Arbeitsbereich 6: Soziologie der Transnationalisierung und Sozialanthropologie
At the centre of our work are the mechanisms of the genesis and reproduction of social practice and the analysis of social structures of transnational, i.e. cross-border, relationships. We distinguish between transnationalisation as cross-border social processes, transnational social spaces as cross-border social formations and transnationality as heterogeneity that characterises cross-border relationships. We are particularly concerned with the consequences of transnationalisation for social inequalities and life chances and for membership and (state) citizenship. We also pay special attention to understanding the relationship between research and the public sphere.
This research interest is currently divided into three research fields: cross-border migration, the nexus of social science research, politics and the public sphere, and the transnational social question, i.e. the politics of social inequalities in the field of tension between the global North and the global South. A transnational perspective forms the background for all three areas: How do categories of staff, people, organisations and states constitute transnational social formations or spaces - such as diasporas, transnational communities, transnational families, transnational social movements, issue-centred networks and organisations? What consequences do transnational social formations have for lifeworlds, social inequalities and affiliations? How does knowledge about these transnational connections diffuse between research, politics and the public? The work of the Centre on Migration, Citizenship and Development (COMCAD) seeks to develop and apply appropriate methods to capture transnational structures and practices. An important part of research and teaching are third-party funds and doctoral projects in the research fields of transnational migration, migration and development, environmental degradation and climate change, and transnational social security.
The research of the Transnational Sociology Group is inspired by the perspective of Transnational Studies. Our projects shed light on the genesis and reproduction of dense and continuous sets of cross-border transactions and their effects on local, national and global processes of geographical migration. Social mobility, social and political change and processes of transformation and development take centre stage. While research into migration, mobility and development usually concentrates either on the OECD world or on regions in Asia, Africa and the Americas, the Transnationalisation, Development and Migration working group takes a systematic look at the relationships between these disparate worlds; between "North" and "South", "East" and "West". The focus is on questions of membership, in particular citizenship, for example multiple nationalities. A more recent focus is the examination of the transnational social question as well as social inequalities and adaptation strategies in the wake of climate change.
This DAAD-funded project started in 2019. The Turkish-German University (TGU) in Istanbul is a joint venture between the Turkish and the German governments. The languages of instruction are mainly Turkish and German. In Sociology, the first step was the establishment of an undergraduate study programme at the TGU in close cooperation with the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University (UBI). The Bielefeld curriculum served as a point of departure for the programme at TGU. The BA degree program in Sociology at TGU was successfully launched in the winter semester 2021/22. Currently, the Turkish and German partners continue the development of sociology degree programmes at the TGU. The project now aims to expand and intensify the implementation of further degree programmes on the MA and PhD level. These future degree programmes are meant to correspond to the local context (e.g. requirements of the Turkish university authority YÖK, status of TGU expansion) and the state of the art in Sociology.
Central aspects of the project are:
1. Intensification of cooperation between TGU and UBI through joint research projects, publications, workshops, etc.
2. Implementation of the Flying Faculty, in which lecturers from German universities are sent to the TGU each semester for teaching courses.
3. Establishment of a double degree program. The first degree of the program will be the BA Sociology, further degrees are being planned. A scholarship program for TGU students will be established in conjunction with the double degree program.
4. Strengthening the methodological training at the TGU through workshops conducted by members of the Flying Faculty.
Funder: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD)
Funded since 2019
Project director: Prof. Thomas Faist, PhD
Project staff: Kristoffer Klement
Editors: Marisol García (University of Barcelona) and Thomas Faist
(Bielefeld University).
Edward Elgar Publishing
The Encyclopedia of Citizenship Studies aims to provide a state-of-the
art tool in social sciences focusing on issues and approaches around the
core concept of citizenship. The distinctive features of this
publication project are: theoretical considerations along with normative
concerns in the context of empirical research; comparative and global
perspectives; regional variations in and beyond Europe; and citizenship
in the Anthropocene. The Encyclopedia of Citizenship Studies will have
around 80 peer-reviewed articles. The Editorial Advisory Board consists
of Willem Duyvendak, Yuri Kazepov, Peter Kivisto, Margaret Somers,
Jürgen Mackert, Lydia Morris, Alejandro Portes, and Bryan Turner.
The change in conflict issues and constellations accompanies the development of modern urban societies just as much as the synchronous and diachronic crossing of different lines of conflict (crisscrossings). This change implies, among other things, that local conflict parties dissolve again over time and that the actors active in them align and form themselves along newly formed lines of conflict . Sometimes actors also act simultaneously in completely different conflict constellations. The
related questions are: What does it do to the actors in an urban society characterised by migration-related diversity when
opponents become allies and partisans become adversaries as a result of changing or intersecting conflict and
alliance constellations? And: Do the intersecting lines of conflict contribute to the development of new local forms of
civil society integration? Is this even the lifeworld foundation for what some migration researchers call a "post-migrant society"?
Project management: Prof. Dr Thomas Faist
Project staff: Kai-Sören Falkenhain, Dr Jörg Hüttermann, Johannes
Ebner
This project investigates the trajectories of social protection of African migrants in Mexico, a new but increasingly visible migrant group that has emerged in the past years as a result of a combination of global processes. Migration is a social-protection strategy for individuals and families throughout the globe. At the same time, however, increasingly restrictive migration policies are pushing many migrants to seek new and more risky migration routes. In the past decades, migration and social protection have taken new forms and consequently different relations between the State and society. Many studies have investigated aspects of social protection for migrants from the Global South in industrialized countries of the Global North, with powerful welfare-states. Yet, such focus on origin and destination countries has failed to understand the complexities during the migration process, where people often spend uncertain periods of time in transit countries, frequently affected by violence, socio-economic crises, and a volatile formal social-protection system. Through a mixed-methods approach (ethnographic methods and social network analysis), this project aims to advance our understanding on how mobile populations devise and shape their social protection strategies during their migration trajectories in a transnational manner, beyond sending and receiving states. To do so, this research draws on the case of African migrants in Mexico, a context characterized by inefficient state protection and where social protection practices are carried out informally by individuals and their social networks. By exploring alternative mechanisms of social protection, the findings of this project will aim to inform social policy and ameliorate social inequalities throughout migration processes. Besides being empirically innovative, this study will contribute to the theorisation of current approaches of transnational social protection, which to date have only focused on the circulation of resources across sending and receiving countries.
Duration: 1st December 2021 to 1st June 2023
Funding: DAAD
Principal Investigator: Dr Ester Serra Mingot, Bielefeld University
Host institution in Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS)
Cross-border mobility is increasingly seen as a key factor in improving life chances. Accordingly, research into the effects of freedom of movement within the European Union on the life chances of mobile population groups has increased in recent years. A key finding of these studies is that not all migrants benefit equally from mobility opportunities. These differences are mainly attributed to heterogeneities such as legal status, gender, ethnicity and class. Research on this topic to date has focussed particularly on disadvantaged or favoured groups, supranational social policy or the living conditions of migrants in the country of origin or the country of arrival. This results in a research gap with regard to the general question of how spatial mobility within the social space of the EU in interaction with other heterogeneities influences social positioning - by which is meant both objective and subjective social status. Furthermore, it is not known how migrants position themselves within the social structure of the EU. The interplay between objective and subjective social position is primarily determined by the mechanism of social comparison along different frames of reference. A special feature of migrants is that they can potentially use both national and transnational frames of reference for their subjective positioning.
The project starts at this point and deals with three focuses of research:
(1) analysing the spatial mobility trajectories of heterogeneous migrant groups;
(2) analysing the connection between spatial mobility trajectories and social position in relation to socio-economic status and its subjective perception and evaluation, and
(3) the investigation of social comparison as a mechanism that influences the subjective perception of social position.
The focus is on analysing the choice of reference frames and groups for social comparisons of migrants. The sequential, mixed methods design of the research projects draws on data from the migrant sample of the SOEP-IAB sample in order to analyse typical mobility trajectories of migrants in Germany as well as their socio-economic status and their life and area satisfaction using quantitative methods. In addition, qualitative interviews will be conducted with a subsample of SOEP respondents, as well as with staff, people without migration experience in an EU country with high emigration rates (Poland), in order to analyse interpretations and meanings of spatial mobility trajectories for the respondents' own perception of their social position.
The aim of the project ending date is to investigate social comparisons as a mechanism conditioning the relationship between spatial mobility and social positions.
Duration: since October 2016
Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Project management: Prof Thomas Faist, PhD, Bielefeld University
Cooperation partner: Dr. Ingrid Tucci, CNRS Institute of Labour Economics and Industrial Sociology (LEST), Aix en Provence, France
(Former) researchers: Dr Karolina Barglowski, Dr Joanna J. Fröhlich, Inka Stock, PhD
Presentations from the project
Positioning Strategies of Migrants in Transnational Social Spaces. A contribution to research on spatial and social mobility. Presentation by Inka Stock at the Congress of the German Sociological Association. 14-24 September 2020
Using Social Comparison to Study Migrants' Social Positions in Transnational Perspective. Presentation by Inka Stock at the 16th IMISCOE Conference on 26-28 June in Malmö, Sweden
Symbolic Boundaries and Subjective Approaches to Stratification": A Reinterpretation of an Empirical Study from a Migration Perspective. Presentation by Joanna Fröhlich at the 16th IMISCOE Conference from 26-28 June in Malmö, Sweden
Processes of subjective status localisation in transnational spaces. Presentation with Thomas Faist, Joanna Fröhlich and Inka Stock in the panel: "Complex Inequalities" of the section "Social Inequalities and Social Structure Analysis" at the 39th Congress of the German Sociological Association (DGS) from 24-28 September 2018, Göttingen
Social Comparison and Visual Methods: Manifesting the Latent in Accounts of Social Status. Presentation by Inka Stock at the ISA World Congress of Sociology from 15-21 July in Toronto, Canada
Unpacking the Social and Spatial Mobility Nexus: Migrants' Mobility Trajectories and Their Perceptions of Social Positions. Presentation by Joanna Fröhlich and Inka Stock at the ISA World Congress of Sociology, Panel: "Classes on the Move: The Everyday Experiences of Social Mobility" RC 28, 21 July, Toronto, Canada and the IMISCOE Conference, 3 July 2018, Barcelona, Spain
Transnational mobility and Social Positions in the European Union: The Role of Social Comparison. Presentation by Inka Stock at the 25th International Conference of Europeanists. Council for European Studies at Columbia University from 28-31 March 2018 in Chicago, USA
Challenges of a Qualitative Research Design to Investigate Social Comparison and Social Mobility. Guest lecture by Joanna Fröhlich and Inka Stock at the research colloquium "Qualitative Methods" by Prof. Ruth Ayaß on 23 November 2017 at Bielefeld University, Germany
Publications
Faist, T., Fröhlich, J. J., Stock, I., & Tucci, I. (2021). Introduction: Migration and Unequal Positions in a Transnational Perspective. Social Inclusion, 9(1), 85-90. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v9i1.4031
Stock, I., & Fröhlich, J. J. (2021). Migrants' Social Positioning Strategies in Transnational Social Spaces. Social Inclusion, 9(1), 91-103. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v9i1.3584
Stock, I. (2021). Insights into the Use of Social Comparison in Migrants' Transnational Social Positioning Strategies. Social Inclusion, 9(1), 104-113. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v9i1.3583
Tucci, I., Fröhlich, J. J., & Stock, I. (2021). Exploring the Nexus between Migration and Social Positions using a Mixed Methods Approach. Social Inclusion, 9(1), 114-129. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v9i1.3538
Faist, T., Fröhlich, J. J., & Stock, I. (2019). Processes of subjective status localisation in transnational spaces. In N. Burzan (Ed.), Complex dynamics of global and local developments. Proceedings of the 39th Congress of the German Sociological Association in Göttingen 2018 (pp. 1-10).
The project will conduct a systematic and comparative analysis of Asian student mobility. This is one of the world's strongest education-related migration movements. We want to gain new insights into the relationship between educational mobility, life planning and life course. Our research design is innovative: based on a representative sample of Japanese and Chinese students, we propose a threefold comparison: between (1) Japanese and Chinese students at British and German universities, (2) Chinese and Japanese students who stayed at home, and (3) Chinese students who migrated to Japan. Through such comparisons, and using various multivariate methods and network analyses, we expect to uncover some theoretical aspects, such as the selectivity of educational mobility, the formation of individual preferences for regional or interregional migration, and the differential impact of such preferences on the perceived value and opportunities of tertiary education for future life planning. In addition to generating valuable survey data on the migration of Chinese and Japanese students, the research will benefit a range of non-academic stakeholders, including governments, tertiary education institutions, think tanks and organisations involved in providing information and support for international students. The proposed project is based on the currently funded survey project 'Bright Futures: Internal and International Mobility of Chinese Students' by the European partners and their co-operation with researchers at Kyoto University.
The 'Asian Educational Mobility' project is a sibling project of 'Bright Futures'
Involved in this project are:
University of Essex, England
Bielefeld University, Germany
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain
Tsinghua University, China
At Bielefeld University, the project is led by Prof Thomas Faist, PhD. Current project members are Isabell Diekmann and Takuma Fujii. Former members are Dr Başak Bilecen, Dr Andrés Cardona, Dr Mengyao Zhao and Janina Jaeckel.
Publications:
Bilecen, B., Diekmann, I., Faist, T. and Fujii, T. (in progress): Future Mobility Plans of Chinese International Students in Germany: Micro- and Meso-Level Explanations.
Fujii. T. (in progress): Transnational art fields: Educational decisions of international art students.
Fujii. T. (2020): Integration into the transnational art fields: Japanese fine arts students. S. 353-375. in: Faist, T. (ed.), Sociology of Migration. A systematic introduction. Berlin/Bosten: De Gruyter.
Fujii, T. (2020): Integration of aspiring artists: Japanese music students in Germany. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, Vol. 29, 3: 358-380.
Aksakal, M., Bilecen, B. and Schmidt, K. (2019): Qualitative sampling in research on international student mobility: insights from the field in Germany. Globalisation, Societies and Education. Vol. 17, 5: 610-621.
Bright Futures - China: A comparative study of internal and international migration of Chinese students deals with the mobility of Chinese students between China on the one hand and Great Britain and Germany on the other in international cooperation. Further information will be available soon.
Project partners:
GB: Prof. Yasemin Soysal, University of Essex
People's Republic of China: University of Tsinhua
FRG: Prof. Thomas Faist, University of Bielefeld
Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
For more information, please read here (German) or here (English), as well as our flyer
The project is sponsored by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 for the period March 2015 to February 2018. Detailed information in English can be found on the international YMOBILITY project page.
YMOBILITYis developing a research programme to address the following questions:
We focus on primary qualitative and quantitative data sets, but also use secondary data from across the European Union.
The study focusses on 9 countries representing different contexts of youth migration: Romania, Slovakia and Latvia as sources of emigration and return migration; the United Kingdom and Sweden as destination regions; Germany, Italy, Ireland and Spain as destination regions and countries of origin. The policy field analysis is supplemented by interviews with relevant actors such as migrant associations and political decision-makers.
At Bielefeld University, the project is headed by Prof Thomas Faist, PhD. Project staff are Dr Mustafa Aksakal and Dr Kerstin Schmidt.
Analysing the long-term development of social inequalities between migrants and host societies, as well as between and within migrant groups, is an urgent task. Most of the existing studies on migration and inequality have two fundamental limitations: first, they cover only relatively short periods of time, and second, they perceive migrants as independent variables that influence inequality either in the country of origin or in the labour market of the receiving country. However, there is a lack of comparative research on social inequalities between different countries of immigration and among migrants themselves. Therefore, the questions to be answered relate to the histories of inequalities over time between immigrants and natives, between and within migrant groups, and between receiving countries. This exploratory project aims to lay the foundations for approaching these questions. To this end, comparative data sets will be compiled and initial comparisons will be made between the historical patterns, dynamics and determinants of the migration-inequality nexus in Germany and the USA.
Project management: Thomas Faist (Bielefeld University, Germany) and Luis E. Guarnizo (University of California Davis, USA)
Participating scientists: Carlos Becerra (University of California Davis, USA) and Joanna J. Sienkiewicz (Bielefeld University, Germany)
The project 'Beyond Humanitarianism - Addressing the issues relating to Syrian refugees in Turkey' is a short-term collaboration between the Centre on Migration, Citizenship and Development (COMCAD) at Bielefeld University and Oxfam in Turkey. The project deals with the challenges Turkey faces as a transit and host country for Syrian refugees.
The aim of the project is to (1) explore the conditions under which adequate participation of Syrian refugees can be ensured in areas that are essential for their survival and life chances, such as labour market participation, education and housing, and (2) propose appropriate policy approaches to achieve human security for Syrian refugees beyond immediate disaster relief.
The pressing question addressed by the project relates to the long-term presence of Syrian refugees in Turkey: What form of cooperation between local, national, transnational and international actors is necessary to ensure the human security and basic life chances of people who have experienced forced migration and are referred to here as refugee migrants? What are best practices in public policy that can ensure that these refugee migrants can have a minimum of life chances in the labour market, education system and housing?
The entanglements of national and international security interests and the human rights of migrants, as they are visible in the current management of migration movements to Turkey, form the context of this study. The central question is, how can we go beyond a purely humanitarian approach to disaster relief and address the long-term concerns of Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries, especially Turkey?
COMCAD at Bielefeld University, in collaboration with Oxfam in Turkey, will undertake a literature review of the current situation of Syrian refugees in Turkey and Turkish policy responses in a comparative manner, and will seek to identify policy-making proposals that can support the handling of refugees. Future research opportunities that could support informed policy action will form part of the literature review.
Duration: 15 February 2016 - December 2017
Coordinators: Prof Thomas Faist, Bielefeld University (project management); Meryem Aslan (Oxfam Turkey)
Research team: Prof Thomas Faist, Dr Inka Stock, Johanna Paul and Victoria Volmer, Bielefeld University
The study 'The importance of volunteering for the integration of refugees in Germany: from the clothes closet to sponsorship' was conducted in Bielefeld from February 2016 to February 2018 and financially supported by the faculty in two different funding phases.
The aim of the study was to analyse the structures and characteristics of volunteer work in the field of refugee aid, its impact on refugee policy and the integration of refugees into society. To this end, focused ethnographic research was conducted in Bielefeld, based primarily on observations, document analyses and interview data.
Against the background of the increased number of refugees in Germany since 2015, many people in the German civilian population are increasingly involved in voluntary refugee aid. Churches and associations as well as municipal departments are mobilising volunteers to better manage the accommodation and care of refugees. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and volunteers can not only play a decisive role as service providers in municipal refugee work, but can also be actively involved in municipal migration policy processes.
One focus of the study was on examining strategies used by volunteers and non-governmental organisations to deal with the possible contradiction between humanitarian services and political influence. Of particular interest in this context are the increasingly relevant refugee sponsorship projects that NGOs, informal aid structures and church organisations have been setting up with refugees since 2016.
The following research questions in particular were investigated as part of this study
The aim of the first part of the study was in particular to describe the structures of voluntary refugee support in Bielefeld. To this end, a comprehensive literature review, eight interviews with coordinators from various refugee aid departments in Bielefeld, 10 interviews with volunteers and a mapping of refugee and migration work institutions in Bielefeld were conducted.
The second part of the study focused primarily on analysing existing sponsorship projects. In total, the participants of six sponsorships, six refugee staff, people and six sponsors, were interviewed. The interview data made it possible to find out the exact characteristics of the sponsorships and the expectations that the sponsors and refugees had of the sponsorships. Furthermore, the motivations of the volunteers and the refugees who had decided to become sponsors were analysed.
The study shows that the majority of volunteers are women. Civic engagement plays an important role in successful municipal refugee work in Bielefeld. Volunteers are not only indispensable for the smooth provision of humanitarian support and the fulfilment of refugees' basic needs (housing, clothing, health care, etc.), but are also a central component of longer-term integration work for social participation. At the same time, it is becoming apparent that non-governmental and church organisations are increasingly trying to move away from short-term humanitarian aid towards longer-term sponsorships with refugees and are also influencing local migration policy with their activities. Motivating volunteers for longer-term tasks and, for example, recruiting them for sponsorships is proving to be a challenge. Furthermore, it turns out that sponsorships have the potential to sensitise both volunteers and refugees to the effects of refugee policy with regard to the rights of asylum seekers and to create alternative practices. At the same time, however, they can also reinforce asymmetrical power relations between volunteers and refugees.
The results of the project were presented at the annual conference of the European Sociological Association (ESA) in Athens in 2017, as well as during the World Congress of Sociology (ISA) in Toronto in July 2018 at an information event on perspectives on German migration and refugee research organised by the German Research Foundation.
Project duration: February 2016 - February 2018
Coordination: Dr Inka Stock
Team: Anna-Lena Friebe, Beatrix Kroschewski
Publications:
The project is funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union and will run from February 2014 to January 2017.
EURA-NET conducts theoretical analyses and empirical studies in the Euro-Asian transnational space in order to better understand the specific characteristics of temporary migration and related policy implications. Three fundamental research questions will be answered:
In the EURA-NET research project, comparative empirical and theoretical-analytical results on transformation processes and their effects on the development of temporary transnational migration in industrialised, emerging and developing countries are elaborated and made available to the public. The countries analysed represent regions of origin and destination as well as transit countries.
At Bielefeld University, the project is headed by Prof Thomas Faist, PhD. Project staff are Dr Mustafa Aksakal and Dr Kerstin Schmidt.
Dr Stefan Rother, University of Freiburg
Ms Marianne Haase, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
Ms Eleanor Koch (Ecumenical Philippine Conference)
The study "Indian high-skilled Migrants and International Students in Germany - Migration Behaviours, Intentions and Development Potential" was conducted from March to August 2016 on behalf of the Bertelsmann Foundation. The aim of the study was to take a closer look at the situation of highly skilled workers and students from India in Germany. This topic appears to be of particular importance in view of two developments. Firstly, the number of international students, especially from India, has increased steadily in recent years. However, the transition between studying and the labour market is often a major hurdle for international students. On the other hand, German legislation is based on an increasingly open but also more selective migration policy. One example is the implementation of the EU Blue Card, which offers simplified conditions for the immigration of highly qualified workers from third countries. However, little is known about their satisfaction on a professional and personal level and the resulting motivation for a longer or shorter stay in Germany.
Against this background, the study focussed in particular on answering the following research questions:
- What are the decisive criteria for choosing Germany to work or study for highly qualified employees or international students from India?
- What factors influence the decision to stay in Germany long-term, to return to India or to move to another country?
- What potential does a stay in Germany offer for personal development?
- To what extent is the stay of Indian students and highly qualified people related to positive or negative development in Germany and India?
The study is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the statistical, migration policy and theoretical background. In particular, it provides an overview of the development of German migration policy in recent years and the associated developments in Indian migration to Germany, which also includes an analysis of the current situation. In addition, a comparative look is taken at current migration policy and empirical developments regarding the immigration of highly qualified people and international students in two other important destination countries, the UK and the USA. Against this background, the current state of research in Germany on highly qualified people and students from India is presented and existing gaps are identified.
The second part of the study consists of an empirical study that includes qualitative interviews with highly qualified employees and students from India, employers, as well as experts from politics, academia and civil society. Indian professionals and students were asked about their personal motivations for coming to Germany, their experiences in the country and their future aspirations. Through interviews with German employers, insights were gained into the advantages and disadvantages of the current legal management of skilled labour migration, institutional practices and the adaptation of Indian skilled workers to German corporate cultures. Based on interviews with experts, different assessments of the current recruitment of skilled labour, also in comparison with other countries, were taken into account.
The empirical results were analysed both within and between the individual stakeholder categories. In this way, converging and diverging aspects were identified in order to adequately capture complex and contradictory perspectives. The resulting opportunities and challenges with regard to sustainable integration into the labour market and other areas of society were formulated in the form of recommendations for action for politicians, employers and universities.
The report based on the study will be published shortly.
Project duration: March - August 2016
Coordination: Prof Thomas Faist, PhD
Team: Dr Mustafa Aksakal, Dr Kerstin Schmidt
Duration: January 2014 - December 2016
Budget: approx. 2.4 million euros
Project management UniBi: Jeanette Schade and Kerstin Schmidt
Principal Investigator: Prof Thomas Faist
Project flyer: EN, ES, FR
The aim of the project ending date is to expand the global knowledge on the relationship between migration and environmental change, including climate change. In addition, the project intends to formulate research-based policy recommendations on how migration can contribute to adaptation to environmental change and climate change. It is based on field research in six countries: Dominican Republic, Haiti, Kenya, Mauritius, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam. Bielefeld University is supervising the study on Kenya.
Improving the capacity of governments to act and make decisions on environmentally induced migration
Consultancy for improved policy coherence and national and regional cooperation
European Union, Thematic Programme on Migration and Asylum (TPMA), with EUR 1.9 million
Project no.: 250064
Duration: 04/2014 - 03/2016
Project management UniBi: Jeanette Schade
Not only climate change, but also climate policy measures, i.e. emission reduction and adaptation measures, can have negative impacts on human rights such as the right to food, water or housing, as well as on political participation and non-discrimination. They can even lead to migration and displacement, for example if people are relocated as a preventive measure to adapt to climate change, or if they are displaced or forcibly relocated from their land due to major adaptation and emission reduction projects. The environmental damage caused by climate policy measures can also lead to migration, impoverishment and marginalisation in the wider project environment.
Nevertheless, human rights considerations are often not systematically taken into account when developing climate policies. In addition, climate policies in developing countries often have an international dimension, as they are often supported by industrialised countries. Domestic policies of industrialised countries, such as the promotion of agrofuels, can also have negative impacts in other countries through effects in the supply chains. The aim of ClimAccount is to explore the complex relationship between climate policy measures, human rights and migration and to analyse the human rights responsibilities (extraterritorial human rights obligations - ETOs) of negative consequences of EU and Austrian climate policy measures.
The central element of the study is three case studies in countries where the EU and Austria implement climate policy measures. Field research will be used to analyse the human rights impacts of EU and Austrian climate policies. The focus is on the resulting displacement and other migration movements. On this basis, the ETOs of Austria and the EU in these cases will be analysed and policy recommendations for political actors will be developed on how human rights considerations can be adequately integrated into climate policies in order to avoid negative impacts on human rights.
The project consists of the following work packages (WP):
Sponsored by:
Project partner:
Duration: 2011-2015
COST Action IS1101 on Climate Change and Migration: Knowledge, Law, Policy and Theory aims to build a research network and broad-based knowledge on climate change and migration. The Action involves researchers from a wide range of disciplines such as geography, political science, migration studies, environmental history and Law. Currently, 20 European countries are represented on the Action's Board of Directors. It provides funding for workshops, short-term scientific missions for knowledge exchange and training schools. COST Action IS1101 is funded under the Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health (ISCH) framework of the European Union's Programme for the Support of European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST).
Jeanette Schade of Bielefeld University is the acting vice-chair of the Action.
For further information on the activities of the Action, including membership lists and workshop reports, please visit the website of Durham University, which chairs and manages the Action: Website
COST Action IS1101 Climate Change and Migration - Bielefeld Workshop
Social inequality and social justice in environmentally-induced relocation
Place and date: 20-21 November, 2014 - University of Bielefeld, Germany
Organisation: Jeanette Schade / Kerstin Schmidt-Verkerk / Thomas Faist
DEADLINE: 20 September 2014
Call for papers:
Workshop outputs:
Schade, J., Ch. McDowell, E. Ferris, K. Schmidt, G. Bettini, C. Felgentreff, F. Gemenne, A. Patel, J. Rovins, R. Stojanov, Z. Sultana and A. Wright (2015) Climate change and climate policy induced relocation: A challenge for social justice. Recommendations of the Bielefeld Consultation 2014; Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Policy Brief Series, Issue 10. Vol. 1, December 2015 Download
Schade, J. (2016) Land matters: The role of land policies and laws for environmental migration in Kenya; Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Policy Brief Series, Issue 1, Vol. 2, January 2016 Download
Duration: 2010-2014
In 2009, the European Science Foundation (ESF), Bielefeld University and its Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) signed a partnership agreement for a series of research conferences as part of the ESF Research Conferences Scheme. The conference series under the name 'ESF-ZiF-Bielefeld Conferences' takes place at the highest scientific level and brings together social scientists and young researchers from Europe and around the world. The thematic focus is on the nexus between environmental change, climate change and migration. Regrettably, the ESF discontinued its entire conference programme in 2013 before the last event in the conference series could be held.
Conference 2010: Environmental Change and Migration: From Vulnerabilities to Capabilities, 5-9 December 2010
Co-sponsors: Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and German Academic Exchange Service
Publications
Thomas Faist/Jeanette Schade (eds.): Disentangling Migration and Climate Change: Toward an Analysis of Methodologies, Political Discourses and Human Rights. Dordrecht: Springer (2013)
Conference 2012: Tracing Social Inequalities in Environmentally-Induced Migration, 9-12 December 2012
Co-sponsors: Gérer les déplacements des populations dues aux phénomènes climatiques extrêmes(GICC-EXCLIM), COST Action IS1101 and Collaborative Research Centres 882
Publications
Robert McLeman/Jeanette Schade/Thomas Faist (eds.): Environmental Migration and Social Inequality. New York: Springer (2016)
To what extent do people currently living in Germany feel an ecological responsibility for future generations? A new study by Dr Isabell Diekmann (TU Dortmund University) and Prof Dr Thomas Faist (Bielefeld University) based on data from the Bertelsmann Stiftung's Religion Monitor shows that a majority of 77 per cent of respondents believe that we should all be prepared to reduce our current standard of living in order to protect the environment for future generations. Religion has a positive influence on the willingness to take responsibility. First of all, this is good news in terms of the willingness for intergenerational justice.
5 May 2021
Vidigal, Inês (2021) The transnationalized social question: interview with Thomas Faist, Observatório da Emigração, January 14th 2021. http://observatorioemigracao.pt/np4EN/7910.html
22. April 2020
Cleovi Mosuela (Uni Bielefeld)
On 20th March theHessische Krankenhausgesellschaft (Hesse Hospital Association, Germany), announced aRekrutierungsflugor a“recruitment flight” for intensive care personnel will take place[1].It translates to a “special permit”that can fly in 75Philippine-trained nurses to care for COVID-19 patients in Hesse. Despite the Luzon[2]-wide enhanced community quarantine in the Philippines and German border closure, in fact, a European-wide restriction to travel to its territory, a fast-paced migration was authorized by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
The recruitment should not come as a surprisesince Germany has turned to the Philippines to meet its nursing shortage mainly through a bilateral agreement called ‘triple win,’ which was enacted in 2013. From the perspective of the Philippine state, signing an agreement with Germany signals a penetration of a new market for the nursing skills whose emigration the state has been facilitating. Through bilateral agreements or authorizing private recruitment agencies, the Philippines has been exporting care work for half a century now to different parts of the developed world.
The opening up of the German nursing labor market is drawn up in accordance with the World Health Organization Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel. The Code was set upon 21 May 2010as a response to current practices of middle- and high-income countries of poaching health care professionals from lower-income countries with already weak health systems. The aim is to manage migration through ethical recruitment. Recruitment from a country with a critical shortage of health personnel should be avoided to protect the health systems in the poorest parts of the world. And to make sure that nurses will have decent work in the host country.
The WHO Code is supposed to guide developed countries to consider the health-related needs of developing countries. Not that the recruitment would cause detrimental effects on the health systems where nurses come from. The Code makes claims on resource-rich countriesnot to look upon the developing world as an infinite source of disposed labor to fill their shortage.
The importance of this global instrument is particularly irrefutable. Especially now. But it seems to have been disregarded in the Rekrutierungsflug.
It has provoked a fierce reaction among Filipino government officials. One current Member of the House of Representatives (18th Congress; Hon. Rufus B. Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro City) urged the Philippine Department of Labor to stop the deployment of Filipino nurses abroad during the current public health emergency[3]. “We need those nurses bound for Germany and other jobs overseas to augment our dwindling public health workforce… Hundreds of doctors, nurses and other hospital staff have already been sidelined by Covid-19 as they are on quarantine due to exposure to the virus,” Rep. Rodriguez said.
At the time the planned recruitment flight was announced, coronavirus cases in the Philippines rose to 230, with 18 deaths[4].
The recruitment of nurses from a developing country, from a country also battling the crisis, seems to be depriving already under-resourced hospitals of front-line responders. In fact, the Philippine Department of Health has been scrambling forvolunteer doctors and nurses to fill its own shortage and support the country’s healthcare system.
Despite the current global political rhetoric of solidarity to combat coronavirus, the planned recruitment flight appears hence all but inspired by a rather national-centric view. Will the German public really applaud this sense of security or protection of imported care at the expense of others in a far-away, relatively grievable place? The ethics inspired by taking into consideration how health systems in poorer parts of the world would fare due to the emigration of personnel seems to have been suspended in the pandemic response.
[1] “Philippinische Pflegekräfte sollen nach Deutschland kommen", Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20 March 2020, 15:46, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/gesundheit-eschborn-philippinische-pflegekraefte-sollen-nach-deutschland-kommen-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-200320-99-411409
[2] The largest island in the Philippines and where Metro Manila is located.
[3] Rufus B. Rodriguez, “Press Statement: Stop Sending Nurses Abroad at this Time, Bello Urged,” Facebook, 30 March 2020, https://www.facebook.com/RufusBRodriguez/posts/1579613962201198?__tn__=K-R The press statement was released on the representative’s Facebook page (and not on the official website of his office).
[4] Mara Cepeda, “PH coronavirus cases rise to 230; fatalities now at 18,”Rappler, 20 March 2020, 16:53, https://www.rappler.com/nation/255275-coronavirus-philippines-cases-march-20-2020
26. August 2019
Thomas Faist (Bielefeld)
On a global scale, distress and social instability today are reminiscent of the living conditions that prevailed through a large part of the nineteenth century in Europe. At that time the social question was the central subject of volatile political conflicts between the ruling classes and working-class movements. From the late nineteenth century onward, the social question was nationalized in the welfare states of the global North which sought a class compromise via redistribution of goods, whereas social protection beyond the national welfare state is found mostly in soft law in the form of social standards. We now may be on the verge of a new social conflict, again on a transnational scale, but characterized more than ever by manifold boundaries?such as those between capital and labour, North and South, developed and underdeveloped or developing countries, or those in favour of increased globalization against those advocating national solutions.
The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the global South and the global North and also revolves around cultural heterogeneities. A proliferation of political groupings and NGOs rally across national borders in support of various campaigns such as environmental concerns, human rights, and women?s issues, Christian, Hindu, or Islamic fundamentalism, migration, and food sovereignty, but also resistance to growing cultural diversity and increasing mobility of goods, services, and persons across the borders of national states. The nexus of South?North migration and cultural conflicts is no coincidence, as cross-border migration from South to North not only raises economic issues such as productivity and labour market segmentation but also has been part of the constitution of cultural conflicts around ?us? vs. ?them?. Migration thus has been one of the central fields in which the solution of the old social question in the frame of the national welfare state has been called into question, hence the term ?transnationalized social question?. One of the core questions for the social sciences therefore is: how is cross-border migration constituted as the social question of our times? One of the sub-questions reads: how are class and cultural conflicts constituted in the processes of post-migration in immigration and emigration states?
The politics of social inequalities in immigration states: politics around migration and inequalities runs along two major lines, economic divisions and cultural ones (Figure 1). With respect to economic divisions, they lie between market liberalization in the competition state and the de-commodification of labour as part of the welfare paradox: economic openness toward capital transfer is in tension with political closure toward migrants. It is the dichotomy of the competition state vs. the welfare state. In the cultural realm, the contention occurs over the rights revolution vs. the myth of national-cultural homogeneity. It finds expression in the liberal paradox, the extension of human rights to migrants who reside in welfare states against the efforts to control borders and cultural boundaries. It is the juxtaposition of the rule of law vs. culturalization and securitization. Above all threat perceptions often lead to a culturalization of migrants (e.g. viewing lower-class labour migrants as unfit for liberal and democratic attitudes), and to an overall securitization of migration (e.g. seeing migrants as prone to commit violent crimes). It is a juxtaposition of the multicultural state and the rule of law on the one hand and the democratic-national state on the other hand. Economic divisions along class lines structure the politicization of cultural heterogeneities.
The welfare paradox (market liberalization and the welfare state) and the liberal paradox (securitization and the rights revolution) have formed patterns that constitute the main pillars of the dynamics of the politics of (in)equalities and integration. In sum, market liberalization serves as a basis for class distinctions among migrants, or at least reinforces them, while securitization culturalizes them. Over the past few decades, the grounds for the legitimization of inequalities have shifted. Ascriptive traits have been complemented by the alleged cultural dispositions of immigrants and the conviction that immigrants as individuals are responsible for their own fate. Such categorizations start by distinguishing legitimate refugees from non-legitimate forced migrants. Another important trope is the alleged illiberal predispositions of migrants and their inadaptability to modernity. Bringing together market liberalization and culturalized securitization, the current results could be read as Max Weber?s Protestant Ethic reloaded: politics and policies seem to reward specific types of migrants, exclude the low- and non-performers in the market and the traditionalists, and reward those who perform well and espouse liberal attitudes. In brief, it is a process of categorizing migrants into useful or dispensable.
These processes have not simply led to a displacement of class by status politics. After all, class politics is also built along cultural boundaries, such as working-class culture, or bourgeois culture. Nonetheless, the heterogeneities that are politicized in the contemporary period have somewhat shifted: cultural heterogeneities now stand at the forefront of debate and contention. What can be observed is a trend toward both a de-politicized and a politicized development of heterogeneities in European public spheres. As to trends toward de-politicization, multicultural group rights, in particular, have been contentious and criticized as divisive. Over time, multicultural language has been replaced by a semantic of diversity or even super-diversity in market-liberal thinking and a semantic of threat in nationalist-populist rhetoric. Given this background, it is possible that market liberalization has also contributed to the decline of a rights-based approach and the rise of a resource-based approach. With specific regard to culture, we have seen a shift in policies from group rights to individual resources which can be tapped by enterprises. Diversity, at least in the private sector, mobilizes the private resources of minority individuals and looks for their most efficient allocation for profit- and rent-seeking. It is somewhat different in the public sector, especially in the realm of policing but also in the education and health sectors, in which service-providers seek more efficient ways of serving the public. In general, what we find is a seminal shift from a rights-based to a resource-based approach in dealing with cultural difference. Incidentally, this can be observed in the transnational realm as well. For example, the World Bank has for years propagated a resource-based approach to link migration to development in casting migrants as development agents of their countries of origin through financial remittances.
While a partial de-politicization of cultural heterogeneities through diversity management may help to achieve partial equalities in organizations, multicultural policies are inextricably linked to national projects. After all, such policies are meant to foster national integration and the social integration of immigrants as minorities into national life. From all we know, migration, migrants, and these policies are therefore likely to remain the chief target of securitizing and xenophobic efforts. While the rhetorical criticism of multiculturalism is ever mounting, existing multicultural policies are not reversed to the same extent. Quite to the contrary: the political struggle is ongoing.
24. April 2018
Johanna Paul (Bielefeld)
You can read a recent post by PhD researcher Johanna Paul on the blog of the UK-based project "Remember Me. The Changing Face of Memorialisation" at: Link
4 August 2017
Thomas Faist (Bielefeld)
Last year, the German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Müller, spoke of 200 million climate refugees; other estimates range from 25 million to one billion people who will migrate as a result of anthropogenic, i.e. human-induced, climate change by 2030. Where do such figures come from? As a rule, they are based on simple and problematic assumptions such as a direct impact of the increase in global warming on migration. The basic assumption is that people react directly to such changes by migrating. In this erroneous way of thinking, the melting of glaciers, the thawing of permafrost soils around the Arctic Circle, changing water temperatures with changing water and air currents, changing rainy and dry seasons not only lead to a rise in sea levels, an increase in extreme weather events and increasing rainfall variability, but also causally to climate migration or climate refugees.
It is worth taking a step back and looking at the terms we use for these migrations. The Old Testament already describes the story of Joseph and his brothers in the book of Genesis, describing migration or flight as a reaction to natural disasters, in this case a drought in Canaan that led to migration to Egypt. But it is only recently that we have started to use a technical term for this phenomenon. In a 1985 publication for the United Nations Environment Programme, El-Hinnawi first defined a category of migrants that he called "environmental refugees": "People who have had to leave their place of origin temporarily or permanently due to environmental degradation (natural and/or man-made) that has threatened their livelihood or quality of life." For some time now, there have also been attempts to categorise environmental refugees, who are now increasingly being referred to as climate refugees, as refugees who should be granted refugee status in accordance with the Geneva Refugee Convention (1951/1967).
Attempts of this kind are mainly coming from environmental research and climate activists. Understandably, the aim here is to raise public awareness of the threat posed by climate change. However, from the perspective of migration research, such attempts are somewhat premature - and not only because people have always migrated for environmental reasons. There are two specific reasons to be wary of term inflation. Firstly, with the exception of natural disasters or development projects (e.g. dam construction), environmental destruction or change is rarely the sole cause of migration and flight. They are often accompanied by economic hardship and military violence. Who would want to claim that the drought in Syria in 2008 or the even more recent water shortage in southern Sudan around Darfur are the main causes of the civil wars raging there today? At best, environmentally destructive factors have so far had a reinforcing effect. Secondly, the destruction of natural resources has so far been caused not so much by anthropogenic climate change as by economic and trade policies, including those of the European Union (EU). For example, industrial fishing off the Senegalese coast destroyed the livelihoods of local fishermen - and not the warming of the seawater temperature.
A migration research perspective also questions the current reinterpretation of migration as a reaction to climate change. Whereas a decade ago, international (and internal) migration was seen as a consequence of environmental destruction, including climate change, as a problem for the rich countries of the global North, the prevailing view in civil society and political circles today is that migration is a strategy of adaptation, i.e. a solution to climate change. This optimistic view has been fuelled by a broader paradigm shift, characterised by the keyword "migration and development" through migrant remittances - at least until the recent surge in refugee movements from Africa, Afghanistan and the Middle East to Europe. In this view, migrants are the better development workers. Since the early 2000s, the World Bank in particular has argued that the financial remittances sent by migrants from the countries of immigration to the countries of origin would themselves act as a development mechanism in the global South. Like a mantra, it is constantly pointed out that these remittances are now higher than official development assistance (ODA), and in some emigration countries in Africa even higher than foreign direct investment. And indeed, the sums involved are impressively high. In 2014, according to the best available estimates, remittances worldwide, and mostly to the global South, officially totalled around 500 billion. Such transfers, which reflect the reciprocity in families living transnationally, are certainly important for families, e.g. to cover the costs of medical treatment or to pay school fees. But crucially, they cannot serve as a driver for overall economic development. This is the responsibility of government economic policies.
The interpretation of migration as adaptation and thus as a solution to the problem of climate change is also fraught with danger because, once again, the naive assumption is that migrants produced by environmental degradation could literally keep those at home financially afloat. This way of thinking shifts the main burden of responsibility onto the migrants themselves and relieves the governments in the Global South and Global North. Families and civil society should once again act as cleaners or libero in the classic footballing sense. Instead, climate change and migration need to be placed in the wider context of relations between the global South and the global North. Ultimately, it is about solving a global collective good problem and not about cheaply shifting responsibility.
From a global perspective, vulnerability to environmental degradation, including climate change, is primarily a question of social inequality. The most important explanatory factor for the high level of climate vulnerability in the global South is the existence of extractive economies. It is those countries that primarily serve as suppliers of raw materials that are the most vulnerable. Other exacerbating factors include a weak civil society, high income inequality, low press freedom and weak property rights. The responsibility for dealing with these issues also lies with the global South, while the global North has to deal with the issue of the consequences of the causes of anthropogenic climate change.
Gemenne, François; Brücker, Pauline; Ionescu, Dina, eds. 2014: The State of Environmental Migration. Geneva: International Organisation for Migration, IOM. Faist, Thomas and Schade, Jeanette, eds. 2013: Disentangling Migration and Climate Change: Toward an Analysis of Methodologies, Political Discourses and Human Rights. Dordrecht: Springer. McLeman, Robert; Schade, Jeanette; Faist, Thomas, eds. 2015: Environmental Migration and Social Inequality. Dordrecht: Springer.
13 May 2017
Thomas Faist, Bielefeld
In his highly controversial intervention in the debate on the integration of migrants, which goes by the keyword 'Leitkultur', Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière (CDU) also mentioned the importance of religion: "In our country, religion is the cement and not the wedge of society." In view of the actual policy of the federal government and some state governments with regard to Islam in Germany, this sentence makes you wonder. Does the government's Islam policy really lead to religion contributing to civic unity? Prominent measures such as the Islam Conference point in a different direction. They tend to sponsor organisations that, like DITIB, are either directly linked to the Turkish state or represent very conservative theological positions.
The Islam Conference, which has been meeting since 2005, has now reached its third phase. There is also a National Integration Summit. But for more than a decade, the Islam Conference has been the highly visible place where not only issues relating to the religious integration of Muslim organisations are negotiated, but also all other areas of integration: School, language, culture and economy. And associations such as DITIB now receive millions in state funding for measures such as language courses.
In Germany, the important social role of Christian churches and the Jewish community also requires reliable contacts among Muslim religious groups and their integration into the institutional structure. In this respect, the aim of the Islam Conference initiated by Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) seems understandable. Why should Muslim associations, which certainly do not represent the majority of Muslims in Germany, act as privileged political contacts for integration in fields such as language and culture?
All areas of integration are now predominantly viewed from a religious perspective. For example, all migrants from Turkey and the Middle East are now regarded as Muslims. This is not only a gross oversimplification but also a false religiousisation of migrants and the discussion about integration. Consequently, it would be high time to transform the Islam Conference into a General Integration Conference.
This reveals a fundamental contradiction in current integration policy. On the one hand, it emphasises the importance of religion for social cohesion, as formulated by de Maizière. On the other hand, it does not recognise that religions - at least those that are organised as membership associations - tend to emphasise exclusive identities. Membership in religious communities or churches is polarised in the sense that one can be either Muslim or non-Muslim or Christian or non-Christian.
We need to go one step further. In order to promote the integration and recognition of migrants, it is important to supplement rather exclusive memberships in religious organisations with inclusive identity offerings. Let's take the example of language. In this case, mastering a new language is additive - each new language is added without necessarily conflicting with another. Learning a new language does not displace the previously learnt old languages.
There is another advantage to focussing more on language. Currently, religious differentiations between migrants and non-migrants often reinforce mutual resentment and perpetrator-victim roles. A clever language policy means that it is not so easy to fall into such traps. Of course, this requires courage. You can start by abolishing heritage language teaching with regard to long-established languages such as Russian, Turkish or Arabic. It makes little sense to cling to the fiction that the children of third or fourth generation migrants bring the necessary native language skills to the classroom. Instead, the status of these languages should be upgraded in general education schools; as normal foreign languages ? just like English, French or Spanish. This would also open up more appointments for some young people with a migrant background. After all, countries such as Russia, Turkey and the Arab world are among Germany's most important economic partners.
Integration policy should therefore not proceed simply by placing one-sided emphasis on religion as the cement of our society, neither by emphasising the 'Christian West' as the guiding culture nor by privileging Muslim migrant organisations and thus religion over sport, art, culture, business and politics. In the current national and global political climate, this leads above all to increased resentment between some migrant groups and locals. Instead, it is high time to utilise further potential for integration. Due to their additive nature, languages are a good place to start.
2 May 2017
Thomas Faist, Bielefeld
After refugees, the discussion about the burden of migration has now also reached children and young people with a migrant background: according to a statement by Federal Education Minister Johanna Wanka, a proportion of pupils with a migrant background of over a third in a class is detrimental to academic achievements. According to the PISA evaluation study, the results are then below average. This inspiring statement was eagerly taken up by politicians and education experts. The Rhineland-Palatinate CDU politician Julia Klöckner, for example, introduced the term 'upper limit' in this context. The chairman of the German Philologists' Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, also emphasised that too high a proportion of children with a migration background hinders their integration.
It is now relatively easy to dismiss this proposal for an upper limit as untenable and nonsensical. In large German cities, the proportion of children with a migrant background is generally well over half. How could such quotas be met under these conditions? Subsequent ideas such as better mixing of classes by busing migrant children to other schools have not yet worked in any other country in the world. Among other things, 'bussing' children from migrant backgrounds to distant schools would lead to middle-class parents transferring their children from these schools to other schools.
What is illuminating, however, is what has not yet been addressed in the discussion. The PISA study does state that a proportion of pupils with a migration background of over a third in a class reduces academic achievements. However, the key point here is the significance of social background or social class: if the data is controlled according to the pupils' class background, the migration background characteristic does not disappear completely, but is greatly minimised. In other words, the negative influence on measured academic achievements is primarily an effect of social class and not of migration background. This is an old realisation that is also known with regard to pupils' language skills. As early as the language proficiency tests in nurseries and primary schools in the early 2000s, it became apparent that not only pupils with a migrant background, but also pupils without a migrant background sometimes had considerable deficits in their German language skills. However, this does not mean that all pupils with a migrant background belong to the underclass. After all, there are also successful immigrant children from well-educated families.
It follows that the discussion about the proportion of children with a migrant background in German classrooms is a sham debate. It distracts from social injustices in the education system, which also exist independently of migration, but which nevertheless become more apparent as a result of migration. This is a recurring insight from the sociology of migration that applies to almost all such political initiatives in recent years. Just think of the recent discussion about refugees in 2015 and 2016, where it was claimed that refugees were causing a housing shortage. However, it quickly became clear that the rapid decline in the construction of social housing was responsible for this.
The push by politicians such as Julia Klöckner is subliminally aimed at the perception of migrant children as a threat from middle and upper class parents. As a rule, these parents try to protect their children's later opportunities in appointments through the education system. The focus on the votes of this clientele is also a reason why politicians do not adequately address and implement complex questions about which measures can address deep-seated injustices in the education system.
In contrast to the current debate, a constructive approach is the social index, which is also used in North Rhine-Westphalia - albeit not in a very fine-grained way. This is intended to ensure that teachers, school social workers and additional resources are allocated according to need. In order to successfully promote the inclusion of all pupils, further measures are certainly required. For example, it must be ensured that artistic and sporting activities are also offered at school throughout the day. This will enable many children to acquire additional skills beyond the narrow curricular knowledge, which are important both for their professional life and for their full participation in our society. This also applies to pupils without a migration background. Here, too, the programmes offered in schools must be strengthened and measures such as publicly funded education and leisure packages must be de-bureaucratised and integrated into school-based measures.
In short, the key points for a fairer education policy are well known. The task now is to fend off the destructive political initiatives that have just been introduced into the discussion. This is because they basically use the term upper limit to culturally charge a problem of social justice. In contrast, constructive means must be used to deal with diversity in schools in terms of social stratification and cultural difference. The fundamental question is not how many children with a migration background a class can tolerate, but how cultural diversity can be combined with social justice.
"Doppelte Staatsbürgerschaft fördert Integration" Interview by Jennifer Pross with Prof. Thomas Faist, January 2, 2017
Article
An interview with Joanna Jadwiga Sienkiewicz, WDR5 Westblick, May 17, 2016.
Listen to the podcast here (21'30min)
Interview "Bielefelder Soziologe: "Migranten sind eine Zukunftsinvestition", January 2016, Neue Westfälische
Read
Discussion panel, SPD Sennestadt, 17 November 2015, Neue Westfälische
Read
Discussion panel, series "Wortwechsel", 18 September 2015, Deutschlandfunk
Die Grenzen des Machbaren
October 2, 2015, Neue Westfälische, Refugees
Interview
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Interview
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Video
from Tobias Haberl, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin
Article (german)
THEMIS international migration conference
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(in Persian/ in Persisch)
Translated by Mohsen
Edited by Peter Kivisto and Thomas Faist (2019)
Teheran: Goli Azin Publications
Migration and the Politics of Social Inequalities in the Twenty-First Century.
Edited by Thomas Faist (2019) Oxford University Press (ISBN 978-0-1992-4901-5)
From Unitary to Multiple Citizenship
Edited by Thomas Faist and Peter Kivisto (2016) Beijing: Law Press of China (ISBN 978-7-5118-8223-3)
Thomas Faist (2016) New York: Springer. Co-edited with Robert McLeman and Jeanette Schade (ISBN 978-3-319-25794-5)
Faist, Thomas, Margit Fauser und Eveline Reisenauer, 2014, Lund: Studentliteratur
Anna Amelina, Devrimsel D. Nergiz, Thomas Faist, Nina Glick Schiller (Hrsg.), 2012, London: Routledge.
Social Spaces in between Ghana and Germany
Thomas Faist und Nadine Sieveking (Hrsg.), 2011, Münster: Lit Verlag.
Thomas Faist, Margit Fauser und Peter Kivisto (Hrsg.), 2011, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Interview with Thomas Faist in Franziskaner 04/2024 on the topic "Understanding migration as enrichment".
Interview with Thomas Faist in the Westfalen-Blatt of 25 November 2017 on the topic 'Search for a better (survival) life'
Interview on 'Germany as a country of immigration' with Thomas Faist on multicult.
Studio discussion on 'Inequalities' with Thomas Faist from Bielefeld University
Interview on the 'Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology Annual Seminar "A New Social Question or Crisis as Usual?"' with Thomas Faist from Christian Ulbricht Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology
Interview with Thomas Faist, Stockholm University
Interview on 'Diversity' with Thomas Faist by Madga Nowicka, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Interview VIDC with Thomas Faist "Coherent migration and development policy is not in sight." Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation.
Exit. Warum Menschen aufbrechen. Globale Migration im 21. Jahrhundert (2022)
The Transnationalized Social Question Oxford: Oxford University Press (2019)
Transnational Migration. Cambridge: Polity Press. (2013)
Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Research Methodologies for Cross-Border Studies, New York: Routledge (2012)
Unravelling Migrants as Transnational Agents of Development. Social Spaces in between Ghana and Germany, Wien/Berlin (2011)
The Migration-Development nexus: A Transnational Perspective, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2011)
Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. (2010)
Beyond a Border: The Causes and Consequences of Contemporary Immigration. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. (2010)
Citizenship: Theory, Discourse and Transnational Prospects. Oxford: Blackwell. (2007)
The Europeanization of National Policies and Politics of Immigration: Between Autonomy and the European Union. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (2007)
Dual Citizenship in Europe: From Nationhood to Societal Integration. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate. (2007)
Transnationale Migration als relative Immobilität in einer globalisierten Welt, in: Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 17(3), 365-385. (2007)
Transnational Social Spaces: Agents, Networks, and Institutions. Aldershot, Uk: Ashgate. (2004)
Identity and Integration: Migrants in Western Europe. Aldershot, Uk: Ashgate. (2003)
The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2000)
Transstaatliche Räume, Bielefeld: transscript-Verlag. (2000)
Migration, Immobility and Development: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. Oxford: Berg. (1997)
Sekretariat für Prof. Thomas Faist, PhD
sekretariat.faist@uni-bielefeld.de
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