Abstract
Over the last four decades the life course perspective has become an important and fruitful approach in the social sciences. Some of its proponents even claim that the life course approach today is the pre-eminent theoretical orientation and new core research paradigm in social science (Elder et al. 2003; Heinz et al. 2009). Although not everyone will agree with this far reaching claim, few will dispute that the life course approach constitutes a promising conceptual starting point for overcoming the crucial micro-macro problem in social research by analysing the dynamic interrelation of structure and agency. The life course perspective has been successfully applied to empirical research in a wide range of sociological as well as demographic studies. In line with the development of the life course approach also migration and integration issues have become core topics of debate in society and are subject of a growing number of studies over the past years. Despite this similar development in time, exchanges between the life course approach and migration research are still rather limited. Reviewing the booming migration literature in Europe it is striking that the large majority of studies do not or only partially use the sociological life course approach. Even though a study already carried out in the early twentieth century became a classical study in migration research as well as in the life course literature. In the “The Polish Peasant in Europe and America” (1918–1920), the authors Thomas and Znaniecki basically apply a life course approach to the study of Polish migrants coming to the US. They aimed to explain social changes and changes in, for example family relations, by focusing on the interaction between individual migrants and the host society. This line of research has however not been fully taken further in research since then. Even though migration has become one of the major factors in population change in Europe today (Coleman 2008; Taran 2009) and the resulting significant amount of research in social sciences, the main focus of recent studies has been on the position of migrants in education and the labour market as well as on issues of identity and belonging (Heath et al. 2008; Van Tubergen 2005; Verkuyten 2001). Studies mainly aim to explain the specific position of migrants after migration. In demography, studies have looked at specific transitions like timing of the first child or intermarriage with native partners (Coleman 1994; González-Ferrer 2006; Kalmijn and van Tubergen 2006; Milewski 2008). In the study of international migration moves different, often economic explanations of migration decisions are taken. Only recently more emphasis has been put on the linked lives and the role of family and other networks for facilitating the migration move (Castles and Miller 2009). That the life course approach is only limitedly used in migration studies is at least puzzling: Understanding migrants’ behaviour and explaining the cumulative effects resulting from their actions which, in turn, are embedded in societal structures and framed by institutions, requires just the kind of dynamic research approach the sociological life course perspective suggests. This is even more so the case for studies on integration issues, as integration processes actually directly refer to life course processes, be it inter-generational (cohort differences) or intra-generational (individual careers). At the same time most studies in this domain focus on the position of migrants in society by studying the process of settlement in the host society only.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. also the new journal “Longitudinal and Life Course Studies” which started last year (Bynner et al. 2009).
- 2.
Population studies usually relate historical situations and factors to life course patterns by studying cohorts. This is not always fully capturing the micro-macro linkage because intra-cohort variations are understudied, institutional mechanisms are rarely specified, and biographical agency and its dynamics are hard to grasp. Already 25 ago Neugarten pointed out that this approach “does not analyze lives but presents the statistical histories of cohorts” (1985: 297). Cohort studies, thus, tend to “speculate about historical forces … At most we end with a plausible story that does not … weigh specific forces or explicate causal processes” (Elder and O’Rand 1995: 455). At the same time sociological studies, too, show a hiatus in this domain and do not fully capture the historical situation and its dynamics.
- 3.
For an account of the emergence of life course research see Elder (1998).
- 4.
As developmental psychologists sometimes tend to assume, regarding social contexts not as constitutive of a person or biography but taking them into account only as (important) mediating variables. Dannefer (1984) criticized this as the “ontogenetic fallacy” in lifespan psychology; cf. also the subsequent discussion between Baltes and Nesselroade (1984) and Dannefer (1984a). Note that, while ever since there has been and still is much talk about integrating the sociological life course and psychological lifespan perspective, so far there is not much progress in this respect (among the few positive exceptions are Elder and Caspi 1988; Sampson and Laub 1997; Diewald 2006) but, realistically, rather reason for taking a sceptical view of integrating the two perspectives (Mayer 2003; Diewald and Mayer 2009; Settersten 2009).
- 5.
Cf. – though less from an institutional but rather from a phenomenological life-world perspective – Alfred Schütz’ classic study on “The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology” (1944).
- 6.
This holds true for the majority of people in modern industrialized societies – yet, it “must be acknowledged that the description of life course patterns and other central preoccupations of the life course literature are largely irrelevant to the empirical reality of the existence of the majority of the present human population of the earth” (Dannefer 2002: 259).
- 7.
The tripartite life-course model has been criticized as not doing justice to female life courses (Moen 1985; Krüger 2003). In addition authors have commented that the tripartite life-course model, due to being age-differentiated, has become dysfunctional because the societies of today require and their individuals wish for an age-integrated life-course model (Riley et al. 1994). These discussions, however, may be neglected in the context of this introduction.
- 8.
- 9.
For an overview on the use of “agency” in life course research see Marshall (2000).
- 10.
According to Meyer and Jepperson (2000) the individual as an agentic actor is a cultural construction and consequence of modernity’s rationalization process.
- 11.
Originally, these guiding principles were induced as generalizations from the many empirical findings of Elder’s work. Elder and his followers sometimes speak of “paradigmatic principles” and sometimes of “linking mechanisms,” using both terms synonymously – and sometimes they claim a sharp distinction according to which the former term refers to a “broadly applicable idea” and the latter one to a “process that links transitions to behaviour” (Shanahan and Macmillan 2008: 55; Elder 1991; Elder and Shanahan 1998; Elder et al. 2003).
- 12.
While the transition concept refers to an individual process of state change the related term “status passage” refers to transitions as well as their societal configurations: “On the micro level status passages are constructed by biographical actors (…). On the macro level status passages refer to institutional resources and guidelines for life course transitions” (Heinz 1996: 58f).
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
Generally, “trajectory” is a ballistic term denoting the flight path of a missile which has a definite direction (graphically represented not as a straight line but a curve). Yet, while ballistics conceives of trajectories deterministically there is no deterministic notion whatsoever in the trajectory concept of the sociological life course approach.
- 16.
Cf. also Mayer who views the life course as “a self-referential process” showing “endogenous causation” (2003: 467), thus supposing conceptual priority of trajectories over transitions.
- 17.
This critique may also hold true for generation and cohort theories which assume that particular historical situations and societal circumstances cause a lasting imprint on individuals, thus producing distinguishable generations in the first place (cf. Mannheim 1952; Ryder 1965) – an overstressing of the supposition of a formative period ignores individuals’ capacity for learning and change.
- 18.
Also, this constitutive association with institutions makes the multiple trajectories of an individual’s life course interdependent: “Interdependence emerges from the socially differentiated life course of individuals, its multiple trajectories and their synchronization” (Elder 1985: 32).
- 19.
“Trajectories are trajectories precisely by virtue of what we might call their stable randomness, their causal character, in particular their comprehensibility under the image of cause implicit in regression thinking. Their inertia arises in stable, but localized, causal parameters” (Abbott 1997: 93).
- 20.
A famous study making use of both concepts is Sampson and Laub (1993).
- 21.
If a turning point could be “identified merely with reference to the past and the immediate present, algorithms locating turning points could beat the stock market. It is precisely the ‘hindsight’ character of turning points – their definition in terms of future as well as past and present – that forbids this” (Abbott 1997: 89).
- 22.
Migration, for example, represents a turning point if – and disregard of the migrant’s own view – it makes a hitherto employed worker a successful entrepreneur or turns a pupil’s good previous educational performance into a school drop-out career.
- 23.
Yet, cf. George (2009) for a conception of trajectories relating to intra-individual change.
- 24.
It is indispensable for a transition to become a turning point “that the trajectories it separates either differ in direction … or in nature (one is ‘trajectory-like,’ the other is random)” (Abbott 1997: 94) – whereas it does not matter whether a turning point is biographically motivated; it may be simply random.
- 25.
“Ironically, trajectories are the periods within which standard statistical modelling might be expected to produce good predictions of outcome, because in a sense that is the definition of a trajectory. But the turning points, precisely because they are the more causally central shifts of regime, will not be discovered by methods aiming at uncovering regimes” (Abbott 1997: 93).
- 26.
For an empirical application of the formal sequence typology developed by Sackmann and Wingens see Brzinsky-Fay (2007).
- 27.
- 28.
The notion of sequencing entails the same problem of societal relevance as the timing notion: while there are still normatively standardized successions of events and social status “disorderly” sequences are increasingly becoming common in modern (post-)industrial societies (Hogan 1978; Marini 1984; Rindfuss et al. 1987). Thus, average or standard patterns of sequencing are fading away, especially when taking into account longer life course periods, in present-day society.
- 29.
Usually, “dense” phases of accumulated state changes are stronger impacted upon by (macro-level) structural conditions than are life phases with a broadly scattered occurrence of events and transitions. Yet, the degree of density of status changes may also be due to an individual’s (micro-level) coping with current circumstances.
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Wingens, M., de Valk, H., Windzio, M., Aybek, C. (2011). The Sociological Life Course Approach and Research on Migration and Integration. In: Wingens, M., Windzio, M., de Valk, H., Aybek, C. (eds) A Life-Course Perspective on Migration and Integration. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1545-5_1
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