaguely translated with social status or power. Sociologist Susan Eckstein criticized that migration scholars used this capital concept while ignoring the fact that it was established in a national, Western framework. In her study on remittances between the United States and Cuba, Eckstein argued that families share capital across the borders of nation-states, which is therefore embedded in broader institutional structures (e.g., national laws on sending/receiving money or purchasing land) and cultural practices (e.g., social pressure in/on migrant communities or collectively shaped ways of investing). Thus, if families mobilize and convert various forms of capital across the borders of nation-states, they can create “transnational capital,” “which enables individuals to draw on their (family’s) past mobility and to weigh in transnational experiences and knowledge to their benefit.” (Silke Meyer, p. 276). Now then, how can someone accumulate symbolically, transnationally acknowledged capital in the home and host society, like the scientist couple Türeci & Şahin? In the last section, I will provide an empirical example to approach this question, drawing on an ethnographic research project (“Follow the Money. Remittances as Social Practices”), in which we examined the effects of remittances in the migration-nexus Stubai Valley (Austria) and Uşak (Turkey) from the 1960s until today.

Remittance Houses as Switch Boards of Capital Conversion

In the first years of migration, most of the so-called guest workers in the Stubai Valley sent money to their families in Uşak. They did this to pay back their migration costs, support the family’s daily expenses, renovation of the house, or acquire agricultural machines. After a couple of years, the migrants themselves started to purchase land and build houses. Interestingly, not in their home villages, but the city of Uşak. One explanation could be a transformation of class: most migrants still considered returning to Turkey. But not anymore to life as a farmer in the village, but as a laborer in the city. The desire and practices of building “remittance houses” are documented in multiple migration corridors. I argue, that these houses are switchboards of cross-border capital conversion when analyzed from a perspective of class. I want to outline four aspects: First, the processes of purchasing land and building houses depend on cross-border economic, social and cultural capital, namely raising the money, having someone to supervise the construction place and knowing the local logics of real estate prices, bargaining, etc. Second, the houses’ interior design symbolizes its builders’ transnational life trajectories, comprising rural and labor elements and displaying “taste diaspora.” Third, as lots of the houses stand out because of their shape or size (see also the project “Migrating Spaces”), they have multiple effects on the local society. On the one hand, the houses can evoke further emigration as they are materializations of a successful migration project; on the other hand, they lead to envious glances and rifts between migrants and non-migrants. Fourth, even if the houses are acknowledged as symbolic capital in the place of origin, this is often not the case in the place of settlement. Local interviewees in Stubai Valley considered the migrants’ investments as economic disloyalty, displaying failed integration. They defined the migrants’ status based on the investments they made in Stubai Valley.

Conclusion

The theory of capital (Bourdieu) extended with a cross-border angle and applied in a multi-sited ethnographic research setting provide a useful toolbox to analyze social mobility in the context of labor migration. However, in public as well as scientific discourses, migrants from Turkey and their descendants are often approached from the respective national perspectives: As immigrants in Austria, they have to be loyal, participate actively and invest in situ; as emigrants of Turkey, they have to remain faithful to their place of origin, come over for visits and bring foreign currency. This approach creates a non-dischargeable situation, which hinders the legitimation of cross-border capital accumulation. Thus, we need to apply a transnational lens that implies the multi-placed experiences and belongings of migrants to contribute to a normalization of transnational lifestyles. Then, the publicly overemphasized migration background of the ‘Super-Migrants’ Şahin & Türeci could take a backseat.

By |2020-12-09T11:15:10+01:00December 9th, 2020|PhD Conference|