The Social Mobility Processes of Second-Generation Women with a Turkish Migration Background Living in Berlin | Meike Radler

Based on data from semi-structured interviews, this study investigates the social mobility strategies employed by upwardly mobile German-Turkish women living in Berlin. Using educational attainment and labor market achievement as objective indicators of upward mobility, the subjects fit into three categories of social mobility trajectories. Important processes for upward mobility are identified within these categories, using the framework of Bourdieu’s theory of capital. In some cases, the domestic transmission of cultural capital is essential for upward mobility, while in others it is a context-specific resource for effective decision-making. Moreover, an expansion of social capital to extend beyond isolated ethnic communities is decisive for all subjects; either for its conversion into necessary cultural capital or through the avoidance of some of the negative effects of social capital on women in certain tightly-bound ethnic communities. While the mobilization of ethnicity is useful for the upward mobility of a subgroup of German-Turkish women, it is a limitation for others. Finally, regardless of social mobility trajectory categorization, subjects are unified by their lack of symbolic capital in mainstream German society. The strategies they employ to counter this are found to be more assertive and focused on Germany than those employed by the previous generation.

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