Original scientific paper

Structure and Culture in Migration Research

Carl-Ulrik Schierup ; University of Umeå, Umeå, Sweden

Abstract

This paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate about integration of immigrants in Western European society. In view of prevailing integrationist/assimilationist assumptions, a revision of the notion of integration in studies of immigrant situations is called for. Proposing a dynamic interpretation of integration, the author introduces the notion of the social field of migrants' life experiences; its fabric is called “migrancy” (Mayer, 1962). The thesis that the community of origin and the community of immigration ought to be treated by the researcher as a “single social field” of investigation is endorsed.
It is reiterated that a profound sense of attachment to the “hinterland” is conserved by most immigrants as some kind of protection in relation to their environment. However, they also develop strategies of integration with the intermediary zone of “the local public” in capitalist industrial society. The author's concluding remark is that through confrontation with the urban-industrial system and its various part-cultures we see a “double cultural competence” coming into being among growing segments of the immigrant population.

Keywords

integration; immigrants; culture

Hrčak ID:

128766

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/128766

Publication date:

31.10.1986.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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