„Transnational positioniert und transkulturell verflochten“: Zur Frage der Konstitution und Konstruktion von Zugehörigkeiten in Migrationsprozessen

Abstract

Dealing scientifically with the question of belonging is a classic field of sociological migration research. However, in the era of globalization, increasing migration and transnationalization of social structures, this question appears in a new light. Whereas the classic assimilation- and integration-oriented research approaches focus on integration into and identification with the immigration society, the approaches of transnationalism and transculturalism allow for a wider perspective on the question of the constitution and construction of multiple ways of belonging across national borders. The following contribution deals with the constitution and construction of multiple ways of belonging in the context of migration. The critical appraisal of the concept of belonging is followed by a presentation of transnational and transcultural perspectives, which broaden the conceptualization of multiple ways of belonging beyond unambiguous national-ethnic-cultural attributions. In order to indicate the procedural character, the contextual-structural and temporal conditionality of such multiple ways of belonging as well as their embeddedness in the subjectification processes and agency, the constitution and construction of the transnational social spaces of action and belonging are discussed from the biographical perspective. Finally, the empirically grounded concept of transnational positioning is illustrated with the help of some examples as a complex biographical construction of belonging, which involves the biographical process of negotiation between structural identity constraints and subjective power of agency beyond unambiguous attributions and identifications.