Immigration and Social Systems

Front matter

CHRISTINA BOSWELL & GIANNI D’AMATO (EDS.)

AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS

Immigration and Social Systems

Table of contents

Foreword Rinus Penninx

Preface Christina Boswell and Gianni D’Amato

Introduction Christina Boswell and Gianni D’Amato

Foreword

IMISCOE owes a lot to Michael Bommes. It is no surprise that he was a key figure in the groundwork and establishment of the IMISCOE Network of Excellence. Michael took on several important roles in our organisation. He led the research cluster on economic integration. As director of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), he hosted the Second Annual IMISCOE conference at the University of Osnabrück. To this day, Michael remains irreplaceable on the IMISCOE Board of Directors, where his modestly offered interventions and proposals were as constructive as they were brilliant. When the Network of Excellence transformed itself into the current IMISCOE Research Network, his support and advice were always to be found.

Although he passed away on 26 December 2010, Michael knew that IMISCOE hoped to bring together the fruit of his labour, publishing it as a whole. Even during his protracted period of illness, he continued to work as much as possible. Among other things, he sharpened and updated some of his earlier articles, which now form part of this manuscript.

This publication of his major contributions to the field of migration and integration studies is a way of honouring Michael, our colleague. At the same time, it is meant to serve the scientific community by making the nationally acclaimed research of Professor Bommes available and accessible to a wider, international readership. It was easy to carry on the momentum of such a scholar, motivated and engaged till his last breath.

Rinus Penninx Coordinator IMISCOE Research Network

Preface

Michael Bommes was an outstanding scholar and an enormously influential figure in the field of migration studies. With a characteristically German background in sociology — being heavily influenced by the theory of Niklas Luhmann — he was able to translate and export complex ideas across his extensive network of research collaborators and students throughout Europe, Turkey and North America. Michael himself had a strong impact on German sociology, contributing to important theoretical innovations and the opening up of new areas of research. He was also pivotal in initiating collaboration among researchers and policymakers both within Germany and at the European level. His scholarly interest had an unusually broad sweep, from linguistics and philosophy to economics and organisation theory.

In mid-2010, Michael was faced with the prospect that he may be unable to fight his illness. At the suggestion of the editors, he began to develop the idea of publishing a book that would disseminate his contributions on immigration and integration to a larger, English-reading audience. As colleagues enjoying a long-standing friendship with Michael, who have gained much from his wise advice and unflagging support, we were honoured to carry through this project. Michael put a lot of energy into the selection and presentation of the articles in this, his last book. He saw the final manuscript before he died on 26 December 2010.

In Michael, we lost a friend with a great sense of loyalty and humour, but also a passionate interlocutor with broad knowledge in many fields, from Schubert to the Bundesliga. We miss his sonorous voice, his sharp wit and ironic insights and not least his enjoying a well-earned pint after an intense research discussion or seminar.

Our acknowledgements go to all those who were close to Michael and who helped make this book possible. We thank Sigrid Pusch, who managed his office and helped us in numerous ways to prepare the manuscript at the project’s onset. We are particularly indebted to Andrea Lenschow, Michael’s companion in life, and to Andreas Pott, his successor at the University of Osnabrück. Both offered crucial comments and precious advice during the production of this edition. A special thanks goes to Karina Hof, managing editor of the IMISCOE Editorial Committee, and to Rinus

Penninx, coordinator of the IMISCOE Research Network, both of whom have been extremely supportive and helpful throughout preparation of this publication.

Introduction

Michael Bommes was one of the most innovative and profound theorists of immigration and integration of our time. His work drew on the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann to develop a highly compelling and sophisticated alternative to predominant contributions in migration studies. His writing constantly questions and challenges mainstream theories and concepts in migration studies, from notions of assimilation and transnationalism, to multiculturalism and discrimination, irregular migration and migrant networks. But equally important is his attempt to advance sociological research through the lens of immigration. His repeated assertion is that immigration has had major consequences for modern social systems and welfare states, and that understanding these impacts needs to be a central question not just for migration scholars, but for sociologists more generally.

Through his research, teaching and policy work, Bommes earned himself a dedicated following, especially across Europe. However, we feel that his work deserves an even wider audience. One of the impediments to achieving a broader impact is that much of his work has been published exclusively in German or in outlets that are not widely disseminated outside of German-speaking countries. Michael’s tragic and untimely death in 2010 also meant that he never had the opportunity to collect the different strands of his opus into one collection.

This book therefore brings together what we believe is a representative sample of Bommes’ most important work on migration and integration. It includes a number of articles or chapters that are appearing in English for the first time, as well as articles that were published in German outlets. The book starts with a series of four chapters on immigration, social systems and the modern welfare state, one of the core themes of his work. Two chapters follow on immigrant integration, with subsequent chapters dealing with, respectively, illegal migration, networks and migration research. In this brief introduction, we start by setting out some of the key themes of his work and introduce the nine chapters. In a second part, we say something about Bommes’ academic career and his work with students and practitioners.

Bommes was particularly gifted in bridging applied themes in migration research with broader theoretical questions in sociology. Many of his essays start with a question, which is currently modish in migration research: How does immigration affect welfare states? Are western welfare states culturally discriminatory? Which is more plausible, transnationalism or assimilation? In what sense does integration take place at the local level? He then proceeds to unravel the question in his characteristically rigorous and methodical style, gradually building up a line of argument that poses a powerful challenge to received wisdom on the topic.

Bommes’ distinctive account is informed by Luhmann’s theory of social systems. According to this theory, the primary building blocks of modern society are not individuals or groups, but functionally differentiated social systems. In pre-modern, stratified societies, rank and status provided the primary categories of the societal fabric, determining social roles and life opportunities. But modern societies have become increasingly divided into autonomous systems such as education, health, economy, religion, welfare or housing. Each of these operates according to its own distinct codes, programmes, logic and mode of inclusion, which regulates which individuals are relevant participants. Indeed, societal subsystems tend to operate according to fundamentally inclusive criteria, not linked to ethnicity or national origin, thematising the individuals’ actions and communications exclusively in terms of each system’s generalised code and programmes. Thus, the labour market as a product of a modern economy operates according to a logic that selects workers according to their skills and price (ethnicity or nationality being relevant only insofar as they may be converted in variations of skills and prices); and public health, education and welfare institutions generally adopt criteria of inclusion based on the life stage or needs of individuals.

This theory of functional differentiation has two quite radical implications for migration studies. First, it implies that international mobility is a quite normal and expected response to the inclusive character of social systems. The labour market, housing, education and health systems are, in principle, quite accessible for foreign residents in terms of their functional codes — even for those without regular status — and are actually willing to include them based on their ability to conform to systems-specific criteria of inclusion. Although the political systems of welfare states may attempt to exclude non-citizens or non-residents (more on this below), the systems most important to an individual’s well-being tend to be blind to their national or ethnic origin. This provides a fresh and unorthodox perspective for making sense of mobility, irregular migration and integration processes.

Second, systems theory implies that in order to understand immigration and integration, we need to study immigrants’ inclusion within, and impact

INTRODUCTION 13 on, these differentiated systems. Concepts such as ‘integration into society’, ‘social cohesion’ or “community relations’ are unhelpful, as the researcher has no possible way of observing or making sense of ‘society’ as an integrated whole, or the characteristics of ‘ethnic groups’ as such. Instead, the characteristics and behaviour of individuals only make sense from the perspective of their participation in a number of distinct social systems, whether these be functional systems in general, or organisations in particular. Again, this perspective has far-reaching consequences for research on immigration integration.

Bommes’ social theory is augmented by the importance he pays to a second type of social system crucial to modern society: organisations. While he argues that social systems are essentially inclusive, one of his most important contributions to systems theory is his work on the role of organisations in perpetuating forms of discrimination and inequality. Recognising that, in practice, immigrants frequently face impediments to participation and equality of life chances, Bommes sought to explain such disadvantages in terms of organisations. Access to welfare, education or employment, for example, is implemented via organisations that specify terms of membership, access to services or recruitment. They tend to base decisions on standardised expectations about ‘normal’ or appropriate life courses. Those who deviate from such standardised careers — and this often includes immigrants — may suffer from particular barriers to inclusion. So it is the institutionalisation of expected careers or life courses that leads to indirect discrimination against migrants in welfare states.

These concepts of social systems and organisations are elaborated and applied to make sense of a variety of issues in migration research. Chapter 1 of the book, ‘Migration in modern society’, explores the relationship between functional systems and the welfare state. While most social systems, as we have seen, operate according to inclusive criteria of participation, immigrants are clearly seen as a problem in political terms. Indeed, unlike other social systems, modern welfare states as organisational systems operate according to a fundamentally exclusionary mode, i.e. national citizenship. Their logic of inclusion is exclusive and permanent, designed to guarantee a relationship of loyalty and service between citizens and state. Thus, despite the inclusionary tendencies of the functional systems most relevant to migrants’ life chances, welfare states attempt to exclude access to non-citizens based on concerns about loyalty.

Chapter 2, ‘National welfare state, biography and migration’, develops this theme, discussing some of the means through which welfare states exclude non-citizens. Bommes suggests that welfare states mediate inclusion through developing and institutionalising predictable life courses, or biographies. Such biographies comprise sequences of inclusion into different systems, based on three main stages of life: childhood and education, founding a family and working life, and retirement. To participate in welfare provisions at each stage, the individual needs not just to meet the general conditions linked to that stage of life, but must also have accumulated relevant qualifications through participating in each stage. This is where migrants face problems, as they often deviate from these institutionalised life courses, for example, through limited or unrecognised educational qualifications, limited or unregistered labour or participation in pension schemes.

Chapter 3, ‘Systems theory and the “ethnic inequality” of migrant workers’, advances a complex argument about how systems theory can contribute towards theories of inequality. At first sight, systems theory would appear to be a poor candidate for explaining or addressing inequality: individuals’ possibilities for inclusion (and thus their wealth or opportunities) are effectively fragmented across different social systems, each of which has its own mode of inclusion and no possibility for cross-system regulation of inclusion between systems. However, Bommes argues that it is the various organisations mediating inclusion into systems that imply the transferability of inequality across systems, and which reproduce inequality across generations. First, the organisations of the welfare state establish expectations about standard life courses or careers, which it is difficult for migrants (especially first-generation) to conform to. Thus, initial exclusion from education, labour or welfare implies further exclusions in other systems. Moreover, the initial exclusion of the first generation becomes reproduced for subsequent generations, as the organisations that mediate inclusion — through recruitment or extension of services — frequently base recruitment decisions on social networks, as well as fixed presuppositions about the characteristics of immigrant groups. Thus, while social systems are, in principle, inclusive, the organisations mediating access to them tend to transfer and reproduce inequality for certain groups.

Chapter 4, ‘Welfare systems and migrant minorities’, looks at the more applied question of whether European welfare states are imbued with cultural models which discriminate against ethnic minority groups. Bommes’ seemingly counter-intuitive answer is that they are not: while welfare states may be highly exclusionary in their treatment of non-residents, they have proved to be generally inclusive of residents regardless of ethnicity. Indeed, welfare states are increasingly abandoning their preoccupation with national loyalty, instead focusing on ‘activating’ reforms to equip all members to be productive and competitive in the face of economic globalisation. However, some welfare states may indirectly discriminate against ethnic minorities insofar as their life courses deviate from institutionalised expectations (see chapters 2 and 3). Moreover, in cases where welfare states organise the delivery of services through cultural organisations (such as church groups in Germany or the Dutch system of pillarisation), one can indeed observe cultural discrimination based on religion.

INTRODUCTION 15

The next chapters turn to aspects of immigrant integration. Chapter 5, “Transnationalism or assimilation?’, offers a brilliant critique of current debates on integration. Bommes argues that the debate between transnationalists and assimilationists rests on a false opposition. On the one hand, transnationalists fail to understand that immigrants do assimilate when they take up roles inside organisations and fulfil the expectations linked to them — indeed, assimilation is a ‘basic condition of the mode of individual life in modern society’. However, assimilationists, in turn, make the mistake of assuming a strict coupling between assimilation across different dimensions — cognitive, structural, social and identificational. As transnationalists have observed, globalisation has led to a loosening of these couplings, so that assimilation across these dimensions does not necessarily take place in the same place. Thus, the debate between the two schools can be reformulated about two rival empirical hypotheses about strict or loose coupling of dimensions of assimilation.

Chapter 6 explores the claim that, as its title specifies, ‘Integration takes place locally’, which has become a familiar mantra of German and other European local authorities. Why has integration become such a priority and rallying cry for local government? Bommes rejects the claim that this is a response to a new crisis, or new research findings. Instead, it reflects the realisation that the welfare state has failed to effectively mediate the inclusion of growing numbers of migrants into social systems. The national political response has been to repackage existing measures in order to mobilise support and demonstrate that something is being done. Local authorities, meanwhile, are keen to be associated with this symbolic initiative because it enables them to procure additional resources and to legitimise their role. Nonetheless, such measures remain essentially symbolic, especially in the case of local authorities, which have limited means of steering those dimensions that might actually make a difference to inclusion, such as employment, education or family policy. Such levers continue to reside at the level of the national welfare state, or within functionally differentiated social systems.

In chapter 7, Bommes addresses the question of ‘Illegal migration in modern society’. This is one of the central themes of his later work linked to the idea of the development of foggy social structures (as elaborated in his co-edited book Foggy social structures, published posthumously in the IMISCOE-Amsterdam University Press Series in 2011'). Building on earlier work on social systems and the welfare state, he argues that the inclusiveness of social systems generates multiple incentives and opportunities for irregular migrants to move in order to improve their life chances. Indeed, their status as illegal in many cases enhances their possibilities for inclusion because of their flexibility and limited demands. Political attempts to manage illegal migration, however, are fraught with contradictions. While the state is keen to retain its control over the population through enforcing the law, it is also committed to providing legal, political and social security for residents. Calls for regularisation may address the problem of immigrants’ protection, but they imply that the state explicitly accepts law-breaking behaviour, renouncing control over its territory. Thus, many states resort to some form of limited recognition of the rights of irregular migrants, such as Duldung in Germany, which guarantees legal protection without implying an approval of the person’s residence status.

Chapter 8, ‘General and specific characteristics of networks’, makes an outstanding contribution to theories of social networks, with important ramifications for the analysis of migrant networks. Bommes and co-author Veronika Tacke theorise networks as lists of addresses that enable participants to access heterogeneous and otherwise unconnected services through mobilising the resources of other participants. Networks are ‘anchorless’ in that both their membership and the expected reciprocity associated with membership are contingent on the motives for establishing them: they are not embedded in particular social or cultural roles or statuses. Nonetheless, some networks simplify their self-descriptions through adopting myths about the conditions and content of membership, such as ethnicity or kinship. Such descriptions miss the point about modem networks, i.e. the fact that they derive their rationale and scope from expectations about the reciprocal provision of services, rather than relationships of close proximity or shared characteristics. In so doing, they risk overburdening participants through setting up unfeasible expectations about both the scope of membership and the duties of reciprocity between members.

The final chapter, “National paradigms of migration research’, is one of Bommes’ last papers. Co-authored with Dietrich Thranhardt, the piece returns to an earlier theme about the contribution of migration studies to core disciplines. The authors argue that migration research generally focuses on research problems and questions that are politically constructed, rather than worked up within their relevant disciplines. These politically constructed problems are associated with the particular challenges that immigration poses to national welfare states, and are influenced by nationally specific ways of framing these problems. Thus, despite some parallel tendencies in problematising and framing migration issues across states, migration research is nonetheless imbued with national paradigms. It is the politically applied nature of migration research that both guarantees its influence and funding base, but also explains its difficulty in making substantial contributions to its cognate disciplines of sociology, political science, geography, linguistics and so on.

We hope that these essays will challenge, provoke and, as they say in German, irritieren (‘irritate’) readers. Whether or not one accepts systems theory — and it certainly has strong critics within social science — it is a rich and compelling theory of society, which deserves serious attention.

INTRODUCTION 17

And, as these essays show, it offers an extremely fruitful base from which to challenge and critique otherwise accepted assumptions in migration research.

Bommes studied sociology, philosophy and linguistics at the University of Marburg, the University of Birmingham and the University of Osnabrück. He continued his academic career specialising in linguistics and migration, the topic of his 1990 PhD thesis defended at Osnabrück. His focus subsequently shifted to questions of migration and the national welfare state, which was the subject of his 1999 habilitation (German professorial qualification). He then had a stint as a professor at the Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg, before taking up the post at the University of Osnabrück in 2003.

Bommes’ career was strongly bound up with the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück. As a member of IMIS from 1992 onwards, he served as a research assistant in the university’s sociology department. In 2003, he became Professor of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Migration Research at the University of Osnabrück, a chair installed with the support of the Volkswagen Stiftung. From 2005 to 2009, he took over the directorship of IMIS and established what was for Germany a unique interdisciplinary master’s programme in migration studies. Bommes became Dean of Social Science at the University of Osnabrück in 2006. He stepped down from this position and as director of IMIS when he fell ill in 2009, although this may have been the plan anyway as he had been invited to be a visiting professor in Toronto.

Bommes held an important place in German sociology, including chairing the migration and ethnic minorities section of the German Sociological Association. He was president of the German Migration Council, a group of experts set up to critically follow and advise immigration and integration policies, and he became a member of the Council of Experts of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR). He was a member of the Migration Research Group at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics and a member of the board of directors of the European Commission-funded IMISCOE Network of Excellence, for which he led a research cluster on labour markets. He was also actively engaged in a number of international collaborations. In 1997 and 1998 he was Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, a research sabbatical that spawned important collaborations with a number of scholars in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the United States. As a visiting professor in the sociology department at the University of Trento in 2008, he helped create their migration study centre, the Scenari Migratori e Mutamento Sociale (SMMS). He participated in several international collaborative research projects, including Political Economy of Migration in an Integrating Europe (PEMINT) from 2002 to 2004; The Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES) from 2006 to 2010; and, more recently, Fundamental Rights Situation of Irregular Immigrants in the European Union (FRIM) from 2009 to 2011.

Alongside his academic and teaching work, Bommes also made a significant contribution to migration policy. Although his work was highly theoretical, he had a great gift of communicating it in a way that made sense to policymakers and practitioners. This was certainly the case with reports he prepared for the German Migration Council, which made an important contribution to policy thinking on integration: indeed, the council’s 2006 and 2008 reports are heavily imbued with concepts of social systems. Towards the end of his life, he was involved in advising the Council of Europe on issues of welfare states and immigrant integration, the inspiration for his paper on whether welfare states are culturally discriminatory (chapter 4 in this book).

Bommes was an inspiring — if demanding — teacher to his many students. He had an impressive ability to quickly grasp and engage with almost any research topic, across a variety of disciplines. He was always keen to apply his sharp theoretical mind to help develop a student’s or colleague’s research ideas. Part of his gift was his unique style of expounding an argument in seminars or conferences. He had a particular talent of being able to develop a complex line of argument or theoretical idea in front of his audience, giving listeners the impression that they were witnessing or even contributing to the development of his thought. His passionate interest in all aspects of immigration processes and research was infectious. It made him an invaluable — and sadly missed — participant in academic debate on migration research.

Note ı A full-length PDF of this book can be downloaded from the OAPEN library; for a direct link go to http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=401761.

ı Migration in modern society

First published in 2003 as ‘Migration in der modernen Gesellschaft’ in Geographische Revue 5 (2: pages 41-58)

Reprinted in 2011 in ‘Migration und Migrationsforschung in der modernen Gesellschaft’ in IMIS-Beiträge 38 (pages 49-68)

Translation into English for this book by Anja Löbert

One of the key claims of mainstream migration research is that it is dealing with significant social structural change which represents an empirical and theoretical challenge for the social sciences. Clearly, migration research focuses its attention on problems of social integration and inequality and on the resulting potential for conflict. It sees such problems as arising from the cultural and social resources of migrants, from their opportunities to participate, especially in labour markets, education systems, political and legal systems of the welfare state, health and care facilities, and also from urban housing conditions and the circumstances and living conditions which these entail for migrants.

It can be noted, however, that the success which migration research has achieved, in politics and also in science policy, is at the same time unable to produce any real scholarly resonance. While warnings about potential social conflict and disintegration do attract attention in the political sphere, and are certainly able to mobilise resources for research, sub-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research' in the field of international migration receives little attention either on an intradisciplinary or interdisciplinary level, since its contribution to the general theoretical issues of the respective reference disciplines seems limited.

There is probably a simple reason for this: migration research tends to greatly restrict the frame of reference for its inquiry. It focuses less on the socio-structural prerequisites and consequences of international migration on the various levels of modern society, and more on migrants and their living conditions in those social contexts which are seen as significant, and how these conditions result from the context of integration and the structures of social inequality. The basis for this is a limited concept of the social structure which essentially includes the social relations of distribution and inequality. This limitation will not really become a problem for migration research, however, as long as the implicit normative preference for equality and social integration strikes a chord with its dual audience — political and academic — to which migration research addresses its findings. The double articulation of the terminology as scientific concepts, on the one hand, and as more or less undeniable values on the other” reinforces these conceptual foundations and lends them intuitive plausibility.

This focus of migration research can quickly be illustrated by means of a small number of examples.

1 While the migrant workers of the 1960s and 1970s (the so-called Gastarbeiter or guest workers) were initially studied in terms of the structural consequences for the labour market and for the use of infrastructural facilities in towns and communities (e.g. Körner 1976, summarised by Herbert 2000: 191ff.), functionally orientated towards, in particular, costbenefit considerations, subsequent migration research in the social sciences focused its analyses on how successful the social integration of the migrants was, as established through criteria such as occupational position, stability of employment conditions, income, social contacts and the like, and the more or less problematic living conditions arising from these factors. True, Marxist analyses work on a model in which they identify the structure of the relations of production as a causal context for international migration, but fundamentally their analysis targets the resulting relations of class and exploitation and the related problematic living conditions of migrant workers as an internationalised reserve army (Castles & Kosack 1973; Castles 1987; Sassen 1988). More nuanced analyses thematise the particular role of the bourgeois state in a basically unchanging overall strategy (Dohse 1981). Despite differently applied analytical models, the studies of Hoffmann-Nowotny (1973) and Esser (1979, 1980), which have their roots in mainstream sociology, also focus on the social relations of inequality resulting from migration — socio-structural change through migration is then registered in the form of the neo-feudalisation of relations of stratification. Essentially what is at issue here are the effects of the more or less successful integration of migrants on their living conditions and on the social relations of inequality.

2 With regard to the second generation, numerous analyses focus their attention on the education system. The main concern here is the cultural prerequisites of the migrants or their children (Schrader, Nikles & Griese 1976) for participation in the education system and their educational success, measured by the types of school attended, the school-leaving qualifications gained and the numbers entering training. The education system is expected to foster socio-structural change, mainly from a normative perspective, in the direction of models of intercultural education; the criterion here is the desired equality of migrant children (see e.g. Auernheimer 2003).

3 For about the last twenty years, internationally orientated research on the position of migrants in the political system has been comparing the politico-legal positions of various categories of migrant in civic, political and social respects, and their position in the various welfare-state security systems (Hammar 1985; Miles & Thranhardt 1994; Faist 1995; Bommes & Halfmann 1998; Bommes & Geddes 2000). These are based on models in which equality for migrants is the desired outcome. Comparable results could be shown for the areas of housing, health and sport.

4 This perspective in migration research has not been disrupted by more recent approaches in so-called transnationalism, since these approaches see the main deficiency of migration research as being the limited nation state frame of reference for the analysis of processes of integration and assimilation. Transnationalism argues that these processes are now differently structured and play out in the frame of reference of so-called transnational social spaces. One does find studies here which thematise the consequences of international or transnational migrations and related social structural developments, taking the political system or the emergence of new industries and labour markets as examples (e.g. Hunger 2000; Levitt 2001). Here too, however, attention is focused on whether the conditions for integration and assimilation have changed with transnational migrations. Furthermore, the largely opaque phrase ‘transnational social spaces’ — from a theoretical point of view — merely indicates the need to extend the analysis of the socio-structural prerequisites and consequences of migration beyond the established frame of reference with its focus on integration, social inequality and the resulting potential for conflict, without actually being able to offer a sustainable alternative.”