Identity and Integration

Migrants in Western Europe

Bernhard Peters, Rosemarie Sackmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780367604585
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351929080
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Symbolic boundaries, cultural differences and ethnic conflicts have gained significance and new meanings in a global situation characterized by the dissolution of traditional political and societal structures. Communications and political and economic interactions increasingly cross the borders of states, nations and ethnic communities, and yet symbolic borders and separate group identities are nevertheless asserted. The perceived efforts of migrants to maintain their cultural and ethnic identities are often blamed as a cause of conflict within nation states. This intriguing volume recognizes that migrants with an Islamic background are seen as especially problematic cases. Turks are the biggest category among Muslim migrants in Europe and more than one third of all Muslim migrants in Europe are from Turkey. Referring primarily to immigration from Turkey, this book combines both exemplary case studies of Turks within Europe and theoretical papers with innovative perspectives on the relations between integration and identity.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Collective Identities and Social Integration

Rosemarie Sackmann

Symbolic boundaries, cultural differences and ethnic conflicts have gained significance and new meanings in a global situation characterized by a dissolution of traditional political and societal structures. While communications, political and economic interactions increasingly cross the borders of states, nations and ethnic communities, symbolic borders and separate group identities are nevertheless asserted. International migration combines these two tendencies in an exemplary way. In this context, the perceived efforts of migrants to maintain their cultural and ethnic identities are often blamed as a cause of conflict within nation states. What some see as a development that enriches a society’s cultural reservoir, others take as a threat to their own culture and conception of themselves.

In the wake of September 11th and the successes of political parties who build their election platforms on the issue of immigration, today the whole subject of migration is assuming an ever greater significance within the public debate. Increasingly, doubts are being expressed concerning the scope for integrating culturally different groups and the practicability of multi-cultural concepts of society. During the last decades especially Muslim migrants have been discussed as a potential threat to social integration (cf. Nonneman, 1996).

While keywords such as cultural difference and collective identity, or assimilation and integration are constantly used by the general public, these concepts have become controversial in the scientific community (cf. Ranger, Samad and Stuart, 1996). Concepts of ethnicity and identity have been criticized as essentialist, as a reification of constantly changing and contested social perceptions or as filling statistical classifications with fictitious subjective meanings. The concepts of assimilation and integration have been suspected of a homogenizing bend. However, the usefulness of concepts like integration or collective identity depends not on the word itself, but on appropriate meanings and analytical differentiations. And the controversies about the role of objective classifications or descriptions and subjective meanings and constructs can be reconciled to some degree by proper distinctions and the analysis of connections and interrelationships.

For analytical purpose we might use ‘positioning’ and ‘self-localization’ as complementary concepts. Positioning refers to structural conditions and structured practices through which members of a society get a position within the social structure. Of course, positions within a structure are not fixed and neither are social structures. Research on self-localization on the other hand tries to reconstruct the point of view of the individuals, of the social actors. Self-localizations include a wide range of identifications, patterns of orientation and self-conceptualizations, feelings of belonging and perceptions of symbolic boundaries. Research in the perspective of self-localizations is also interested in connections between processes of self-localization and positioning.

We can now combine these perspectives with the familiar distinction between migrants as categories, as social groups and as bearers of collective identities. Such a distinction permits a differentiated view of integration processes with regard to different parameters and to possible interactions between them. (The first part of this volume provides some theoretical perspectives on these concepts and relationships.)

Immigrants as population categories are determined in the first instance by the socio-statistical characteristics of immigration and descent. These characteristics give rise to different types of ascription by members of the host society. For instance, migrants are imagined to be groups with special preferential social relationships, with a collective identity, with a different culture. Immigrants are perceived as groups of people who are culturally different. Arising from this broadly interpreted difference, a number of further ascriptions are deduced, concerning the capacity for assimilation and integration of different categories of immigrants, for instance.

Sometimes, migrants take up these ascriptions. The act of categorical self-location refers to the fact of immigration, or descent from migrants, and to the fact of differentiation between immigrants and the native population in the country of immigration. The adoption of categorical ascriptions can be the expression of discrimination or stigmatization experiences. Immigrants perceive themselves as members of some social category with unequal status. This might become one particular element of collective identity (see below).

The self-conception of the respective country of immigration provides a framework for the perception of its migrants. The acceptance of immigrants as citizens who are equal in status depends to some degree on their legal status as citizens or non-citizens, of course. But full recognition is only possible via social processes which result in a new determination of societal self-conceptions in the country of migration (cf. Bauböck in this volume). The frequently heated debate on immigration issues in Western Europe has also made it clear that in the wake of immigration, self-conceptions are under pressure for change. Reactions to this pressure can be seen e.g. in the way public institutions are adapting their schemas of categorization and perception (cf. Engbersen in this volume).

Societal schemas of ordering and systems of categories present a point of departure for scientific analysis. And as long as systematic positioning effects are connected with immigrant status, scientific analysis will not be able to manage without the category ‘immigrant’. Nevertheless, the warnings against reification and essentialization which have been iterated in the past ten years or so should not be ignored. It is possible to guard against such risks. Reflected socio-scientific analysis makes it possible to examine ascriptions with respect to their reality content (cf. the contributions by Karakasoglu and Spohn in this volume). The investigation of processes of change in immigrant categories supersedes essentializations (cf. the contribution by Prümm, Sackmann and Schultz in this volume). The perception of immigrants as social actors cancels out reifications (cf. the contributions by Apitzsch and Sauter in this volume).

If we now look at forms of self-localization by immigrants, we should distinguish between group-formation and the formation of collective identities. A perspective on immigrants as social groups refers to the social organization of the immigrant community, i.e. to special preferential social relationships (choice of friends or partners; social nets of co-operation) and to forms of social organization such as associations to represent interests, organizations for self-help, cultural associations, sport and leisure clubs. The membership in organizations and the composition of circles of friends and acquaintances can exert an influence on the social identities of individuals. Migrant organizations can be places of communication about collective identities whereby identity models are reproduced or changed (see the contribution of Sunier in this volume). However, collective identities of some kind may well exist without much group organization or actual community formation (compare Peters, this volume).

We perceive collective identity as a component of the culture of a group (compare Peters in this volume; 1993; 1998). The culture of an immigrant community comprises systems of symbols and symbolic contents which play a role in the lives of members of the group, which are shared by the group members, i.e. by all members or at least a real majority, and which are used for orientation and in communication and interaction. Prominent among these symbols and frames of interpretation there are those which refer to the character or to the destiny of the group. The sum of these cultural elements forms the collective identity of the group. Collective identities can be of different density or extensiveness. Their articulation can be diffuse and vague, or differentiated and multifaceted. Note should also be taken of certain structural relationships between different collective identities. Certain memberships and identities mutually exclude one another. An interesting question would be to look into conflicts of loyalty which might ensue from having membership in different groups and the sharing of different collective identities. The interesting case today is the relation between national identification with host societies and identification with an immigrant community. For immigrant communities of non-Christian religion, this question is connected with the problem of the relation between their own religious identification and membership in a national community which exhibits many cultural elements characterized by the Christian religion. This may entail the collective identity of most immigrant communities being of a ‘hybrid’ type. It does not simply consist of identification with the national identity of the country of immigration. Rather, certain elements of identification with the country of origin join together in an immigrant identity which also bears elements of identification with the country of immigration (compare the contribution of Modood in this volume).

It is not to be expected that immigrants constitute a homogenous group, sharing one and the same collective identity. Rather, it is to be expected that existing social lines of differentiation also bear an influence on the relationship of individuals to constructions of collective identity. Differences between generations, between social classes and gender differences can be systematically taken into consideration in the analysis. Nor is the concept fixated on ethnic identity. It is quite possible that empirical application of the concept may ascertain an orientation of the collective identity of immigrant groups toward the class position, or perhaps a clear reference to gender roles.¹ The analytical concept put forward here is characterized by openness vis-à-vis different theories and by a high degree of analytical differentiation.

The contributions to the first part of this volume are mainly engaged in conceptual and theoretical clarifications.² Parts two and three of the book analyze examples for various forms of self-localization. In part 2, the contributions analyze patterns of orientation among Turkish migrants in Germany and The Netherlands.³ Part 3 takes up a ‘transnational’ perspective. Included are a transnational/post-modern perspective, the trans-national social spaces approach, and one contribution that combines the transnational perspective with other theories of integration. Since the transnational approach is still in a stage of development, searching for its specific content and shape and clarifying its relation to other approaches, the diversity in the third part of this volume is a reflection of the state of the art.

Part I: Collective Identity and Social Integration

The first part begins with an analytical reconstruction of the concept of collective identity. The proposition put forward by Bernhard Peters in his contribution is that of a discursive concept of collective identity: Questions like ‘who are we, what sort of group do we constitute?’ can only be sensibly voiced and resolved within the context of real or imaginary communication. On the basis of this definition, Peters formulates a critical appraisal of other concepts of collective identity.

In his contribution, Rainer Bauböck specifies normative criteria for the evaluation of collective identity in its institutionalized form. This has to do with public culture and insofar it has primarily to do with the collective identity of immigration societies. The proposition advanced by Bauböck is that all modern societies are internally multicultural. Within this context it is up to the state to bring about the creation of a public culture to represent the political community in its entirety. This becomes the basis for communication, it offers a cultural repertoire (memories, identity; explicit norms and values regulating political conflict; implicit norms and styles of behaviour broadly shared across communities within society). Bauböck distinguishes between four aspects of the public culture: linguistic, historical, political and civil culture. His text deals with the first two.

Whereas Bauböck is engaged in questions of political theory, the contribution by Godfried Engbersen is sociological in its orientation. Engbersen puts forward a general model of societal integration. Modern societies are integrated in three dimensions: in the functional dimension (which affects questions of co-ordination), the moral dimension (questions of justice and solidarity) and the expressive dimension (questions of identity). At the same time, though, one has to distinguish between the different spheres of integration (e.g., law, labour market, education system, religion). Making reference to the integration of migrants over the course of the past forty years in the Netherlands, Engbersen illustrates that different spheres were alternately at the centre of debate and politics. Engbersen’s observations are directed towards the necessity for differentiated and reflexive policies. It is the task of the state to find a new balance between the functional, the moral and expressive dimensions of integration.

The last two contributions in this first part turn the focus onto the migrants. Tariq Modood deals with questions concerning the collective identity of migrants in the UK. He finds it of particular interest that for the South-Asian migrants, notwithstanding the British reference system on the basis of race or class, it is religious identity which primarily determines localization. Modood endeavours to arrive at an evaluation of this collective identity. Among other things, he investigates the question whether this entails a form of collective identity which is characterized by a particular insularity against the host society.

Ursula Apitzsch is especially interested in domestic culture. This does not mean, though, that she perceives her object of research in the private sphere. On the contrary, Apitzsch critizes prevailing concepts about publicly recognized forms of life conduct. Whereas freedom of religion is institutionalized in the public sphere of host societies, the subsequent recognition of cultural difference is not sufficient to cover the cultural- religious practices of Islamic migrants, a difference which is articulated in everyday forms of life conduct (rules concerning clothing, for instance). Rules which have been shaped on the model of Christianity leave no room for these forms of expression. Apitzsch advances the proposition that this will lead to a situation in host societies in which they have to redefine their self-conception.

Part II: The Self-Localization of Migrants

Like Ursula Apitzsch, Yasemin Karakasoglu also emphasizes that integration policy in Germany has so far failed to create an adequate practice for the accommodation of religious difference. Politicians and large sections of the public still perceive the visible forms of Muslim life style, like the headscarf for instance, as the expression of an undemocratic, theocratic and dogmatic world view. Karakasoglu shows that this perception is misplaced. Veiled and unveiled Islamic students of education differentiate between their orientations as Muslims and their orientations as teachers. They have a well developed sense of educational and professional principles, which are not mixed up with their religious belonging. Karakasoglu believes that the new academic elite, especially women, who are culturally and structurally integrated and who insist on their right to religious freedom, will change the meaning of integration for Muslims in the future.

Thijl Sunier’s analysis points to an alternative way of influencing the process of integration. He examines the Turkish Muslim organizations in The Netherlands with a special focus on the way their orientations are changing with the changer of generation. For the first generation, the organizations represented a means for creating the infrastructure for exercising their communal religion. Only a few of these organizations were attributable to the initiative of migrants, rather they were organizations for migrants and created by actors of Dutch society. Eventually, Turkish Muslim organisations also became active in Holland. The organizations were in competition with one another. In a parallel development, the presence of the second generation in the organizations was making itself felt. These two changes were instrumental for the increasing focus on the issue of identity and allegiance. Sunier shows that the ethnic collective within Turkish Islamic organisations has been redefined by second generation migrants. The redefinition includes a greater importance of localization processes within the Dutch society.

The second generation differs greatly from the first – this is a general finding in migration research. Often the first generation receives less attention than following generations. Notwithstanding, Margret Spohn focuses her research on the first generation males. She shows that different concepts of family relations among migrants have existed prior to their migration to Germany. It is important to note that, while the process of migration may foster the change of models, changes may occur within an repertoire of models that have already existed in the Turkish context. Thus, while adaptations to specific experiences in migration processes influence reconstructions of cultural patterns and orientation models, this does not necessarily mean that migrants have to ado...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction: Collective Identities and Social Integration
• PART I: COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION
• PART II: THE SELF-LOCALIZATION OF MIGRANTS
• PART III: WHERE IS ‘HOME’? THE PERSPECTIVE OF TRANSNATIONAL THEORIES
• Index