**IMISCOE Research Series**

Jens Schneider Maurice Crul Andreas Pott *Editors*

# New Social Mobility Second Generation Pioneers in Europe

**IMISCOE Research Series**

Now accepted for Scopus! Content available on the Scopus site in spring 2021.

This series is the offcial book series of IMISCOE, the largest network of excellence on migration and diversity in the world. It comprises publications which present empirical and theoretical research on different aspects of international migration. The authors are all specialists, and the publications a rich source of information for researchers and others involved in international migration studies. The series is published under the editorial supervision of the IMISCOE Editorial Committee which includes leading scholars from all over Europe. The series, which contains more than eighty titles already, is internationally peer reviewed which ensures that the book published in this series continue to present excellent academic standards and scholarly quality. Most of the books are available open access.

Jens Schneider • Maurice Crul • Andreas Pott Editors

## New Social Mobility

Second Generation Pioneers in Europe

*Editors* Jens Schneider Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) Universität Osnabrück Osnabrück, Germany

Andreas Pott Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) Universität Osnabrück Osnabrück, Germany

Maurice Crul Faculty of Social Sciences Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ISSN 2364-4087 ISSN 2364-4095 (electronic) IMISCOE Research Series ISBN 978-3-031-05565-2 ISBN 978-3-031-05566-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05566-9

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## **Contents**


## **Chapter 1 Producing Pathways to Success: New Perspectives on Social Mobility**

**Andreas Pott, Maurice Crul, and Jens Schneider**

#### **1.1 Against All Odds**

In 2020, Covid-19 changed the world, as it overwhelmed nearly every country on earth, affecting every continent and posing a potential threat to every human being. Measures undertaken to halt the steep rise in infection numbers and climbing death toll imposed severe restrictions on economic activity and everyday social and cultural life in practically every country. But accompanying this new menace was hope, as we put our trust in medical research and the coordinated efforts to fnd an effective vaccine. Funded by international venture capital and public fnancial investments, researchers all over the world embarked upon the race to fnd a vaccine.

In April 2020, the German biotechnology company BioNTech, a start-up enterprise founded in 2008, was the frst to announce rapid progress in designing and developing a highly promising vaccine against Covid-19. BioNTech was working on an inoculant based on a new approach in individualized cancer immunotherapy that makes use of messenger RNA (mRNA). In November 2020, following months of intensive testing and in partnership with the US pharmaceutical company Pfzer, the mRNA-based vaccine BNT162b2 was presented to the world as a ready-to-use vaccine with the unusually high effcacy rate of 95%. In December 2020, the frst vaccinations were administered in the UK and the USA. All this happened within roughly one year of the virus being discovered in China – the most rapid development of a vaccine ever. What an achievement, what a triumph of science and research!

Universität Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany

M. Crul

A. Pott · J. Schneider (\*)

e-mail: andreas.pott@uni-osnabrueck.de; jens.schneider@uni-osnabrueck.de

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: m.r.j.crul@vu.nl

The driving powers behind BioNTech and the development of the vaccine are Dr Uğur Şahin, professor of translational oncology at the Mainz University Medical Center, and his wife and business partner, Dr Özlem Türeci, BioNTech's Chief Medical Offcer. Together they have been conducting ground-breaking and highlyawarded research into the use of mRNA for cancer treatment. Şahin is the holder of many patents, a manager, a successful entrepreneur and co-founder of a non-proft organization called Ci3, a cluster initiative for "Individualized Immune Intervention". He is also an experienced and trustworthy networker, which made him well prepared for the enormous challenges presented by the development of a Covid-19 vaccine. Having mastered these challenges and being among the frst to have 'won' the race to fnd a globally-accepted, promising, high-performance vaccine has made his and Türeci's professional careers even more exceptional. Şahin and Türeci have become modern heroes, to whom millions of people are grateful − and they are also shining examples of immigrants' success. Their achievement was widely applauded in immigrant communities in Germany, who proudly declared: *"Wir sind Impfstoff"* ("We are vaccine") in social media.

Although they both enjoy scientifc and entrepreneurial success, Şahin's career differs from that of his wife with regard to one crucial aspect. Özlem Türeci's Turkish father was an academic and an acknowledged surgeon in a German hospital, while Uğur Şahin comes from a 'typical Turkish guest-worker' family. His father had come to Germany in the 1960s to work as one of the many low-educated Turkish labour migrants in the Ford factory in Cologne. Şahin and his mother followed his father to Germany when he was 4-years-old. It was in Cologne that he grew up and attended school. In 1984, he was the frst pupil of Turkish descent to graduate from his secondary school (*Gymnasium*) before going on to study medicine. Şahin's success story is also the story of an extraordinary educational and social mobility. Before becoming successful, he frst had to overcome all the problems of selectivity in the German school system and its notorious reproduction of social inequality (Breen, 2004; Ditton, 2007). Even though his parents could offer him little help with his school work, he managed to leave school with the highest diploma, enter university, pass his exams with good grades, complete his PhD and acquire further academic credentials. Within just one generation, the developer of the Covid-19 vaccine had moved from being a member of a working-class family living nearby Cologne's Ford assembly line to occupying a top position in society.

Of course, these enormous achievements and Şahin's extremely steep upward mobility are a striking exception. Upward social mobility is not the rule in workingclass families. And, obviously, not all social climbers of immigrant descent become frst-class researchers or top-earning company directors and shareholders, let alone becoming innovative, highly-infuential warriors against pandemics or other global problems. Still, Şahin's trajectory could and should be reason enough to take a closer look at the steep mobility pathways than an increasing number of children of immigrants are taking to achieve careers that are similarly fascinating and in comparable need of explanation. What are the factors, mechanisms, contexts or coincidences that enable children of immigrants to make it into high-status jobs or even to become part of the professional elite? Like Şahin, the innovative start-up scientist,

other social climbers have also looked for and successfully carved out new pathways. To do so, they have invested a great deal of effort and energy; managed to accumulate social, cultural and other types of capital needed for future mobility steps; changed social positions and adapted to previously unknown contexts in which they are often the frst people from their background to occupy such a position. Many of them are indirectly or even actively changing the rules of the game. Because of this, they have the potential to bring about further societal change. It is the remarkable trajectories of these individuals that this volume sets out to explore.

#### **1.2 From Social Problems to Social Mobility**

For decades, research on children of immigrants has mainly focused on the problems connected to integrating children with low or extremely low starting positions – children whose parents have very low levels of formal schooling and are non-native speakers of the national language – into educational systems that were widely unprepared for them. In addition to educational underachievement and school dropout, other more-or-less typical features of marginalized populations such as unemployment, discrimination, criminality, residential segregation in urban neighbourhoods, or radicalization of immigrant youth have all been studied in depth. This highlighting of 'integration problems' may have contributed to a widespread 'fxation on problems' around migration, but this preoccupation with social problems, of course, has its justifcations: it does not apply to all groups and social classes, but a majority of the children of immigrants in European societies is still disadvantaged (Heath et al., 2008; Phalet & Heath, 2010). Compared to their nonimmigrant peers, the second generation continues to occupy a weaker overall socioeconomic position and signifcant social mobility is still rather the exception. The study of hindrances, barriers and less successful cases mostly aims at explaining and potentially overcoming the persistence of inequality. The underlying idea is that if we know the reasons and mechanisms that produce 'failure', we will be better prepared to repair, reduce or avoid problems in the education and labour market system.

In this book we deliberately take a different perspective. We turn it around and look at the success stories − those children of immigrant descent in Europe who have pursued an upward mobility pathway and are now occupying an attractive professional position. The people we study in this book have defed the logic of social reproduction. Reconstructing their pathways allows us to examine the junctions or transition points at which relevant decisions with potentially long-lasting effects are taken and the foundations for careers are laid – or not. These transition points may be individual decisions to follow a specifc study or vocation, to apply for a particular job or to enter a specifc professional context. But institutional mechanisms of incorporating contexts also play a decisive role in attaining upward mobility. Organizations, for example, have specifc recruitment and assessment practices; during selection procedures, they examine candidates' qualifcations and backgrounds, and eventually select a few from the many (Lang, 2021). Thus, several parties are involved in these major decisions taken at crucial transition points.

By studying successful upward mobility, we not only aim to counteract the onesided problem-focus in much of public and academic discourse, but we also want to gain a better understanding of how these unlikely careers unfolded and became possible 'against the odds' in educational and labour market systems that have thus far predominantly served a different function: the reproduction of social status. Therefore, the authors of this volume ask: why did these children of immigrants succeed, what did they do differently to their less successful peers who set out from similar starting positions? Which external factors made their careers possible? How did they 'navigate' the structural conditions and institutional challenges of the professional felds they entered, while moving forward into contexts completely unknown to them and their families – which, furthermore, had not been prepared for people 'like them'? What can we learn from their strategies and experiences of social mobility? And does this also give us new insights into the social mechanisms of the reproduction of inequality?

The frst analyses of upward mobility among Europe's second generation of immigrant descent date back to the late 1990s and early 2000s.1 These studies mainly focused on socially mobile children of the large group of labour migrants who began arriving in Western and Northern Europe in the mid-1950s. Most of their parents had been recruited for low-level unskilled work or blue-collar jobs in industry, construction, cleaning, transport and similar sectors. This early research showed that it would be worthwhile to study mobility processes among labour migrants' children in order to understand differences and similarities to social mobility among working-class offspring in general. However, at that time, this almost exclusively meant studying *educational* trajectories, simply because the second generation was not yet old enough to have moved beyond the educational system in relevant numbers, especially those who had gone to university. But since then, motivating our endeavour, many of the educational climbers of the 1990s and 2000s have continued their pathways: they have left university, entered the job market and obtained high skill positions in various parts of society. Moreover, the general demographic situation has changed completely since then. The countries who received labour migrants and have seen their children growing up have had to come to terms with being immigration societies, albeit in different ways. They have had to recognize that (a) children of immigrants are entering the educational systems and labour markets in growing numbers, and (b) a generational 'sedimentation' of immigration patterns has taken place, meaning that the challenges of upward mobility have now been taken on by the native-born and locally raised children and grandchildren of the frst generation of immigrants.

The frst and main challenge for all social climbers is education (Heath & Brinbaum, 2007). Educational credentials are still the strongest predictor of high

<sup>1</sup>See for Germany: Badawia (2002), Hummrich (2002), Karakaşoğlu-Aydin (2000), Pott (2002); for the Netherlands: Crul (2000); for France: Santelli (2009), Simon (2003); for Austria: Herzog-Punzenberger (2003).

5

socioeconomic status; most professions with high social prestige require candidates to have successfully completed their university studies. Thus, for the social climbers of immigrant descent, successfully passing through the educational system was the single most important prerequisite for their subsequent careers. Their pathways to success inevitably led them through primary and lower secondary school as part of compulsory education, but often tertiary or higher education, too. These pathways showed a number of similarities across countries and occupational sectors, but they also differed.

It is typical for social climbers in general that their pathways are often not straightforward. Their routes, both during the educational phase and when gaining access to leadership positions in the labour market, are more likely to take longer and to require some extra loops. This is especially true when the social climbers are children of immigrants. As the authors of this book have described in earlier works, this is similar across all European countries: low expectations, discriminatory, if not racist attitudes, as well as the structural barriers imposed by tracking systems and conventional recruitment criteria frequently force young people of immigrant origin to fnd alternative solutions and new ways to reach the desired outcomes (see Crul et al., 2012; Keskiner, 2019; Lang et al., 2018; Schnell, 2014). Often, a considerable degree of luck is also involved, for example in the form of key persons and social relationships that make a decisive difference at the right time. The aforementioned scientist, Uğur Şahin, was continuously successful at school from a fairly early point onwards; he got good marks and passed all the necessary exams. But even Şahin experienced what is so typical for many of the cases we have studied: His primary school teacher had recommended that he should go to the lowest qualifying vocational track in the secondary school system (*Hauptschule*), and it was only because a German neighbour intervened that this intelligent boy ended up in the academic track (*Gymnasium*). Hurdling the barrier of access to a higher educational track at the age of 10 was a decisive step that paved the way for his stellar career. Statistically, even exceptional talents like Şahin are much more likely to become car mechanics or small entrepreneurs rather than top-level academics. While the example of Şahin might suggest that the sky is the limit for eager students, the latest research proves what many social climbers experience and describe: however much they are spared from exclusion or downplay the importance of discrimination, their mobility generally reaches up to a certain level before they get stuck or hit a 'glass ceiling' (Chin, 2020; Friedman & Laurison, 2019).

#### **1.3 New Social Mobility?**

The group of successful social climbers of immigrant descent is slowly growing and becoming more visible. Here, international comparisons show striking differences. Not only the size of this group varies between countries, but also the share of successful people in their age cohorts of similar background. Data from the TIES survey on the second generation in eight European countries revealed enormous differences in access to higher education and higher qualifcations (Crul, 2013; Schnell, 2014). For example, access to higher education for the Turkish second generation is fve times higher in Sweden than in Germany. The role and numerical relevance of different types of successful and less successful occupational trajectories differs considerably across countries (see Chap. 2 for more details). The growing visibility of social climbers is not merely the result of a growth in numbers, but also because an increasing number of people with a so-called migration background are obtaining more visible infuential positions (refected also in a growing number of media reports). Yet, despite the growing importance and visibility of the phenomenon, the pathways and mechanisms of success among children of immigrants with low levels of formal schooling are still widely understudied.

For exploring these pathways, we can build on a large body of social mobility literature, both with and without reference to migration. While classic social theory and much empirical research into social inequality and social stratifcation has put its main emphasis on mechanisms of social *reproduction* (e.g. Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Hoggart, 1971; Willis, 1977), social *mobility* studies aim to understand how social reproduction can be suspended or overcome (Luckmann & Berger, 1964; Breen, 2004; Bratberg et al., 2017; Friedman & Laurison, 2019). Due to the logic and power of social class reproduction, the upward mobility of individuals or groups is not the norm. Working your way up from the lower strata of society is a process that breaks with the common rules of reproduction. As such it sometimes initiates larger-scale societal change: an example of this is how the mobility of women from working-class families through educational advancement in the 1960s in the Western world accelerated emancipation across society. Social climbers who successfully made their way often function as a role model for others. The frst girl from a working-class family who goes to university or the frst boy from a poor urban immigrant neighbourhood who becomes a soccer star or an engineer, sets an example and motivates others – moreover, they create a different starting position for their own children.

In many respects the social mobility careers of working-class children from families without a migration history do not differ from those of children with a migration background (Hoggart, 1971; Pott, 2002; El-Mafaalani, 2012; Kupfer, 2015; Spiegler, 2015). Climbing the social ladder is a diffcult, demanding and often lonely task, characterized by insecurities, obstacles and challenges. Being the frst child in the family to attend upper secondary school and acquire a higher education diploma, means that you cannot beneft from shared educational knowledge or the reassurance of knowing that the educational path you are following is normal or self-evident. Parents who have not attended high school or university cannot give their children the kind of support that the children of highly-educated parents receive. They do not know by their own experience what is needed to not only 'survive', but to 'thrive' in the educational system, and what kind of educational institutions to choose. This makes a big difference right from the start. Thus, social climbers have to come to terms with recurring questions like: will I manage? Will I achieve the next step?

In addition to this, the pathways of social climbers are often paved with prejudices. While research has long emphasized the infuence that a family – or rather the parents' social, cultural and economic capital – has on a child's school performance, educational expectations and choices, the role that schools and teachers play in guiding, encouraging (or discouraging) children from a working-class background through the educational system has received much less attention (Bonizzoni et al., 2016). Teachers often do not notice or promote their talents as they simply do not expect them to perform well or even above average (Lang et al., 2018). Unlike students from middle-class families, pupils from underprivileged groups cannot contribute knowledge from outside school. They might not be perceived by the teaching staff as being talented in the same way as their peers from a non-immigrant or 'nonworking-class' background (Bourdieu, 1984). In school and at university, they might even be given worse grades for the same performances. Later on, when looking for appropriate jobs or trying to advance in their profession, they are once more likely to encounter various forms of discrimination. Again, upwardly mobile children of lowly educated parents have to deal with and fnd solutions for these challenges. They must not be deterred by insecurities or frustrations, but must learn to live with them or reduce them. Otherwise, they would abandon the mobility path.

Moving up in society means crossing group and habitual boundaries. Although family and some friendship relationships are often maintained, this boundary crossing can bring about inconsistencies and status tensions (Hoggart, 1971; Sennett & Cobb. 1977; Williams, 1973). To avoid confict, emotional stress and the discontinuation or deterioration of old relations, socially mobile climbers need to balance between varying and sometimes contradictory expectations. They develop particular switching and bridging competences (cf. Schneider & Lang, 2014). They must bridge the daily experience of academic culture at university or bourgeois culture at a corporate law frm, with the working-class culture of their parents, siblings or friends (Byrom & Lightfoot, 2012). At the same time particular identity questions arise, such as: where do I belong? Who am I? Even though social climbers fnd new friends, get involved in new social relations, and move to more middle-class areas – and thus often experience a blurring of boundaries (Alba, 2005; Konyali ,2014; Waldring et al., 2014) – doubts of entitlement tend to continue (Puwar 2004). They can never be sure. When entering and trying to fnd their place in new social and professional contexts, they encounter the relevance of subtle social distinctions in taste, behaviour or language, which Bourdieu identifed as effective mechanisms of social reproduction and closure (Bourdieu, 1984; Hartmann, 2001; Lee & Kramer, 2013). For a long time, social climbers feel that they are both insiders and outsiders. If, despite all their individual success, their lack of acceptance by the dominant group persists and social boundaries appear insurmountable, social mobility can cause experiences that Sennett and Cobb (1977) describe as the 'hidden injuries of class'.

The accumulated knowledge on social mobility and its typical challenges as summarized above provides a solid basis for our analysis, not least because our respondents are not only second-generation migrants, but they also started out as working-class children. Yet, framing their pathways as 'normal' social mobility – however unusual and exceptional social mobility always is – would miss important characteristics. That is why we speak of *new* social mobility (see also Chap. 7). Introducing this concept and feshing it out empirically means acknowledging three fundamental distinctions from past mobility processes.

First of all, the group of people we are studying is a *new group* in historical terms. The children of post-war labour immigrants in Europe have so far been described and analysed as 'second generation' which puts the emphasis on their being offspring of immigrants. But the upwardly mobile among them, whose trajectories led them into positions which had previously been widely out of reach for migrants and their offspring, constitute the *frst* social mobility generation. Compared to 'classical' immigration countries like Canada or the US this is something new – as much for the members of this group as for European societies in general, especially when we consider that migrants and even their native-born children are still problematized and are often depicted as 'ethnic groups' or assigned various markers of supposed ethno-national or cultural difference (Mecheril, 2003). But now they are entering new occupational spheres and beginning to occupy infuential societal positions. The social climbers in this volume are therefore not just pioneers with regard to their families, but also because they are from ethnic groups which have not been present in the elites of the respective countries of immigration until recently. They are and act as new pathfnders, as potential agents of change in societies which are still struggling to understand the ramifcations of becoming migration societies.

Secondly, considering the generally very low levels of formal education among the labour migrants of the 1960s and 70s, the trajectories we explore represent *very steep* mobility processes. The acquired socio-economic positions of this group are totally different from those of their parents. For a long time, these very steep mobility trajectories into high prestige professions have been largely invisible. There are two reasons for this: frstly, they were and still are quite exceptional (which has made it diffcult to identify potential research subjects); secondly, they take much longer. Thus, it has only recently become possible to examine the transition from education to the labour market and the development of careers over time in different occupational contexts. Drawing on biographical reports which also cover a signifcant part of their adult lives has revealed the enormous amplitude of these mobility careers. Within just one generation, our respondents have managed to accomplish what according to social mobility studies had traditionally taken at least two (cf. e.g. Kleining, 1975; Kaelble, 1978).2 But even when we compare these people to children of native working-class parents who have also made this leap within one generation, there are relevant differences: on the one hand, the level of education of many parents from a Turkish or Moroccan background (who have had only a few years of schooling or are even illiterate) is well below the level of compulsory

<sup>2</sup> In the case of female climbers, for example, the process mostly ranged from mothers with only primary education via daughters who achieved a secondary school diploma or some vocational training to granddaughters going to university (Portocarero, 1983; Erikson, 1984; Minello & Blossfeld, 2014).

schooling for any working-class child in Europe; on the other hand, even loweducated immigrant parents have consistently shown *higher educational aspirations* for their children than native-born parents with a similar socioeconomic status (see e.g. Leyendecker, 2011).

Thirdly, the conspicuous progress within one generation relates to the *experience of being a child of immigrants*. This experience has at least two dimensions:


than their lower-class co-ethnics. Even though professional contexts usually declare that they are 'colour blind', ethnic minority members who break the norm and manage to reach privileged positions can be faced with subtle (and not so subtle) attempts at exclusion (Puwar, 2004; Cain, 2007; Waldring et al., 2014). This experience is inscribed in their mobility trajectories, which is why the new social mobility also produces new identity formations (see Chap. 3). In addition to, or as a result of external ascriptions, some social climbers re-invent or discover the usefulness of ethnicity in professional contexts. The command of an 'other' language, familiarity with segregated or 'mixed' urban neighbourhoods and transnational connections between the country of residence and the parents' country of origin – potentially including spatial mobility as well – might become valuable mobility resources at different points in their careers (Pott, 2001; Konyali, 2014). Beyond all individual differences, social climbers of immigrant descent experience the negative and positive power of ethnic differentiations. They develop a particular sensitivity to external ascriptions of class-related *and* immigrant or ethnic group-related markers.

#### **1.4 The Ambiguities of Success**

Part of the mobility experience is a frequently perceived mismatch between selfidentifcation and identifcation by others, in particular with regard to success. Interpretations of social climber's biographies and careers may deviate considerably. Mass media observations, public discourse and migration scholars might construe their pathways as very successful ones, in the sense that they are exceptional and have surpassed expectations simply because they have been achieved by an immigrants' child. A daughter or son of low-educated immigrants from Turkey, for example, who has become an independent lawyer or is working in a law frm has certainly successfully and by far surpassed their parental socioeconomic status. But this does not automatically make her or him a particularly successful lawyer; in fact, in the *professional* context, this achievement is likely to be nothing special and, at least from the outside, does not distinguish this lawyer from other established lawyers in the city or the law frm. The following quote from one of our interviews illustrates this discrepancy of perspective:

I mean, take the fact that we are doing this interview: you are singling me out [...] because I come from a minority and have apparently or supposedly somehow made such a social leap. I am "successful", in quotation marks, and that is something special. [...] But I'm not doing anything special, I'm just a normal lawyer. That's not a big success. I mean, (…) you always put it in relation to where I come from. My father who worked at the Ford factory says: "Great, son, you've achieved something, your parents can be proud of you!" My colleagues would not call it like that. Imagine, if I'd be at some colleague's private party: "And, what do you do now?". Me: "I'm a lawyer." Them: "But what else do you do?" Something like that. They are all lawyers with PhDs or whatever. [...] It's like that, you always have to put it into context. You can call my performance something like success. But I think, I am not particularly successful, I don't do anything other than what my colleagues do. – Eray Dogruel, lawyer in Berlin

This ambiguity also extends to sociocultural aspects of belonging: while the climbers may be proud of their achievements, also because it was all *self*-achieved and nothing was given to them 'for free', their families or former friends might be sceptical or even complain that they have 'changed' or become 'estranged' from their home communities because of new cultural preferences or simply the way they talk (cf. Schneider & Lang, 2014). On the other hand, colleagues and superiors might continue to address them, either bluntly or subtly, as being 'different' and 'deviating' from their colleagues of middle-class and non-immigrant family background and habitus (cf. Neckerman et al., 1999, Puwar, 2004). Bearing and balancing such tensions between external and self-ascription is a typical *new* climbers' challenge, because it goes beyond similar, yet not ethnicized processes in the careers of nonimmigrant social climbers.

Obviously, there is no simple or unequivocal defnition of success. As stated above, factory workers or small entrepreneurs, such as hair dressers, can also be perceived and rightly perceive themselves as being successful. Depending on criteria such as income or number of employees or the way they maintain their families, they might sometimes appear even more successful than those whom sociology identifes as 'social climbers' (especially if their success is mainly educational, but with little fnancial reward and mainstream recognition). The meaning of success is always relational and depends on the observer and the social context.

The ambiguity of success and the problem of addressing it already became apparent in the search for interview partners for the research projects on which the analyses of this book rest. In most cases the investigated careers are particularly successful or worth highlighting in relation to family background, but not necessarily within the occupational feld. By selecting interviewees and addressing them as 'successful', a positive othering could hardly be avoided. It makes their successes appear as exceptional, in both meanings of the word: as a deviation from an implicit norm and as outstanding – which is certainly true with regard to their families, the 'ethnic communities', and the neighbourhoods they grew up in.

The experience of othering – of being considered different, migrant, special or deviating from a norm of some kind – is of course not new to interviewees of migrant descent: as children from immigrant families as well as 'successful' or 'exceptional' persons, they have grown up with various experiences of discrimination and othering. A number of our respondents literally said that people of native descent did not expect them to be in the professional position they now occupy. Sometimes this was mentioned as a meant-to-be-positive remark in the sense that they were impressed by what they had achieved given their family background. Even today, many of our respondents are confronted with forms of othering in everyday life. Interviewing social climbers reveals how they have learned to deal with and position themselves in relation to these everyday ascriptions and impositions. Their reactions made us aware that discrimination plays a greater role in the context of advancement than is often assumed. For the analysis it proved fruitful to refect on how the respective mobility pathways were being pursued *against* diverse resistances and *despite* the frequent almost inescapable external ascriptions. The rhetoric of success can also be misleading. It tends to divert attention from the fact that social mobility is a social product which emerges as a result of several factors. The upward mobility careers of the children of immigrants are socially produced processes. Their pathways to success, however individually shaped they appear, are co-produced by both individuals and social contexts – more precisely institutional, organizational and professional contexts that belong to the most infuential and 'mainstream-shaping' contexts in all the countries studied. Rising numbers of children of immigrants in these social contexts mean to make what has been 'exceptional' up to this point into something that is considered 'normal'. By doing so, they may not only exert infuence on their professional felds, but also far beyond them.

#### **1.5 Producing Pathways to Success**

The chapters in this book are based on a series of research projects with a particular focus on children from immigrant families who were born in the country of immigration or raised there from an early age, and who are old enough to have completed their education and made their way well into a professional career. This implies that their immigrant families came to Europe between the early 1960s and 1990s – which was the case in signifcant numbers, especially in Western and Northern Europe. The national or local research projects were conducted under the common header of *Pathways to Success* in the following countries: Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The data basis of the book also includes a European funded comparative cross-country research project named *ELITES* that was executed in the following countries: Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Our authors interviewed lawyers, doctors, teachers, and persons in leading managerial positions in corporate business or entrepreneurs. In Chap. 2 we will elaborate on the empirical basis of this book in more detail.

Studying new social mobilities empirically across several European countries, the variety of pathways, experiences and corresponding identities becomes obvious. While the social climbers' pathways share the mobility-specifc features described, the concrete form they take on differs. It does not only differ due to individual agency and individual or family-related characteristics, but also strongly depends on the social and organizational contexts involved: the educational systems, the schools and universities visited, the social networks, as well as the places of work and the occupational felds our respondents were working in. The professional context, for example, determines to some extent the signifcance of ethnic referencing and ethnic ties or whether the command of a migrants' group language can be a useful resource at work. National framings and discourses also infuence mobility careers. But in order to explain the emergence and forging of mobility pathways we ought to consider the often-overlooked logics and conditions of the respective professional felds. Starting from this assumption we developed a conception of the contingent pathways as co-produced processes.

In order to systematize the factors and mechanisms which enable steep upward mobility and shape its empirical forms, we draw on and further develop two conceptual approaches: Bourdieu's distinction of different types of capital and the Integration Context Theory put forward by Crul and Schneider (2010). Certain levels of cultural capital and a class-based feld-specifc habitus are prerequisites for making a career in traditional middle-class professions, and this forms a part of the deep challenges faced by social climbers in general who have to work out how to acquire both when they were not part of their childhood socialization. For this reason, Bourdieu uses the logic of social felds and concepts like habitus and capital to explain the *reproduction* of social status (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, Bourdieu, 1984). By contrast, the *raison d'être* of this volume mainly lies in explaining the *overcoming* of social barriers and boundaries by the new or upcoming elite in the second generation (cf. Crul et al., 2012; Schneider & Lang, 2014). Differently than – or rather complementing – Bourdieu who saw cultural and social capital as something that people mainly inherit or acquire through the family they are born into, we will focus on social climbers' individual agency and the ways and effects of acquiring social and cultural capital 'along the way' (Crul et al., 2017).

Social climbers gain access to and accumulate new social and cultural capital because they move into new social contexts. This process generally begins early on in their school career when they have contact with middle-class peers of immigrant and non-immigrant background (of course, this kind of 'dual socialization' is not limited to school; sports clubs and cultural activities can play a similarly important role). Entering university once again means developing agency by picking up new cultural and social capital that proves useful for moving into the professional world. In their frst professional jobs, climbers acquire the very specifc and tailored capital necessary for particular professional felds and organizations. Each time they enter a new social environment, they learn both explicit and unwritten rules, make new contacts and learn through their mistakes, using each new environment as a launching pad for the next step in their career. Obviously, to a certain degree this applies to any newcomer in the feld, but for social climbers it requires a remarkable overall intellectual and social capacity and a readiness to *adapt, learn and transform*. It also requires *persistence* and *resilience*, since not all steps and attempts are successful right away, disappointments and setbacks have to be withstood, and thresholds may turn out to be particularly high for those who do not have the middle-class background that is more or less taken for granted in most high-prestige professional felds. All this is even more challenging when there is a visible 'foreign' background.

Next to these characteristics, social climbers have to be *motivated*, *capable* and fexible to make best use of given *opportunities* (cf. Spiegler, 2018, and see Chap. 5). *Motivation* is the necessary 'fuel', frequently derived, as described above, from a success-oriented family habitus. *Ability* is nurtured from an early age onwards. Children of low-educated immigrants develop the ability to rely only or mainly on themselves. They have to fnd their own way because of the lack of practical parental support and because teachers may be blinded by stereotypes about children from working-class and immigrant families. But they also develop the ability to make use of whatever *opportunity* and support are offered. As will be shown in the empirical chapters of this volume, many social climbers actively pursued opportunities for building social networks from scratch in new environments and for making contact with people who could offer support and coaching to help them navigate their new environments. Using all of these elements at different moments in time or in combination makes it possible for social climbers to be successful. Climbers thus actively co-create the conditions that make their advancement possible. But, at the same time, the relevant contexts of their careers are socially produced. For this reason, this book aims to identify the social mechanisms through which motivation and abilities 'interact' with opportunity structures and how this contributes to the formation of a *mobility habitus* of ambition and 'pragmatic cleverness' that has guided the new social climbers through their careers.

The second building block of our conceptual approach consists of the structural forces that exert a strong infuence on mobility pathways, at frst the educational institutions (Hao & Pong, 2008) and, later on, the respective professional felds. In each feld, whether it is school, university, corporate law or business, medicine or education, there are specifc rules and working cultures – described in social theory as the 'forces of the feld' (Bourdieu, 1984, 1990; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) or the 'logics' and 'codes' of social systems (Luhmann, 1995). Especially in professional felds, there are selection mechanisms and gatekeepers at work that protect and determine who may enter, or who is considered to 'ft' in. The higher people climb on the social and professional career ladder, the more selective these mechanisms become. Social climbers try to understand the rules of the games, they adopt and stick to them or – if necessary – they also actively try to circumvent or change them. Depending on the professional feld, institutional arrangements may be very similar across countries – for instance, because of very similar university diploma requirements. But the rules can also greatly differ – for instance, because of nationally different ways to license or train independent lawyers, teachers, or doctors. This can result in very different professional opportunity structures across countries.

The Integration Context Theory (Crul & Schneider, 2010) helps to grasp both the impact of and the differences between institutional contexts that are relevant for the emergence and formation of upward mobility processes. According to this approach, individual pathways and career trajectories are always the result of the interaction between individual agency and capital and institutional contexts. Comparing outcomes in education and the labour market across different countries reveals a strong infuence of the differing institutional arrangements such as pre-school facilities, division into school types and tracking mechanisms – an infuence which, until recently, has been examined mostly to explain underachievement and inequalities (Borgna & Contini, 2014; Shavit & Müller, 1998). Different school systems demand different strategies and require different forms of engagement from children and their parents to achieve upward mobility (Crul, 2010, 2013; Crul et al., 2012; Schnell, 2014; Keskiner; 2019).

Whereas Integration Context Theory was designed to analyse and internationally compare the performance of the children of immigrants in general, this volume refnes its potential by considering specifcally relevant institutional arrangements, not only across countries, but also across different professional sectors like business, medicine, corporate law or education and the opportunities offered by (regional) labour markets. We also relate the mobility trajectories to the inherent structure and culture of organizations like law frms, companies, hospitals, and schools which includes their specifc recruitment mechanisms, their organizational rules, cultures and staff (cf. Baecker, 1999; Luhmann, 2018).

Each professional sector has its own institutional logic and provides different opportunities and obstacles that either help or hinder the success of the children of immigrants. In the educational sector the role of specifc national institutional arrangements is particularly signifcant because of how education is organized and fnanced or how becoming an accredited primary or secondary school teacher or school principal is regulated. In the case of law, the national institutional arrangements determine the way in which one can become a recognised lawyer, but the higher one climbs in the organization or company, the more success also depends on networks and performance. In the business sector, we also see important differences between countries ranging from the role of internships or on-the-job-training to the ways in which individuals move into higher managerial positions. To what extent do such differences explain the differing sizes of the upwardly mobile groups in different countries, revealed in the survey outcomes in Chap. 2?

#### **1.6 Book Chapters and Their Theoretical Contributions**

Within the conceptual framework charted above, the chapters of this book examine how institutional arrangements, specifc to each professional feld, interact with the agency of people trying to gain a foothold in this feld. People exercise agency through the different forms of capital they can mobilize. This may include making use of *ethnic resources* in the form of business and client network contacts from their own ethnic community or simply in the form of linguistic and specifc cultural competences. It may also invoke the principle of meritocracy, i.e. the self-images and 'identity' of some professional felds that draw on 'objective profciency', for example in the form of educational credits or generated revenues. This is typically the case in high-prestige professions like law and medicine, as Chaps. 4 and 6 demonstrate. Invoking the logic that meritocracy should only be interested in making use of 'the best people', social climbers of immigrant origin can hope that this will shield them from discrimination based on ethnicity, class or religion. Midtbøen and Nadim describe that entrance into training or a specialized profession is very selective in some felds, but once that threshold has been crossed, opportunities can be remarkably good for everyone, regardless of their family or ethnic background (see Chap. 6). They even speak of a 'sheltering effect' in some elite institutions which means that the concept of 'occupational closure' requires a more nuanced approach. But the opposite can also be true: some professional sectors have forms of selfrecruitment that in extreme forms even prefers family lineage over formal qualifcation or proven expertise – examples include specialized surgeons or partners in law frms.

Another theoretically interesting mechanism is described by Keskiner and her co-authors in Chap. 4: the transformation of one form of capital into another. The interviewed social climbers had transferred their family's capital investment in education into forms of cultural capital that are valued independently of their family background. They made use of informational knowledge that had been acquired in social networks, which may be essential to making the right choices at the right time. In the case of studying law or business in France, for example, this meant investing a great deal of effort in gaining access to a prestigious university college *(Grande École)*, as this is the only type of university that effectively functions as a springboard to the French elites, not solely by virtue of the prestige on an application form, but also in terms of the contacts these universities can provide. In the Netherlands, it could mean investing a comparable effort into internships during law studies so that you can build the social networks that will provide access to prestigious law frms.

Fibbi and Aparicio-Gómez differentiate between *job systems* and *career systems* (see Chap. 5). Using the example of teachers, they demonstrate that the *career system* relies heavily on recruitment through institutionalized internships/traineeships and competitive examinations. The *job system*, by contrast, looks more for specifc job qualifcations. Being of migrant descent and speaking a major migrant language, for instance, is hardly ever a formal requirement, but it can be highly valued for teaching migrant children. Distinguishing between job and career systems is an interesting tool for gaining a better understanding of why we see far more doctors of migrant descent in some countries than in others, and why in one country these doctors more frequently work as general practitioners, while in other countries we also fnd them among the more specialized medical professions.

As part and product of their mobility trajectory, social climbers develop and articulate specifc identities. Since their social mobility is co-produced by institutional and organizational contexts, so are their feelings of belonging. The identity formations we encountered are therefore clearly dependent on the jobs and professional felds they were active in, but also on the contexts in which they had been developing their educational, professional and social lives so far – including their families, friendships and neighbourhood relations (see Chap. 3). Particularly interesting are the strategies for coping with the aforementioned tensions inherent to their exceptional position: in many regards, they continue to see themselves as 'normal people' – or, at least, wish to do so.

Introducing these empirical chapters, Chap. 2 presents selected fndings from previous quantitative comparative research on the educational and occupational trajectories of the second generation in Europe, and a more precise description of the analytical tasks that follow from these fndings. It then introduces the qualitative methodological approach of this book, the essential analytical categories, and how the empirical data were collected (scope, sampling criteria, recruitment strategies). Based on this, the chapter describes the different analytical strategies for crosscountry comparisons with the qualitative data collected in the course of the various Pathways to Success projects in the research consortium.

Concluding the volume, Chap. 7 wraps up central results of all presented empirical analyses and discusses their wider societal and theoretical implications. It develops generalizations that cut across the different comparisons (sectors, countries, careers). In particular, the paradoxes of New Social Mobility are highlighted that become visible throughout the book. Reconstructing the remarkable – and impressive – pathways of social mobility pioneers from immigrant families, the fnal chapters argues, is a contribution to a better understanding of their potentials for change.

#### **References**


Luhmann, N. (1995). *Social systems* (Trans. J. Bednarz & D. Baecker). Stanford University Press.


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### **Chapter 2 Data, Methods and Comparisons**

**Jens Schneider, Philipp Schnell, and Michael Eve**

#### **2.1 Introduction**

Between 2007 and 2008 the TIES project conducted a survey of almost 10,000 native-born children of immigrants from Turkey, Morocco and former Yugoslavia in 15 cities in eight European countries; it was the frst comparative data collection to focus explicitly on the 'second generation' in Europe. The TIES Survey was carried out with young adults aged between 18 and 35, and provided broad insights into educational outcomes, their transition to the labour market and current labour market situation, feelings of belonging, social and family relations, and a number of other relevant issues (see Crul et al., 2012a for details of this project). The results also generated a special interest in processes of intergenerational upward mobility between the second generation and their immigrant parents in educational and socio-economic terms. Since labour migrants from Turkey and Morocco had particularly low levels of formal education when they were recruited as 'guest workers' between the early 1960s and mid-1970s, successfully completing secondary education and attaining a secondary education certifcate – which is true for the vast majority of the native-born children of these labour migrants in Europe – already represented a clear step beyond their parents' level of formal education. But the TIES data also revealed a small minority that achieved even steeper upward mobility as they had entered higher education, obtained a degree and/or were working as

P. Schnell Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria e-mail: philipp.schnell@univie.ac.at

J. Schneider (\*)

Universität Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany e-mail: jens.schneider@uni-osnabrueck.de

M. Eve Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli, Italy e-mail: michael.eve@uniupo.it

highly qualifed and well-paid professionals. Taking into account the age range of the respondents and the fact that, at the time of the TIES data collection, in most survey countries the 'second generation' was still mostly in the younger age cohorts, the statistical presence of this group was quite remarkable. However, its size varied greatly per survey country: it amounted to between a quarter and almost half of the total sample of 'second generation' Turkish and Moroccan respondents in Sweden, France and the Netherlands (including those who were still in higher education), while numbers did not exceed 15% in the German-speaking countries − Germany, Austria and Switzerland – countries where vocational training and company-based labour market careers tend to be more central (Crul et al., 2012b: 127).

The statistical presences of this steeply mobile group were also remarkable if we note that in all survey countries, access to higher education and high-prestige professions was basically not foreseen for children from working-class immigrant families in the institutional arrangements concerning education and the transition to work; there were hardly any targeted support measures, and there were even mechanisms of active hindrance at work (cf. Crul, 2013).

For this reason, some of the researchers in the international consortium that had carried out the TIES Survey decided to design a follow-up research project on this particularly successful group, but this time working with *qualitative in-depth interviews,* at least in part also among the former TIES respondents*.* The project consortium comprised the leading partners of the TIES project from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and Germany, found new partners in France, Sweden and Belgium (only Austria was no longer represented), and expanded to include Italy and Norway.1 Each of these national projects secured its own funding and some pursued additional research interests, while remaining under the common umbrella of regular exchange and shared critical refection called *Pathways to Success*. In addition to this cooperation, the Dutch team obtained EU-funding for *ELITES,* a comparative qualitative project across four countries and three professional sectors. The empirical basis of this book is formed by these two research clusters: the several national *Pathways to Success* projects and the multinational *ELITES* project.2

The decision to follow up specifcally on this particularly successful group of respondents was also motivated by a rather surprising lack of research and literature on 'success' and upward social mobility in this generation of labour migrants' children (cf. Schneider & Lang, 2015; Crul et al., 2017; Schnell et al., 2013). The TIES data allowed us to determine a number of specifc contextual and correlational factors behind these trajectories. But, they also show the important statistical effect of educational level and professional qualifcation on a number of other socially relevant issues, such as feelings of belonging; social relations and the composition of circles of friends; the role of religion; values of democracy and gender equality;

<sup>1</sup>Since it had not been part of the TIES Survey, the Norwegian project also included a quantitative survey (see Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019).

<sup>2</sup>Both denominations were combined in the overall name *ELITES/Pathways to Success* of the consortium and a joint webpage for external and internal communication (see below and at https:// elitesproject.eu for further details).

perspectives on multicultural and multi-religious living together; the importance of transnational relations; and the role of female labour market participation on middleclass formation. However, while the analyses showed the strength of these correlations and – once again – huge differences between national contexts, neither TIES nor other available quantitative data on social mobility processes in immigrant working-class families allowed us to assess the specifc and concrete 'interaction effects' between individual human capital and family background factors, on the one hand, and different context factors, such as institutional arrangements in education and professional felds which structure the pathways of young people into highprestige professions, on the other.

In this chapter, we start with an international comparative look into the TIES data, descriptively analysing the differences in degrees and types of social mobility which need to be explained. This quantitative comparison serves as a broader contextual reference for the qualitative analyses in the chapters that follow. After that, we explain how the various projects within the *ELITES/Pathways to Success* consortium recruited their respondents and their sampling criteria. This is followed by a description of the topics covered by the respective interview guides and the data collected for contextualizing the individual trajectories and narratives at the national and local level. Here, we also elaborate on the specifc challenges of international comparisons on the basis of qualitative data and how these were tackled in the following empirical chapters.

#### **2.2 Educational and Occupational Trajectories of the Turkish 'Second-Generation' – Insights from the TIES Survey**

In this section, we present some analyses of data collected in the TIES Survey specifcally on the 'second generation' of families that migrated from Turkey. The aim is to assess (a) the frequency and 'typicality' of the successful trajectories described in the qualitative analyses in the following chapters, and (b) their connectedness to a wider picture of 'institutional arrangements' and context factors, especially within the educational systems, in the transition to the labour market, and in the course of professional careers. The central focus of comparison in this section are *country*related data, which in the following chapters are further differentiated according to occupational sectors – an analytical differentiation that is not possible in this quantitative part because the numbers are too small. The statistical analyses compare four countries – Sweden, France, the Netherlands, and Germany – which show the most diverging, but also 'ideal-typical' country differences, thus best exemplifying the effects of institutional arrangements and context factors on trajectories of (relative) individual success (see Chap. 1 for a discussion of problems around the conceptualization and defnition of 'success').

To obtain a differentiated picture of how the 'Turkish second generation' achieves upward social mobility in different countries, we pay special attention in this section to the notion of educational and occupational trajectories and differentiate various avenues to gaining socioeconomic advancement. This design, stemming from life course research, gives a portrait of educational and occupational trajectories from the beginning of school tracking in lower secondary education until the stage in the labour market at the time of the interview when all education-to-work transitions were complete (Hao & Pong, 2008, Groh-Samberg et al., 2012; Laganà et al., 2014). This 'trajectory perspective' provides insights into the process-like character of the socioeconomic careers of children of immigrants, as shown in a similar study on Switzerland (Schnell & Fibbi, 2016). It gives a different perspective to that obtained by looking at either educational achievement or occupational achievement separately. It highlights not only the interplay between individual factors and institutional arrangements of national systems but also transforms the generalized understanding of thresholds between 'success' and 'failure' at the end point into more detailed sequences of failures and successes. The questions guiding this section are: do second-generation immigrants of Turkish descent experience upward mobility in the four countries compared, and if so, in what respect? To what extent does the degree of upward mobility differ between these four countries?

In the feld of sociology of education, and especially in studies focusing on educational upward mobility, two different types of mobility pathways are frequently observed (e.g. Laganà et al., 2014; Spiegler, 2018). These types differ not only in the barriers students are confronted with and the resources available to them, but above all by the structure of their educational and occupational upward mobility paths. Most of these studies observe a trajectory in which young adults successfully move through more prestigious educational tracks leading to professional and highincome positions. In contrast to these "thrivers", numerous publications describe at least a second group of upward mobile youths: those starting low in the education system but climbing successfully step-by-step to higher streams that eventually lead to more prestigious labour market positions (often labelled as "climbers", Schnell & Fibbi, 2016). Both upward mobility paths are described schematically in Fig. 2.1 (compare categories A and B). At the same time, the fgure shows at least two potentially less successful trajectories: *'Downward trajectories'* (category C) frequently start high in the education system but either lose ground within the course of their educational career or in the labour market after completing education, while a fourth category describes trajectories characterized by a lack of upward mobility (category D). In order to empirically analyse these socioeconomic trajectories we used retrospective autobiographical statements on individual life courses collected in the TIES survey in order to explore various trajectories towards socioeconomic advancement.

We focussed on three relevant transition points (t) in the life course in order to defne and measure socioeconomic trajectories (for similar approaches see Laganà et al., 2014 or Schnell & Fibbi, 2016): (t1) *(Lower) secondary education* represents the starting point in secondary education (after the transition from primary school) and is divided into school types with (a) elementary requirements (basic-level

**Fig. 2.1** Families of trajectories (schematic illustration)

performance) and (b) extended requirements (advanced-level performance).3 (t2) *Final education attainment* (educational certifcate acquired) is the end point of education and is categorized on the basis of the EduCodes scheme (Crul et al., 2012b) into (a) post-upper secondary and tertiary (university or applied scientifc/ technical institute) and (b) below tertiary education, especially vocational training after the end of compulsory schooling. (t3) *Occupational status* captures the current labour market position by using information from the Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero (EGP) classifcation scheme (Erikson et al., 1979). Respondents with a high labour market status are either 'executives and professionals' (EGP I and II) or have an income above the average national disposable income. This is the 'default category' in the following analysis; the other category thus includes low to average occupational status, ranging from economic inactivity or unemployment to skilled and routine manual jobs.

Figures in TIES indicate that the percentage of 'thrivers' (category A), who successfully move through more prestigious educational tracks and go on to professional and high-income positions in the respective national samples of 'Turkish second generation' varies substantially between countries. This group is smallest in Germany (2%), followed by the Netherlands (6%) and France (8%), while it amounts to almost 11% in Sweden (compare Figs. 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5). The group of *'upward trajectories'* (category B) summarizes avenues of upward mobility following (lower) secondary education. This upward mobility may happen in the course of secondary education, on the labour market, or through a combination of both – whichever is the case, these persons are classed together as *'climbers'*. There

<sup>3</sup>Note that age at (t1) varies according to the age at the frst selection in the four countries: 10–12 in Germany and 12 in the Netherlands (including lower secondary education); 15 in France and Sweden (upper secondary education).

**Fig. 2.2** Four types of trajectories in France, Turkish second-generation (%; N = 303). (Source: TIES 2007–2008)

Germany

**Fig. 2.3** Four types of trajectories in Germany, Turkish second-generation (%; N = 466). (Source: TIES 2007–2008)

**Fig. 2.4** Four types of trajectories in the Netherlands, Turkish second-generation (%; N = 371). (Source: TIES 2007–2008)

is a substantial group of Turkish 'second-generation' youth within each country travelling along upward mobility trajectories: 10% in Germany, 11% in France and the Netherlands, and 17% in Sweden.

In contrast, the *'downward trajectories'* (category C) start high in the education system but either lose ground within the course of their educational career or in the labour market after completing education. Compared to their initial starting position in the education system (high, academic-orientated track), their current employment status is lower than originally expected. These '*declining achievers'* are frequent among the Turkish 'second generation' in Sweden (37%), followed by France (29%), while they are only half as frequent in the Netherlands and Germany (18% and 16%, respectively). Finally, '*low to average-level trajectories*' (category D) start in the lower tracks of secondary education and end up in routine to manual work with low to average formal requirements, or even in unemployment or economic inactivity (e.g. unpaid housework). These *'average-level achievers'* are a substantial group among second-generation Turks in all the four countries compared, but there are signifcant cross-national differences (compare Figs. 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5): they are, for example, twice as frequent in Germany (71%) as in Sweden (36%). It is worth emphasizing that being an 'average-level achiever' is not the same as being part of the group of young people 'at-risk': respondents who left school early and are currently unemployed account for only around 12% in Germany, 9% in the Netherlands, 7% in France and 4% in Sweden. But since this chapter focuses on those who end up in a *high* position, i.e. above the average in education and professional status even in relation to the total population of similar age groups, categories C and D comprise all statuses below this.

The following fgures show the distribution of the four types of trajectories in the four countries studied, highlighting the two trajectories that lead to upward mobility and educational and/or economic success.

#### *2.2.1 A Closer Look at 'Climbers' and 'Thrivers'*

Because the Turkish second generation in the four countries usually come from less-advantaged social backgrounds, they often did not manage to enter and keep their place in '*constant high-level trajectories'* (in particular in comparison to nonimmigrant-origin students, see Fig. 2.6). But here, we can see clear effects of the differences between the respective education systems. On average, the proportion of 'thrivers' embarked upon 'constant high-level trajectories' is signifcantly lower in countries with an education system that selects pupils at an early age (Germany and the Netherlands) as compared to the two countries with a tracking system that only comes into effect at the end of compulsory education (France and Sweden).4 The

<sup>4</sup> It is relevant to note that despite the fact that the TIES Survey targeted the population in two cities per country, differences between the cities within one country turned out to be negligible with regard to the issues presented here. Gender difference also did not appear to be signifcant; only in the Netherlands are women of Turkish origin more often 'climbers' than 'thrivers'.

**Fig. 2.6** Thrivers and climbers, by country and group (percentages). *CG* Comparison Group (nonimmigrant descent, same age cohorts), *2GT* Turkish second-generation. (Source: TIES 2007–2008)

early tracking in the frst two countries streams children into pathways that are very diffcult to leave or overcome. Yet, in contrast to Germany, students in the Netherlands are encouraged to stay in the education system as long as possible, which frequently means completing higher vocational education. Although this 'stapling possibility' also exists in Germany, it is chosen by far fewer students, mainly because the main focus is on bringing them into the apprenticeship system rather than into higher forms of vocational education (Crul & Schneider, 2009).

Although children from Turkish working-class families have fewer opportunities to take the successful path from the beginning (in particular in Germany), some constantly move upwards and get ahead through other trajectories. While the proportion of these 'climbers' is almost identical among our respondents of Turkish descent in France, Germany and the Netherlands, the channels through which they climb differ substantially. In Germany and France, almost all climbers gain their upward mobility via the labour market (see Fig. 2.7). For the group of Turkish descendants who achieved upward mobility in the labour market in these two countries, self-employment plays a larger role (9% in Germany; 13% in France) – especially in direct comparison to Sweden and the Netherlands. In addition, the private employment sector plays a signifcant role in both countries, since the majority of climbers works in the private sector, e.g. in sales and marketing. There are also differences regarding the way in which upward mobility through the labour market manifests itself in both countries. In Germany, vocational training, which combines vocational schooling with training-on-the-job in companies and offces, is important for gaining relevant work experience and network contacts with future employers. This role of vocational training in Germany has been repeatedly emphasized in comparison to the more school-based system in France (see Chap. 4 for details and examples).

**Fig. 2.7** Channels of upward mobility among 'climbers', second-generation Turks (%). (Source: TIES 2007–2008)

Upward mobility in the education system, on the other hand, is rather low among 'climbers' in Germany and France. In Germany, students who have been streamed into vocationally-oriented schools at the age of 10 (*Hauptschule* or *Realschule*) are theoretically able to switch and move up to the academically-orientated track at the end of lower secondary education (generally around the age of 16). But only a small proportion of pupils make use of this possibility: it is diffcult to obtain the marks needed to switch to the academic track, especially if this is not explicitly encouraged and facilitated by teachers. In France, the majority of students of Turkish descent are streamed into the vocational track after lower-secondary education at the age of 15 and leave at the end of secondary education to take up jobs even though the French system also offers them a 'second chance' to make the transition from the vocational track to post-secondary/tertiary education. Several studies have shown that in order to successfully navigate their way to the top of the educational ladder, access to resources provided by non-immigrant peer networks, as well as support from teachers, are crucial for children of Turkish immigrants in both countries, but only a small share has access to these forms of support (see e.g. Schnell, 2014).

By contrast, in the Netherlands almost half of the climbers enter the upward mobility path during their education. Previous analyses of the TIES survey data have shown that many children of immigrants in the Netherlands have moved up the educational ladder by starting at the bottom rung in lower vocational education and climbing step-by-step via middle vocational education to the highest stream of vocational education, 'stapling' diplomas as they go (Crul & Schneider, 2009; Schnell et al., 2013). Compared to the direct route towards higher education via the academic track, this 'long route' in the Dutch 'stapling system' takes between 1 and 3 years longer.

The Swedish educational system does not really provide 'second chances' because the permeability between tracks at the end of each type is always a given. Students in lower and upper secondary education can choose tracks without restrictions, and all upper secondary tracks provide certifcates that permit students to continue on to post-secondary or tertiary education. This high degree of permeability means that individual factors are less relevant to the educational upward mobility of second-generation Turks in Sweden (Schnell, 2014: 217). Yet, about two-thirds of the climbers in Sweden experience upward mobility through the labour market, almost half of them being employed in the public sector, e.g. in public administration or public health organizations.

These data from the TIES survey show that there are important differences regarding the possibilities that institutional arrangements in education and the labour market produce for native-born children of migrants in different systems. The differences described among children of Turkish labour migrants with similar levels of resources at the family level indicate the importance of looking in more detail at the conditions and specifc barriers and opportunities that different institutional contexts – both country and occupation-specifc – present to children of immigrants upon entering the labour market. Related to this is the question of how some of the children of immigrants manage to successfully 'navigate' these contexts, while many do not. This is thus the starting point from which *ELITES/ Pathways to Success* proceeded.

While it was generally felt that the open questions could be better investigated through qualitative techniques and exploratory research, the TIES database still served as a departure point for a general assessment of relevant context variables (including local contexts, i.e. cities). It was also used to contact former TIES respondents as potential interviewees in those countries where addresses were still available.

#### **2.3 ELITES/Pathways to Success: Sampling and Recruiting**

The exploratory nature of the *ELITES* and *Pathways to Success* research projects allowed the researchers from the various countries considerable freedom to choose additional foci, while still remaining frmly within the same set of theoretical problems (as presented in the previous chapter). So, for example, we allowed for a certain variety in national origins of interviewees' parents, in accordance with those origins which were most numerous in a particular national (and urban) context, or

which seemed particularly interesting for theoretical reasons.5 Other aspects were the availability of data and the existing knowledge on particular migration fows in the countries where the projects asked for fnancing. The only central requirement was that the focus had to be on *labour* migration, a selection of *high-prestige occupations* to which access was obtained, and the dynamics of considerable *upward social, educational and occupational mobility* compared with their families of origin. So, even though there are a number of important problems in identifying the social class, educational level, and occupational status of frst-generation immigrants (a high school diploma in rural Morocco in the 1950s is not the same level of education as a high school diploma in the Netherlands in the twenty-frst century), it was clear that our starting point would be children whose parents had low status regarding the criteria of occupational position and education conventionally used in European immigration countries.

According to the conceptual approach of Integration Context Theory (Crul & Schneider, 2010), individual pathways and career trajectories are always the result of individual agency and human capital in interaction with institutional arrangements in relevant contexts. While the original comparative focus of this conceptual approach was nation-states and secondarily cities, it became clear that analysing the trajectories of young people who seemed to be establishing a middle-class position also required a focus on *occupations*. Becoming a lawyer, a teacher or a business executive requires specifc qualifcations and sometimes involves quite different career paths. It could thus be assumed that the obstacles in the pathways of children of migrants who attain success might also vary, as might the resources which children of migrants could mobilize. Hence, *occupational contexts* became an additional central focus of attention, resulting in specifc sampling strategies targeting 'second generation' individuals in particular occupations.

#### *2.3.1 Sampling Criteria*

Following the above specifed research interests, the following sampling criteria were applied:

– *Country of origin*: following-up on the TIES Survey, most sub-projects focused on respondents with parents who had immigrated from Turkey – in *ELITES* and in the German *Pathways to Success* project, this was the only immigrant-origin group. In Switzerland and Norway, the projects also looked at other origins. The focus on a Turkish background was mainly due to the fact that it is present in

<sup>5</sup>This differentiates the new projects from their quantitative predecessor, the TIES Project, which compared the same groups across different national and urban contexts. However, in comparative sociological and socio-psychological research on immigrants and their descendants, it seems that it is the norm rather than the exception to compare e.g. 'Vietnamese' in Australia with 'Turks' in Germany and 'Russians' in Israel (see e.g. Berry et al., 2006).

large numbers in many European countries, making it suitable for international comparisons. However, Turkish immigration has played a very marginal role in Spain, so the Spanish project opted for the most important immigrant groups from Latin America, China and Morocco (the latter group it shares with Norway).


age cohorts. Germany signed its labour recruitment agreement with Turkey in 1961, and was followed by other European countries at later dates. Turkish labour migrants in Germany came earlier and also started to have families earlier; consequently, we can fnd native-born children from Turkish immigrant families in Germany who are in their early to mid-ffties. Accordingly, the German and the Swiss projects lifted the upper age limit, and this had some positive effects. Careers are built over time, and even though simple age does not tell us how many years an individual has been working in a particular occupation, older respondents simply have more to say about career development and, for example, 'glass ceiling' effects – also in comparison to colleagues of nonimmigrant background. By contrast, Spain only became a sizeable immigration country in the 1980s which means that the 'second generation' in this country is almost 20 years younger than in Germany and Switzerland. Accordingly, it has the lowest age range of all participating countries, and fnding respondents in the upper age cohorts turned out to be quite a challenge.6


<sup>6</sup>Unfortunately, certain potentially interesting aspects related to age could not be explored in detail in this book. This holds true for questions of generational differences *within* the 'second-generation experience'. For example, being the only child of immigrant origin in a school class in the 1970s was certainly a quite different experience to being one of many 20 years later (cf. Schneider, 2010). It should also be remembered that age is a socially determined characteristic which complicates comparisons across countries: in fact, being 30 in, say, Spain or Italy is not necessarily the same as being 30 in the Netherlands (we need to think, for example, of the percentage of 30-year-olds living in their parents' home in these countries).

<sup>7</sup>The Dutch denomination *Randstad* refers to the metropolitan region in the Western part of the Netherlands that includes all larger Dutch cities and more than half of the country's total population.

Germany added the traditional mining and steel production area *Rhein-Ruhr,* because it had been the main destination of Turkish labour immigration to Germany and the project could connect to previous qualitative research that had been conducted there by the German research institute IMIS.8

– *Occupational sectors*: a shared interest of the consortium was looking at access to occupations with high social prestige that are clearly associated with middleclass status and which are also known for their high level of social reproduction – in the sense that coming from a family with active members in the feld has consistently been proven to be an important source for upcoming junior staff (cf. Hartmann & Kopp, 2001). The professional sectors that are most associated with high social prestige are certainly *medicine* and *law*, closely followed by *corporate business*. Medicine and law generally require high levels of cultural capital in the sense of formal educational credentials. They are also interesting from the point of view of international comparisons because states are heavily involved in regulating education for both lawyers and doctors, and in organizing large parts of the labour market, e.g. through state-run hospitals and public judicial systems. In contrast, the business sector is more diverse and ambiguous in almost all regards. Yet, although access to the feld offers fewer barriers in terms of formal educational qualifcations, and it draws its prestige primarily from monetary success, it also shares the characteristic of high social reproduction. This is especially true with regard to access to top ranks and managerial positions in leading corporations. Another interesting sector for comparison is *education*. In many European and emigration countries, becoming a teacher used to be one of the prime avenues of social mobility for gifted children from low-educated families, especially in the countryside. The social prestige of the teaching profession varies across countries and across levels of education, but it generally offers high job security and social respectability. However, the required formal levels of education and also the level of competitiveness are generally lower than for law and medicine, which tends to make education – as a professional sector – more open to a broader range of prospective professionals, and accessible for career changers. All projects except Switzerland decided to compare at least three professional sectors. Education and business are regarded in four projects, law in three projects; medicine was only included in Norway, as was public administration in Germany.

Table 2.1 gives an overview of the more than 400 qualitative interviews in total in the various projects which were used for the analyses in this book:9

<sup>8</sup>The *Rhein-Ruhr Metropolregion* is the largest metropolitan area in Germany and received its name from the two main rivers, the Rhein demarcating the area to the west and the Ruhr passing through from east to west.

<sup>9</sup>Three national samples within the consortium do not fgure in this table: Italy, Belgium, and Sweden (the sample that was not part of the ELITES project). For diverse reasons, authors from these national teams could not fully participate in the qualitative comparative analyses in the following chapters.


**Table 2.1** Interview samples in Pathways to success and ELITES

#### *2.3.2 Recruitment Strategies*

Generally, it can be said that the respondents whom the projects in the *ELITES/ Pathways to Success* consortium wished to interview were relatively exceptional. They were exceptional due to their steep upward mobility trajectories within their families and among age peers with a similar immigrant and/or social background; but also with regard to the organizations and felds they made their way into. There was no sampling frame and no direct or 'natural' way to easily fnd respondents, and all projects reported that obtaining the samples required considerable effort. Consequently, in all of the projects the strategies for fnding respondents had to be quite varied and adapted to the conditions in the respective cities and – above all – in the different occupational sectors:


tial to develop a broad range of starting points to set off a high number of 'snowballs'. But this was also necessary in order to fnd enough respondents and obtain broad access to the different local and professional felds. In those projects which also interviewed respondents of non-immigrant working-class background, snowballing was almost the only way to fnd potential interviewees, since this information is hardly available on webpages; many of them were colleagues of the interviewees of immigrant background. In Germany, additional important resources were a network of higher education students of working-class background, and the inside knowledge of the editors of a professional journal for corporate law frms.

Whatever channel was used to obtain names and contact details, all the potential interviewees had to be asked not only about their willingness to participate in the research, but also whether they fulflled the basic criteria mentioned above – especially with regard to the educational/socioeconomic background of their parents and their birthplace or age at immigration. Other screening questions might also include their specifc position in the company or connectedness to the respective local urban contexts (i.e. originating from there or currently working and/or living there).

In general, reactions to being contacted for interviews were very positive and welcoming. Only a very small fraction of all persons contacted refused to be interviewed. But some reactions of potential interviewees revealed that this was related also to the wording and channels of contact. For persons from Kurdish families, for example, it could make a difference whether they were approached as having a "Turkish background" or a "family background *in* Turkey". Potential respondents were more productively approached as professionals (and via professional networks and contacts) than as the offspring of immigrant families or as having a particular 'ethnic' background. It tended to be helpful to emphasize the relevance of social class, and – in projects where this was the case – to mention that persons from a non-immigrant working-class background were also part of the target group.

All researchers of the consortium were aware of the possible dangers of selectivity introduced by the recruitment methods used, and they therefore adopted strategies to limit bias. However, the primary objective is not to provide information about 'typical' trajectories, although we believe many of the accounts will be paralleled by accounts elsewhere. As qualitative research, the main aim is to identify *social mechanisms* in operation in order to shed light on the factors which either facilitate or obstruct social mobility. However, specifc factors identifed as helping or hindering one interviewee's career may not be applicable in other contexts, because different dynamics are at play in different contexts. For example, the degree to which a lawyer may wish to pro-actively 'network' with co-ethnics by attending 'community' events, or by using the language of his or her 'country of origin' depends on the numbers of potential clients this will bring in. Our purpose in understanding and describing this kind of use of 'ethnic resource' in contacting potential clients – a pattern described in several chapters – is not to suggest that this strategy is always used, but rather to describe how it can be appropriate in a specifc

context – for example, it could be used by a young independent lawyer who needs to build up a client base – and also how it may change over time as the lawyer's career progresses. Aspects such as being self-employed or working for a large frm, being in the public sector or in the private sector, are likely to be relevant aspects of the 'integration context', especially in contexts where they represent a rational business strategy. Yet, our focus is not on frequency, but on possible social mechanisms at work – and on 'modelling' contextual relationships between institutional arrangements in specifc professional sectors and how individual biographies and resources 'respond' to them (and vice versa).

#### *2.3.3 Topics and Comparative Analysis*

#### **2.3.3.1 Interview Guides**

The main method of data collection in all projects were interviews with members of the respective target groups. Information on the interview guides is presented in the single chapters. The following list shows the topics generally covered:

– family background:

parents: migration history, occupations and support attitudes role of siblings

– school careers and experiences:

types of school, school changes experiences as regards teacher attitudes, peers, support, discrimination key persons

– higher education:

choice of and transition to higher education experiences with teaching staff and peer students (including encounters with other students of immigrant, working class or similar 'ethnic' background)

– transition to work:

access to frst jobs/traineeships, relation to studies, role of networks next steps/jobs and career development

– current job:

access and current position career steps within the current institution (if applicable) characteristics of the institution and the working environment – places and social relations:

place of work, place of living, choice of residence/neighbourhood partnership and family, role of parents and siblings circles of friends, relations with colleagues transnational relations

– identity issues:

feelings of belonging, role of ethnicity and of parental place of origin professional identity othering experiences

Since the interviews had to cover a wide range of topics, most project teams worked with interview guides that structured the course of the interviews and helped to limit the total duration of an interview. At the same time, interviews were also intended to evoke narrations and allow for aspects brought up or particularly emphasized by the interviewees. As in similar qualitative interviews, interviewees' accounts provide information which they think the interviewer will see as appropriate and interesting and which ft in with their more general ideas of how people's careers are structured (Plummer, 1995; Mason, 2004). This is an aspect of comparative qualitative research which should be borne in mind, since ideas of what is an interesting social phenomenon worthy of attention, as well as more general ideas of social reality, vary between countries and historical epochs. To give an example: common sense discourse regarding how people get on at work, and regarding e.g. the importance of personal 'connections' probably varies from one country to another as well as between different occupational and institutional environments. Likewise, with regard to discrimination, the awareness of feeling discriminated against or disadvantaged may be greater in some national contexts than others, simply because the issue is discussed more widely in the respective national debates transmitted by media and then flter into private conversations and thus individuals' conceptions of social reality.

#### **2.3.3.2 Contextualization**

In addition to the interviews as the core empirical data, different kinds of empirical material were collected in order to *contextualize* the interviewees' narrations about their pathways into their current positions and to complement them with information on the respective local, regional and national structural situations. In particular, these include information about labour markets and demographic data, but also about important actors, be they organizations or personalities. It was particularly important to learn as much as possible about institutional arrangements in the investigated occupational sectors in their specifc local, regional and national expressions. This made it possible to better assess the role of specifc aspects and mechanisms at work in the still exceptional career paths of our respondents.

Contextualization thus worked in two directions: on the one hand, the respondents' statements and information about their careers were highly relevant for understanding the role of institutional contexts; on the other hand, this personalized information needed to be 'classifed', in the sense of adding a wider perspective and information from other sources and other types of knowledge about each specifc feld. This greatly 'enriches' the analyses in the following empirical chapters: they assess in detail how individual careers and pathways corresponded and interacted with the institutional arrangements concerning school education, higher education, and work in labour market sectors with high social prestige and rather restricted access possibilities.

#### *2.3.4 Comparisons*

The interviews were recorded and then prepared for analysis via detailed transcriptions and coding with the help of qualitative data analysis programmes. Codes were derived from theory at frst hand, nevertheless allowing for open coding during analysis. The units of analysis were meaningful statements that were analysed according to qualitative content analysis, as described, for example, by Mayring (2008).

Comparative approaches are quite rare in qualitative research in migration studies. Yet, we believe that it is crucial to move beyond the simple dichotomy between large-scale surveys that do not hesitate to undertake cross-country comparisons (with sometimes quite adventurous theoretical presumptions and data bases) and qualitative case studies on single migrant groups in single countries. In this we follow David FitzGerald and his 'comparativist manifesto':

Undertheorized works simply portraying immigrant lives do not explain the causes of migration or its consequences (…). Large-scale censuses and surveys promise to yield more generalizable propositions, yet even if researchers are able to resolve the formidable challenges of the comparability and validity of data collected across different cases (…), large-N studies alone cannot explain the mechanisms of causality or provide an interpretive appreciation of how migrants engage multiple contexts of origin, transit, and destination. This paper argues for building migration theory through feldwork in multiple sites chosen for their theoretical variation. Studies of both assimilation and 'transnationalism' can be improved by case selection strategies that strip away self-imposed national blinders. The logic of multi-sited feldwork has been challenged for making the false assumption that the various sites are isolated units, and that variation in outcomes observed in each site are derived from different causes. (FitzGerald, 2012: 1725f.)

While we follow FitzGerald's plea for doing feldwork – or qualitative data collection – in various 'sites', comparative data *analysis* remains a challenge. Multi-sited research is mostly rooted in anthropology (Marcus, 1995; cf. Boccagni, 2020). It has had an immense infuence, especially on the developments of transnational research. However, it has been mostly conceived as ethnography in various research sites undertaken by single researchers on single ethnic minorities or migrant groups (see Vathi, 2015 for a good example in migration studies). The comparative analyses in this book are taking a different path. They use qualitative interviews backed by quantitative data, also because our objective is partially a different one: Our main analytical focus is on the *structural mechanisms* of social mobility. We expect the trajectories and careers of children from working-class immigrant families to shed light on these issues. Through this we hope to develop relevant knowledge about the particular role and position of these new social climbers in current and future societal changes. So we hope that this research has broadened the scope of what are considered aspects of reality which infuence the educational and occupational careers of children of migrants, and by identifying the social mechanisms in play, has throw light on social mobility more generally. Whereas much research – and much policy – is centred on features of a social context which are of obvious relevance for members of an 'ethnic minority' (from policies on migration to media presentations), the empirical results emerging from our research focuses attention on many other aspects of institutional organization not normally considered to be relevant to the lives of migrants and their descendants, (from the age of transition in an educational system to the rules of access to a profession). In the same way as work in gender studies has long broadened the focus on features of social organization which limit or promote the careers of women well beyond the measures that explicitly exclude or empower them, so work done in the context of integration context theory broadens the feld of features which 'matter' to the lives of migrants and their descendants.

As Charles Ragin (2014) said, 'variable-centred research' tends to pluck social phenomena out of context in order to compare them. In this book, on the contrary, the central task and challenge is to compare not only individual experiences and narratives, but also their connections to and dependency on sector-specifc institutional contexts. The analytical endeavour of this book comprises four levels of comparisons: comparing national contexts, comparing institutional contexts, comparing individual trajectories, and comparing narratives of belonging in their relation to underlying social mobility processes. These aspects stand in a relationship of 'mutual mirroring', in the sense that we learn about the structural mechanisms of access and career development, of inclusion and exclusion in specifc professional felds from the individual trajectories and narratives of belonging; but we can also only understand individual trajectories and narratives by taking into account the structural mechanisms of the respective professions in a cross-country comparative perspective. Even though the entire sample comprises more than 400 biographical accounts in seven countries, we still have to look for the underlying *structural* aspects in *individual* trajectories and 'uncover' them.

The analytical task set out above is quite a complex one, both with regard to practicability – considering the width of the sample – as to thematic focus and adequate forms of presentation. The empirical chapters of this book deal with this in different ways, but with the same objective: to translate the detected differences and commonalities into a 'thick description' (Geertz, 2017 [1973]) which allows a deeper understanding of the underlying processes. In this regard, all chapters apply a mix of individual biographical accounts and different forms of modelling or generalizations, making use of individual examples as 'prototypes' (cf. Borneman, 1992: 47ff.) for what was found in the broader sample. The approaches represent different ways of 'analytical modelling' on the basis of an extremely rich corpus of qualitative research data from several countries.

*Chapter 3* sets the stage by looking in more detail at individual trajectories as producers of senses of belonging and participation, and what makes the 'secondgeneration experience' specifc. In line with the occupational sector approach in this book, it focuses particularly on those parts of the biographies and their corresponding narratives that make connections between self-defnitions and the structural and institutional contexts in which respondents have been developing their professional and social lives. The chapter presents four exemplary cases from four countries – Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany – and with careers in four different professional felds: a banker, a teacher, a journalist, and an independent lawyer. In this regard, they also represent the width and options of constructions of belonging in the professional sectors which are the centre of focus in the chapters that follow.

*Chapter 4* undertakes a detailed description of the pathways enabled or facilitated by the institutional arrangements in two sectors in two countries: business and law in France and Germany. Thus, this chapter also compares in three dimensions: across countries, across occupational sectors, and across the trajectories of individuals in these contextual settings. In contrast to the previous chapter, the main 'characters' in this chapter are not individuals, but institutional contexts.

*Chapter 5* follows a similar strategy for school teachers. Here the focus is on just one sector, while comparing across fve countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. Consequently, the cross-country comparison is the main centre of focus in this chapter, and it relates the qualitative empirical fndings to what is observed as the state of knowledge in the literature. These analytical comparisons of empirical evidence taken from our research projects and the literature focus on three main topics: motivation and choices for becoming a teacher, access to teaching positions in schools, and the experiences and agency of teachers against the backdrop of mainstream images of the role of teachers in the respective educational systems.

*Chapter 6* adopts an inverted approach: it looks at two occupational sectors in just one country: medicine and law in Norway. There are two reasons for this: (a) the Norwegian *Pathways to Success* project started and was completed much later than the other projects of the consortium which made it diffcult to include the Norwegian case in the comparative analyses in Chaps. 3, 4, and 5; (b) the Norwegian project is the only one that focused on medicine as an occupational sector which once again makes it diffcult to directly compare it to any of the other country projects in this regard. However, it is also attractive to include this project in this book, since medical professions rank among the most prestigious and highly-desired occupations for families with upward social mobility ambitions. Chapter 6 not only adds another country and another professional feld, but it also confrms the remarkable similarities across countries and occupations. The analytical comparative fndings are summarized in Chap. 7.

#### **References**


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## **Chapter 3 Setting the Stage: Being Successful and Negotiating New (Mainstream) Identities**

#### **Jens Schneider, Ali Konyali, Ismintha Waldring, and Reinhilde Pulinx**

#### **3.1 Introduction**

Success […]. An origin-alien Late-German does not infrequently react rather stroppily to this ascription – why? He senses that he is almost accused of betrayal: of the culture of the homeland of his parents. He knows about the implications – burned and disfgured is the gifted worker's child; another possibility can and must not be there. – Feridun Zaimoğlu1

I hear it said of somebody that he is leading a double life. I think to myself: Just two? – Leon Wieseltier2

In 2017, in Schorndorf, a mid-size town near Stuttgart in the south of Germany, a huge crowd of young people were getting drunk and having fun at the town's annual

J. Schneider (\*)

A. Konyali

#### R. Pulinx Erasmus-Universiteit Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: pulinx@essb.eur.nl

<sup>1</sup> "Erfolg […]. Ein herkunftsfremder Spätdeutscher reagiert nicht selten unwirsch ob dieser Zuschreibung – wieso? Er ahnt, dass man ihn fast des Verrats beschuldigt: an der Kultur der Heimat seiner Eltern. Er weiß um die Implikation – verätzt und entstellt ist das begabte Arbeiterkind, eine andere Möglichkeit kann und darf es nicht geben." (In: Ezli & Staupe, 2014: 77, translation JS). <sup>2</sup> https://newrepublic.com/article/92857/against-identity

Universität Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany e-mail: jens.schneider@uni-osnabrueck.de

Deutsches Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung (DeZIM), Berlin, Germany e-mail: konyali@dezim-institut.de

I. Waldring Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: i.e.waldring@vu.nl

summer feast. The celebrations were well underway when police forces started to aggressively search the crowd and arrest some of the teenagers, leading to a major riot when the crowd, in defence of their peers, attacked the police. In an initial press statement, the police blamed young refugees for having sexually harassed girls at the feast in the afternoon and justifed their intervention in the partying crowd by saying that it had a 'high share of young men with a migration background', while searching for the perpetrators. Immediately, press and politicians drew parallels with the mass attacks on women in Cologne on New Year's Eve 2016/17. But after more inquiries had been made in the days that followed, a different picture began to emerge: frst, just one girl had said that two young male refugees had made a pass at her that afternoon, but she reported that they had never been aggressive or harassing. Second, the two young men had no connection to the party, which was mainly attended by pupils from the local grammar school who were celebrating their fnal graduation with generous alcohol consumption (in line with a longstanding local tradition). Interestingly, neither the police, journalists nor local politicians took any notice of the fact that the noticeable presence of youngsters 'with a migration background' in the crowd was simply because of the high share of children from immigrant families among the local population in this age group, and thus also among the graduates of the local *Gymnasium*. Nor did any of them draw the conclusion that graduating from *Gymnasium* and participating in the party's drinking culture were not only proof of these youngsters' 'successful integration', but also of their identifcation with local mainstream culture. Similar observations could be made in the aftermath of riots among party people in downtown Frankfurt and Stuttgart in 2020 in reaction to police action and arrests. Neither the police nor politicians and the media questioned whether alcohol consumption is really a valid indicator of 'integration problems', especially among young people with a Muslim family background. It also almost went unnoticed that, considering the fact that in both cities well above half of the local population below the age of 21 has at least one immigrant parent or grandparent,3 it would have been rather surprising if the group of 'foreign-looking' youngsters had *not* represented a signifcant share of the partying crowd.

In the Netherlands, we can also see a continued inability in people *without* a migration background as well as Dutch institutions to view people with a 'migration background' as being equally 'Dutch'. Recently, this has come to the fore in numerous incidents of ethnic profling which has led to systemic inequality and discrimination against people who 'look different'. In 2020, Amnesty International reported on ethnic profling by the Dutch police and how this is linked to their use of 'risk models'. At the beginning of 2021, a large-scale scandal at the national tax offce in which ethnic profling had been used for at least 7 years to unjustly discriminate against citizens with dual nationality led to the demission of the Dutch government, which was forced to acknowledge that the discrimination had been systemic. Yet, in spite of this acknowledgment, another case of explicit ethnic profling was

<sup>3</sup>Local statistics, compiled by the authors.

judicially approved in 2021 after several citizens and civil society organizations initiated court proceedings against the Dutch military police. The court ruled that it was not discriminatory for the military police to select people of colour for stopand-search practices during border controls. In reaction to this decision, the claimants stated that '[r]acial profling is harmful because it contributes to stigmatizing non-white citizens. The Court has now ruled that non-white Dutch citizens may continue to be singled out as potentially "non-Dutch" just because of the colour of their skin.' One of the claimants, a city councillor from Eindhoven born in Congo, had been selected for a check as he returned to the Netherlands on a fight from another European city in part because "he didn't look Dutch". Not only was the court sentence painful for him personally, it also misjudged the fact that as ethnic and racial diversity has been part and parcel of the Netherlands and its population for quite some time, non-white people can be just as 'Dutch' as white people.

It would seem that the *generational dynamics* of immigration are not yet widely understood by the public debate in any European country. Sixty years after the frst Turkish labour migration to Western Europe, mainstream discourses still tend to overemphasize 'foreignness' and 'difference' when referring to the native-born offspring of immigrant or bi-cultural families, oblivious to the fact that they represent between 80% and 90% of young people who statistically fgure as 'persons with a migration background' in most countries and cities in Western and Northern Europe (cf. Schneider, 2018). It could rightfully be questioned whether the concept of 'integration', at least in its common understanding, even applies here at all: to a large extent, the rioting youth mentioned above are not only native-born, but are also the children of native-born parents, i.e. of the second generation of immigrant families to whom this book is dedicated.

It is probable that the anger that fuelled this aggression against the police is partly derived from the fact that many of these third-generation migrants have to deal with 'mainstream institutions' whose ideas about 'migration', 'integration' and 'society' seem to have got stuck somewhere in the 1980s or 1990s, the time when their parents were going to school or starting out on their careers, and had to fght hard to be valued for their talents or achievements rather than judged by their names or physical appearance. The children of the various groups of early 'guest worker' migrants were pioneers as they were the frst to introduce elements of ethno-cultural diversifcation to almost all relevant social institutions – from kindergarten to their professional felds. Since then, other groups and waves of immigrants have arrived and sent their children to school, the total population has become much more diverse, and contacts across ethno-national origins – including the population of non-immigrant background – have become the rule in classrooms, relationships, and many professional felds. Yet, much of the public discourse around migration, integration and diversity in Europe continues to propagate a quite different impression.

#### *3.1.1 Belonging and Identifcation*

Identity formation always involves and "requires some element of choice" (cf. Woodward, 2004: 6) at the individual level. Yet, this choice is limited by how society sees and defnes the similarities and differences between those who are perceived as part of a common 'We' and those who are 'They'. Since these mainstream defnitions basically follow old, established 'racial' and ethno-national categorizations in which 'descent' is an important identifer of national belonging (Schneider, 2001, 2002a), this interaction between the social and personal level in processes of identifcation points to a double bind: whatever migrants and even their children do and achieve, most of them do not become 'invisible', in the sense that they continue to look 'different' and to have 'foreign' names in the eyes of mainstream selfdefnitions. Social participation in and identifcation with the mainstream is thus not a mere matter of choice on their part, but also requires openness and the possibility of access, aspects that imply a responsibility on the part of mainstream society.

Questions of identity and belonging thus always have two sides: (a) How do individuals position themselves in relation to socially relevant categories? And (b) What categories are in use in a given society, how are these flled with social meaning, and what functions do they fulfl in the social structure and the maintenance of specifc power relations? The past decade in particular has seen an unprecedented pervasiveness of right-wing populism all over Europe, and its ingrained overemphasis on 'migration' as a supposed 'threat' to national identity.4 At the same time, in an almost parallel development, the demographic situation has taken the opposite direction: European urban populations have never been as diverse, and there have never been more well-educated and professionally successful members of diverse immigrant and bi-cultural backgrounds. These people are diversifying mainstream society organizations from within and contributing to the normalization of 'having a background'. In general, religious and ethno-cultural diversity are increasingly understood as being an integral part of today's mainstream (cf. Alba & Nee, 2003).

This chapter looks at feelings of belonging and strategies of self-positioning among 'second- generation' people of Turkish descent in top-level professions in Europe, all of them 'pioneers' with regard to their parents, who have very low levels of formal education, but also with regard to their professional felds as they are frequently among the frst persons of immigrant working-class origin to enter these

<sup>4</sup>The former German Minister of Home Affairs Horst Seehofer expressed this almost idealtypically when he declared migration to be 'the mother of all problems' (see e.g. https://rp-online. de/politik/deutschland/horst-seehofer-lehnt-stichtagsregelung-fuer-fluechtlinge-alsfachkraefte-ab\_aid-32736207); similar sentiments and statements are to be found in the political and public discourses of Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, leading to a problematization of both migrants *and* their native-born offspring. For a more recent example, see the ways in which the refugees at the Belarus-EU border are discursively represented as a 'threat to the integrity of the European Union', as if families stranded in the border zone are every bit as dangerous as illegal drugs or weapons.

occupations. What have been the effects of social mobility and professional careers on their identities and their relationship to both their native country, but also to their parents' country of origin? On the other side, what has been the infuence of their access to and presence in these occupations, which fgure among the most infuential professional felds in our societies? This chapter analyses belonging and identifcation with regard to three aspects that are especially characteristic of upwardly socially mobile individuals from immigrant families:


The chapter analyses these three aspects on the basis of the exemplary cases of four respondents from the Pathways to Success/ELITES-projects in Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany. The description of their trajectories is situated in the specifc professional and local/national contexts in which their careers and strategic self-positionings are taking place. By this, the chapter also aims to 'prepare the stage' for the analyses in the subsequent chapters that focus more broadly and specifcally on careers in specifc professional sectors.

#### **3.2 Theoretical Considerations**

Identity is one of the key concepts in scholarly work on the incorporation of immigrants and their offspring into society. In dominant assimilation theories since Milton Gordon (1964), identifcation with the host country has not only been one of the four dimensions of processes of incorporation and acculturation, but even its culmination point. And although assimilation and integration theories have been under critical revision in the past two decades, questioning the oversimplifcations in their schematic models in particular (cf. Crul & Vermeulen, 2003, Schneider & Crul, 2010), identity and feelings of belonging are still quite commonly looked at through an analytical lens based on a linear juxtaposition of 'either-or' or 'fromto' – as expressed, for example, in analyses of 'national vs. ethnic identity' (e.g. Berry, 1997, 2003) or 'ethnic retention vs. assimilation' (e.g. Ersanilli & Koopmans, 2009). Most studies on the relationship between labour market integration and identity measure the effects of success in the workplace on 'levels of acculturation' and feelings of belonging to the 'host society', a concept also applied to the second generation (e.g. Constant & Zimmermann, 2012).

The long-lasting prevalence of this type of static approach to identity and belonging is partly due to methodological constraints in the quantitative measurement of identity aspects. At the same time, this is, to a large extent, also the way in which immigrant integration and adaptation is understood by the dominant social and political discourse in the home countries of most researchers which, in our view, may have supported a certain lack of critical refection on the categorizations that are often used in migration research (cf. Dahinden, 2016). However, other researchers have also put an emphasis on the *ambiguities* and situational context-dependency of expressed feelings of belonging (e.g. Duemmler, 2015; Duemmler & Dahinden, 2016; Schneider, 2010; Wessendorf, 2010, 2014). The concept of 'hybridity', for example, stresses the *simultaneousness* of belonging to and identifcation with different socio-cultural references (Baumann, 1995, 1996; Hall, 2017; Schneider, 2010; Schneider et al., 2012a, b; Schneider & Lang 2014). Native-born children/ grandchildren of immigrants and members of cultural minorities grow up constantly balancing out their sense of belonging to the wider place *of home* (i.e. neighbourhood, school, city, country) and their attachment to the culture(s) *at home* in their families (cf. Schneider et al. 2012a; Schneider & Lang, 2014).

However, the concept of 'hybridity' also raises questions: are children of immigrants, belonging to the second generation, best described as being *in-between* two cultures, or *across* them (cf. Waldring et al., 2018)? How do we defne the 'difference' between two cultures, and what about 'commonalities'? To make things even more complicated: does this involve only *two* cultures, and what about the intersections with other relevant categories of belonging, such as gender, social class, profession, sexual orientation, and life style preferences, and their cultural aspects and relevance *within* 'mega-categories' of belonging, such as *ethnos* and Nation? 'Hybridity' is not a static attribute, but rather the description of an ongoing *process,*<sup>5</sup> which raises further questions: when do hybrid cultural practices lead to the development of a 'new culture' (as any 'culture' is the result of cultural adoptions), whereby they cease to be hybrid – and when do we stop insisting on identifying and separating these different components?

Some of the terms that were developed in research on migration and integration are being examined more critically today than they were a decade or two ago. This applies especially to 'migration background' which has evolved from being a complex statistical item to become a simplistic social category that, at least potentially, perpetuates the projection of older static juxtapositions that have become increasingly inadequate (e.g. the German *Deutsche-Ausländer* or the Dutch *autochtoonallochtoon* dichotomies) well into the future (cf. Mannitz & Schneider, 2014). It overemphasizes the element of 'immigrant origin', especially because (a) it may statistically root in only one grandparent having been born in another nation-state (and for the statistics it does not make any difference, if that grandparent came from Austria to Germany or from Ghana to the Netherlands, but for the social category this difference is crucial!); (b) it does not take into account the actual cultural and/ or identifcational relevance for the individuals concerned. To a certain degree, this also applies to the term 'second generation', because it emphasizes the attribute

<sup>5</sup>See Slootman (2018) for an account of different phases of changing identifcations in the socialization and coming of age of members of the second generation in the Netherlands.

'child of immigrants' of native-born individuals which is refected, for example, in the widely used oxymoron 'second-generation migrants' (cf. Schneider, 2016). At the same time, parental origin, language and everyday culture can be empirically evidenced as an important reference point for identifcation and cultural tastes and preferences among many native-born children of immigrants (e.g. Schneider et al., 2012a, b).

Feelings of belonging are never simply an individual choice, but also depend on their being accepted by the surrounding world and by the group to which such belonging is proclaimed.6 Second-generation individuals may feel most comfortable when they can feel as much 'Turkish', for example, as 'German' or 'Swedish' or 'Dutch'; yet, they also know that exclusive claims of belonging (and identifcation) can be addressed to them at any moment – be it, for example, by the Turkish premier Erdoğan, demanding that they 'resist assimilation', or when politicians argue against dual citizenship on the presumption that people entitled to two passports will have 'divided loyalties'. Families may expect their children to feel loyalty and affection to the parents' home culture and language (and disapprove of marital relationships with persons from other ethno-national backgrounds or religious beliefs), but they also want the same children to achieve professional success in mainstream institutions – which obviously requires certain levels of adaptation and incorporation in these.

Another relevant theoretical question is the wider social and societal effect of an increased participation of persons who seem to disrupt or even jeopardize the accustomed homogeneity among the members of a social organization. This has long been a broadly-discussed issue with regard to women in leadership positions, especially in politics and large corporations, and has expanded in recent years to include other categories of 'difference'. As always when the topic comes down to sharing power and infuence, this is not without confict and debate. El-Mafaalani calls this the 'integration paradox' (2018): if children of immigrants become successful and move out of the 'niches' where their parents made a living, this is likely to produce rising levels of confict because broader sections of the mainstream society, especially in the higher and better paid ranks, begin to 'discover' them as competitors for the same jobs and leading positions, for clients/customers for their products or services, and for houses or apartments.7 Once again, it is the 'guest worker' second

<sup>6</sup> 'Identity' as a term and concept contains an inherent contradiction or ambiguity: it establishes the individual's uniqueness and Self as different from all other individuals, but also its belonging to groups/categories and being 'the same' – which is the literal meaning of the Latin root *idem* – as anyone else in a specifc category. Identity is based on belonging to different groups, and the fact that belonging always requires these two sides is an element that can be found back across the different defnitions of 'identity' in the various social science disciplines that are interested more in the social aspects of identifcation than its individual psychological aspects (see e.g. Devereux, 1978; Tajfel, 2010; Baumann, 1995; cf. Barth, 1969). Unfortunately, like 'culture', 'identity' belongs to those terms that are taken for granted in much social research and used without further differentiation.

<sup>7</sup>See also Oliver (2010) and Steinman (2019) on higher perceptions of discrimination among highly-educated immigrants. In socio-psychological literature, the 'integration paradox' can also

generation that has had the main pioneering role in these processes of – individually – fnding access to these jobs and positions and – socially – taking the frst steps towards making various professional felds more diverse and heterogeneous.

The following parts of this chapter analyse three fundamental mechanisms of identity construction:


#### **3.3 Examples from Four Countries**

In the following, we will present four biographical accounts and narratives that were selected from a total of several hundred individual narratives across the different national samples (see Chap. 2 for details) for their 'prototypical' representation of identifcations, belonging and strategies of self-positioning (Borneman, 1992: 47; Schneider, 2002b).8 They were chosen for representing similarities as much as differences: there are different professions and job statuses – an independent lawyer, a

refer to the measurable effect that highly-educated and professionally successful second-generation individuals decide *not* to identify with their country of birth and become 'disengaged' with their home society (see Verkuyten, 2016 for an overview and empirical evidence from the Netherlands).

<sup>8</sup>With the concept of 'prototypicality' (as opposed to 'representativity') we follow the anthropologist John Borneman who introduced the term to refer to a choice of cases that represent a specifc *range* of meaningful social practices in a specifc historical context rather than a mean or 'typical' position in the feld: "For this study, the individual life is interesting not because of its statistical typicality, but because of its prototypicality for a generation. There are particular individual life constructions that are better examples of the generational category, that is, prototypes, than are others [...]. Two principles informed my selection of individuals for life constructions: (1) to illustrate the range of practices rather than the mean, mode, or ideal-typical practice, and (2) to reveal the historical and cultural specifcity of practices rather than to disclose a set of universal timeless, 'necessary and suffcient' conditions for membership in a category" (Borneman, 1992: 47).

public school teacher, an employed banker, and a person working in the media who is partly employed and partly an entrepreneur; they share a similar age (32–40) and the experience of intergenerational social mobility in relation to parents who came from Turkey with comparatively low levels of education.

The presentation of the cases does not follow an ideal of a fxed format, nor does it always place the same emphasis on the same aspects. It should rather be understood as an 'interpretive narration' and a 'thick description' (Clifford Geertz) that aims to illustrate the different layers of belonging and self-identifcation in different contexts and how they correspond to or 'interrelate' with each other. This also includes the *intersections* between the three aspects of identity mentioned above: being native to the country to which their parents migrated, being a highly-skilled professional, and having gained a middle-class status. Although we do not aim to distance ourselves from the predominant body of quantitative literature on social mobility and 'integration', we do follow the critique of Bertaux and Thompson (1997) that we need a better understanding of the subjective contexts in which social mobility processes occur and how individual trajectories and mobility pathways refect and respond to structural factors.

#### *3.3.1 A Lawyer in Berlin*

Eray Dogruel9 is an independent lawyer in Berlin. At the time of the interview, he was 40 years old and sharing an offce, located near West Berlin's famous central boulevard Kurfürstendamm with other lawyers, all of them of non-immigrant German background. He shares an apartment with his partner – an architect – and her three adolescent children.

Eray Dogruel was born and raised in another large city in Germany to loweducated parents whom he describes as being liberal-minded and emotionally supportive. The family lived in a mixed area with working-class and lower middle-class families, many of whom were also of Turkish origin. His parents were active in a local parents' association which operated an intercultural kindergarten where he met Thomas, who is still his best friend to this day.

Three moments stand out in his educational trajectory: frst, he spent primary education in a so-called 'Turkish class' consisting exclusively of children from families originating in Turkey; second, after obtaining his secondary school diploma from a middle vocational school (*Realschule*), he was accepted for upper secondary education at a *Gymnasium* (academic track). He describes this new school environment as being so elitist and hostile towards him and the handful of other kids from an immigrant and/or working-class family background that, after 1 year and at the initiative of Thomas' parents, he changed to a comprehensive school (*Gesamtschule*) to obtain his university access diploma there. The third distinct moment in his

<sup>9</sup>All respondents' names cited in this chapter are pseudonyms.

educational career came when Eray had nearly completed his Law studies: he decided to take a break and start working full-time as a barkeeper and waiter, a move that took him deep into the excesses of nightlife. After 2 years of this, he returned to his studies and passed his fnals.

Straight away, he decided to leave his home city and follow Thomas to Berlin where he started the usual two-year trainee period for law professions (*Referendariat*). But what was more important for Eray was that moving to Berlin meant that he could fnally start living – as he puts it – the "typical life of students". He moved into a shared student fat and became part of the 'leftish-alternative' milieu that is characteristic of certain areas of Berlin. In these areas, this student milieu in West Berlin generally co-existed with large shares of immigrant populations with Turkish families being the largest group. Despite this, he never got really involved with the local Turkish community in his area.

Eray associated his experiences with stigmatization and stereotyping − both at the *Gymnasium* in upper secondary education and in many subsequent incidents that could be interpreted in an ambiguous manner to say the least − with being of Turkish descent. As he felt completely at home in Berlin's leftish-alternative milieu, he never felt any *need* to resort to his ethnic or family background. He feels German by birth, passport and socialization, but he is also very clear about the fact that he as an individual cannot freely decide as to his identity:

In the end, nobody gives a shit about what you feel yourself; it is the mainstream that decides what you are. So, you simply parrot as what you've been identifed: If they identify me as a Turk, then I am a Turk. And that's how you are socialized. It is socially not accepted when a Turkish-originating person says, 'I am German'.

At the same time, his Turkish background and language skills became of central importance *professionally*: once Eray realized that his fnal grades in Law were not good enough to become a judge, state attorney or corporate lawyer, he had to assess his chances for building up a clientele as an independent lawyer:

The only thing I could do was become a lawyer, and so I started looking for a place in a shared offce. At that time, I lived in Kreuzberg and I thought that I should use my unique selling point in a somehow economically reasonable manner. So, you look for your clients where there is some likelihood that they come to you. […] I mean, you have to be realistic: as a Turkish lawyer you only get Turkish clients. There is no Hans Müller going to pass by and ring my bell. No non-Turk will ever go to a Turkish lawyer.

Eray Dogruel strategically developed his Turkish background and language skills into a 'unique selling point' among the host of independent lawyers in the city. But it was also very fortunate from his point of view that, frst, he found a place in a *mixed* law frm (and not a 'purely Turkish' one), and, second, that at a certain point they decided to relocate to Charlottenburg, a more upmarket and centrally located district of Berlin, because it made it possible to 'blur' the line of separation between his Turkish clientele – which also appreciates having a so-called 'Ku'damm-lawyer'10 as part of their social prestige – and, for example, non-Turkish clients who have business relations with companies in Turkey.

Most respondents in the German sample did not fnd it diffcult to clearly separate the roles they play in their professional and their private lives. However, they would most commonly consider themselves as 'Turkish' in their private lives. If they ever considered themselves as 'German', it was in relation to their work (in the sense of stereotypes surrounding 'work ethos' etc.). By contrast, in Eray Dogruel's case, it is the other way round: he professionally enacts and performs 'the Turkish lawyer', while being 'Turkish' hardly features in his private life. He had to become a 'Turkish lawyer' in order to gain a foothold in his profession, but since then he has worked hard to extend his range of clients. Being part of a mixed law frm has helped a lot in this regard, and, according to Eray, the issue for his partners is never a person's 'background', but their skills and competences in a specifc feld of law. From his point of view, being addressed as a 'Turk' in all kinds of situations outside his offce is particularly annoying.

#### *3.3.2 An Editor in Ghent*

Acun Arslan is editor-in-chief at a broadcasting company in Belgium, but he also edits and publishes books. At the time of the interview, he was 34 years old. Acun was born and grew up in a small village in Flanders which only had a few other immigrant families. Today, he lives and works in Ghent with his partner, who is of non-immigrant Flemish background. At the time of the interview, they were expecting their frst child.

Acun Arslan's father came to Belgium in 1975 to work in the Flemish coal mines and his mother followed 2 years later. For his parents it was important for their children to do well at school and obtain a good job:

I think my parents realized that they belonged to a lower social class and they wanted their children to move up. I think they wanted us to become a lawyer or a doctor. They could not provide us with academic support, but they understood that it was very important to obtain good grades at school. So, they always wanted to know our grades. They always checked our school diary and invested a lot in good communication with our teachers and the school.

Both his parents are low-educated, but his mother in particular constantly underlined the importance of a good education, not least because she would have liked to have gone to secondary education, but instead had had to help out at home and work in the felds. His parents were also convinced that a mixed environment and the neighbourhood with Flemish families would be important and did not want their children to be confned to the Turkish community. According to Arslan, it was a

<sup>10</sup> *'Ku'damm'* is the popular abbreviation of Kurfürstendamm, the above-mentioned main shopping boulevard in former West-Berlin, and used here to refer to an area with many prestigious, upperclass law frms.

combination of personal ambition and the fact that there were only a few children with a migrant background at his schools that made his educational success possible: his perseverance allowed him to ask teachers for the support his parents could not provide, and because teachers had to deal with only a few children like him, they were quite supportive. Arslan also does not remember any particular hostilities or a separation between Muslims and Catholics in the village: "You could say that we were equal."

He went to university and obtained a master degree in Social and Political Science. Three months after graduating, Arslan got his current job at the broadcasting company. When he entered this central mainstream institution 11 years ago, he was one of the very frst people with a visible migrant background and he clearly remembers the initial uneasiness among his 'white Flemish' colleagues:

They tried to be friendly, but did not know how to act when I was there. It took them a few months to realize that I was just one of them.

Next to this job, he started to write novels – and discovered that his work apparently fell in-between established categories on the literature market: as a native-born Fleming he wanted to write about Flemish society, but his Turkish name almost automatically pushed him into the category of 'immigrant literature':

At frst, I tried to get my work published through the existing publishers. But they gave me the advice to not debut with the work I presented. They said it was good material for a second or third book, but not as a debut novel. These reactions confused me, and then I understood: Look at the titles of debut novels written by authors with a migrant background. They all talk about lambs and sheep, family chronicles, returning to their home country. But I write about Western society.

After a while, he gave up on fnding a publisher and decided to start his own publishing house – both for his own books and to explicitly promote authors of immigrant background whose books did not deal with 'typical migrant topics':

I do consider this as a wakeup call. I want them to write about things that are important to them. They have to stop writing these exotic stories that will surely please the Flemish public.

Acun Arslan sees himself, but also people like him in general, more as part of wider Belgian society than of the Turkish community. At the same time, he fnds that both the wider mainstream society *and* the 'Turkish community' tend to overemphasize family origin as the main identifer. This produces interesting contradictions:

Today, my circle of friends remains predominantly white. From time to time, I have friends with a Turkish background, but mostly they are not highly-educated. But the level of education is not important when making or choosing friends, they do have to have the same vision on society. What I mean is that the individual is the starting point. The individual has the right to choose the community he or she wants to belong to, there shouldn't be any pressure from the community towards the individual. Yes, you could consider me as someone living outside the Turkish community – if we believe that there is something like a 'Turkish community'. […] I want to make clear that they [the Turkish youth] live in Belgium. They live here and they are no longer Turkish. They are born and raised here. Of course, everyone has his roots. But just because certain community members ask you to act in a certain manner, that doesn't mean that you have to conform to this. […] You have to break free from your community in order to be able to function in that community later on.

Acun Arslan's social environment today is quite homogeneously highly-educated and predominantly of non-immigrant background. But his experience with trying to fnd a publisher for his novels shows that stereotypes about 'Turks' and other 'immigrants' (or 'ethnic minority' members) are diffcult to avoid. And this also applies to the widely taken-for-granted difference between 'Turkishness' and 'Flemishness' which, for Acun Arslan, does not correspond to either his childhood and youth socialization or to his current social and professional life.

The fnal sentence in the above quote reveals the multiple layers of contradictions that are involved: even if something like a 'Turkish community' could be reasonably defned and addressed, persons belonging to the 'second generation' should free themselves from the *automatism* of submitting to 'Turkishness' (with all its 'baggage' of cultural meanings and political implications). This would allow them to return to it later, but from a different position, that of a self-declared belonging to Belgian or Flemish society in which family roots are *one* among many important aspects. This is also the explanation for his seemingly contradictory commitment towards publishing 'second-generation writers': Flemish publishers expect these writers to write about migration-related topics, but Arslan's publishing house offers them an opportunity to publish on any topic they want.

Acun Arslan had the opportunity to experience mainstream Belgian society as being more inclusive than exclusive: in the village, in school and – after a short period of irritation – also at his workplace. This is in stark contrast to Eray Dogruel, whose school experience included segregated classes and/or being denied equal opportunities on the sole basis of institutionalized stereotypes regarding immigrant children. Eray Dogruel escaped from this mainly by making use of the intercultural social capital that his parents had built up by engaging in an intercultural association. Starting a new life in a new city allowed him to choose an alternative pathway that avoided the clear 'either…or'-ascriptions to which Acun Arslan responds with a strong emphasis on the individual as the only relevant 'unit for categorization' as a strategy to bypass the widespread stigmatization of the 'second generation' as 'immigrants' within Belgian or Flemish society.

Other respondents made other choices, and one option is also to engage more actively in 'being Turkish' or 'being Muslim' as much in one's private as in professional life – for example, by engaging in explicitly 'Turkish' or 'Muslim' academic networks or by acting as the protagonists of generational change in Turkish associations.

#### *3.3.3 A Banker in Stockholm*

At the time of the interview, Esra Topal had been working for a big Swedish bank in the centre of Stockholm for almost 15 years. She was 40 years old, the same age as her husband who is also of Turkish descent and works as an industrial diver. The couple had two young daughters and lived in a mixed suburb of Stockholm which has a lot of working-class families, but also several middle-class professionals who work in the IT sector in the area.

Esra Topal was born and raised in the Swedish capital. Although she feels strongly connected to the city, this feeling is not as strong towards Sweden in general:

I mean in Sweden I would defnitely not move to another place than Stockholm. Because, I don't know, I wouldn't. I could not feel at home at any other place, I think.

Her father came to Sweden in 1963 and her mother followed 7 years later. Both had only completed primary education and had spent their working life in Sweden doing low-skilled factory jobs. Esra vividly recalls how much her parents wanted her to study and how this led to conficts because all she wanted was to become a professional basketball player in Turkey. It was her Turkish language teacher from primary school, who later also became her frst basketball coach, whom she identifes as being the most important key person at that time:

He changed my perspective. Like: 'nothing is impossible'. I mean, for example, when playing, we were often smaller than the players in the other teams, but we would still win. This shows how it all depends on us.

Straight after fnishing secondary school, Esra moved to Turkey in order to start her professional sports career. But shortly after her arrival, an injury put paid to her dreams of becoming a professional basketball player. She returned to Sweden and started working as a shop assistant, followed by other jobs in a call-centre, a tourist offce, and fnally in a travel agency where she stayed for about 5 years. She then saw an advertisement for her current position in the bank in the newspaper and was so determined to at least have a shot at it that "I called them a hundred times – until they said 'okay, okay we promise, we will contact you for a job interview'." She did not really expect to get the job as she did not have a higher education degree, but a friend she knew had obtained a job in another bank under similar conditions. Esra was hired and the skills she had obtained from her previous working experience allowed her to move from fund administration through diversity management into her current position as a project manager. She is not yet in a leading position, but she was selected by her superiors to take part in an internal leadership training program. For many years, her parents were not happy about her professional life and, to her great regret, her father passed away before she got the job in the bank and could have shown him how successful she had become despite everything.

Although Esra's professional environment is almost exclusively 'white', she has never felt that her Turkish name or background are a problem or disadvantage. On the contrary, she even sees the 'explicitness' of her background as an asset, because "no one here is like me" (cf. Konyali, 2014) and there is currently a general trend in the corporate sector to promote more diversity, also in leadership positions. She has even experienced demand for her specifc language skills and cultural familiarity:

My supervisor had scheduled a meeting with the board of directors [of a professional association], but he could not go there, so instead I went [...]. Now, of course, they also knew that I'm Turkish and they immediately approached me saying that 'on the 16th of June, some people from Turkey will come. Esra, wouldn't you like to join in?' 'Of course', I said, 'I will join in!'

Yet, at the same time, she also admits that there is discrimination at her place of work, although interestingly mainly in the sense that "difference is something like a non-issue", meaning that, although difference can play a negative role in organizations, it is avoided as a topic to talk about and refect upon. This is the typical problem of ambiguity: difference can be an asset when Esra *and* the bank see a possibility to capitalize on her specifc language skills or the – mostly symbolic – representation of diversity in the organization. But, when having a 'background' is not an asset, being perceived as 'different' or even as 'Other' can be a problem of exclusion or a 'glass ceiling' in the regular course of a career. In this regard, Esra Topal gains her self-confdence and pride from her 'self-made career' and the fact that after her dream of becoming a professional basketball player was shattered, she had to work her way up through different jobs and professions and make it into the bank without having educational credentials and social capital. It also motivates her to actively pursue her professional career – be it within the bank or, if that should prove to be diffcult, by starting a small frm on her own.

Despite her attempt to make a career in Turkey and her underlining of her 'Turkishness' in her professional profle, Esra is rather reluctant to consider herself as part of the 'Turkish community'. She participated in some associations in the past, but withdrew as soon as things started to get "too exclusively Turkish" for her taste. Similar to the case of Eray Dogruel, 'being Turkish' is something that Esra Topal 'cannot avoid' in her professional life, so actively making it part of her 'professional Self' (or her 'unique selling-point' in the bank) means keeping agency in her own hands and not waiting to be 'pushed into it' by someone else's remarks or reactions. Even her move to Turkey after school was prompted by a pragmatic decision to try out a specifc career option and proft from her language skills and family networks, rather than any particular feeling of connectedness or identifcation with her parents' home country.

#### *3.3.4 A Teacher in Rotterdam*

Azize Kaya lives in Rotterdam. At the time of the interview, she was 32 years old and working as a teacher at a secondary school in Leiden, a university town not far from Rotterdam. Her husband is also of Turkish descent and works as a baggage handler at Schiphol Airport. They have an infant son.

Similar to Esra Topal, it was primarily Azize's mother who strongly encouraged Azize and her sisters to attain a good level of education. She had always regretted not having had the opportunity to go to school for more than a few years as this had made her dependent on her husband who would not allow her to work or enjoy an independent social life. Azize's mother wanted her daughters to be independent, which meant fnding a good job and making their own money. This is why, even as

a young girl, Azize was determined to succeed at school and become a professional.

After fnishing secondary school, she at frst wanted to study Psychology, but her school-leaving certifcate did not allow her direct access to university. Instead, she chose to do a BA in Social Welfare which, after 1 year, would allow her to change to Psychology. However, during her frst year, while doing an internship in a primary school, Azize discovered that she liked teaching and seemingly also had a talent for it:

In one of these internships, I was assisting IT lessons for 5th and 6th graders. And, well, this guy was giving these classes and I thought: 'I can do that a lot better', because the kids weren't paying attention and he was using very diffcult words and therefore the kids couldn't keep their attention. And these kids were just sitting there with an attitude like: 'Yeah, I'm here because my mom sent me here'. You know, that's what they were transmitting. And I just realized that I could do a lot better, and it was like I was taking over these classes, which made me think: 'Why shouldn't I become a teacher?'

So, instead of studying Psychology she decided to go to Teacher Training College, where she chose English as her main subject. But she also wanted to study something that would provide her with good opportunities in case she would "return to Turkey" someday. It seems noteworthy that she had considered this option, as in the interview she did not appear to be very involved with any Turkish people besides her own family. Her closer friends are from a range of diverse ethnic-minority backgrounds and share a common profession: they are all teachers. Azize does not participate in any activities or organizations with special links to Turkey or the Turkish community. While she was studying to become a teacher, she participated in a Turkish-run mentoring organization, but this was motivated by the teaching aspect, not the organization's ethnic background:

I kind of ended up there, because there were some fellow students in the Teacher College who were active there, and they said: 'we need some more people'. Yeah, well, I went to take a look and I took the job, and it was fun, so I did that for a while.

Azize Kaya got her frst job as a teacher while she was still studying. She has therefore never experienced unemployment or the usual uncertainties of recent graduates. At the same time, the fact that she was already working as a teacher before graduation also meant that the fnal examination phase at Teacher Training College was quite stressful, and she had to rely on support from her colleagues and the school management. The fact that they kept pushing her to fnish her studies enforced her sense of belonging and loyalty to the school where, at the time of the interview, she had been working for approximately 10 years.

Her sense of belonging and feeling very much at home there, despite the fact that there are very few other colleagues with a migrant or ethnic minority-background and that the school environment itself is rather middle-class, also goes back to an incident some years ago. When standing in for another teacher, the pupils of this particular class explicitly rejected and challenged her because of her background. This attitude was even supported by some of their parents. During this diffcult time, the principal stood frmly on her side, suggesting that the parents either had to conform and accept her as the teacher or they would have to change to another school.

On the other hand, it also flls her with satisfaction that she is regarded as a role model especially by the few girls at her school from different ethnic minority backgrounds:

(There are) ethnic minority kids here who realize: 'Wow, you can be a teacher here!', because there's an ethnic minority teacher in their classroom. […] I don't work in Rotterdam, and the school in which I work is not a 'black' school. Looking around the classroom, ethnic minority kids are a numerical minority and I do notice a 'click' with them, especially with the girls with a Turkish, Moroccan or Afghan background. They want to connect with me after class to tell their stories or to ask questions.

In contrast to her school and work, Azize Kaya does not feel fully comfortable in the city of Leiden where her school is located. Leiden is far less ethnically mixed than her hometown, Rotterdam, and for her the incident in the substitute class refected an attitude that she continues to encounter in negative remarks when, for example, shopping in the city centre:

When I do grocery shopping in Rotterdam, the vendor is often from an ethnic minoritybackground, so if that person is being unfriendly… well, actually I haven't experienced that yet. […] [By contrast, the vendors in Leiden] will be very snappy, for instance, by making a remark that I'm supposed to pay for the groceries. Then I think to myself: 'Of course, I have to pay for the groceries. That's only logical!' I don't know why they would make such a remark, and I try not to dwell on it. I forget these things really quickly, but they do make me feel that I don't want to be in Leiden, I'm happy to be here [in Rotterdam].

Azize Kaya's sense of belonging is not linked to her specifc 'ethnic' or migrant background, not even to 'Turkishness' in a broader cultural sense, but to ethnocultural diversity in general and the respect and acceptance of cultural difference as such – which also produces the immediate sense of solidarity with the minority pupils at her school. Her circle of friends is diverse, and so is the neighbourhood where she feels most at home and experiences a strong sense of community. When relatives, friends and neighbours ask her to help their children with homework, she considers this a normal and natural thing to do, given the fact that she is a teacher and likes helping people out. For her, being successful and having fulflled the dream and ambition that her mother expressed for her daughters does not translate into an ambition to become part of a mainstream 'Dutch' middle-class that, in her experience and perspective, "is not ready yet" to accept someone like her as "just one of them".

Azize Kaya's situation differs from the other cases, especially as in order to be successful in her profession, she never needed a 'unique selling-point' connected to her background or linguistic competences. She obtained her current position neither *because of* nor *despite* her family background, and it is thus also not a central part of her self-image as a teacher. The single negative experience of being rejected by pupils and parents in one particular class was more than counterbalanced by the fact that the school principal unconditionally backed her in front of the pupils and parents. Yet, the rising numbers of pupils of immigrant origin in her school is slowly changing the self-perception of her background and its potential for her profession: the regular experience of being seen as a role model for girls of diverse 'ethnic' backgrounds is not only gratifying, but also an indication that, at least for an increasing number of her pupils, her background *is*, in fact, relevant – and in this sense a 'unique selling-point' among her colleagues. This experience might make her become a 'pioneer' of more diversity in the teaching staff of her school.

As regards her sense of belonging, the professional environment nevertheless plays an ambiguous role, because of the fact that the area in which the school is located is dominated by middle-class families of non-immigrant background, many of which seem to have rather negative opinions about immigrants and their nativeborn children. This makes it diffcult for her to identify with her school as part of a local community. In her neighbourhood in her hometown Rotterdam, this feels completely different. Similar to Eray Dogruel in Berlin, she has found a social milieu as 'home base' in which backgrounds like hers are not only not a problem, but rather the norm and the basis for a collective sense of local belonging that cuts across ethnic and other types of boundaries.

#### **3.4 Navigating Challenges**

#### *3.4.1 Being Second Generation*

As stated above, this chapter analyses the effects of social mobility processes on the three different aspects of identifcation listed above: the ambition to be a good professional, having become middle-class by education and income, and being born into an immigrant family. What role do these aspects play in the individual 'identity fabric'? How are these aspects balanced out against each other in light of a social discourse that generally imposes constraints on the free choice of options in this regard (cf. Woodward, 2004)?

Being the child of parents who left their home to move to another country is a special condition and starting-point for making your way through the educational system and into a socially recognized position in society – even if you are nativeborn or arrived at a very early age. In general, their parents' decision to migrate merits respect because it required bravery and endurance, a sentiment that was very frequently expressed by our respondents. Moreover, by far most of our educationally successful respondents perceived their parents as supportive, motivating and believing in the capabilities and success of their children (Rezai, 2017), despite the fact that they often could not support them academically (e.g. with homework). All this has produced a deep sense of loyalty towards their parents, their family and, at least to a certain degree, to the geographical and cultural origins of their parents. On the other hand, managing their school careers for themselves has made our respondents independent and self-reliant from quite an early age – an important ingredient for their later success.

As regards questions of identity, *being second generation* – we believe that the term is sensible and appropriate in this context – means constantly balancing parental wishes for professional success, and loyalty to one's family and cultural upbringing on the one hand with one's personal sense of belonging and home as a consequence of local socialization and professional success on the other hand. Becoming successful is very frequently the fulflment of the parents' 'migration project' and their dreams and hopes for their children – but it can be accompanied by fears that their children will become estranged from their family and origin. For the children, these parental expectations may feel like a 'burden' (cf. Konyali, 2014), and balancing this out can feel like navigating 'two worlds', an image quite frequently used by our respondents (cf. Schneider & Lang, 2014; Waldring et al., 2018). In general, our respondents did not seem to fnd it a too complicated task as they have been doing this from early childhood, developing tools for constantly switching and translating between different cultural and social realities of which languages are only the most manifest differences.

But 'second generation' in this context also means being forced to position oneself in relation to the two *ethno-national labels* that are represented by one's parents' country of origin and one's own country of birth. The problem is not that these individuals fnd it diffcult to belong to two 'cultural worlds' at the same time, but that these labels are generally (a) considered to be mutually exclusive, and (b) associated with many cultural stereotypes. The case descriptions above demonstrate strong and unquestioned identifcation with the societies in which our respondents grew up, particularly with regard to the local level (Konyali & Keskiner, 2018; Schneider et al., 2012b). They also demonstrate different strategies for positioning themselves in relation to diverse kinds of socio-cultural expectations – e.g. 'at home' and 'at work' (and in the corresponding social contexts). In fact, there are many indications in our empirical material that *social* background and identity are of similar importance as the family's 'ethno-national origin'.

#### *3.4.2 Being Middle-Class*

Therefore, *having become middle-class* is a second important key to understanding the challenges facing successful and socially upwardly mobile children of immigrants – and which they share to a large extent with their upwardly mobile peers from working-class families of *non*-immigrant background. For both groups, 'middle-class' is, in the frst place, a function to their level of education, income and professional activity. Their income offers them a much broader range of socioeconomic possibilities than their parents had, especially in relation to housing and choice of neighbourhood. Since the familial and social origins (and their childhood memories) link them to the working-class, there are two inherent contradictions to solve: (a) how to maintain bonds with people and neighbourhoods to which their current professional everyday life offers hardly any connection and in which their acquired cultural and social capital is 'out of place'; (b) how to fnd a place and feel

at home in social environments that are not only new to them, but which also, almost by defnition, have not been particularly open to socio-cultural diversity so far.

Many of our respondents were 'pioneers' of ethnic and cultural diversifcation not only in their professional felds, but also in their middle-class neighbourhoods. An above-average income allows choices, but also produces a 'choice dilemma': they can, for example, opt for an owner-occupied single family house with a back garden, but in many cases this means living in a widely 'white' neighbourhood that might not be a very welcoming environment (Lang & Schneider, 2017). Some respondents therefore set their priorities differently: Azize Kaya decided to stay in the diverse working and lower middle-class neighbourhood where she had grown up, while Eray Dogruel opted for a highly diverse, but also widely gentrifed 'alternative left-wing' inner-city neighbourhood where people do not seem to care too much about ethno-national backgrounds and self-defnitions. Other respondents, however, decided differently and gave priority to the typical symbols of middleclass life by buying a single-family house in the suburbs. Social contacts between the neighbours might generally not be as intensive as in inner city areas, but our respondents reported subtle to openly hostile reactions to them by their 'white' environment. For these respondents, intensive family and/or 'ethno-cultural' or religious networks sometimes compensate for the lack of social connections in their middle-class suburbs (see also Mayorga-Gallo, 2014).

#### *3.4.3 Being a Good Professional*

This makes the third aspect – *professional identity* – an even more important 'cornerstone' in our respondents' fabric of belonging. Of course, professional environments are generally by no means spaces without 'Othering', or even discriminatory practices which can range from stereotyping remarks from colleagues to one's professionalism or qualifcations being questioned on the basis of one's migrant, 'ethnic' or religious background. Typical examples include casting doubts upon the suitability of a lawyer in a corporate law frm to take care of a particular case or the 'impartiality' of a teacher when dealing with immigrant parents (Waldring et al., 2015). Respondents also reported 'glass-ceiling effects' in their career prospects and blamed stereotypes or racist discrimination based on their background, physical appearance or names for this. Yet, at the same time, in the professional felds in which we sampled our respondents in the four countries, professional performance seemed to be by and large more important for professional recognition than one's 'background', religion or family origin (Waldring et al., 2014).

This picture may be somewhat idealized, because our sampling looked for those who had *succeeded* in making it into professional positions and not for those who were never granted this access or who dropped out because the working environment was too hostile. But, according to our respondents, a good professional performance can provide high levels of recognition which is also backed by a central meritocratic argument: it is not pleasant when colleagues or clients make a fuss about them being 'Turks' or 'Muslims', but reason and right rest with those who demand to be measured by their professional performance and not their 'background' (Konyali & Crul, 2017).

This is not to say that the specifc cultural capital connected to family origin is not relevant. As shown above, language skills, cultural knowledge and/or social relations connected to family background can play a role, and respondents actually make use of them as a potential 'unique selling point' on the job market, especially, when setting up their own businesses (Konyali, 2014). As Konyali and Crul (2017: 63) concluded:

…the value of ethnicity as an individual resource across professional contexts is dependent on the organizational importance that is attached to individual difference. (…) Being successful in balancing making use of ethnic capital on the one hand and avoiding being stigmatized or pigeonholed on the other hand is an important refexive quality our respondents needed to develop to be able to position themselves successfully as professionals in their sectors.

It makes a major difference whether your background can serve as an 'extra' that helps to advance your career, or if it becomes the reason for being confned to some sort of 'ethnic niche'. At the same time, the cases above (and other chapters in this volume) also show that it helps to see this as a *strategic process that develops over time*: Eray Dogruel felt that he did not have much choice but to begin his professional life as a 'Turkish lawyer', but this was no more than a stepping-stone towards becoming a lawyer for Berlin's new diverse business world; Esra Topal had never put any particular emphasis on her Turkish background, but was happy to make use of it when it offered her the opportunity to boost her career at the bank she had been working for; Acun Arslan clearly separates the two felds of his professional activities: his 'migrant background' is not supposed to be of any relevance to his job at a Belgian broadcasting company, but it was the starting point for setting up a publishing house for 'second-generation literature'; Azize Kaya became a teacher, because she liked teaching and was good at it − she was also not recruited because of her 'migrant background' or Turkish language skills. Yet, as her middle-class school became increasingly diverse, she slowly grew into becoming a role model for girls from immigrant families, and this had an effect on how she perceives herself and the role her background plays in her profession. This strategy works because it reverses the argument of exclusion and provides a good argument for demanding recognition on the basis of professional performance, not personal attributes – even when, in practice, this offers no protection against stereotyping and Othering.

Finally, bringing aspects of the 'ethnic' background into one's professional activities also offers the possibility to reconcile the two characteristic aspects of a 'second-generation experience' mentioned above: feeling 'at home' in the mainstream while remaining loyal to one's family origins. A teacher of Turkish background does not make a special connection to pupils and families of Turkish background because she feels 'Turkish' – which is simply not relevant here –, but because it *makes sense* and flls a gap within the teaching staff at her school. The 'Turkish lawyer' has predominantly Turkish clients, because it was the most effcient strategy for starting his business, but not because it gives him a special sense of socio-cultural belonging. The publisher specialized in 'second-generation literature' because he wanted to give authors the opportunity to *escape* the confnes of the expectations related to their 'background' and the concept of 'migrant literature', a contradiction that is due to the context, not to identifcations.

#### *3.4.4 Similarities in Professional Fields Across Countries*

The analysis of the three categories of belonging reveals quite a degree of complexity and differences across the four presented examples. At the same time, there is a high level of *consonance* across the cases and contexts when considering two aspects. The frst aspect is the low relevance of country-differences, which is particularly striking when we consider the frequently demonstrated large differences across countries, especially in educational systems and the ways in which the transition to the labour market is organized (Crul et al. 2012b; Crul & Schneider, 2010). We presume that this is partly due to the fact that differences in education have the most impact in secondary education, while higher education brings a lot of convergence again. This is certainly true for the legal profession and its social prestige, despite broad differences between judicial systems. This also applies to other sectors, albeit probably to a lesser degree: becoming a teacher or a banker may require different formal qualifcations and institutional trajectories in different countries, but the jobs themselves, their social prestige, 'corporate cultures' and career development within them show quite similar characteristics across European countries.

At the same time, the 'second-generation experience' is, in principle, also very similar: the starting position in immigrant families from Turkey, in which parents overwhelmingly had very low educational capital, but relatively stable industrial jobs and similar ambitions. The latter is described as an important positive factor for successful educational and professional trajectories in all the national Pathways projects.11 The numbers of second-generation individuals who succeeded in secondary education are very different when comparing Sweden and Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany (see Crul et al., 2012a), but the challenges of (and obstacles to) fnding one's pathway into professional positions and the following steps nevertheless seem to have been quite similar.

<sup>11</sup> In this regard, it is particularly interesting how frequently mothers in particular were reported to have transferred their own frustrated educational dreams to their daughters.

#### *3.4.5 The Pragmatic Dimensions of Self-Defnitions*

The second aspect of consonance across countries in the overall sample refers to ways of 'negotiating' the two big 'ethno-national' categories of identifcation that are constantly being forced on immigrant children in terms of mutual exclusiveness: being 'Turkish' and being 'Belgian', 'Dutch', 'German' or 'Swedish'. As described above, research on immigrant children's identities has tended to juxtapose these two categories and presuppose some sort of linear opposition between 'ethnic' and 'national' identifcation which, at least in theory, offers two extreme options: (a) pursuing 'total assimilation' into the non-immigrant 'white' part of society, combined with a denial of (the relevance of) their 'ethnic' background; (b) declaring exclusive belonging to the 'ethnic community' and maintaining social and professional relations only within this community.

While these two options may appear coherent and probably even 'attractive' because they seem to show fewer incoherencies, very few respondents in the overall sample adhered to them. On the contrary, 'hybrid' identifcations that are neither 'coherent' nor univocal are a much better refection of what is characteristic of the 'second- generation experience' in all four countries mentioned in the case studies above. Less exclusively defned identifcations offer more 'liquid' options (cf. Bauman, 2000; Spyrou, 2019) for self-positionings that can be adapted to a wide range of situations and contexts. In this way, 'being Turkish' may be an obvious self-ascription while *simultaneously* being of practically no everyday signifcance.

The portraits above illustrate that there needs to be no direct correlation between social practice and identities: Esra Topal wanted to play basketball in Turkey without ever really having felt the need to be part of 'the Turkish community' in Sweden. Acun Arslan denies the relevance of his family background as a category of wider relevance, but he publishes books written by second-generation authors (not restricted to those of Turkish background) to let them express their individual voice. Being contradictory and leaving things open or undefned could be interpreted as a sort of 'discursive clumsiness', but it can also be seen as a particularly creative way of widening the space for situation- and context-specifc self-defnitions. Eray Dogruel sharply analyses (and somewhat suffers from) the fact that his actual possibilities for *self*-defning his identity reveals a depressing lack of options (Woodward, 2004), but he has created a private and professional environment for himself that makes this almost irrelevant in his everyday work and private life. In Azize Kaya's case it is the combination of a protective working environment and the 'comfort' of a diverse local community that provides suffcient ground for unambiguously feeling 'at home'.

This is also relevant in the negotiations around professional identities. By far most of the respondents in the Pathways projects in the different countries are successful in 'non-ethnic' mainstream institutions or organizations. Yet, local and national contextual factors can make a difference here – to mention just two examples: becoming a 'Turkish lawyer' is only an option if there is a suffciently large community to provide clients – which is certainly the case in most German cities

and even smaller towns, but not necessarily all over Norway; teachers in the Netherlands can actually opt to work for a 'Turkish' or 'Muslim School', while this option is much more limited for teachers in Germany and Sweden. Yet, at the same time, the 'Turkish lawyer' in Berlin can only perform his tasks effciently, if he is, above all, a *good lawyer* who wins court cases or successfully facilitates deals between Turkish and non-Turkish business partners; teachers at Dutch 'Muslim Schools' still have to teach the national curriculum, and they do this so that their pupils can become successful in mainstream Dutch society, not within some 'ethnic niche'.

However, there is an interesting tension here: on the one hand, and as mentioned above, the respondents' background and 'cultural intimacy' (Michael Herzfeld) with language and communication can serve as a special additional qualifcation to cater for a specifc clientele – as a lawyer for clients of Turkish background, as a teacher who knows the pupils' home language, as a publisher for second-generation literature and so on. On the other hand, this only works because their clientele is also part of the mainstream society, e.g. as pupils in mainstream schools, as entrepreneurs on the domestic market, or as authors within a national or regional literary context. And they themselves also acquired their formal and specifc qualifcations as *mainstream* professionals: they went to regular schools and regular higher education institutions, and made their transition into their professions via mainstream pathways.12

The general political and media discourse in all European countries presupposes a mutual incompatibility between the two major 'ethno-national' labels that – especially – second-generation individuals are connected to.13 A very common strategy among our respondents to deal with this presumed 'incompatibility' was to distinguish between a 'private Turkish' and a public or professional 'national' Self. We interpret this as a way to reconcile both aspects and to more easily allow the claim of being the sole author of one's self-defnitions.

#### *3.4.6 Intersections*

Obviously, the question of belonging and place is not limited to 'ethnic' and/or 'national' identities. Since all our respondents are 'social climbers', there are issues that are more a question of social than cultural background. As Sennett and Cobb (1977) described, 'social climbers' never remain unaffected by the fact that their social mobility is almost automatically accompanied by changes of habitus in the Bourdieu'an sense (1984). Their predominantly middle-class working

<sup>12</sup>This also applies to those rather few respondents who studied specializations connected to their 'ethno-cultural' background, such as the Turkish language or Islamic Theology in the case of teacher students.

<sup>13</sup> It should be kept in mind that frst-generation immigrants also generally develop a dual sense of belonging over time, if they stay for decades and have family relations in both countries.

environments and fnancial possibilities exert an infuence on their cultural preferences and social networks. At the same time, living a typical middle-class life and life-style is the visible fulflment of the dream of success that in many cases had inspired their parents' migration decision and their own educational ambitions. This leads to a number of 'bridging' strategies and efforts directed in particular towards their parents and other family members (cf. Schneider & Lang, 2014), which may include a preference for staying in their local home communities or, at least, preferring mixed neighbourhoods over predominantly 'white' ones (Lang & Schneider, 2017) – which is actually contrary to what substantial parts of the urban and migration literature had expected for a long time (cf. Tran et al., 2012). Several 'secondgeneration social climbers' whom we interviewed, as the example of Azize Kaya above illustrates, also engage in activities that 'serve' the community or 'pay back' for their own 'privilege' of having made it (cf. Rezai et al., 2015).

A rather surprising absence in the portraits and the analysis above is *religion*. There is empirical evidence for a correlation between religious feelings in the second generation of Turkish origin and school segregation, social exclusion, and a lack of career opportunities (Çelik, 2015; Crul et al., 2013; Phalet et al., 2012). Yet, the exact mechanisms behind this correlation are not clear: does religiosity have a hampering effect on educational ambitions which makes the successful less likely to be religious? Or is it the other way around: people with fewer educational opportunities and professional career perspectives in society are more likely to seek comfort in religious belief and practices, or to continue family traditions in this regard? There are, of course, also numerous religious persons who become successful and there are successful individuals who are actively engaged in the leadership of religious associations also in the group of respondents of Turkish origin in the Pathways projects in the different countries. Moreover, the described statistical correlation is not equally expressive in all countries, as the underlying issue is regularly not a binary opposition between religious and not religious, but rather between different degrees of religiosity. At the same time, 'visible religiosity' in particular may infuence possibilities for entering specifc professional felds and career development within them: women who wear headscarves, for example, will still fnd it harder to fnd a teaching position in a secular state school or to be accepted into a corporate law frm with a rigid dress code, than they would if their religious beliefs were only made visible by an avoidance of alcohol and ham sandwiches (see also Lettinga & Saharso, 2014). Probably because of this diversity of reasons, religion was not a major issue in the interviews in all four countries – although contacting religious associations had been part of the sampling strategy in several countries: in Germany, for example, a network of Muslim academics of mostly Turkish background helped us to fnd and contact potential interviewees, and some respondents, especially in the Netherlands, had connections to the so-called 'Gülen-movement' which is particularly engaged in the felds of education, business and interreligious dialogue.

Another intersectional category of interest is *gender*. Once again, we can see a discrepancy here: on the one hand, there are mainstream expectations that it is more diffcult for girls to free themselves from family pressure to marry and become mothers rather than pursuing a long educational pathway in order to gain access to a high-profle professional career. On the other hand, for quite some years, girls have been overrepresented in educational tracks that result in better qualifcations and they also obtain better grades than their male peers (Crul & Schneider, 2009). It is certainly true that in conservative and traditionalist families, young women are under more pressure than men of the same age to stay close to the family and fulfl social expectations regarding gender roles. This forces them to be even more inventive and creative in developing strategies of bridging and compromise, such as studying at a university near their home town and living with their parents until graduation; marrying early, but postponing pregnancy; choosing a partner from the community, but with similar ambitions and viewpoints about professional ambitions – to mention just a few examples. We can also observe that the higher-educated daughters in our samples were often the younger siblings, profting not only from elder sisters and brothers who had followed a more traditional pathway, but also from their help with school matters and sometimes even fnancial support during their studies. Finally, as mentioned above, we can also observe a special relationship between a number of our successful female respondents and their mothers who unconditionally support their daughters' careers, because that was their dream when they were young – a dream that was either forbidden to them or beyond their fnancial means.

#### **3.5 Conclusions**

Context and situational factors play a central role in identity constructions because, as observed above, defnitions of belonging depend as much on external ascriptions as on self-defnitions and how their 'legitimacy' is perceived in social interaction. This is what makes Othering so daunting for those affected by it: it represents not only a moment of exclusion, but also a demonstration of powerlessness with regard to one's very self-defnitions. These moments can moreover potentially occur at almost any time and place, thus also in places and situations which belong to the 'core parts' of a person's social life – such as school, the neighbourhood and the workplace.

Some of our respondents were fortunate enough to grow up in a village or neighbourhood and attend schools in which their 'ethnic background' was not entirely irrelevant, but was also not seen as an issue or problem. Some of them have been lucky enough to fnd a workplace where their 'background' is either not relevant or, if an issue was ever made of it, management and/or colleagues provided explicit backing and solidarity – as in the case of Azize Kaya. Heavy and traumatic experiences of discrimination are clearly exceptional in the wider sample across countries, but this may indicate two different things: it could mean that such experiences are indeed rather exceptional, but it could also be an effect of 'sampling on the dependent variable', in the sense that it is diffcult to achieve success if the institutional and psychological hurdles erected by social discrimination are insurmountable. What we can say on the basis of the sample is that, however positive or unburdened our respondents' biographical experiences have been, their 'background' is never *not* an issue – the main question is whether they manage to 'keep the agency' with them and make it an asset rather than a disadvantage.

Another element of convergence across the different national contexts and idiosyncrasies in Europe is that mainstream discourses are still basically centred around the juxtaposition of 'natives' vs. 'migrants'. This juxtaposition fundamentally entails an underlying 'habitus of monoculturalism'14 that entails a deep scepticism towards hybrid forms of cultural expressions and 'interculture' (Terkessidis, 2010). This position sees the infuences of several cultures and languages as a 'zero-sum game' which converts bilingual or even multi-lingual backgrounds into a problem rather than a precondition for effective communication in increasingly diverse societies (cf. Schneider, 2001; Crul et al., 2013). The juxtaposition only works on the basis of an *ethnic* defnition of national belonging, i.e. putting *descent* as the prime principle for defning a person's belonging to the Nation and making use of visible (and culturally stereotyped) criteria – especially names, 'race' and (religious) dress codes. The main problem of these defnitions of *Self and Other* in the 'imagination of national community' (Anderson, 2006) is the denial of a dynamic of demographic, cultural and political change. It is this denial that ensures that labels such as 'migration background' have an exclusionary effect on the *majority* of urban youth in the vast majority of larger Western European cities even today. Secondgeneration professionals may fully identify with the society they were born into, they may speak the national and local language just like anyone else, and they may fully subscribe to everyday youth, leisure or corporate culture – but it will never be enough to guarantee full belonging and institutional protection against racism and discrimination.15

The common thread in the four portraits above is that they represent a range of individual strategies (cf. Waldring et al., 2018) for navigating the very similar challenges of 'potential Othering' and claiming a place and environment where they can belong and feel at home. Most of them experience this as largely unproblematic in their everyday lives, not least because they have learned to deal with this from an early age onwards. Yet, this empirical experience does not have a 'language': there are no well-established discursive conventions that would adequately express the simultaneousness and/or hybridity of actual feelings of belonging in the second or even third generation.16

<sup>14</sup>We borrow this slightly amended expression from Ingrid Gogolin's pioneering study on the "monolingual habitus" of German schools (Gogolin, 2008).

<sup>15</sup>Today, this discourse about the "immigrant threat" (Lucassen, 2005; cf. Chavez, 2013) even extends to immigration countries such as the USA, Australia or Brazil which used to have a much more pragmatic and 'relaxed' attitude towards immigration and the demographic normality of 'hyphenated identities' (Çağlar, 1997). The corresponding rhetoric basically follows the ethnonationalist model of right-wing populism in Europe (see also Hirsch, 2018 for the British case).

<sup>16</sup>Cf. Waldring et al., 2014; it is important to note that much of this also applies to the quite stereotypical representations of 'Turkishness'. Respondents make use of the label 'Turkish', but this label offers practically no room for hybrid or hyphenated defnitions. Therefore, there is very frequently an emphasis on the heterogeneity within the population of origin in Turkey and a distanc-

Some respondents therefore engage in narratives that emphasize their success and pathway mainly as an *individual achievement* (Konyali & Keskiner, 2018) – which is true in several regards: without a strong personality and personal determination it used to be very diffcult for children from working-class families to make their way into higher education and well-paid professional jobs; moreover, many respondents look back on their hard work and the need to be self-reliant from a very early age onwards. The narrative of individual achievement suggests that they are equipped with the necessary means for overcoming any obstacles and diffculties they may encounter in the future, which is certainly a very valid and useful basic stance. But it also tends to ignore the systemic and structural mechanisms behind the relative exceptionality of their success stories and – not in the least – the considerable degree of luck or coincidence involved, especially with regard to the important role of 'key persons', such as relatives, neighbours, or teachers who took care of them at crucial transition points.

As the following chapters show, the professional sector-specifc 'socialization mechanisms' exert an interesting mediating role as it is in the workplace that the co-existence and situation-specifc relevance of 'ethnic' and social backgrounds can best be observed. And it is in work relationships where the paradoxical ambiguity of these background factors – being relevant, but also irrelevant at the same time – have best developed a productive relationship. Our respondents want to be judged upon their professional performance, but they do not mind making use of their 'second-generation specifc' cultural and social capital if it helps them to advance. Sometimes, this relationship to their background seems rather instrumental and functional to their aim to succeed, but it can also be a way to reconcile or bring together the 'two worlds' that they grew up in and which social and media discourses still represent as being widely separated.

#### **References**


Barth, F. (1969). Introduction. In F. Barth (Ed.), *Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference* (pp. 1–38). Little, Brown.

Bauman, Z. (2000). *Liquid modernity*. Polity Press.

Baumann, G. (1995). *Post-migration ethnicity: de-essentializing cohesion, commitments, and comparison*. Het Spinhuis.

Baumann, G. (1996). *Contesting culture: Discourses of identity in multi-ethnic London*. Cambridge University Press.

Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. *Applied Psychology, 46*(1), 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.1997.tb01087.x

ing from certain sectors of the supposed 'Turkish community', such as snobbish upper-class Turks or very traditionalist families.


Terkessidis, M. (2010). *Interkultur*. Suhrkamp.


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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## **Chapter 4 Becoming Successful in the Business and Law Sectors: Institutional Structures and Individual Resources**

**Elif Keskiner, Christine Lang, Ali Konyali, and Sara Rezai**

#### **4.1 Introduction**

This present chapter zooms in on the professional trajectories of immigrant descendants who managed to achieve upward mobility – those whom Chap. 2 described as "climbers" and "thrivers". We use data from the Pathways to Success and ELITES projects, both of which focused on descendants of migrants from Turkey who have achieved higher positions across different professions, occupational sectors and countries (see Chap. 2 for more details). The fndings uncover crucial differences between successful pathways across occupational sectors and countries. In this chapter we focus on the trajectories of descendants of Turkish labour migrants into the business and law sectors in France and Germany. We highlight how these trajectories are shaped by the interplay between institutional contexts and different forms of resources or capital that individuals have at their disposal or are able to accumulate in the course of their careers. Further, we show differences between professional sectors and countries with regard to the resources that descendants of Turkish migrants relied on to achieve their position. They indicate differential opportunities

E. Keskiner (\*)

C. Lang Universität Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany e-mail: clang@uni-osnabrueck.de

A. Konyali

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: e.keskiner@vu.nl

Deutsches Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung (DeZIM), Berlin, Germany e-mail: konyali@dezim-institut.de

S. Rezai Erasmus-Universiteit Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: sara@rezai.nl

for these immigrant descendants to enter higher professional positions. The chapter is guided by the following research questions:


In recent years, studies have paid increasing attention to the success stories of descendants of migrants and underlined the growing number of descendants of migrants of a lower social class background acquiring higher education diplomas (Crul, 2015; Schnell et al., 2013). How these trajectories continue in the labour market has received much less attention (Agius Vallejo, 2012; Alba & Barbosa, 2016; Lang et al., 2018). Research on the labour market access of immigrant descendants regularly shows disadvantages (Brinbaum, 2018; Heath & Cheung, 2007) that are partly related to their social class background (Gracia et al., 2016; Kalter, 2011; Zuccotti, 2015) and provides evidence of hiring discrimination (Midtbøen, 2016; Zschirnt & Ruedin, 2016). More recently, a growing number of studies have investigated migrant descendants' access to and careers in specifc established and more prestigious occupational sectors and examined the barriers they face (Keskiner & Crul, 2017; Konyali, 2017; Lang, 2019; Lang et al., 2022; Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019; Waldring et al., 2018). Yet the mechanisms that help or hinder immigrant descendants who have completed 'successful' educational trajectories in their efforts to fnd positions in the labour market that are commensurate with their qualifcations, still demand closer scrutiny, especially by taking comparative perspectives. In this chapter 'successful professional pathways' refers to acquiring or being on one's way to acquiring higher or leadership positions in established sectors of the labour market.

Previously, Crul et al. (2012) showed that successful educational pathways of descendants of migrants vary across countries according to the institutional structures of their education systems. Using the international TIES Survey of the second generation from a Turkish, Moroccan and ex-Yugoslavian background in cities spread across eight European countries, they showed that even after controlling for parental social class background, descendants of migrants experienced distinct school pathways in different education systems. In this study, pursuing a comparable approach, we take these insights a step further and try to understand the trajectories of our respondents into and in the labour market by comparing their experiences in different occupational sectors in a number of cities in different countries. We assume that the professional trajectories of descendants of migrants are also structured by the distinct institutional contexts of occupational sectors and their national particularities. We have selected two occupational sectors, business and law, which are commonly perceived as infuential and prestigious in today's societies. Jobs in these sectors offer both high salaries and social status. These sectors differ, however, as to the way in which access to positions is structured. The business sector provides career opportunities for people from various educational and professional backgrounds, which may lead to powerful, highly-paid positions, e.g. in the banking and fnance branches as well as in international corporations. Corporate business companies are at the centre of the global economy, accommodating the fnancial and managerial elite. Due to increasing internationalization in the corporate business sector, it is nowadays regarded as a more dynamic sector that is open to accommodating professionals from different backgrounds (Konyali, 2014; Savage & Williams, 2008). Compared to the business sector, the law sector is more embedded in and regulated by national institutional contexts. Traditionally, the legal profession has provided careers linked to high social status and prestige and given access to infuential positions in the justice system, in public administrations, or in corporate law frms. While access to positions in state institutions as judge, state attorney or civil servant is nation state-regulated, the more businessoriented subfelds, such as corporate law companies, share the business sector's international focus.

We compare access to these sectors in Germany and France, two countries that have often been compared in the sociology of education and the sociology of work due to their distinct institutional structures (Maurice et al., 1986). The French education system is more comprehensive while the German education system is more stratifed, the French labour market supports on-the-job training, whereas in Germany occupational skills are gained more in the education system, particularly via vocational training (Müller & Gangl, 2003; Powell et al., 2009). Yet such comparisons have focused on the transition to the labour market for the entire population, and for all sectors and occupational levels. In this chapter we will investigate how distinct national institutional contexts play out in the occupational sectors of law and business and how this specifcally impacts the professional trajectories of highly-educated descendants of migrants from Turkey. Empirically, we focus on individuals working in specifc cities/city-regions: Paris, in the case of France, and Berlin, Frankfurt and the metropolitan Ruhr Area in the case of Germany. Thus, the experiences of our respondents may also be shaped by these city contexts. Nevertheless, by comparing these settings, we pursue the more general aim of illustrating how institutional structures in distinct sectors, and their country (or city) specifc forms, shape the professional careers of descendants of migrants.

First, we will provide a brief overview of our theoretical framework, followed by the details of our methodology. In presenting our fndings we will introduce profles of selected respondents to illustrate recurrent patterns in professional pathways in the French and German business and law sectors that we have retrieved from our data analysis. We do not argue that the pathways we present here are the main or only pathways to professional success. Instead, we aim to point out how distinct institutional contexts shape the relevance of different types of resources and the opportunities and strategies of immigrant descendants to achieve higher positions in the labour market. The conclusion will discuss this relational relevance of different forms of resources in the course of the careers of descendants of migrants.

#### **4.2 Theoretical Framework**

According to the 'Integration Context Theory' of Crul and Schneider (2010), social mobility patterns of descendants of migrants vary across institutional settings. The authors argue that the "participation and belonging of the second generation in European cities is strongly dependent on the integration context" (p.1257). By "integration context" they refer primarily to national and local institutional structures in education systems, the labour market, housing, religion and legislation. Using this as a starting point, we assume that the structures of educational systems and occupational sectors in the respective national and local contexts are crucial to shaping the pathways of migrant descendants in law and business in Germany and France. To make sense of their pathways, we complement this focus on institutional arrangements with a focus on the forms of resources, or capital (Bourdieu, 1986) which respondents described as being signifcant for their careers in the given contexts. We argue that it is the interplay between institutional structures and the resources that descendants of migrants have at their disposal and are able to accumulate which shapes their professional careers (Keskiner, 2019).

In the cases investigated here, the institutional contexts include, frst, the education systems which infuence how educational credentials and required degrees can be attained. Most of our respondents in the French and German law and business sectors have a university degree since this is a formal entry requirement in the law sector, and important for achieving leading positions in many parts of the business sector. Thus, distinct features of tertiary education are visible in their pathways. Moreover, the institutional contexts of the careers include the requirements for access to jobs and positions within a professional sector, i.e. the qualifcations, skills, experiences etc. that employing organizations (e.g. companies, law frms, state administrations) expect from prospective employees and that infuence employment opportunities. Further important structural conditions of the occupational sectors include the national and local labour market context, i.e. whether it is a booming sector that provides jobs and upward mobility opportunities (e.g. the IT sector) or a stagnant occupation. Another important condition is the state of local supply and demand regarding professionals and services.

Relevant to the case of descendants of migrants from Turkey, is also the existence and size of the Turkish community in the city and the emergence of Turkey as a booming economy in the 2010s when this research was taking place, providing business and career opportunities in the business and law sector. Our data shows that both transnational career opportunities and access to a local migrant community as potential clients infuenced careers in different ways across the sectors.

In relation to such institutional or structural contexts, certain resources, or forms of capital, may become signifcant for professional pathways. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986), we can assume that two forms of capital in particular become important: cultural capital, in its

'institutionalized' form of educational degrees and 'embodied' form of skills and (implicit) knowledge (Nohl et al., 2014), and social capital, i.e. contacts to potential future employers, clients or to people who provide important information on possible career paths (Keskiner et al., 2022). Further, we assume that specifc resources related to one's 'migration background' may also become relevant for professional trajectories such as language skills, cultural competences or social capital in relation to the 'ethnic community' (Lang et al., 2018; Nohl et al., 2014; Schmidtke, 2010). For example, the social capital that descendants of migrants rely on when pursuing careers in felds where they frequently interact with immigrant clients is different from the social capital required for building connections in felds where they primarily deal with fellow professionals and clients without a migration background − yet both types of social capital are relevant in their careers (Lang et al., 2022; Keskiner & Waldring, 2022).

Focusing on the role of different forms of capital in a Bourdieu-inspired approach draws attention to two important aspects. First, according to Bourdieu, the relevant forms of capital, or resources, are not static and do not exist in a void but are defned by the structures of the respective felds (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Savage et al., 2005). The institutional structures of a professional sector in a specifc national or local context require specifc resources in order to successfully enter the feld and achieve further positions. Comparing highly-skilled migrant descendants across the business, law and education sectors in Paris, Keskiner and Crul (2017) have shown that each sector values different forms of capital for reaching high status positions. Similarly, when investigating the access of immigrant descendants to positions in the felds of law and public administration in Germany, Lang et al. (2022), illustrated the varying signifcance of 'ethnic' or 'cross-ethnic' forms of social capital.

Further, the capital approach sheds light on individuals' differential opportunities to access and accumulate the required resources. While some individuals can beneft from the transmission of relevant resources from their families, most of the descendants of migrants from Turkey in France and Germany had parents who were low-educated and had arrived in these countries via guest worker migration schemes to do low-skilled jobs. This implies that those who have achieved high- ranking positions could not draw on cultural and social capital from their families or had diffculties transforming this capital from their parents' country of origin into the environment of the receiving countries (Keskiner, 2019). Nevertheless, certain resources, which are related to the ethnic background and transmitted from the parents (such as language capital) may function as valuable assets in the occupational trajectories. Further, individuals may also accumulate and convert resources in the course of their trajectories, for instance through deliberate educational or professional strategies or in contexts that provide favourable opportunities.

#### **4.3 Methodology**

This chapter is based on qualitative interviews from two studies: the ELITES Project in France and Germany and the Pathways to Success Project in Germany. Both studies concentrated on descendants of migrants from Turkey who had achieved upward social mobility and successful educational and professional careers. The ELITES project aimed to access respondents in leadership or high-ranking positions and focused on individuals with a minimum of fve years of work experience in three professional sectors: business, law and education. Interviews were conducted in Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Stockholm and the Randstad area in the Netherlands. For the present chapter, we use the French and German interviews. The German Pathways to Success project also targeted respondents who have reached or are on the way to higher or leading professional positions but it did not have a strict requirement regarding the length of their careers. This project focused on four professional felds: law, business, teaching and public administration. Interviews were conducted in Berlin, Frankfurt and the metropolitan Ruhr Area. In spite of slightly different sampling strategies, both projects ended up with very similar samples. Through concentrating on respondents who had achieved a certain professional position (regardless of whether this was via higher education or through climbing the occupational ladder in the labour market), the Pathways to Success project mostly found respondents who had higher education diplomas. This is partly due to the choice of occupational sectors, as the law sector in particular requires university degrees, although the business sector is more open to persons without a higher education diploma.

Both studies only sampled respondents with low-educated parents, most of whom had arrived in France and Germany as labour migrants in the 1960s–1980s. Hence all of the respondents had achieved considerable levels of upward mobility considering their parents' socio-economic status. The feldwork of both projects was conducted in 2012–2014. Both studies used semi-structured interviews and similar interview guides for the questions on the pathways into and in the labour market.

The following analysis draws on interviews with 23 respondents in the law sector and 23 respondents in the business sector in Germany (in Berlin, Frankfurt and the Ruhr Area), and with nine respondents in the law sector and 12 respondents in the business sector in France (in Paris). Among our respondents in the law sector, 18 were female (eleven in Germany, seven in France) and 14 male (12 in Germany, two in France), in the business sector, 12 were female (nine in Germany, three in France) and 23 male (14 in Germany, nine in France).1

<sup>1</sup>While gender affects professional careers in multiple ways, e.g. in specifc forms of discrimination or gendered labour market and organizational structures, this dimension was not central to the analysis for this chapter, small case numbers in higher professional positions also made it diffcult to systematically focus on gender differences. However, the French sample in particular, which focused on individuals who were more established in their professional felds, shows gender dif-

#### **4.4 Pathways to Success in the Law and Business Sectors in Germany and France**

In the following sections, we will juxtapose the pathways of our respondents in the law and business sectors in Germany and France and highlight how − in specifc institutional contexts − different forms of resources, or capital, became relevant for helping Turkish migrant descendants to achieve certain professional positions. This interplay of institutional contexts and individual resources has shaped distinct opportunities and constraints for these successful careers. We will show this by frst introducing the main institutional features for each sector in both countries and by sketching our respondents' career patterns. We will then illustrate the interplay of institutional contexts and the various forms of resources our respondents used and accumulated at different stages of their trajectory, by looking at several profles of respondents.

#### *4.4.1 The Law Sector*

In both France and Germany, the pathways into legal professions are strongly institutionalized and have clear barriers that need to be passed. In Germany, future lawyers have to pass fve years of law studies at university which are completed by a frst state exam (*Staatsexamen*). This is followed by a mandatory two-year traineeship period (*Referendariat*) which includes placements in different legal professions and felds. All law students are guaranteed a placement*,* which gives them the opportunity to gain professional experiences and to make contacts in the feld, in other words, to accrue relevant cultural and social capital. Their training is then completed by a second state exam. As legal education and traineeships are regarded as general training, all future lawyers, irrespective of whatever specializations they intend to take at a later date, have to complete this pathway. The two state exams, which are centrally organized by the federal state*,* have a reputation for being extremely diffcult and failure rates are relatively high.2 Candidates often prepare for these examinations for a year or longer and pay for private preparation courses, as their transition into the labour market depends largely upon their grades. If a candidate passes with 'distinction' (*Prädikat*), the door is open to prestigious, wellpaid and secure professions as judge, state attorney or in a corporate law frm3 – if

ferences in the numbers of respondents, which might relate to gendered forms of discrimination or structural disadvantage, but any further examination of this is beyond the scope of this chapter.

<sup>2</sup>Around a third of the candidates fail at the frst exam, around 15% at the second exam (BMJV, 2014).

<sup>3</sup>Achieving certain grades is a formal requirement for the judiciary (becoming judge or state attorney) and higher for positions in the civil service, and it is commonly expected by corporate law frms and in law departments in companies.

their grades fall much short of this threshold, there is not much choice but to become an independent lawyer.

In France, a law degree requires a four-year Bachelor study and a minimum oneyear Master (*master 1 de droit)* degree from a university. Yet most candidates acquire a two-year Master (*master 2 de droit).* Having acquired a law degree, candidates then have to pass the Bar exam (*CRFPA, Centre Régional de Formation Professionnelle des Avocats*), which functions as a major threshold to accessing the profession. As with most state exams in France (*concours*), the Bar exam has an oral and a written part and only about a third of candidates will pass.4 Similar to the German context, candidates attend expensive private courses and spend considerable periods of time preparing for the Bar exam. In contrast to Germany, respondents did not mention grades being crucial for gaining entry into prestigious law frms as the Bar exam in itself functions as a major threshold. Those who pass the exam then attend a training course lasting 18 months and graduate with a CAPA *(Certifcat d'Aptitude à la Profession d'Avocat*) diploma that gives them the right to practice as a lawyer. The 18-month course also includes a six-month internship in a law frm. These internships are crucial for building networks in the profession and obtaining your frst job (i.e. accruing profession-related cultural and social capital).

Figures 4.1 and 4.2 below illustrate the career patterns of our law respondents in these institutional contexts (light blue arrow, from left to right, the width of the arrow indicates the frequency of a pattern among the respondents). In our sample, we concentrated on trajectories leading to three sub-felds: independent lawyers, lawyers in corporate law frms and the judiciary (judges and state attorneys - only in the German sample). The vertical lines mark crucial institutionalized transition points in the careers, the boxes show the resources respondents accumulated and relied on at different points in their pathway (with dotted lines when these were

**Fig. 4.1** Career pathways in the German law sector

<sup>4</sup> http://droit-finances.commentcamarche.net/faq/40997-devenir-avocat-en-france-diplomeet-concours

**Fig. 4.2** Career pathways in the French law sector

optional or only applied in a few cases). These were educational resources, such as degrees and grades as a form of institutionalized cultural capital, in the case of France these also imply symbolic capital when a degree is from a prestigious institution, professional skills and knowledge as a form of professionally-relevant cultural capital, social capital, and language skills and cultural competences related to their Turkish background.

In Germany, our respondents' career patterns refected the importance of grades in the two state exams with 'distinction' acting as a threshold that either opened or precluded professional opportunities. While independent lawyers of Turkish descent have become more common in German cities, we found very few potential respondents in corporate law frms or the judiciary (Lang et al., 2018). This is related to the worse starting conditions of children of immigrant working class parents. Usually, they could not draw on family support in study-related issues and had to work in student jobs to cover their living expenses, which reduced the time available for studying. These conditions, as one of the few respondents who had managed to enter a corporate law frm emphasized, "just lead to the fact that you somehow pass the exam but often not beyond the nine points [the threshold for the 'distinction']" (Okan, associate in a corporate law frm in Frankfurt).

In contrast, one major pathway dominated the careers of our French respondents. All of our respondents initially worked in a corporate law frm, where they gained experience and developed their networks. But they all underlined the importance of becoming independent or a partner in a law frm in order to progress in their career.

In both settings it was considered very prestigious to work at a corporate law frm where one could someday be made a partner. While we observed access to such corporate law frms among immigrants' descendants, we only found two partners of Turkish descent in the cities we focused on, which may serve as an illustration of the high barriers to accessing this position. Below, we present four cases studies that illustrate how our respondents used and accumulated different forms of resources at different stages of their trajectory in order to achieve their positions. The frst two profles are independent lawyers in Frankfurt and Paris, the second two are lawyers in corporate law frms in Düsseldorf and Paris.

#### **4.4.1.1 Independent Lawyers: Ferhat and Demir**

Ferhat works as an independent lawyer specialized in business and tax law in Frankfurt. He was born in Turkey and came to Germany as a baby together with his mother and brothers to join his father. His father worked in an automobile factory while his mother was a housewife. After primary school, Ferhat was initially assigned to the vocational track in secondary education and only managed to go to Gymnasium after his Turkish teacher intervened (Turkish mother-tongue teaching was common at that time in German primary schools). Having passed his Abitur, Ferhat started studying political science, being interested in politics, but he found it "too theoretical" and soon changed to law like one of his older brothers.

Ferhat told how it came as a complete surprise when he passed the frst state exam with 'distinction', which opened up career prospects he would never have previously considered. Before then, he had no idea what his studies might lead to: "I was always like […] the main thing is that I study to calm down my parents so that they know their son has fnished a degree and then I somehow will make my way." Equipped with the institutionalized cultural capital of good grades, he easily found placements in an international corporate law frm and a large auditing company during his *Referendariat*. During this period, he made professional contacts and gained experiences that were to be of decisive importance to his professional trajectory. The partner of the audit frm offered him the opportunity to continue working for them – because "apparently I made a good impression there" – if he also achieved good grades in the second exam, which he did. When Ferhat's contract was not extended after the frst year due to staff cutbacks as a result of the fnancial crisis, he decided to start an independent law frm together with former colleagues, drawing upon the social capital he had established during his traineeship placement in the corporate law frm. This was also a career choice because he wanted to quit the corporate law sector.

As an independent lawyer, Ferhat specializes in business and tax law for migrant entrepreneurs. In our overall German sample of independent lawyers, the focus on migrant clients is a common pattern. Almost all of the independent lawyers interviewed reported having practically only Turkish or migrant clients. In the context of a large Turkish-German community in Germany and an increasing number of businesses run by migrant owners, having a Turkish/migrant background becomes a form of capital that lawyers can utilize as a 'unique selling point'. For Ferhat, it is important, however, to underline that he is not just a common "Turkish" lawyer catering for any legal needs of the Turkish-German community but that he addresses a "niche" in the legal feld as a specialist in business and tax law, building on the expertise he gained in his previous job. He has also acquired additional credentials in this specialization. He thus combines his accumulated professional experiences and competences with his resources related to the 'ethnic community'. Both Turkish language skills and cultural knowledge are an important asset in his job, and have been converted into social capital in the form of clientele:

The typical legal profession in Germany is still dominated by established, conservative lawyers. […] You have the lawyer sitting up there, who knows everything and […] just tells it once, and […] if you don't understand it – tough luck. Turks cannot deal with this, not at all. That's a question of mentality and I just have an advantage there compared to other colleagues. I have many clients who went to German lawyers before and it did not work out. […] It's an enormous advantage to know the language and also the culture, yes, because I can probably assess the people a bit better.

It also becomes obvious, however, that 'ethnic' background is an ambivalent career resource. There is not much alternative for an independent lawyer of Turkish background than to focus on clients sharing their Turkish or migrant background because of the diffculties in attracting German clients without a migration background. This might be due to a lack of the necessary networks or to discrimination in the choice of a lawyer. Demir works as an independent lawyer in Paris, where he was born and raised. He set up his frm four years ago. Both his father and mother had primary school diplomas and worked in factories. They pushed him to study so that he did not end up 'like them'. Even though they were not able to help him with his homework or study choices he felt very much supported. In high school, Demir's interest in politics infuenced his decision to become a lawyer as he thought this would be an infuential and prestigious occupation.

After receiving his Master degree, while studying for the Bar exam, he did an internship which enhanced his knowledge and experience in the profession. When he received his CAPA certifcate to practice law, he started working at the same law frm. Once again, this is an example of how social capital accumulated during internships facilitated access to a frst job, as was the case for many of our respondents. He underlined that he learned a lot from his superiors, famous lawyers. When they left the company, he decided that it was the time for him to become independent. Like Ferhat, he drew on the social capital gained during his frst job to establish his company together with a French colleague without a migration background. Once he started his own company, he and his associate actively enlarged their social circle by attending social events and meetings to gain a clientele that is both French and French-Turkish. Regarding social capital he underlined that he did not have a "pre-fxed" social network, meaning he did not have a lawyer father from whom he could derive support and clients. When building up his clientele he relied considerably on French-Turkish contacts. His Turkish language capital was crucial to his business as most of his clients did not speak French. At the time of the interview, more than 50% of his clients were of Turkish origin. Like Ferhat, Demir thus capitalized on his language skills and cultural competences in relation to the Turkish migrant community and converted these resources into social capital in the form of clientele, which was crucial for the survival of his business.

#### **4.4.1.2 Careers in Corporate Law Firms: Rezzan and Emel**

Similar to our independent lawyers, the trajectories of respondents pursuing a career in corporate law frms illustrate the crucial role of educational resources in gaining a position at a prestigious law frm and the subsequent accumulation of relevant social capital and professional experience. However, these careers differ regarding the role of resources related to the respondents' Turkish background. Below, we juxtapose the cases of Rezzan from Düsseldorf and Emel from Paris.

Rezzan works as an associate in a middle-sized corporate law frm in Düsseldorf. Her parents both came to Germany as teenagers to reunite with their parents. Both had left school with only a basic level of formal education, Rezzan's father was a manual worker in the steel industry, and her mother was a cleaner, but they both had high educational ambitions for their children. Rezzan's decision to study law was mainly infuenced by her father who pushed her towards law because it is a reputable, prestigious degree with concrete job prospects. Rezzan was a good student and passed her frst state exam with 'distinction'. When to her great disappointment her grade in the second state exam was just below 'distinction', she decided to re-take it (an attempt to improve one's grade is not uncommon among law students in Germany). She was supported by her father who paid the sum required to re-sit her exams, and this time she was successful. While preparing for the exam, she worked at a large international law frm where she had already spent part of her *Referendariat*. As in Ferhat's case, her grades in the frst exam made it easy to work there and enabled Rezzan to accrue both professional experience and social capital, which led to a job offer at this frm after she passed the exam. However, Rezzan turned this offer down as she did not like the "inhumane working hours". She successfully applied to different law frms and attributes the fact that she had several offers to choose from to her high grades. Rezzan opted for the law frm she was working in when we interviewed her because of its "more appropriate" working hours and pleasant atmosphere. Unlike Ferhat and Demir, Rezzan has only recently begun strategically using her Turkish language skills and cultural knowledge to accumulate social capital related to Turkey and enhance her future career opportunities:

I've just started a bit with acquisition activities […] and this regarding Turkish clients […] I am still quite new here but I mean the partners are all entrepreneurs and they have to acquire clients […] I do look around and also attend events when possible where I get to know Turkish businessmen or German businessmen who have relations with Turkey and I try to build up something for me. […] And because Turkey is very interesting at the moment and it is just booming there, this also is an opportunity for me to use this. There are many university graduates in Germany, Turkish university graduates, there are many jurists, many lawyers, but not so many who are in bigger law frms.

This illustrates that in a context of increasing business relations with Turkey, having a Turkish background can become a career resource in a corporate law frm. Rezzan, however, seems to have far more fexibility and scope as to whether or not she chooses to use these resources than the independent lawyers. Emel was born and raised in Paris, where she works as a senior lawyer in a corporate law frm specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Both of her parents came to France through the

guest-worker scheme and worked in the manufacturing industry. Although they were unable to help Emel with her studies, they always encouraged her to continue and provided full emotional support. At frst, Emel was not sure whether she really wanted to study law, but discovered that she liked it, especially corporate law. During her bachelor years she read about a prestigious Master degree in business law in a law magazine, which required high grades. She studied hard to get the grades required for this master and succeeded. During her Master, she saw that all of her classmates were preparing for the Bar exam, so she also subscribed for the Bar exam competition and passed it right after gaining her Master's 2 degree. Her initial plan was to practice law for a couple of years and then work in the business sector as legal consultant. To her surprise, she was accepted by a prestigious corporate law frm just two months after graduation. She thinks that gaining her Master's degree from a prestigious institution, i.e. a particular form of symbolic capital, played an important role in getting this job. Emel had also completed two internships during and after her studies, which were crucial, not only for expanding her professional knowledge and meeting other lawyers but also for enhancing her selfconfdence and learning the behavioural and verbal conduct in the feld, i.e. acquiring the relevant habitus:

It's not that things were strange but it was more that I didn't know how to behave towards an associate, how to behave towards other employees, how to behave towards other interns, with secretaries, everyone has their own place, so voilà, I don't know how to say…..It's just knowing how to behave.. Then I learned by observing, I think it's like every person, when you're a child as well you observe what you do, what you don't do, you observe: that is how you learn. In the beginning you act like you think you should and once we master the environment you act like how you really are and voilà….

At the time of the interview, Emel had been working for the same employer for 6 years. As a senior lawyer, she was in a leadership position working with junior lawyers, with whom she had a good relationship. At work, she mainly spoke French and English, and contacts in Turkey or the Turkish language skills had not been relevant so far. Yet, as in Rezzan's case they could become instrumental for her future career. Emel wanted to become a partner in her frm or, alternatively, to work as an independent lawyer. Therefore, she had started to build a clientele that also included the French-Turkish community and her parents' contacts.The pathways of these four respondents illustrate how different forms of resources became signifcant for their careers in the given institutional contexts of the law sectors and how the relevance of these resources varied throughout the course of their career. Thus, the pathways are reminiscent of the relational and temporal nature of forms of capital. Although our respondents were professionally successful, their trajectories also revealed barriers for immigrant descendants' careers.

First, in both country settings, specifc educational resources – passing highlydemanding exams (in both countries), with good grades (Germany) or attending prestigious law schools as a form of symbolic capital (France) – were crucial in order to access the law sector and obtain well-paid, secure positions. While access to the sector is formally guided by the meritocratic idea embodied in exams, our respondents from immigrant working-class families were structurally

disadvantaged as they could hardly rely on concrete support from their families or social environment and often had to work next to their studies. Passing these 'meritocratic' exams often required following expensive private courses and/or possessing the correct information about the entry requirements (i.e. that the grades mattered). Such resources were not likely to be at the disposal of working-class immigrant families.

Second, social capital and professional knowledge and experiences accrued during internships/traineeships were important for job offers and accessing one's frst job. In both countries there are opportunities to accumulate this capital during mandatory training programmes, which is benefcial for individuals who did not 'inherit' profession-relevant social capital from their families.

Third, once having entered the feld, resources related to one's Turkish background could become important. This was particularly the case for independent lawyers who, in both countries, strategically used these resources to build up a clientele and secure their professional survival. The fact that they were based in big cities with a large Turkish migrant origin community supported this. Compared to the independent lawyers, the respondents employed in law frms relied less on clientele with a Turkish background, but later they invested in their social capital in the community and also in Turkey in order to expand their assets. However, Turkish names, language skills and cultural competences are ambivalent resources. While they helped to attract clients with a Turkish background, they did not attract 'German/French' clients without a migration background – something that both Ferhat and Demir mentioned. This also poses the question of whether easier access to the migrant population was an additional asset for these independent lawyers or the only source of clientele they could realistically count on.

#### *4.4.2 The Business Sector*

Compared to the pathways in the law sectors in Germany and France, the careers in the business sector are far more diverse and less shaped by rigid formal access requirements. Theoretically, it is possible to become a successful entrepreneur even if you dropped out of school. However, to access high-ranking positions, it is crucial to acquire formal educational resources. The two countries differ to some degree in this respect.

In Germany, work experience and contacts were key resources for our respondents' transition to the labour market. In several cases, these could be acquired via institutionalized channels, e.g. during vocational training (a highly recognized pathway in Germany, which combines vocational school and working in a company and leads to a range of qualifed occupations) or in mandatory internships and 'working student' placements during university studies (especially at universities of applied science). However, a relatively large number of our respondents had also completed a higher education degree or obtained other additional qualifcations at some point in their career, which indicates that formal educational resources are also a career asset in this sector. Compared to the pathways in the law sectors, the transition between the educational and professional pathway was often more dynamic as gaining educational credentials alternated with accumulating professional experience.

The French business sector proved more rigid with regard to the qualifcations required for high-ranking managerial positions. All of our respondents in France held a Master's degree. This also has to do with the way in which education and labour market institutions are designed in France. In Germany, vocational training and universities of applied science are highly recognized educational options that allow students to gain occupational skills and become acquainted with the labour market during their educational trajectory, whereas in France occupational skills are mostly acquired via on-the-job training (Keskiner, 2019). Vocational tertiary education is not as recognized, though it exists and was also preferred by secondgeneration respondents if this was an option (Keskiner, 2019). This had two consequences for the labour market entrants to the business sector: due to the limited opportunities for dual training they had to attain a university degree and to arrange their internships on their own to gain relevant skills and develop contacts in the labour market. While internships were also relevant experiences in France, they were not institutionally supported or provided as part of the educational trajectory. Furthermore, in France prestige differences between higher education institutions created an additional structural barrier, graduates with *Grande École* diplomas had better opportunities to both enter the labour market and to achieve upward mobility. Attending a *Grande École* allowed students to develop various resources, on the one hand our respondents acquired valuable educational credentials (institutionalized cultural capital), on the other hand they developed social capital in the form of networks of people in leadership positions, and gained symbolic capital which signals their value and capacity in the labour market. Respondents with *Grande École* degrees had much steeper upward mobility and rapid access to leadership positions. Those who had a Master degree from a 'normal' public university (*Fac*) had to make extra efforts, such as conducting internships, going abroad for their studies, etc., to increase their chances in the labour market. Despite children of immigrants' increased participation in higher education, they are still under-represented in the *Grandes Écoles* (Brinbaum & Guégnard, 2011; Keskiner, 2019).

Our respondents' career patterns in the business sectors in Germany and France are illustrated by the following fgures. Once again, the vertical lines mark the transition points, while the boxes show the different forms of resources that they accumulated and relied on at different points in their career (Figs. 4.3 and 4.4).

To illustrate the relevance of different forms of capital in these contexts within a career perspective, we will once again present four profles. Since the careers of the respondents in France and Germany are shaped rather distinctly, we will present two cases of children of Turkish immigrants working in the business sector in Germany (in Berlin and Essen) in juxtaposition to two cases from France (Paris). For the comparative angle, we selected cases of individuals employed in larger companies.

**Fig. 4.3** Career pathways in the German business sector

**Fig. 4.4** Career pathways in the French business sector

#### **4.4.2.1 Careers in Business in Germany: Ayca and Esra**

Ayca works as HR manager in a global player in Berlin. She was born in Istanbul and came to Berlin at the age of two. Her father owned a small restaurant, her mother was a housewife. Ayca grew up in Berlin-Kreuzberg where she spent the frst three years of primary school in a 'foreigner class', i.e. a class solely for immigrant children. Later she attended a comprehensive school, where she passed her *Abitur*. She hesitated between university studies or vocational training and opted for the latter because she wanted to earn her own money (trainees receive a salary) and become independent from her family as soon as possible. Ayca completed a threeyear vocational training as an industrial clerk at a large logistics company, which offered her a job straight after she graduated. From this secure position, she applied for further jobs in the HR sector where she aspired to work. After one year in her

frst company, she found a new job as a HR assistant at a start-up in Berlin. Step-bystep, she moved to more responsible positions in the HR sector while gradually accumulating professional experience and qualifcations. Ayca successfully applied for new positions and changed company several times because she wanted to "advance". She combined working with additional training as a HR assistant, followed by a tertiary degree in business and commerce, mainly for the "certifcate". She thinks that her work experience and expertise were the determining factors that led to her career advances, including the position she held at the moment of the interview. However, before this job she had also worked as freelance HR consultant and capitalized on networks she had established over the years. She had worked in Istanbul for some months, combining occupational and private interests:

I somehow wanted to do this because until then, Turkey was always a holiday destination for me. And these former colleagues who I was well connected with, they had invested in Turkey […] and asked if I could somehow support them building this up, fnding personnel etc. And one thing led to the other and then I said "Okay, I always wanted to do Istanbul, why not?"

Apart from this period, Ayca's Turkish background did not seem to feature in her occupational pathway. It thus appears as a fexible resource which she was able to mobilize when an interesting opportunity came up but which she did not rely on in order to advance her career. However, she could convert her Turkish language and cultural capital into the symbolic capital of work experience abroad and highlight this in her CV. While Ayca's case illustrates a smooth entry into the labour market and a step-by-step career, the case of Esra reveals barriers to the transition into the labour market and higher positions. Esra works as an HR consultant in a large, internationally operating corporation in the Ruhr Area. Born in Turkey, she came to Germany at the age of fve with her mother to join her father who was working in an automobile factory. Esra grew up in a small village in South Germany. After primary school, she frst attended secondary school in vocational track for two years before changing to *Gymnasium* after her father had intervened with her teachers because she was such a good student. Having obtained the *Abitur,* she chose business studies partly infuenced by her part-time job in a company where she was attracted to a managerial role. During her studies, she did not do any internships but always had a part-time job (e.g. as a waitress), as the state student loan (*BAföG*) was not suffcient. Unlike Ayca during her vocational training, Esra did not accumulate relevant work experience and contacts during her educational pathway. This turned out to be a problem after graduation. Esra applied for numerous jobs all over Germany but without success. This was a common experience for respondents who had applied for positions in the business sector without having built a network, several assumed that it was due to discrimination. Finally, Esra entered the labour market via an internship programme paid for by the job agency. She obtained an internship position after a neighbour who was working in the HR department at her current company recommended her. After completing the programme, Esra was offered a regular contract in the same department. Social capital at work was therefore crucial for accessing this job. Esra describes her disadvantage in this respect because she could not draw on family resources:

[The internship] was the only thing which worked. It was, if you want, through connections, but connections that I'd gathered myself. […] What I see now is when parents introduce their children, their children apply and things are much easier for them than they were for me: then I think I would have loved to have had that as well.

Esra also points to the importance of social capital for careers within the company. To her disappointment she had not yet been included in the company's internal career support programme, which depends on recommendations by senior managers, while several of her direct colleagues had been chosen. She said she experienced discrimination because of her background:

A glass ceiling is there. I don't know anyone in Germany [in her company] with a migration background who is head of a department. […] I can only make assumptions but if you have a migration background you defnitely have to be twice as good as someone else to get these opportunities. It's the same for women: you also have to be twice as good as a man before people even consider you for a higher position.

Esra has thus experienced her migration background as hampering her career. Her Turkish language skills and cultural knowledge could still become relevant, because her company had branches in many countries, including Turkey, and liked to temporarily assign employees who are familiar with the local language and culture to management positions. However, Esra doubted that it could be a long-term career resource in her company since colleagues who had taken this path had found themselves back in their former position upon their return to Germany. Both Ayca's and Esra's cases show the crucial importance of social capital in addition to educational resources, for the transition into the German business sector and making a career within a company. While our French cases reported similar fndings, educational resources played a more important role in the French context. Attending a *Grande École* as a prestigious higher education institution improves the odds of success. Below we will present the cases of Sukran and Ali. Ali attended a *Grande École* and his account illustrates how this can be a game changer.

#### **4.4.2.2 Careers in Business in France: Ali and Sukran**

At the time of the interview, Ali was working as a manager in an IT company. He was born in Turkey and moved to Paris at the age of 5. His parents had migrated to France for economic reasons and neither his father nor his mother had received any formal education beyond a couple of years in primary school. His mother worked as a housewife, his father in the construction sector. Ali went to public middle and secondary schools in Saint Denis (a working-class *banlieue* of Paris) before deciding to study mathematics at a university in Paris. While he was at secondary school, a teacher advised him to do internships during the school holidays instead of going to Turkey with his family every summer. Ali accumulated several internships and shorter periods of employment. After obtaining his Master's degree from the university, he continued his education by enrolling in another Master programme at a business school (*École de Commerce*), a *Grande École*. He did so because it was diffcult to fnd a good internship position after his studies:

And when I found an internship, all the other interns that were in the company with me came from Sciences Po, Chaussée, HEC- the Ivy League so to say. Only a few of those who came from an 'ordinary' university would do internships that were interesting. And I found that my friends indeed did internships which were less interesting, so taking a step back (…) I concluded that (…) all those that came from a 'normal' university would be put in a 'back offce' position. Those positions that were not strategic. It was there at the end of my studies when I concluded that I had to do another year at least in an Ivy League school of business.

In addition to gaining contacts and professional skills, Ali's internship experiences were thus crucial in order to learn the rules of the game in the business sector – i.e. understanding the importance of attending a *Grande École* for future career options. After surveying all the schools, he found an institution that accepted students from public universities (the others required a bachelor degree from a *Grande École*). His degree from a prestigious institution and internships helped Ali gain entry into his current company where, with the help of 'many connections', he has managed to move up to a middle management position over the years. During the interview Ali repeatedly underlined the importance of social connections in making it in his profession:

How can one acquire a leading position? With connections. With many connections. Because we are in a profession in which you have to be open towards people and open to companies and all departments. We have connections and the capacity to receive training. This is how you rise from your starting position. The type of portfolio manager who is closed-up on himself, who sits in front of his computer screen, who does not seek to know what is happening behind his screen, or try to understand the frms and the departments: things will not work out well for him.

Hence Ali was still actively building social capital in order to advance his career. His family could never be instrumental in his pathway, but he initiated a networking drink among highly-educated descendants of migrants from Turkey in Paris every two months. Even though his contacts with the Turkish community have not helped his career so far, he likes to keep a large circle. In contrast to Ali's trajectory, Sukran's case typifes the pathways of young people who did not acquire a *Grande École* diploma and who try to accumulate different forms of capital through internships, part-time jobs and foreign study programmes to compete in the job market. Sukran was working in a middle management position at a large French Bank. She was born and raised in a suburb of Paris. Her parents also did not have any formal education beyond primary school in Turkey. Her father was employed in the construction sector, while her mother worked as a housewife. Sukran decided to study business administration, banking and fnance at two different public universities in Paris. She said she couldn't attend an "École" because her family couldn't afford it. Therefore, she put even more effort into getting interesting internship positions during the summer holidays.

After high school I did not go on any holidays with my family. Yeah, I think that was the last time I had a long holiday. I didn't have any connections so I was making open applications to all companies, maybe I was lucky to fnd something but these experiences are important. I learned about my different options but also got to know a lot of people.

Thus, similar to Ali, Sukran realized that due to her family background she lacked contacts in and knowledge about the feld. However, unlike him, she could not access *Grande École* credentials as a form of symbolic capital but had to rely on individual strategies to accumulate professionally-relevant social capital and work experience to advance in her career. Through recommendations and her selfdeveloped professional network, she managed to attain a middle management position in an internationally operating French bank. Like Ali, she highlighted the importance of interpersonal relationships when advancing in the feld. However, she was also aware that, in general, top-level managers in French frms have *Grande École* degrees and that it would be diffcult to become part of the leadership positions without one. Since access to these private institutions is highly selective and very limited among descendants of migrants or working-class families, the selection to top management positions even precedes the labour market and begins much earlier in differential educational opportunities. At the time of the interview, Sukran was seriously considering moving into her company's international department in the expectation that this would give her more opportunities to climb the corporate ladder. But this would require English language skills rather than her Turkish language capital as the connection with the Turkish migrant community or Turkey could not be used as a resource in her current position. The comparison of these pathways in the business sectors in Germany and France shows similarities and differences in the forms of resources that became valuable and were accumulated by respondents in the course of their careers.

First, social capital and professional experience accrued by doing internships during one's educational trajectory proved crucial in both countries for the transition into the labour market and the later career. Educational programmes combining theory and practice through mandatory internships, such as vocational training or programmes at universities of applied sciences in Germany, could support this, especially for young people who could not rely on the transmission of professionallyrelevant resources from their families (Keskiner, 2017, 2019). In France, where such institutionalized opportunities were less common, our respondents had to develop individual strategies to fnd relevant internships and accumulate the social and cultural capital crucial for their entry into the labour market. This also included acquiring knowledge about the rules of the game, which enabled them to adjust their career strategies accordingly (Keskiner & Crul, 2017). Contacts among future employers and networks in the company also played an important role for our respondents.

Second, educational resources were of varying relevance when we compare the two countries. While attaining a profession-related degree was a necessary but largely unspecifed condition for accessing positions in companies in Germany, the pathways of respondents in France were overshadowed by the signifcance of attending a *Grande École* in order to build the required network and reach a leadership position. For our respondents, this constituted an important barrier. To begin with, most of our respondents or their immigrant parents had not even been informed of the existence of such institutions, and even if they knew they were unable to afford courses to prepare them for the entrance exams for a *Grandes École.* If they somehow managed to surmount these obstacles, their families were not in a position to afford the high tuition fees for these institutions. Only a few of our respondents who were able to secure scholarships as high-achievers managed to enter these institutions, a move that paid off as they later attained top management positions.

Third, resources related to one's Turkish background were less relevant in all the profles. Building contacts in the migrant community or transnational connections to Turkey were not particular assets, at least not for the types of careers we were looking at in large companies, despite their international orientation. In this context, resources related to one's migration background could become relevant for temporary assignments to Turkey but it is questionable whether this is helpful to a career in the long run.

#### **4.5 Conclusion**

In this chapter we conducted a comparative analysis of the successful pathways of descendants of migrants to enter and work in the business and law sectors in France and Germany. The sectoral approach unravelled how these pathways are shaped by institutional contexts which required or enabled our respondents to accumulate different forms of resources at different moments in their career. These resources consisted of institutionalized cultural capital in the form of educational degrees and grades, professional skills and knowledge as forms of 'embodied' cultural capital, social capital, and language skills and cultural competences related to their Turkish background. This implies differential opportunities for children of immigrants who were largely unable to draw on career-relevant cultural and social capital in their families to achieve higher positions in these sectors.

We have seen that sectors in which the transition into the labour market is regulated by more rigid institutional structures primarily require institutionalized cultural capital. Acquiring the 'right' educational diploma (and grade) is thus crucial in order to access higher positions. This does not come as a surprise, yet the degree of credentialism in these sectors was also refected in our respondents' experiences and infuenced their educational strategies. This was clearly the case in the law sector in both countries, where entry into the profession is regulated by state-organized exams, which create high barriers. The accounts of our respondents in the law sector underline that passing the examinations or grade threshold that open up secure professional opportunities, is far from merely being a matter of individual effort as promulgated by the 'meritocratic' narrative. Instead, it depends on the available cultural and economic capital – the latter being used to pay for private preparation courses. This is capital that children of immigrant and working-class background are unlikely to 'inherit' from their families. While attaining these credentials is not an equal battle for everyone, once acquired they can open doors to prestigious areas in the law sector. The business sector seemed less rigid in terms of such credentials, yet in France we see that a *Grande École* degree is more highly valued than a degree from a public university. Acquiring a degree from such a prestigious institution, which is still unlikely for children of immigrants (Brinbaum & Guégnard, 2011), functioned as symbolic capital and eased our respondents' pathways into leadership positions in both law and business. A similar condition was not observed in the business sector in Germany. Nevertheless, for all of our respondents in both sectors, educational credentials were not suffcient on their own, and they therefore had to accumulate other resources in order to succeed in the labour market.

Social capital was another crucial resource for all of our respondents. There is a long tradition of research into the signifcance of networks for access to the labour market (Granovetter, 1974; Keskiner et al., 2022). As the individuals we studied entered employment sectors and positions distinct from those of their parents, they could not inherit relevant social capital and had to accumulate it themselves by using different strategies such as doing internships or combining work and study. Especially in the German business sector, social capital seemed more relevant for entering the labour market than the type of educational credentials. Social capital worked in different ways. Connections to future employers smoothened access to the labour market. Having connections was also emphasized as being key to accessing leadership positions. Despite their considerably high educational achievements, many of our respondents reported situations in which they perceived disadvantages and discrimination, like Osman who tried to enter the business sector in Paris:

It is more diffcult to get into a job interview, that's what I discovered, with this background. I see this with other colleagues who fnished training and actually fulfl all the requirements but then receive a one-liner like "the position is already flled" (laughs) whereas you know that this is not true because the position is still being advertised.

Experiences of discrimination in recruitment processes were particularly reported by respondents in the business sector in both countries. Gathering social capital in the feld before entering the labour market, e.g. via internships, thus became even more important because it allows one to 'prove' one's professional skills to potential employers and avoid having to go through recruitment processes as an 'unknown candidate'. Further, the trajectories show how the accumulation of social capital and institutionalized cultural capital are closely entangled: respondents converted educational resources that helped them to enter prestigious subsectors ─ such as a *Grande École* diploma in the French business sector or degrees with 'distinction' in the German law sector ─ into important social capital that further supported their careers. However, this also shows how in some felds, building relevant networks may require specifc educational resources (e.g. attending a *Grande École)*, which are more diffcult to attain for children of immigrants. While for most respondents, useful contacts were professionals without a migration background, who still dominate the higher positions in the sectors investigated, in the law sector, contacts in the population of migrant background or transnational connections to Turkey also emerged as important social capital.

Most of our respondents possessed language skills and cultural competences related to their parents' Turkish migration background, yet these only became a

resource in some of the felds they entered. Primarily among independent lawyers in France and Germany, converting these resources into social capital was a key strategy. The respondents invested in their relations with the Turkish migrant population to build up a clientele. However, this was also a reaction to their experience of an 'ethnic bias', or simply discrimination, in the choice of a lawyer among clients both with and without a migration background. In that sense, the active, partly strategic use of their language skills and cultural competences to build up social capital proved an important ingredient for success.

Lawyers working in corporate law frms in both settings mentioned building up connections with Turkey as a lucrative career strategy, a specialization that could be fexibly deployed. In contrast, for those working in the business sector in large companies, Turkish language skills and cultural knowledge was hardly a resource. Our fndings thus illustrate that labour market contexts defne the value of the resources at an individual's disposal and that this includes contextual factors beyond institutional structures: notably the booming economy in and business relations with Turkey at the time of the research and the existence of a sizeable population of Turkish background in the cities where our respondents worked proved crucial.

The chapter pursued a relational approach, which made it possible to understand how the professional pathways and strategies of children of migrants from Turkey are shaped by the interplay between structural conditions and different forms of resources, or capital that individuals have at their disposal or are able to accumulate in the course of their careers. It is important to underline that this also has a temporal dimension, with different forms of capital becoming relevant at different stages of a career. This points to the importance of studying careers with a longitudinal perspective as the institutional structures and the resources they value or enable to be developed vary over time. The temporal dimension also relates to the convertibility between different forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986), which was visible in different respects. On the one hand, it could be supportive for certain trajectories, when, for example, attending a prestigious university or achieving a degree with 'distinction' not only means accumulating institutionalized cultural capital and symbolic capital, but also makes it possible to convert this into social capital in the form of important contacts in the professional feld. On the other hand, however, this convertibility is a mechanism that perpetuates the disadvantages of children of immigrants in accessing higher positions as they have fewer opportunities to obtain such required or valued educational credentials in the frst place.

All in all, our research underlined the importance of looking at institutional structures and conditions not only in educational systems (see Crul et al., 2012) but also in different labour market sectors when investigating the pathways of descendants of migrants. Focusing on the resources that descendants of migrants rely on and are able to accumulate within these contexts and over time helps us to understand their professional strategies and opportunities.

#### **References**


Granovetter, M. S. (1974). *Getting a job: A study of contacts and careers*. Harvard University Press.


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## **Chapter 5 Teachers of Immigrant Origin: Contextual Factors and Resource Mobilization in Professional Life**

**Rosita Fibbi and Rosa Aparicio Gómez**

#### **5.1 Introduction**

Migration scholars have often thematized the integration problems of immigrants and their children. Yet virtually all studies on children of immigrants born in the receiving country (the so-called second generation) show that a remarkably high share of them experience educational and social mobility in comparison to their parents' generation. This is especially true for children of labour migrants (Crul, Schneider, & Lelie, 2012a; Stutz et al., 2010; Wippermann & Flaig, 2009; Santelli, 2001). Despite this, the public debate continues to treat the second generation with deep scepticism. Current, often politicized, debates neglect the accomplishments of immigrants' offspring (Ettinger & Imhof, 2011). Concentrating attention on the problematic aspects (which are a reality that needs to be addressed) minimizes the potential of these often-ambitious children of modest immigrant origin. The homogeneity assumption within immigrant fows overshadows their internal differentiation. The emergence of a new, successful category of people of immigrant descent, the high-achieving second generation, risks being overlooked, and its potentials neglected.

In many countries, immigration conformed to the existing segmentation of the labour market, as guest-workers were recruited to cover the lower occupational levels. Moving out of "dirty, dangerous and demanding" immigrant jobs (Castles, 2002) proved to be beyond the reach of most frst- generation immigrants, as changing social stratum mainly occurs at the generational turn (intergenerational mobility), if at all. In migration studies, social mobility is largely framed as 'the' avenue

R. Fibbi (\*)

R. Aparicio Gómez Instituto Universitario de Investigación Ortega y Gasset, Madrid, Spain e-mail: rag.migraciones@fogm.es

Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland e-mail: rosita.fbbi@unine.ch

for migrant-origin populations to integrate into their new society. Many studies on the children of immigrants focus on the conditions required for advancement in the educational system as this gives them the qualifcations they need to advance beyond their parents' low-status, precarious occupations. The present study shifts its focus from the acquisition of educational assets – largely studied in Europe (Crul et al. 2012a, b; Fibbi et al., 2011; Heath et al., 2008; Stanat & Christensen, 2006) – to the conditions of their valorisation at a later stage in the labour market. Achievement in the competitive setting of the labour market is subject to other challenges than those of the restricted, less competitive, and rather meritocratic school environment.

Building on the international 'Pathways to Success' study, this chapter concentrates on educationally successful children of immigrants who decided to become teachers. Many arguments support our choice of this particular professional feld. The *mobility argument* is based on the evidence showing that this profession – at least some segments of it – is especially open to socially underprivileged strata. Becoming a teacher has long been a typical avenue of mobility for youth with a working-class background and thus, possibly, also for children of immigrants. The *process argument* rests upon the highly formalized trajectory giving access to this profession. The meritocratic principle mostly shapes the avenue to this largely publicly ruled and sponsored profession, enabling social mobility through education, whatever one's social or ethnic origins.

The *institutional argument* refers to the fact that teaching very often entails entering public employment. In many European countries, by far the most teachers work in the public sector.1 This is especially relevant for children whose parents occupy marginal labour market positions: becoming a teacher secures them a stable job and gives access to the primary labour market of public employment. Given the relative size of the public employment sector, which ranged between 10% and 22% of the labour force in 2008,2 "reduced opportunities for public sector employment for ethnic minorities may be a more important constraint than its numerical importance may suggest" (Heath & Cheung, 2007, 14).

The *symbolic argument* refers to the fact that teachers are entrusted with the task of contributing to the social reproduction of a society, while fostering empowerment, equality and social mobility for individual students. Such a position might be particularly satisfying for children of immigrants, outsiders whose conformity to the rules of their country of residence has often been questioned. The profession is a powerful marker of legitimate belonging.

The *policy argument* refers to the growing interest of academics and policy makers in a diversifed teaching force as one possible way of responding to the

<sup>1</sup>Three of the countries under study, namely Germany, Switzerland, and France, present a share of students in private schools below the 18% OECD average, while Spain (34%) and the Netherlands (66%) largely exceed this level. Sources: (OECD, 2012). Indeed, almost all teachers in the Pathways study work in public schools.

<sup>2</sup>Employment in general government (i.e., public services excluding market production by public corporations) as a percentage of the labour force in 2015: FR 21.4%; ES 14.8%; NL 13.6%; DE 11.3%; CH 9.9%. Source: (OECD, 2017).

diversifed student body (Rotter, 2014; Ogay & Edelmann, 2012; Schmidt & Schneider, 2016). Teachers of immigrant origin (TIO) are the living proof that an immigration society is an open society. Furthermore, they can function as role models for immigrant-origin youth. The fact that TIOs have a migratory experience and working-class background is likely to ensure a cultural and class proximity with minority students.

#### **5.2 Theoretical Background, Research Questions and Methodology**

Our study of the career paths of second-generation adults is framed by two main theoretical references. The frst frame, 'frst-generation students', analyses factors infuencing the educational success of upwardly mobile youth with a micro and meso focus. The second frame concentrates on the specifc situation of socially mobile children of immigrants: the 'integration context theory' develops a macrosocial approach by considering the impact of country-specifc social opportunity structures on the trajectories of children of immigrants.

The analysis of educational trajectories identifes factors determinant for upward mobility, accounting for how the gravitational law of social reproduction can be overridden. Studies on 'frst-generation students', i.e. students whose parents have not followed tertiary education, provide valuable insights into factors that shape upward trajectories (Mountford-Zimdars & Harrison, 2017; Spiegler, 2015). Spiegler synthesizes the factor clusters affecting educational mobility as pertaining to the individual learner, characteristics of their family context and the role of school at both the micro and meso level (Spiegler, 2018). He introduces an acute distinction between resources, mobilized by achieving students to overcome obstacles, on the one hand, and requirements, conditions necessary for successful upward mobility, on the other hand. The three requirements are ability, motivation, and opportunity. While no single resource is needed to attain high educational qualifcations, each single requirement is necessary for educational intergenerational mobility.

Findings concerning 'frst-generation students' are of course also pertinent to educationally mobile children of immigrants, the subject of many studies conducted in Europe in the last decade (Stamm, 2009; El-Mafaalani, 2012; Tepecik, 2011; Ravecca, 2009; Schnell et al., 2015; Crul et al. 2012a, b). If educational trajectories are at the core of those pathways, recent research projects like 'Pathways to Success' and 'Elites' focused on another institutional context, namely the labour market. They extended their interest to the way in which educational credentials provide access to workplaces and professional careers and to factors that either enable or hinder career promotion (Lang et al., 2018; Waldring et al., 2015; Rezai, 2017; Konyali & Crul, 2017). Synthetizing their results, Crul et al. (2017) offer an overall overview and discussion of the resources that can be mobilized to reach the social mobility goal in working life, namely individual agency, resilience, parental agency, social support, social skills and ethnic capital.

Grounded in these theoretical frames and based on qualitative feldwork carried out in fve European countries on teachers of immigrant origin (TIOs), i.e. born or raised from an early age in the country to which their parents migrated, this paper addresses three crucial aspects of the respondents' professional trajectories: career choice, access to the professional feld and present workplace experience, and sets them in a broad comparative perspective. Each theme with its specifc research questions is treated in a different section, while the comparative purpose of the study runs across the three aspects.

Section 5.3 sets the background scene for our schoolteachers by presenting their *professional choice*: the analysis looks at the motives and constraints underlying their decision to become a schoolteacher. It fnally addresses the transversal comparative issue by seeking to identify whether there are common patterns across the countries under study for TIOs' educational trajectories and professional choices.

Section 5.4 retraces the process of TIOs' *access to the professional feld* and their frst employment. The questions here are: which institutional features channel qualifed students into the workplace in the various countries and how do the resulting institutional opportunity structures defne which resources help TIOs to attain a stable position? This section thus shifts the focus to macro dimensions representing the constraints under which individual agency might develop.

Section 5.5 fnally concentrates on the *professional experiences* of TIOs. The central questions are: how do our TIO respondents interpret their role as a teacher? In what ways do institutional factors infuence the way in which they interpret their TIO role?

Each section is organized according to a similar schema: it frst presents the analytical tools from the relevant literature and the research questions guiding the analysis, it then introduces elements from the feldwork (exemplary cases) to illustrate the variety of situations encountered in the countries/contexts under scrutiny and fnally it discusses the relationship between theories and the empirical evidence, delivering the interpretation of the fndings. Understandably, not all 46 TIOs interviewed are presented in the paper. We selected 13 cases to account for the scope of the dimension pertinent to each section, e.g. choosing the profession, contextual settings, and agency. Hence the portrayed cases qualitatively refect the types of situations found in the feldwork.

The overarching comparative research question pertains to contextual factors: it addresses the relative importance of migrant-specifc policies in relation to allencompassing institutional arrangements in drawing the opportunity structure for the mobility of children of immigrants. It further analyses how those contextual factors infuence which resources are relevant and can be effectively mobilized by children of immigrants accessing the teaching profession according to the specifc opportunity structure they are confronted with.

The comparative part of the article refers theoretically to the "integration context theory" (Crul & Schneider, 2010) which argues that participation and belonging of children of immigrants depend on the integration context. The context is shaped by the social and political situation as well as by the institutional arrangements in key social areas, such as education, labour market, housing, religion, and legislation. This focus on the context is not new in migration sociology. For instance, Portes and Böröcz (1989) theorize reception conditions for immigrants in the receiving country as the contextual aspects relevant for integration. They refer concretely to the regulatory frame for admission and integration, which can dramatically change according to the historical period and/or the immigrant group in question. In their segmented assimilation theory, Portes and Zhou further explain various assimilation issues as the product of interactions between characteristics of migrants and the receptivity of the host society, referring to government policies on migration, civil society and public opinion as well as resources and structures in ethnic communities (Zhou, 1997). In other words, the contextual dimensions deemed relevant for the incorporation process are essentially migration-related.

Studying the integration dynamics of children of immigrants in Europe, Crul and Schneider expand the notion of context to include all-encompassing institutional arrangements specifc to each country in social areas such as education, labour market. They are the product of a country's long-term history and the result of the way in which cleavages within the country have been managed and settled: therefore, such arrangements design an institutional opportunity structure not tied to migration-specifc issues and peculiar to the different countries. Moreover, this theoretical frame includes "the agency of individuals and groups, actively developing options and making choices, challenging given opportunities and structural confgurations" (Schneider & Crul, 2012: 31). The TIES research project was designed to test this theoretical frame (see Chap. 2 for details) and indeed confrmed, notably for the educational system, the relevance of country specifc features.

In this paper, however, contextual comparisons will not be based on the national unit of the country of residence, as was the case in the TIES project. The present analysis focuses on the main institutional features structuring the teaching profession. Single countries are subsumed into a typology of such features (see following section) based on the general structure of the respective civil service (*job vs. career system)* and on policies in the educational feld precisely targeting teachers of immigrant origin. The residence country of the interviewed teacher is not prominently featured as it is subordinated to the typology categories, although it is systematically reported in the vignettes for the reader's comfort.

#### **5.3 Methods, Sample, and Informants' Characteristics**

The study is based on extensive qualitative feldwork conducted by research teams in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland as part of the 'Pathways to Success' and 'Elites' projects. Complying with the general design of these two projects, respondents were selected on the dependent variable of educational success and professional activity. Immigrant origin was of course considered for identifying possible interviewees, while family educational background was controlled for by selecting respondents whose parents had not followed tertiary education.

This paper exploits the subsample of 46 in-depth interviews conducted with in-service teachers, offspring of immigrants from the main non-EU infows of the last 20-40 years in the countries and cities under study (Table 5.1). The respondents are teachers, active in both primary and secondary schools who have acquired their qualifcations in the country in which they are currently working, while their parents emigrated from non-EU countries and did not follow tertiary education. A shared interview outline largely comparable across countries allows for the pooling of the data. The paper focuses on the common general feature of the respondents' immigrant origin and does not thematize differences in ethnic origins.

Among our informants, 14 are currently working as primary school teachers, 12 are teaching at lower secondary level and 20 at upper secondary level. Nowadays, teaching is a profession that appeals mostly to women: on average two-thirds of the teachers in OECD countries are female (OECD, 2014); a feature which also applies to our TIOs interviewees, as 32 out of our 46 informants are women. Our informants are aged 30 on average.

The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Each team then submitted these texts to a content analysis supported either by an analytical grid or by software programs like MAXQDA, ATLAS.TI or Kwalitan. The present article used the coded documents developed by the Pathways teams.


**Table 5.1** Interviewed teachers by country of residence, parental country of origin and gender

#### **5.4 Becoming a TIO: From Education to Professional Choice**

This section looks at intergenerationally upward mobile pathways by retracing how children of immigrants converted their educational achievements into labour market positions and by analysing their motives for choosing teaching as a career.

#### *5.4.1 Analytical Tools*

There is extensive research into the motivation for becoming a teacher (for an overview see Heinz, 2015). The literature generally distinguishes three types of motives: (1) intrinsic reasons, pertaining to the actual nature of the job, such as teaching children, and a desire to use one's knowledge and expertise in a particular subject; (2) altruistic reasons, pertaining to viewing teaching as a socially worthwhile and important job, accompanied by a desire to help children succeed and to contribute to society at large; and (3) extrinsic reasons, which cover aspects of the job that are not inherent to the actual work, such as long holidays, level of pay, and status (Brookhart & Freeman, 1992; Kyriacou & Coulthard, 2000).

Enlarging the scope beyond the traditional analysis of values, a new, more elaborate model of motives behind teacher career choice, the Factors Infuencing Teaching Choice Scale (FIT-Choice Scale (Watt & Richardson, 2007) considers fve constructs: socialization infuences, perceptions of the task, perceptions of the self, values related to teaching and teaching as a 'fall-back' career (Richardson & Watt, 2016). The FIT scale, frst developed in Australia, has been used in several studies internationally (Heinz, 2015): it shows consistent fndings in studies on pre-service teachers' motivations across higher-income countries, including the Netherlands (Fokkens-Bruinsma & Canrinus, 2012), Germany (König et al., 2016) and Switzerland (Berger & D'Ascoli, 2012).

Findings on prospective teachers point out that: "for most students the decision to choose to become a teacher is (…) because the expected occupation-specifc activities are in the foreground" (Affolter et al., 2015: 86). Similarly, a US study indicates that "most candidates chose to enter the education profession for noble causes such as the opportunity to share their love for learning or to make a difference in society or students' lives. More pragmatic motivators were also noted such as a need for a career change or the perceived benefts of the teaching career" (Bunn & Wake, 2015, 47). Richardson and Watt (2016), 288) in their recent state of the art on this topic conclude that "the main motivations for entering teaching are intrinsic enjoyment and the desire to make a social contribution and work with youth", while choosing teaching for negative reasons, such as a 'fall-back' career appears as the lowest rated motivation in countries where job opportunities are scarce (2016).

On the other hand, the teaching profession has traditionally been a steppingstone for socially mobile young people from the working and lower middle classes (Charles & Cibois, 2010; Lortie, 1975). Today, as in the past, students in teaching programs are generally characterized by lower socio-economic and cultural resources than their fellow students in other degree programs (Enzelberger, 2001). Furthermore, teachers' social origins differ according to the level they teach at. Primary school teachers are more likely to have a working-class background while upper secondary teachers tend to have a middle-class background (Charles, 2006). Such differentiation used to be attributed to the prerequisites to access training and hence to the length of training. In most countries, primary school teachers could access teacher training directly after compulsory education, while teachers at upper secondary school level were required to undergo a full university curriculum before a short pedagogical training.

In many European countries teacher training has undergone deep reforms, repositioning all teacher training at the level of tertiary education. Altogether the number of training years after compulsory school has increased for all types of teacher training, although the study programmes for primary school teachers are still shorter than those for upper secondary school teachers (except in France). The impact of these teacher training reforms on the recruitment of teachers is perceived differently in some of the countries under study. Studies in Germany support the hypothesis of a progressive closing of the gap in social recruitment of teachers between lower (compulsory school) and higher (Gymnasium) school levels (Kühne, 2006). In Switzerland, however, fndings show that teacher training institutions still recruit "from lower, less-educated social classes" more often than other university programs (Denzler-Schircks et al., 2005). Finally, in France the question of whether this reform has changed the social background of primary school teachers is a matter of hot debate (Charles & Cibois, 2010).

#### *5.4.2 Case Studies*

Four cases exemplify the variety of educational trajectories and reasons for entering the teaching profession.

#### **5.4.2.1 Safa: Model Student and a Teacher Through and Through**

Safa grew up in the Paris region as the child of Algerian parents. She always wanted to become a teacher. As a child, she played at teaching her brothers and sisters. Her father had just two years of schooling, while her mother had completed compulsory school. As her parents valued school success, she responded by being a very good pupil. She was teased in class because of her good grades but at home, she was a role model for her siblings. Studying was a way to escape the many constraints of the family home, where she felt bored to death. The distance with her parents grew as she moved up the educational ladder. After her baccalaureate, she studied Spanish at university and spent a year in Spain to learn the language. While in Cadiz, she was surprised that she was perceived as a Frenchwoman, as in France she is an 'Arab'. Today she teaches Spanish at an upper secondary level school.

#### **5.4.2.2 Saladin: Following in the Footsteps of a Few Emancipating Teachers**

Born in Geneva to a Syrian family, Saladin moved as a child to the Arab Emirates and Syria before settling back in Geneva as a teenager. Although he was a good pupil in general, he struggled with math and was therefore tracked into a prevocational career by a teacher who could not conceive that an immigrant child would be capable of following general education. He overcame this humiliating experience by attending the general education track in nearby France. In this new positive environment, a couple of teachers reassured him: his school results were extremely good and he passed his baccalaureate in 5 languages. He studied French at university and became a teacher in a Gymnasium. Nowadays, he tells his pupils that "nothing is decided once and for all, everything is still possible if we manage to have the right knowledge and the right means, each of us can change the world. We can choose to let it be or to act".

#### **5.4.2.3 Kerim: Teaching as a Fall-Back Solution**

Teaching was not Kerim's frst choice. Instead, this young man who was born in the Netherlands to Turkish parents wanted to study medicine but failed the admission exams. He embarked upon a public administration curriculum but felt uneasy in this milieu. He therefore took the entrance exam for dentistry, but once enrolled on the course, he did not like the atmosphere. As he had previously worked as a mentor in homework classes, he opted for pedagogy. He started out as a social worker, but was frustrated by the feeling that he was unable to do enough for the children he had been employed to help. He therefore took a newly created position combining teaching with social work at a secondary school in Amsterdam, helping pupils with problematic behaviour both as their daily classroom teacher and as a social worker. Despite this trial-and-error orientation process, Kerim took a very well-considered professional decision and derives satisfaction from the fact that his work corresponds to his values.

#### **5.4.2.4 Bülent: Seeking Refuge from Discrimination and Economic Hardship**

Bülent went to a comprehensive school, achieved his Abitur and studied construction engineering. He is now a teacher in Math, Engineering, Social Science, and Islamic Religion in the Ruhr area, as well as a guidance counsellor at a comprehensive school (secondary level school). After his studies, he found it diffcult to get a job in construction engineering. Fearing a diffcult professional future (due to the fact that many construction companies were in crisis, in addition to feelings of discrimination), this young Turkish-origin professional was persuaded by his wife to take the available 'lateral career /cross entry' into the teaching profession, made easier by a shortage of teachers at that time in the Ruhr area. He applied for a teaching internship and was assigned to a school near his home. Two years later, after following extra courses in pedagogy, he was offered a contract at the same school. He soon obtained a position as guidance counsellor and later as provisional head of department, extending his competence subjects by taking additional training to teach Islamic Religion.

#### *5.4.3 Trajectories: Ability, Motivation, and Resource Mobilization*

The primary and secondary school teachers in our sample have a similar social background, in contrast with the literature on teachers in general. The interviewed teachers of immigrant origin have a working-class background. The parental level of education is unsurprisingly low, once more exemplifying the literature fnding that the teaching profession is an open avenue of social mobility for children from underprivileged milieus.

Yet the educational trajectories of teachers at primary and secondary level are somewhat different: non-linear paths are more frequent among primary school teachers than among secondary school staff. Being assigned to lower educational tracks such as pre-vocational schools or dropping out are setbacks that are also found among upper secondary school teachers like Saladin, albeit to a much lesser extent. Youth of immigrant origin often mention diffculties during their time at school, ranging from teasing and mocking to bullying and discrimination.

The story our informants tell in order to account for their educational trajectories is the result of interactions between factors pertaining to the individual learner and characteristics of their direct social context. Motivation and ability are the two individual-level 'requirements' for upward mobility for "frst-generation students" (Spiegler, 2018), like our informants.

Teachers' narratives are imbued with intrinsic motivations pertaining to the actual work involved in their profession, while extrinsic reasons for choosing this profession are virtually absent. Yet the conversion of tertiary educational achievement into professional mobility takes forms which are not always clear from the beginning. Half of the informants said that they always wanted to become teachers: Safa is motivated by her love for this activity; Saladin acts as a role model, encouraging his pupils to take action and stay the course despite setbacks. For the other half of our informants, teaching was not their frst goal, but a fall-back option. Kerim reached out to the teaching profession he had been socialized to when working as a mentor after failing to achieve his professional goals; Bülent's decision to retrain as a teacher was prompted by a fear of unemployment and discrimination. For these people, teaching is not a 'vocation' but rather a mature decision, an alternative way to make use of their educational qualifcations and to attain middle-class status from the options available to them. Across the whole sample in the various countries, half of the teachers interviewed did not initially want to become a teacher (cf. Schneider & Lang, 2016 for a more detailed analysis of the German case).

Literature on motivations for the choice of the teaching profession extensively discusses the notion of teaching as a fall-back career among pre-service teachers. In studies that included a fall-back career as a possible reason for becoming a teacher, this was the option ranked lowest by respondents (Wong et al., 2014). Delving into this last motivational factor, Wong distinguishes two types: 'Teaching as an alternative', a career option selected by respondents who were experiencing diffculties fnding a job or who had had negative experiences in other jobs, and 'Teaching as a provisional option', suggesting that teaching is only a temporary solution. While the frst type is associated with positive attitudes toward teaching, the second type is negatively correlated with teaching-related commitments.

Naturally, fndings on ranked motivations of pre-service teachers are not proper terms of comparison for interpreting the frequency of fall-back options among our in-service TIOs. Yet, the gap between a least valued motive and the recurrent mention of this type of decision in our TIOs sample is a striking indication of the specifc situation of our committed minority teachers, matching the frst type identifed by Wong. They had hesitated several times before taking the decision to enter the teaching profession, after coming to terms with disillusionment and abandoned dreams, especially if they had encountered obstacles towards achieving their professional aspirations. Their career choice is mainly symptomatic of frustrations and hurdles rather than a lack of commitment to their current teaching profession. This second-best career choice is not a matter of individual motivational defcit but points towards painful individual readjustments and challenging labour market access even for successful children of immigrants, framed by larger societal conditions, such as minority status, social origin, opportunity structures and economic and labour market conditions.

Results concerning educational trajectories and professional choices show that TIOs travel along similar pathways across countries; this is not surprising as the analysis was mainly conducted at the micro and meso level. Moreover, the methodological set up of the study, selecting respondents on the dependent variable of educational success tends to black out relevant country differences observed in studies of educational careers (Crul et al. 2012b).

#### **5.5 Entering a Teacher's Position: Opportunities for TIOs**

The necessary 'requirement', complementary in Spiegler's terms (2018) to individual specifc ingredients for upward mobility, are opportunities: they relate to the wider context under which motivations and abilities may unfold. While these two latter requirements characterize successful children of immigrants across the board, the third requirement − opportunities − are country specifc. In this section we analyse if and how upward mobility pathways differ across a typology of countries. Our analysis of opportunities covers some institutional features characteristic of the public school system, since almost all informants in our sample teach in public schools. We focus on institutional regulations regarding entry conditions and career opportunities or barriers as well as educational public policies.

#### *5.5.1 Analytical Tools*

The recruitment and career development of teachers differ according to the general features characterizing each country's civil service. The literature distinguishes two different ways of organizing the civil service in Europe: the *job system* and the *career system* (Bekke & van der Meer, 2000).

In the *job system*, recruitment and selection are highly decentralized and functionoriented. Individuals are recruited for a specifc position, are subject to general employment legislation, and may not always beneft from job security. Such a system ensures great fexibility and enables the externalization of tasks. This system highly resembles what is practised in the private sector. This job system, typical for Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries, is also practised to a certain extent in Switzerland and the Netherlands (Eurydice., 2012, 116).

In the *career system*, the initial recruitment of teachers is carried out through competitive examinations, based on the principles of merit and equality. As individuals are recruited not only for a position but for a career, they beneft from job security. Their advancement through the hierarchy of their corps is determined by specifc promotion rules based on length of service and merit or by internal exams. The *career system* is typical of the French and Spanish civil service. In those countries, teachers have "career civil servant status" as they are "appointed for life by the appropriate central or regional authority" (Eurydice., 2012, 116).3

The German civil service combines characteristics of both systems. On one hand, there is a comprehensive and uniform hierarchy of legal norms establishing a country-wide framework of career categories and insuring clear standardization and job security. On the other hand, decisions on recruitment, personnel deployment, in-service training and promotion are very much decentralized (Goetz, 2000). Differences are found not only between Länder, but also within Länder.

The civil service systems determine the mechanisms for allocating teachers to a school. Whereas in all countries under study, teacher training includes some form of traineeship, the effects of internships on gaining access to a stable workplace vary according to the type of civil service model. In *job system* countries, internships provide an arena where a prospective teacher can build up a professional network

<sup>3</sup> https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED539386

that may be instrumental when looking for a job; therefore, this system opens up margins for individual action. In *career system* countries, internships have no bearing on the further allocation of teachers, as competitive examinations leave no leeway to infuence where they will practice their profession. These general institutional features impact teaching careers as they determine conditions and entry procedures into the workplace and defne the scope for individual action.

Yet entry procedures are not only determined by general institutional arrangements but also by educational policies aiming at improving the educational performance of migrant-origin pupils. Some measures directed at reaching this goal focus specifcally on teachers. To identify the main features of these policies and their variability across the countries under study, we rely on the Migrant Integration Policy Index. The MIPEX index is a comparative tool measuring policies promoting the integration of third-country nationals in some 38 countries (http://www.mipex. eu/) and education is one of the eight policy areas covered by the index.4

We singled out policy measures that specifcally target teachers from the questions the index is built upon. For our purpose of analysing entry conditions of children of immigrants into the teaching profession, a key policy action is one aimed at bringing migrants into the teaching workforce. This provision intends to promote school success among children of immigrants and create a diversity- friendly school environment (Schmidt & Schneider, 2016). While it could be questioned as a form of affrmative action, this measure ensures sheltered access to a middle-class position for people with an immigrant background.

Table 5.2 shows that this policy measure is often quite consistently accompanied by other teacher-centred measures in training, so that the three tools shape the professional environment and its degree of openness to the specifcity of migrant teachers. The overall picture emerging from Table 5.2 is of a great variety among the countries under scrutiny in this paper: the Netherlands and Germany adopted clear teacher-centred measures. In Germany, for instance, bringing migrants into the teacher workforce represents one explicit goal that has featured in the national integration plan since 2007 (Lang et al., 2018, 105). Such policies seem to be completely absent in Spain and France, while Switzerland takes an intermediate position between these two poles.

#### *5.5.2 Case Studies*

The selected cases illustrate the infuence of institutional opportunity structures on the ways in which teachers of immigrant origin manage to enter this career.

<sup>4</sup>Each policy area in the MIPEX index 2015 is divided into four sub-dimensions for a total of 167 items. Each item is a closed ordinal item, coded as 0, 50, or 100. The maximum score of 100 is awarded when policies meet the highest standards for equal treatment, often drawing on policy standards set by the European Union (Ruedin et al., 2015).


**Table 5.2** Evaluation of measures targeting teachers as tools to promote children of immigrants' integration in the countries under study

Source: MIPEX 2014, http://www.mipex.eu/methodology

Legend: Considering the diversifcation of the teaching force, MIPEX country experts report widespread measures in the Netherlands and a scattered pattern of similar provisions in Germany; this contrasts with the absence of such arrangements in the other three countries under scrutiny. Measured against European integration standards, the Netherlands scores 100, Germany 50 and the other countries 0

#### **5.5.2.1 Mayra: In the Hands of a Bureaucratic System**

Mayra, born in Seville to Peruvian parents, had been working for some time as a mediator, when she decided to risk taking the competitive examination for teachers in the public sector. She passed the exam and, in the face of her previous experiences as a child of immigrants, was surprised to acknowledge that "the examiner had been fair". However, because of her grades, she was assigned to a school with many children of immigrants in a village far away from where she was living. Her placement in this school (be it a majority or a minority school) was neither the result of her personal choice nor that of the school but the outcome of an impersonal administrative decision.

#### **5.5.2.2 Ceren: Fitting in the Ethnic Niche**

After achieving her Abitur in the German school system, Ceren wanted to study Turkish. It seemed like a natural choice to take advantage of the newly established opportunity to combine this with a teaching degree. She applied for a teacher internship and, because of her subject, it was easy to fnd a job at a Gymnasium in the Ruhr region, an urban area with many migrant children. Her professional profle fts in the ethnic niche.

#### **5.5.2.3 Dilek: Relying On Her Professional Network**

Dilek, a teacher of Turkish origin, was having a diffcult time fnding a job as the supply of history teachers exceeds demand in Geneva. To secure a teaching position, she activated her professional network, built during her school days when she attended a school with many minority pupils as well as during internships and jobs as a supply teacher. Eventually, she found a job as the only teacher with 'exotic origins' at a predominantly majority school, where most pupils have a majority background.

#### *5.5.3 Institutional Channelling*

This paper's comparative design highlights the importance of contextual dimensions in shaping the job search process. The institutional structure of the feld may grant or inhibit individual leeway in the process and determine the relevance of the resources that individuals can mobilize to enter the professional feld.

The competitive examination system typical for *career system* countries, illustrated here by Mayra's vignette, frmly channels a competent workforce into vacancies defned on the basis of the subjects to be taught. In Ceren's vignette, a policy of 'preferential' recruitment for teachers of immigrant origin may make the ascribed attribute of ethnicity more relevant to securing a position, leaving it up to the individual teacher whether or not they want to highlight this attribute. Yet, Ceren is the only German case where the institutional channelling of migrants into the teaching workforce was mediated by the choice of the subjects taught. For most of the teachers interviewed in Germany, their immigrant origin was not important to their recruitment to the extent that the offcial teacher-centred policy to promote immigrant pupils' integration might suggest (Lang et al., 2018, 110). While the specifc profles and competences of TIOs are often sought after by schools in urban neighbourhoods with high shares of immigrant children, the allocation of positions based on a career system or the simple lack of open positions in some regions prevent it from becoming a primary resource for recruitment. Almost all informants had been recruited by a school where they had either worked during their training period or as a supply teacher, thereby proving their competences.

The *job system* of civil service, illustrated here by Dilek's vignette, gives a great deal of latitude to individual actors. Naturally, both teaching subjects and the supply and demand situation in the specifc labour market powerfully infuence job search, but informal job-search methods through mobilizing one's social networks also become very relevant in this context. This dimension recalls Granovetter's pathbreaking studies (1973, 1974) on job search; however, in our case, informal contacts take place within a largely institutionalized context such as internships and supply teaching in the framework of the *job system*.

As this context gives relevance to social capital, a discussion of this concept is appropriate (Behtoui, 2009). According to Bourdieu (2001), social capital, i.e. personal and professional relationships, procures competitive advantages by providing higher returns on [educational] investment. Emphasizing its inherited nature, Bourdieu's social capital theory primarily explains the reproduction of inequalities in society. The situation of upwardly mobile children of immigrants is quite different. First-generation students entering a 'new' professional area cannot 'inherit'

relevant social capital. The social capital they rely on in their job search is what they have accrued in their specifc professional environment; they are actors in accumulating human and social capital via 'hard work and commitment'.

The notion of social capital 'à la Coleman' (1988) differs sharply from the meaning attributed to it by Bourdieu. Similar to economic and cultural capital, social capital can be accrued by the same logic of 'rational choice theory' (Arneil, 2006). The institutional opportunity structure of the *job system* and of internships provides an arena for collecting a profession-specifc relevant network which can be exploited when looking for a job. Framed as the rational calculations of self-interested individuals, social capital provides individually-tailored tools to escape from social reproduction (Crul et al., 2017).

Ethnic-specifc social capital can also be a resource in upwardly mobile trajectories of children of immigrants (Crul et al., 2017). Echoing the 'Pathways to Success' studies, this type of capital can be understood as the mobilization of the ascribed attribute – the immigrant origin – in gaining a professional position. Yet the examples of the teachers cited above show that the relevance of this resource which 'turns disadvantage into advantage' (Konyali, 2014) is crucially dependent on the countryspecifc institutional channelling and opportunity structure.

In *career system* countries, individual attributes such as ethnic background are not formally recognized and therefore bear no formal relevance to gaining a position, even if school principals may express a preference for specifc candidates during the recruitment process. In *job system* countries, there is potentially more scope to mobilize one's ethnic background; however, this was not really exploited by most of the informants in our samples who relied mainly on their professional attributes to gain a position.

The critical contextual dimension required for ethnic reference to be effective is an explicit diversity policy on teaching staff or, to a much lesser extent, the inclusion of migrant-specifc teaching subjects. This is partially apparent in the German case. For these teachers, facilitated access to a job is counterbalanced by the risk of being caught in an 'ethnic mobility trap', whereby it is impossible to transfer acquired professional, cultural and social capital to any sort of mainstream organization (Crul et al., 2017).

Mobilization of one's minority background may function as a resource to gain a work position; alternatively, it may be totally irrelevant, depending on the institutional opportunity structure within the various contexts.

#### **5.6 Being a TIO: Interpreting the Teaching Role**

Having discussed the trajectories of informants to attain their ambitioned position in the labour market as teachers, in this section we turn to their present situation as professionals and address questions on the extent to which they perceive their immigrant origin as having a bearing on their professional activity. We especially analyse if and how the type of institutional opportunity structure infuences two central

dimensions of their activity: the way in which informants interpret their role as teachers of immigrant origin and to what extent they are accepted within their professional environment.

#### *5.6.1 Analytical Tools*

School sociology literature identifes three major dilemmas and challenges confronting teachers today: knowledge transmission vs educational function; separation between private and professional spheres vs fusion of the two spheres; institutional role vs relevance of personal project. In the exercise of their professional activity, teachers are called upon to position themselves in those various areas of tension. Democratization of upper secondary school has brought into the school system pupils quite different from the two traditional fgures of pupils, i.e. Bourdieu's heirs or deserving diligent learners. Democratization has opened up secondary school to young people from working-class backgrounds who are less familiar with the school culture than the traditional pupils. This means that teachers are being confronted with new social problems and personal tensions (Dubet, 2010; Dubet & Martuccelli, 2014).

The interpretation of the work and role of teachers has been affected by these fundamental transformations (Navarro, 2012; Duru-Bellat, 2015). Some teachers uphold the primacy of knowledge transmission, whereby they must prove their disciplinary expertise and pupils must show discipline and endurance, while others support a larger educational function for teachers who prioritize learners and adapt to their needs (Perrier, 2004). The former shares the traditional cultural ethos of teaching based on a strict divide between the private and the professional sphere; the latter abandons this position and uses their personality, background and relational capacities in their work. In such cases, the teachers' role is subject to a personal interpretation that reaches beyond institutional defnitions. The divide between upholders of knowledge transmission and supporters of the educational function of teaching is more prominent among secondary school teachers than primary school teachers (Duru-Bellat & van Zanten, 2012). Dubar (1996) identifes and names the two different historically positioned models from which teachers can develop their professional identities: the reference professional model is that of a 'magister', i.e. a teacher who focuses on transferring knowledge to the pupils; the alternative model is that of a 'pedagogue', who focuses on the learning process and pupils (Lang, 1999).

In countries where the notion of TIOs is made relevant by educational policies, teachers must meet two main expectations: to establish cultural links between school and home for pupils from a minority background (Villegas & Irvine, 2010; Schmidt & Schneider, 2016), on the one hand, and to function as role models for minority pupils in achieving (Sleeter & Richard Milner, 2011) and developing identities (Bayham, 2008), on the other hand. Such expectations are coherent with the 'pedagogue' model. This is usually not the case in countries where educational policies grant no institutional relevance to teachers' ethnic origin.

TIOs are minority professionals who pioneer access to a work feld that used to be largely precluded to immigrants (Elias & Scotson, 1994). As 'newcomers' in their professional milieu, like other minority professionals (Waldring et al., 2015; Van Laer & Janssens, 2011), they may be confronted with a lack of acceptance of their position. This can take the form of open contestation or of micro-aggressions, i.e. "everyday exchanges which send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership" (Sue, 2010, xvi). The comparative design of the paper allows us to analyse whether the type of institutional environment has an impact on the occurrence of legitimacy questions and on the ways in which such thorny situations are dealt with.

#### *5.6.2 Case Studies*

The following cases illustrate how TIOs interpret their role and deal with any legitimacy tensions they may encounter. These examples specifcally show how the institutional opportunity structure affects the way in which they fulfl their role.

#### **5.6.2.1 Evren: Magister By Conviction**

Evren is a biology teacher of Turkish origin working in an upper secondary school of the Paris region. He grew up in Brittany where – as he says – his unusual name did not sound out of place. He thinks that a teacher's migrant background is a personal matter which has no place in his work: in the public sphere a schoolteacher has to be "deeply republican". He believes that a teacher's job is to portray "republican values" and transmit disciplinary knowledge.

#### **5.6.2.2 Raquel: Magister By Necessity**

Raquel is a teacher of Moroccan descent, working in a public primary school in Madrid. Her headmaster has welcomed her, glad of her professional competences both as a teacher and a mediator. Despite this, from the very beginning, she has had to cope with unvoiced resentment from the rest of the school staff – from the cleaners to her colleagues – who consider that her appointment has overturned established ethnic hierarchies: "A Moroccan person as teacher?" Similarly, the pupils' parents question her professional competences. Raquel must therefore struggle to be recognized as a competent teacher. Leaving this school is not a solution open to her in a *career system*. Instead, she decided to downplay her migrant background at work by giving up her mediator role and focussing only on the teaching side of her job. She has chosen to reinforce her role as magister as she reckons this is the best way to keep on challenging the established ethnic hierarchies in her school.

#### **5.6.2.3 Sultan: A Self-Appointed Mediator Who Enjoys Double Legitimacy**

Sultan, a young Dutch woman of Turkish descent, teaches Economics and Business classes at a secondary school attended by many minority pupils. The school not only offered her a job after her internship but also allowed her to implement a business class project that she had designed. She feels that she is not only teaching Economics and Business but also norms and values. She considers herself a role model to these youngsters: because she shares an ethnic and religious background with her students, she can contextualise students' questions and remarks and students are likely to place trust in her.

#### **5.6.2.4 Azize Bahar: Role Model Challenged in Her Professional Identity**

Azize, now an established English teacher of Turkish descent in Rotterdam, realizes that her professional position as a teacher is valued by her pupils, especially Turkish and Moroccan girls, for whom she is a role model because of her immigrant background. Yet, her Turkish background also makes her vulnerable as she feels that her professional position is sometimes undermined because of her ethnicity. When she was working as a supply teacher in the school where she is currently employed, most pupils did not accept her because of her immigrant origin. After being continuously challenged by these pupils, she fnally notifed her direct supervisor. The school arranged talks with both the pupils and their parents, and eventually the class was assigned a different supply teacher. When relating this incident, Azize emphasized that she had received institutional backing from the school administration, legitimizing both her immigrant descent status and her professional competences as a TIO.

#### **5.6.2.5 Aldin: Token Other, Contested as a TIO in a Majority School**

Aldin, a Bosnian Serb by origin, teaches Italian and French at a Gymnasium in Basel with very few minority students. In a city with a distinctive diversity-sensitive policy, quite unusual in Switzerland, the headmaster at his school feels obliged to comply with the general trend and therefore hired a TIO. After starting his new job, Aldin became aware of resentment on the part of his colleagues who are convinced that he is "fehl am Platz", out of place in that school and that he only got his position because of his origin. He suffers from being in an uncomfortable position in which his competences are ignored, while lacking the resources to overturn or manage the situation.

#### **5.6.2.6 Harun: Appointed as Mediator Yet Contested as a TIO in a Minority School**

Harun is a teacher of Turkish origin working in Berlin. He was recruited as supply teacher to "ease" relationships between a 100% "German" teaching staff and an almost 100% "non-German" student body. Although shocked by the educational styles of the parents in many low-educated migrant families, he understands his pupils' frustrations and daily experiences of hostility. His pupils are glad to hear their names fnally properly pronounced and parents appreciate fnding an attentive counsellor when their children have problems at school. Yet as the only TIO at his school, he faces unfriendliness from his colleagues: some of them will not speak to him or even greet him. He is left alone to deal with this awkward situation.

#### *5.6.3 Constraints and Opportunities Framing Agency*

These vignettes document that the institutional setting affects the way in which TIOs can interpret their role. Strictly speaking, the extent of ethnic origin mobilization is not a constitutive feature of the models of magister and pedagogue, yet these two professional approaches represent frames which either inhibit or allow a productive mobilization of one's ethnic minority background. The magister model of teaching tends to be dominant in *career system* countries with a diversity-neutral approach towards educational policy, while the pedagogue model is more common in *job system* countries, especially when this is associated with a diversity-friendly teacher recruitment policy. Naturally, such tendencies are not the result of institutional determinism but rather the outcome of constraints acting on the agency of TIOs and the implementation of their individual projects.

The French and the Spanish vignettes are cases in point. Evren has interiorized the French republican ethos; he adheres to a strict separation of his public role and private ethnic belonging to the extent that he refrains from communicating his immigrant origin to his pupils. He unsurprisingly aligns with the model of knowledge provider. Raquel's case is similar in outcome but different with respect to the dynamics leading to this result. Her initial project of combining teaching and mediation broke down when she was faced with persistent hostility. Lacking personal resources and institutional backing to resist and overcome this obstacle, she gave up the more 'pedagogue' approach she had cherished. Institutional arrangements and educational policy options converged to exert pressure on her to comply with the magister model.

The two Dutch cases are emblematic of *job system* countries with an open diversity-friendly teacher recruitment policy. Both Sultan and Azize resolutely engage in a pedagogue interpretation of their teacher role and enjoy full recognition of their competences and ethnic background from the school management board. Obviously, this type of institutional setting does not protect TIOs from being contested; yet when tensions arose, the school authorities provided Azize with effective

backing so that she could feel secure in her professional and personal identity as well as in her role interpretation.

The Swiss and the German vignettes are good examples for countries where the *job system* applies (at least partially) in combination with a somewhat hesitant diversity policy. While their immigrant origin signalled an openness towards diversity, Aldin and Harun did not receive any support from their school hierarchies when confronted with challenges to their legitimacy from fellow teachers and parents.

The analysis of access to a teaching position showed that ethnic origin mobilization can only work as a resource under a specifc institutional structure of the professional feld (§ 2.3). Here again, the range of possibilities that TIOs have to interpret their role and mobilize their ethnic attribute are shaped by the specifc institutional setting of the context they work in. Moreover, the type and degree of diversity-sensitive teacher recruitment policy plays a role in managing any tensions that may arise in the professional arena and in legitimizing ethnic minority background as a resource in how TIOs play their professional role.

Contextual features infuence the way in which TIOs interpret their role, as we have seen so far. Yet other social factors contribute to determine teachers' role understanding and action: school sociology literature points out the impact of social origin in this respect. The explicit choice to work in a minority school is more often observed among teachers from underprivileged families than those from a middleclass milieu (Legendre, 2004). As primary school teachers are more likely to have a working-class background than upper secondary teachers (Charles, 2006), commitment towards teaching in a minority school is more likely to be found among the former than the latter.

A similar commitment to underprivileged groups is observed among the upwardly mobile second generation in the United States. Socially mobile minority children of immigrants, be they Mexican (Agius Vallejo & Lee, 2009), African-American (Lamont, 2000) or Asian-American (Su, 1997), are motivated to 'give back' to less fortunate co-ethnics by providing them with fnancial and social support. Here again, such behaviour varies according to social origin: children who grew up poor and achieved middle-class status within one generation more often exhibit a collectivist orientation, and want to 'give back' to poorer kin, co-ethnics and the larger ethnic community. By contrast, those who grew up in middle-class households tend to adopt an individualistic meritocratic orientation, and are therefore less likely to give back to poorer co-ethnics (Agius Vallejo & Lee, 2009).

In our European study of TIOs, commitment to co-ethnics may take the form of individual help to disadvantaged people living in close proximity to helpers, as in the United States; but more often it takes the form of an action addressing a collective recipient, be it the ethnic community, an underprivileged social category or a deprived section of town. In other words, commitment to teaching in minority schools appears to be a specifc form of 'giving back' for TIOs in Europe.

Our TIO respondents are quite a homogeneous group in terms of social origin, as we already pointed out. Consequently, this criterion has little bearing on their 'giving back' attitude or behaviour. However, commitment to teaching in minority schools tended to be articulated by primary school teachers more often than by secondary school teachers.

#### **5.7 Conclusions**

This paper presented and discussed fndings on inter-generationally mobile and educationally successful children of immigrants who are now professionally active as teachers. Based on a qualitative approach, the empirical material resulted from the pooling of interviews conducted with teachers of immigrant origin in fve European countries. The variety of country institutional settings is especially valuable for a comparative analysis inspired by the integration context theory.

The paper addresses three main topics: educational trajectories and professional choice, access to the professional feld and professional experiences. Two issues and their interactions run through the entire text: the resources that TIOs mobilize to create and maintain their upward social mobility and career, and the institutional opportunity structure that shapes access to the professional life.

The selection of respondents on the dependent variable of educational success resulted in homogenizing across informants and contexts the individual ability and motivational requirements critical for achieving tertiary qualifcations despite initial adverse social conditions. Findings about the resources mobilized for those requirements are in line with the conclusions reached in the overall 'Pathways to Success' and 'Elites' projects; namely individual agency, resilience, parental agency, social support, and social skills (Crul et al., 2017).

The specifc contribution of this paper resides in the analysis of the professional integration and career development of TIOs. The comparatively high share of TIOs in the sample who choose this career as a second-best option seems to be indicative of some fragility among children of immigrants; because of their not wholly successful performance in the education system, they end up resorting to teaching, a career that functions as a steppingstone for young people from a working-class or lower middle-class background when the obstacles to reaching their initial goal prove to be too high.

Mechanisms for allocating teachers to a workplace result as much from general, historically evolved country-specifc institutional arrangements, such as the civil service system, as from targeted migrant integration policies, such as teachers' recruiting measures. The interplay between the two creates an institutional opportunity structure that affects both the entry conditions into the workforce for TIOs and the leeway they have to shape and interpret their professional role.

The institutional opportunity structure infuences which attributes can appropriately be mobilized by granting or denying relevance to available resources. As a consequence, professional social networks established during the qualifcation path can either be practically meaningless or instrumental to granting access to a job. The same applies to ethnic background, which is worthless in some contexts – especially in *career system* countries – and valuable in others, particularly in countries or regions with a policy of promoting diversity among teaching staff.

One's legitimacy as a professional may at times be challenged if immigrant origin is interpreted as being a marker of an everlasting 'outsider' condition. It is important to note that such challenges and tensions may occur in all types of contexts, whatever the institutional opportunity structure. However, the type of structure infuences the kind of responses to such challenges. In *diversity-blind* structures, the single TIO is likely to be left to their own devices to sort out legitimacy issues. This type of response reduces the personal leeway for TIOs to interpret their role and forces some to play down their migrant background in their professional activities in an attempt to make it invisible. In *diversity-sensitive* structures that recognize ethnic origin as a resource, school principals or colleagues are more likely to use their institutional infuence to meet any challenges confronting a single TIO, thereby giving them support and legitimacy.

**Acknowledgements** We thank Christine Lang, Laure Moguérou, Emmanuelle Santelli, Agota Sanislo and Ismintha Waldring, who conducted studies on teachers of immigrant origin as members of the Pathways to Success and ELITES teams in Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands respectively. They kindly shared their notes and writings and thoughts for the drafting of this overview article. We further thank Christine Lang and Ismintha Waldring for their insightful comments on a previous version of this paper.

#### **References**


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## **Chapter 6 Becoming Elite in an Egalitarian Context: Pathways to Law and Medicine Among Norway's Second-Generation**

**Arnfnn H. Midtbøen and Marjan Nadim**

#### **6.1 Introduction**

The extent to which children of immigrants are able to translate their educational achievements into high-status labour market positions has become a key question in research on integration and assimilation (Alba & Foner, 2015; Crul et al., 2016a; Tran et al., 2019). Although they often come from families with limited education, children of immigrants tend to have high educational ambitions, and many perform remarkably well in the education system (Heath & Brinbaum 2014; Kasinitz et al., 2008; Lee & Zhou, 2015; Shah et al., 2010). Signifcant numbers are entering elite educational felds and prestigious occupations. As in many other countries, the second generation in Norway is overrepresented in professions such as medicine and law (Østby & Henriksen, 2013), yet we still know little about their work trajectories and professional achievements. A pertinent question is what opportunities European labour markets offer highly ambitious second-generation individuals, and whether – and on what terms – they are granted access to elite occupations (cf. Tran et al., 2019).

Medicine and law are prime examples of elite professions, as they have challenging and highly competitive admission criteria, while yielding high levels of reward compared to other felds of higher education (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). In Norway, both professions are characterized by formal and informal *occupational closure*: access to these occupations is regulated formally (and institutionally) through high entry requirements for these study programmes and strict licence requirements for practicing these occupations. In addition, informal selection mechanisms produce a

University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway e-mail: a.h.midtboen@sosgeo.uio.no

M. Nadim (\*) Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway e-mail: marjan.nadim@socialresearch.no

A. H. Midtbøen

strong degree of social reproduction whereby students and employees from higherclass strata are overrepresented (Strømme & Hansen, 2017).

Such formal and informal occupational closure can represent obstacles for the second generation's access to elite occupations. They face greater challenges in meeting the competitive admission criteria, as they tend to obtain lower grades than their majority peers (Alba & Foner, 2015; Cools & Schøne, 2019; Heath & Rothon, 2014; Reisel et al., 2019). Furthermore, being visible minorities and having undertaken a steep social climb means that the second generation may experience being "other" in their educational and work context, making them vulnerable to subtle processes of exclusion that might shape their work experiences and trajectories (e.g. Dinovitzer, 2011; Hansen, 2001; Konyali, 2014; Puwar, 2004; Waldring et al., 2015). Building on the Norwegian *Pathways to Success* study, this chapter examines the common pathways to entering the elite occupations of medicine and law for descendants of labour migrants in Norway, how these pathways are shaped by the institutional arrangements regulating access to these occupations, and how the ethnic minority status of second-generation individuals shapes their experiences within elite occupations once they have gained access.

We start by embedding the Norwegian context in the broader comparative landscape of research on how institutional opportunity structures affect secondgeneration incorporation. Next, we discuss two strands of theory that help to shed light on the experiences of second-generation elite professionals: theories of occupational closure and of symbolic boundaries. We draw on insights from both theoretical perspectives in our analyses, concluding that while the occupational felds of law and medicine in Norway are open to newcomers who manage to pass the highgrade requirements, processes of ethnic segmentation seem to occur after employment is secured.

#### **6.2 The Norwegian Context**

Norway is an interesting contrast to the European countries typically examined in studies of second-generation incorporation, such as Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands (cf. Alba & Foner, 2015; Crul et al., 2012, 2016a). On the one hand, Norway shares with these countries the experience of becoming a country of immigration in the late 1960s, when labour migrants from countries such as Pakistan, India, Turkey and Morocco started to arrive as part of the broader wave of post-war labour migration to Western Europe in response to recent economic growth. As elsewhere, many of these immigrants had low levels of education; they could not speak the host country language; they were culturally and religiously foreign to the majority population; and they were absorbed into the lower tiers of the labour market, often in declining industries and occupations (Brochmann & Kjeldstadli, 2008). On the other hand, Norway's institutional structure – its egalitarian education system, redistributive welfare state system and regulated labour market – stands out in international comparisons by offering a range of institutional opportunities for upward social mobility to children of immigrants (Hermansen, 2017; Midtbøen & Nadim, 2021).

First, due to a compressed wage structure and redistributive policies, income inequality is low in Norway and relatively few children live in poverty regardless of their parents' employment status. This is benefcial for all children, but especially for children growing up in poor families with low-educated parents. Indeed, recent comparative research has demonstrated that intergenerational upward mobility is more widespread in the Scandinavian countries than in countries such as Germany and the US (Bratberg et al., 2017).

Second, Norway's education system is characterized by a combination of a high level of standardization (i.e. low variation in school quality) and a relatively low level of stratifcation (i.e. a system of relatively late tracking). In Norway, the quality of education meets the same standards across the country, and tracking into vocational, professional or academic tracks does not occur until the age of 16, when students leave compulsory secondary school (after 10 years in a school for all levels of ability) and enter the high school system (Reisel et al., 2019). Compared to countries such as the US, this suggests that children of immigrants in Norway growing up in residentially segregated areas are penalized less by differences in school quality. And compared to countries with early-tracking systems, such as Germany, children of immigrants in Norway have time to catch up with their majority peers before choosing what tracks to pursue, and both they and their parents have the power to choose the direction of their future studies (Midtbøen & Nadim, 2021). Upon fnishing compulsory education at the age of 16, most Norwegians, including the second generation, go on to high school (i.e. upper secondary education), which consists of academic and vocational tracks. Academic upper-secondary tracks take 3 years, while vocational upper secondary tracks take 2 years. After these 2 years, students may spend 2 years in apprenticeship training or 1 year completing general subject supplements, providing them with the basic entrance requirements for higher education. Although children of immigrants generally tend to perform less well in their fnal secondary school examinations, their average high school completion fgures are identical to those of the majority population (Reisel et al., 2019).

Finally, the Norwegian system of higher education is predominantly public and free of charge. In striking contrast to the US, public universities in Norway offer a higher quality of education, are more competitive (and therefore attract the best students) and rank higher in status than the few existing private alternatives. In highstatus felds of tertiary education, such as medicine and law, public universities are by far the best option in terms of both quality and status (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). These features of Norway's system of higher education suggest that the threshold for ambitious second-generation individuals (who have often grown up in low-income families) to embark on a high-status educational track is comparatively low. The question is how diffcult it is for them to acquire the necessary educational credentials and, having done so, to translate their educational achievements into relevant occupational positions (cf. Tran et al., 2019).

#### **6.3 Accessing Law and Medicine in Norway: Standard and Alternative Routes**

Both law and medicine degree courses are offered at selected public universities in Norway, and the public education programmes in these felds are considered the most prestigious. Access to these higher education study programmes is mainly determined by the grades obtained in the centralized, state-run high school system (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). All students have to take the same exams and in contrast to many other countries, entry into these elite study programmes requires no extra tests, personal letters, recommendations or essays, thus limiting the infuence of social networks or mastery of specifc forms of expression on a student's chances of gaining admission compared to many other countries (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). At the same time, both medicine and law have highly competitive entry requirements that demand a high average grade. Medicine study programmes have the highest grade requirements of all Norwegian study programmes. The requirements for law are lower, but this was the study programme with the most applicants and the longest waiting list in 2017 (The Norwegian Universities and Colleges Admission Service, 2017).

Importantly, however, there are alternative routes if a candidate has not graduated from high school with good enough grades. It is, for instance, both possible and common to retake high school exams in special private schools in order to improve one's grades after completing high school in the public education system. This requires the economic means to pay tuition fees and be able to spend a substantial amount of time trying to achieve better grades.

Another alternative route lies in the actual study programmes. Full law study programmes are offered at three Norwegian public universities and consist of a 5-year Master's programme. An alternative route to a law degree is to embark on a Bachelor's degree in law, which has lower entry requirements. This degree does not qualify students to become lawyers and generally has a low status in the labour market, but after completion, graduates can apply for direct admission to the Master's level at the three universities offering this programme. However, the possibilities to enter at Master's level are limited, and the three Master's degree universities appear to be closing down this option in practice. Instead of following the 'alternative route' students have to apply for ordinary admission to the Master's programme on the basis of their high school grades. If they manage to enter the programme, the relevant subjects they have already completed can be accepted, so that they will be able to continue where they had left off in their study trajectories. However, only a minority of bachelor students meet the grade requirements, meaning that they need to improve their high school grades, even after obtaining a Bachelor's degree. Until recently, it was also possible to enrol in a private institution offering law courses and apply for transfer to a public law school at a later stage, but this route has become severely limited in recent years. In effect, the alternative routes to a law degree are becoming limited to retaking high school exams to improve one's grades and the only limit to this alternative is a student's willingness to spend time and money. The informants interviewed in this study had been able to choose this alternative route.

Traditionally, a law student's grades have been more decisive to their career opportunities than is the case for other higher education programmes. Norwegian law schools are characterized by continuous competition, in which only those with good grades can continue to compete for high-earning and high-status jobs, whereas the rest have to continue with more modest ambitions, or simply leave the feld (Strømme & Hansen, 2017). In order to work as a lawyer (*advokat*) in Norway, you must frst obtain a Master's degree in Law, and then pass a qualifcation as a lawyer. This entails a minimum of 2 years of legal practice, for instance as an associate lawyer (*advokatfullmektig*), whereby in most cases one must have tried three cases at a court, including at least one civil case. Within the feld of law, the status of lawyers differs widely according to the prestige of their law frm and case portfolios. Some of the most prestigious jobs are found in the public sector (e.g. judges or lawyer in the Legislation department in the Ministry of Justice or with the Attorney General).

Medicine in Norway is a 6-year programme offered at four universities. It is usually the most competitive feld of study to enter and has extremely high grade requirements. Admission is mainly based on an applicant's high school grades, but it is possible for candidates to improve their grades privately after graduating and to gain extra grade points by taking other university courses or acquiring relevant practical experience. Strømme and Hansen (2017: 172) characterize the route to gaining admission to medical school as a "long and risky process" that in many cases demands economic resources to fnance the diverse strategies for gaining extra points. Once in medical school, however, the programme is characterized by *low* competition, as most medical schools do not give grades, but rather use a pass/fail system.1 Unlike law students, medical students can earn their degrees in other countries and return to Norway to practice medicine, and there has been a massive increase in students using this alternative route to a medical degree.

In order to become a medical doctor, graduates have to go through a one-and-half year mandatory traineeship. Before 2012, these were allocated through a lottery that students from universities outside Norway were also allowed to enter. Nowadays, students must compete for traineeships by applying directly to relevant institutions. The new competition has fuelled charges of nepotism, whereby children of medical doctors are accused of having an unfair advantage in securing traineeships (Drange, 2020; Losvik, 2013).

<sup>1</sup>However, grades were reintroduced at the University of Oslo in 2013, and there are ongoing discussions about the grading system at other universities.

#### **6.4 Closure Mechanisms in Elite Professions: What Room Is There for the Second Generation?**

A defning aspect of *elite* studies and professions is their exclusivity. Only a select few are granted access to the status and rewards awarded by elite positions, and elite professions protect their exclusivity by closing off opportunities to 'outsiders' (cf. Murphy, 1988). Access to privileged positions is typically controlled by requiring formal educational credentials. The two professions of interest in this chapter – medicine and law – are both *licensed* professions. This means that they are regulated by law, so that unauthorized practice is illegal and educational requirements are institutionalized and sanctioned by the State. Licensing creates a monopoly situation that raises the demand for – and reward of – their professional services, which in turn functions as an indirect *institutional barrier* to access (cf. Drange & Helland, 2019; Weeden, 2002). Moreover, access to the required educational credentials, which is necessary to access the professions, is also characterized by institutional barriers, as elite educational tracks have strict admission criteria.

However, elite professions are not only protected by institutionalized barriers, they can also be characterized by more *informal* closure mechanisms, manifested in the social composition of those recruited to these professions. It is well documented that recruitment to high-level professions such as medicine and law is characterized by selectivity, as they tend to recruit professionals from a higher stratum of society. Strømme and Hansen (2017) show that medicine and law in Norway seem to be relatively closed professions in terms of their social profle. Both disciplines have high levels of self-recruitment, whereby students in these felds often have parents with the same educational background and higher incomes compared to students in other felds of higher education. In other words, there is reason to expect that those of higher-class backgrounds have more relevant social networks and experience a better "ft" both within the educational and work context.

Law appears to have even more skewed social recruitment patterns than medicine. Strømme and Hansen (2017) argue that this is due to the type of skills required in the two felds, as well as the type of competition fostered through the two educations. While medicine is largely based on a set of technical skills, law is a 'softer' feld requiring a vaguer body of knowledge and relying more on skills such as vocabulary, articulation and rhetoric. Furthermore, although medical schools in Norway have extremely high entry requirements, they are generally characterized by low levels of competition after entry is secured. By contrast, law schools have lower entry requirements, but are characterized by continuous competition. Thus, having parents in the same feld might be particularly advantageous in law as mastering the 'hidden curriculum' and having feld-specifc cultural capital is more important in this feld (Strømme & Hansen, 2017).

As the adult second generation in Norway are predominantly children of (lowskilled) labour migrants and refugees, we can expect them to be disadvantaged by the institutional and informal closure mechanisms in elite professions. On average, in Norway and elsewhere, children of immigrants obtain lower grades and test scores than their majority peers (Alba & Foner, 2015; Cools & Schøne, 2019; Heath & Rothon, 2014; Reisel et al., 2019), limiting their access to highly competitive educational felds. Furthermore, children of immigrants are 'different' to the students typically recruited into these professions, in the sense that they are not only often among the frst visible minorities in their specifc work environments, but are also often the frst ones in their families to pursue an elite education. Such differences are not necessarily obstacles to studying medicine and law, but subtle processes of exclusion might shape the second generation's access to the labour market and later work experiences and trajectories (e.g. Dinovitzer, 2011; Hansen, 2001; Konyali, 2014; Waldring et al., 2015).

However, Drange and Helland (2019) argue that occupational closure may also have a 'sheltering effect' on minority individuals once they have entered elite professions. They fnd that licensed occupations – of which medicine and law are prime examples – appear to offer protection against ethnic wage discrimination. The legal regulation of licensed occupations reduces the supply of employees and directs the demand for skills to the license holders, as others cannot legally supply the services in question (Drange & Helland, 2019). These factors may make employers and customers less inclined to practice ethnic discrimination, and thus protect secondgeneration individuals who have managed to secure access.

Thus, on the one hand, we could expect that once the second generation has achieved elite education credentials, their ethnic origin has little relevance for their further career paths. Lamont (1992) suggests that higher education can mark a more signifcant distinction than ethnic origin, and argues that the boundaries that the highly educated build between themselves and others "are likely to be more permanent, less crossable, and less resisted than the boundaries that exist between ethnic groups" (Lamont, 1992: 11). Although an ethnic minority origin might not become invisible, the blurring of boundaries can reduce the social and cultural distance between ethnic groups, resulting in minority individuals being seen as belonging to both the majority and minority group, or as members of one or the other depending on context (Alba, 2005; Alba & Nee, 2003). Following Drange and Helland (2019), closed elite professions might be a context that helps to blur the signifcance of an ethnic minority status.

Puwar (2004), on the other hand, argues that while minorities might be able to access elite professions that they were previously absent from, they are still considered outsiders as they conspicuously break the norm regarding who usually inhabits such positions. Although not all minorities will be seen to break the norm to the same extent (e.g. Indian doctors), minorities with a labour migrant background – typically associated with a low class background – can experience being seen as somewhat 'out of place' in elite positions. Puwar (2004) calls them 'space invaders' and argues that while those who usually inhabit such positions (e.g. majority men) are seen to have a natural right to belong in the elite, minorities who are more atypical in the profession (e.g. women or ethnic minorities), are not seen as having an undisputed right to occupy this space. The processes of exclusion in privileged positions can be extremely subtle (see also Neckerman et al., 1999). The professions commonly consider themselves 'colour blind', without recognizing that they operate according to implicit standards and norms that position minorities as different and put them "under the constant spotlight of surveillance" (Puwar, 2004: 117).

In line with Puwar's argument, studies fnd that levels of self-reported discrimination are indeed *higher* among highly-educated ethnic minorities and among those in high-status occupations than for others (Midtbøen & Kitterød, 2019; Steinmann, 2018). This might refect that high-achieving minorities expect that their ethnic background should be irrelevant or invisible more often than those lower in the occupational hierarchy. Furthermore, they work in settings in which they are expected to conform to white middle-class interactional styles, making 'minority climbers' (cf. Slootman, 2019) more likely to encounter discrimination and prejudice than their lower-class co-ethnics (Neckerman et al., 1999). In any case, the research literature suggests that educational and work achievements do not necessarily protect against experiences of exclusion (Konyali, 2017; Midtbøen, 2016; Neckerman et al., 1999; Puwar, 2004; Slootman, 2019; Waldring et al., 2015).

How children of immigrants who have gained access to high-status positions in the labour market manoeuvre in felds that traditionally have been reserved for the native majority has recently been set on the scholarly agenda in Europe (Crul et al., 2016a, b; Keskiner & Crul, 2016; Konyali, 2014; Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019, 2021; Rezai, 2016; Waldring et al., 2015). The current chapter contributes to this important line of research.

#### **6.5 Data and Methodology**

The Norwegian *Pathways to Success* study includes 62 in-depth interviews with children of labour migrants who arrived in Norway in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The interviews were carried out in 2016 and 2017. All of the informants had grown up in poor households in Norway, typically with a father in a working-class occupation or on welfare benefts and a mother outside the labour force. However, the second-generation informants have achieved advanced degrees in medicine, law, business and fnance. Refecting the demographic composition of the second generation in Norway, whereby children of immigrants from Pakistan constitute by far the largest group, the majority of the informants originate from Pakistan, but children of migrants from Morocco, India and Turkey are also represented in the study. Three-quarters of the informants were born in Norway, while the rest had either immigrated before school age or had arrived in Norway between the ages of 8 and 13. Given their parents' origins, all informants had a background that was likely to make them a visible minority and, for most, to be ascribed a Muslim identity. In this chapter, we focus on the informants with degrees in medicine and law, making up 40 individuals. This sub-sample comprises 24 men and 16 women, ranging in age from 23 to 47 years, with the majority being around 30 years. As our sample is not ft for systematic comparisons between ethnic groups, we concentrate on other comparative dimensions in the analysis.

To complement the qualitative data, we also employ Norwegian registry data to provide a statistical overview of the share of second-generation and majority individuals with degrees in medicine and law, as well as the share of individuals employed as medical doctors and lawyers in 2014. The registry data comprises the total population of majority natives between the age of 26 and 35, as well as Norwegian-born children of immigrants from Pakistan, India, Morocco and Turkey in the same age group. Table 6.1 provides an overview of the informants, separated by the felds of work, gender and ethnic origin.

Most of the informants within medicine were working in public hospitals, while some were working as general practitioners (GPs). Most of the lawyers were working in private frms in various felds of law, while some were working as civil servants. All informants were working in well-paid high-status occupations, but only a handful occupied top positions within infuential companies. Consequently, few of the informants constitute an elite in the strict sense, but as they are still quite young, the sample might be characterized as an *upcoming* elite of second-generation professionals in Norway (cf. Crul et al., 2016a, b).

We employed several strategies for recruiting informants. First, relying on snowball sampling, we used our extended networks and recruited informants who, in turn, identifed more individuals who met our sampling criteria. Second, we identifed informants with the help of student organizations and professional networks aimed at ethnic minorities. Last, we identifed individuals who met our sampling criteria by searching company websites and LinkedIn Premium, a social medium where professionals present their CVs. We conducted most interviews face-to-face and a few via telephone. Most of the face-to-face interviews took place at the informants' workplace or at a quiet café. These interviews lasted between one and oneand-a-half hours, while the telephone interviews were slightly shorter.

We used a slightly modifed version of the interview guide developed for the broader, comparative *Pathways to Success/ELITES* project, thus ensuring a high degree of comparability between our analyses and the other chapters in this book. All interviews were tape-recorded, fully transcribed and coded using HyperResearch. The interviews mapped the informants' educational and work trajectories, including their pathways to their current occupational position, the choices and refections they had made along the way, the role played by signifcant others and how they understand their educational and career trajectories. In the analysis, we frst traced the individual pathways to their current labour market position, examining formal and informal requirements for obtaining a degree, in the transition from education to work and for career advancement. Second, we analysed the signifcance and


**Table 6.1** Overview of the informants, by feld of work, gender and ethnic origin

salience of being an 'ethnic other' in the workplace, and the informants' experiences with and responses to subtle forms of exclusion.

#### **6.6 Institutional Barriers and Opportunities in Law and Medicine**

To what extent do the felds of law and medicine represent barriers or opportunities for ambitious second-generation individuals in Norway? Do these individuals follow the standard route through the education system, or do they pursue alternative routes because of the strong admission selectivity and high grade requirements?

Figure 6.1 presents the outcome of our analysis of Norwegian registry data, showing the share of those in the second generation who have obtained either a degree in law or medicine in the age group 26 to 35 years, according to their parents' country of origin (Pakistan, India, Morocco, and Turkey) and compared to the native-origin majority. The shares of second-generation groups who have *obtained a university degree* in these felds are striking; especially degrees in medicine stand out. Compared to the native majority, with the exception of Moroccan women, a larger share of all second-generation groups has obtained a medical degree. Particularly striking are the fgures for the Indian group: While less than 1% of all native majority men and 1.5% of all native majority women have obtained a medical degree, the fgures for second-generation Indian men and women are 14.3 and 19%, respectively. It should be noted that Indian immigrants in Norway are highly selected – their level of education by far exceeds the average in other labour migrant groups (Statistics Norway, 2010) – which probably explains their offspring's high educational levels (cf. Feliciano & Lanuza, 2017). However, the second-generation Pakistani group is also overrepresented, especially among those with a medical

**Fig. 6.1** Share with obtained degrees in law and medicine, age 26–35, by ethnic origin and sex. Percentage of total population in each group. 2014*.* (Source: Statistics Norway, own calculations)

degree, and this even applies to the male descendants of Turkish migrants. As these groups are less positively selected, this suggests that many children of labour migrants in Norway can access and complete these elite educational tracks.

Figure 6.2 shows the shares of the same groups that have managed to *secure jobs* as lawyers and medical doctors in Norway. Once again, the numbers are quite remarkable. While 1% of native-origin men and 2% of native-origin women are employed as medical doctors, almost 12% of second-generation Indian men and almost 17% of second-generation Indian women work as doctors. The secondgeneration Pakistani group is also clearly overrepresented among medical doctors. Among lawyers, there are few differences between the native majority and the second-generation groups, but second-generation Moroccan and Turkish women are both slightly overrepresented in this occupation.

Importantly, the two fgures cannot be compared directly, and therefore do not provide information on the share who have obtained a relevant job. In particular for the individuals holding a law degree, not all relevant jobs are captured by the work code "lawyer". Nevertheless, the statistical data suggest that among those who have obtained a degree in medicine or law and those who are employed as medical doctors or lawyers, all second-generation groups are either participating on a par with or are outperforming the native majority. This points towards these felds of education and occupation being open to newcomers who have not traditionally been part of the recruitment base, and stand in contrast to recent fndings from the US that suggest that many second-generation groups are not able to translate their educational achievements into corresponding jobs (Tran et al., 2019).

However, data on educational and occupational destinations do not say much about the *trajectories* towards getting there. Does the second generation follow the same paths as the majority into these positions? We build on the qualitative study of second-generation professionals' educational and work trajectories to address this question.

**Fig. 6.2** Share working as lawyers or medical doctors, age 26–35, by ethnic origin and sex. Percentage of total population in each group. 2014. (Source: Statistics Norway, own calculations)

#### **6.7 Second-Generation Pathways to Degrees in Law**

Our informants in the law sector have taken different routes to their fnal law exam. The frst barrier that prospective second-generation lawyers must overcome is to get good enough grades from high school to secure admission into law school. While the majority of our informants – three quarters – were directly able to meet the requirements at the time, the remaining quarter of informants relied on various 'second chance' options.

One recent law school graduate describes a circuitous route to law school and explains that it was far from certain that he would end up as a lawyer. In his second year of high school, he simply stopped showing up to class, and dropped out of school. Many of his friends also dropped out of school and never got an education, and some even went to jail. He says that he could easily have ended up on the same path. However, 2 years later, he realized that every career path he was attracted to required a high school diploma, so he decided to take the 2 years of high school that he had missed privately. He thinks that this is actually what enabled him to enter law school as he was more mature and motivated in high school the second time round and got much better grades than he would have done if he had stayed in high school initially. For him, the possibility of going back and retaking high school, albeit privately, was decisive.

Another alternative route to law school used by our informants was to enrol in a private institution offering law courses, and apply for a transfer to law school at a later stage. Informants choosing this option did so because their grades were not good enough to study law at a public university. They attended a private school for between 1 and 4 years before transferring to university, and their credentials are from the university law school. While they point out that this route clearly has low status amongst law school students, they insist that attending a private school has more benefts than merely being a less competitive route into law school. Students at private schools have more lectures and closer supervision than at university. Furthermore, these schools have the clear goal of helping them to attain high grades, while students at the university law schools are expected to take more responsibility for their own learning and success. Informants who had attended a private school emphasize that the close supervision they received there was an important asset that helped them achieve the grades they needed to eventually transfer to university.

As mentioned above, this route via a private school to university law school has become severely limited, or even eliminated, in recent years. One of the lawyers explains that this might affect the share of minority law students:

There were more minority students at [the private school]. Now I've heard that there are fewer minority students [in the university], you see it in the library, because [the private school] option has been closed down.

The private route to law school is portrayed as being of lower status, as it is used by people who were not 'good enough' to enter law school in the regular manner. To some extent this also appears to be understood as a 'minority strategy', perhaps refecting that minority students tend to have high educational aspirations irrespective of their educational achievements, and therefore must rely on this alternative route to access law school. Although second-generation students might disproportionally use alternative routes into this elite study, it is important to emphasize that most of our informants entered and followed the regular path.

#### **6.8 Second-Generation Pathways to Degrees in Medicine**

In contrast to our informants with law degrees, more than half of our informants within medicine – 13 out of 20 informants – took some sort of alternative route. The most striking example of a circuitous route to medical school is a male doctor who had been convicted and imprisoned after high school, but completed his high school diploma at a private school in addition to taking extra university courses before fnally being admitted to medical school. His story echoes that of the lawyer who describes himself as having been on a pathway that could easily have led to a criminal career rather than to getting a law degree. These stories illustrate how secondchance options can be of crucial importance to young people who are on the 'wrong track'. The practice of improving high school grades and taking university courses to gather extra points is common for prospective medical students and is also a strategy that was often employed by our informants.

The second main alternative route to medical school is to bypass the high barriers of the Norwegian system and attend medical school in an Eastern European country, before seeking to have one's degree approved in Norway. Three of our informants have taken this route. Their main reason for studying abroad was to circumvent the barriers in Norway. As one of them states:

Since they have put the admission criteria so high [...], I had to get my grade average up. And then I would have to turn all my 5's [second highest grade in high school system] into 6's, and I couldn't be bothered. I know people who have spent two and three years to manage to get admitted here in Norway. I didn't want to spend my energy on that.

Interestingly, recent statistical data confrms that the second generation is overrepresented among those who use studies abroad as an alternative route. While around one third of the native majority obtained their medical degree abroad, more than 70% of second-generation medical doctors in Norway received their degrees from universities abroad, especially in Eastern Europe (Cools & Schøne, 2019).2

Within both medicine and law, it is thus apparent that some of the secondgeneration professionals have entered their elite professions through alternative routes. The Norwegian education system, most notably because of the possibility to improve one's high school grades, provides a second-chance option for students who do not meet the highly competitive admission criteria of elite educations. The high share of the second-generation embarking on studies abroad points in the same

<sup>2</sup>The detailed numbers for medicine students do not appear in the paper and are provided by Sara Cools.

direction. Clearly, second chances and alternative routes are particularly important to second-generation individuals, as they are shown to have high educational aspirations despite having lower grade averages than majority students. These fndings from Norway correspond with results from similar studies in Europe (see other chapters in this book).

#### **6.9 Ethnicity as Burden and Resource in Law and Medicine**

Although many of our informants obtained their degrees through alternative routes or by second-chance options, they all succeeded in making their way into jobs as either lawyers or doctors. However, accessing the labour market is just one obstacle, the other is making a career in these professions. How open are law and medicine to 'ethnically other' second-generation professionals once they have secured employment? Our analyses suggest that an ethnic minority background can function as both a burden and a resource in the working lives of the second generation.

#### *6.9.1 Burdens of Belonging to a Minority*

Although our second-generation informants have succeeded in meeting the strict admission criteria to their professions, some still describe a constant awareness of the risk of discrimination. Indeed, this perception from childhood or youth on was an important factor that motivated several of the informants to work hard at school, achieve good grades, get internships or take on extra work during higher education. In other words, they hold that it motivated them to work 'twice as hard' and 'jump twice as high' as their majority peers in order to secure access to labour market opportunities further down the road. They are aware that even when they have managed to secure a position in line with their qualifcations, they are not automatically assumed to have the required competencies. Consequently, some of the informants believe that they need to make a special effort to prove themselves profcient and competent. In sum, they anticipate ─ and to some extent experience ─ being underestimated and met with a *burden of doubt* (cf. Puwar, 2004: 59).

In addition, the lawyers also describe a *burden of representation* (cf. Puwar, 2004: 62). Several of the lawyers in the study expressed concern over a series of recent high-profle cases in which ethnic minority lawyers have faced criminal charges for misconduct, threats and even human traffcking. The second-generation lawyers worry that these cases will reinforce stereotypes of 'immigrant lawyers' as unreliable and that these stereotypes will apply to them, potentially leading to a bad reputation and blocked career prospects. As Puwar (2004) argues, visible minorities in an elite profession are often seen to represent the capacities of 'their group', meaning that the actions of one individual infuence how others from the same group are met and considered. This is furthermore linked to what she (2004: 61) terms *super-surveillance*. Some of the informants highlight that their visibility as ethnic minorities in their workplace means that any mistake or mishap is particularly noticed, and potentially seen as refecting a lack of professionalism. They experience a heightened risk of easy judgements, where imperfections are easily picked up, amplifed and subsequently applied to others seen as belonging to the same group.

The burden of doubt, the burden of representation and super-surveillance are related to the visibility of second-generation professionals as 'ethnic others' in their respective elite professions. These burdens of ethnicity related to the ways in which boundaries are drawn in professional felds in which ethnicity, at least sometimes and in some contexts, appears as a bright boundary (cf. Alba, 2005). Such bright ethnic boundaries may have dramatic consequences. In the feld of law, experiences of blocked opportunities at mainstream frms have led some informants to create self-employment opportunities (see Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019). These lawyers describe subtle forms of occupational closure, whereby the most prestigious law frms appear to be out of reach for them. In some cases, the experience of blocked opportunities inspires ambitious lawyers to break out and start their own frms, after fnishing their term as a trainee lawyer and securing their licence to practice as a lawyer in a mainstream Norwegian law frm. Some of the self-employed lawyers in our study hold that their main motivation to set up their own frm was that they did not feel they got the recognition they deserved from their employers (see also Chap. 4). Instead of lowering their ambitions, they started their own frms where they could exploit their comparative advantage – their ethnic resources – and predominantly cater to an ethnic minority market.

#### *6.9.2 Ethnicity as a Resource*

Yet, being visibly different can also be an advantage *within* mainstream frms. One of the lawyers, for example, describes his situation as the only ethnic minority employee in a large law frm:

The advantage I think I have had here is that everybody recognizes me, everybody knows who I am. And when I go to seminars or abroad or wherever, I am noticed. [...] If you get on an e-mail list or on a case, everybody knows who you are. So it's easy to get known with a foreign background here. […] I see that many of those who started at the same time as me, they often get many small cases and some big. But I've almost only been part of the biggest projects, and I think that's pretty fun. And it [being visible] has been an advantage.

For this lawyer, being 'different' means that he is noticed and stands out from the crowd in a large frm, something that has afforded him opportunities and recognition that many of his majority peers have not experienced in the same way. Thus, as long as they prove themselves as well-performing professionals the visibility of the second-generation can work to their advantage.

Indeed, the informants often consider their ethnic minority background as a *resource* rather than a barrier in the labour market (cf. Konyali, 2014). Typically, they emphasize their ethnicity as a resource that gives them valuable language and cultural skills, which are recognized and made use of by their employers. However, this plays out somewhat differently in the occupations studied.

The doctors in our sample describe that they can make regular use of their language and cultural skills, especially when dealing with patients, and that these specifc skills are recognized as a valuable competence by their employers and colleagues. Depending on where they work, the doctors emphasise in particular the importance of language skills which enable them to communicate well with a broader segment of patients. As one doctor of Pakistani background explains:

If an Urdu-speaking patient comes in, I often go in and interpret. It's much easier for the department and it's much easier for the patient. A lot of patients want to come to me, of those with an immigrant background. Because they feel they can explain their problems to someone who has my background.

The doctors claim that they save their employers a lot of time and money by reducing the need to call in interpreters, and they are often allocated patients with poor Norwegian language skills or called in to interpret for their co-workers. Cultural competence beyond language skills also aids in the communication with patients. For instance, one doctor argued that her background enables her to better understand ethnic minority patients who might have a different understanding of disease and health than is common in Norway. Thus, the doctors regularly experience and use their ethnic background as a resource, and their background is recognized and used as a resource by their employers and co-workers. At the same time, being summoned to interpret for co-workers means continuous interruptions and distractions from their own patients and tasks, and the informants describe feeling an ambivalence between having their cultural competence recognized and being distracted from their own work (see Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019 for a detailed analysis of this ambivalence and Chap. 3 for similar experiences in other countries and professions).

Many of the lawyers also described their ethnic background as an asset. Like the doctors, several of the lawyers pointed out the importance of having a cultural competence that enables them to understand and communicate with their clients in a way that native Norwegians cannot. One lawyer of Pakistani background explains:

If an Arab comes to me, I don't speak the language, but I have an understanding of the culture and I can understand. He can act quite irrationally and for a Norwegian it'll be completely incomprehensible why this person is acting irrationally, but I can perhaps understand why he is doing it. I would never defend an irrational action, but I can more easily understand why this person is acting irrationally and can support and back him so he can perhaps get on the right track. So, I think they feel safer around that. And I think that a lot of them think: "Yes, but he's one of our own, so I can tell him everything", right?

Besides the obvious advantages of being able to communicate with some clients in their mother tongue, this lawyer argues that his cultural competence generally puts him in a better position than Norwegian colleagues to understand the actions of ethnic minority clients, thus enabling him to offer these clients better support and guidance.

Several of the lawyers also emphasize that their ethnic background helps to attract a broader segment of clients. As the ethnic minority population is potentially a big market, these lawyers stressed that they are better positioned to tap into this market than their majority Norwegian colleagues. As one of the lawyers in a medium-size law frm puts it: 'You attract other clients who would never use someone like [names a native Norwegian lawyer]. It's as simple as that'.

However, the potential of the 'ethnic market' varies greatly between different felds of law; ethnicity as a resource is mostly relevant for those working with private clients, for instance within criminal, immigration and family law, while it is less relevant within corporate law or for those working as civil servants (Midtbøen & Nadim, 2019). Thus, especially among the lawyers working with private clients, having an ethnic minority background is described as an explicit resource, which attracts ethnic minority clients, and they often work on cases where they can make direct use of their language and cultural skills.

#### **6.10 Conclusion**

This chapter has shown that second-generation professionals in Norway have gained striking access to both law and medicine, two traditionally rather closed, elite occupational felds with high formal and informal institutional barriers. In fact, children of labour immigrants, especially those originating from India and Pakistan, are overrepresented in both felds. This stands in contrast to previous studies of occupational closure, which suggest that elite felds are especially prone to social reproduction (Strømme & Hansen, 2017).

However, both the statistical data and qualitative interviews used in this chapter show that the second generation makes frequent use of alternative pathways to access these occupational felds. In law, many second-generation individuals overcome the high grade requirements by taking extra exams after high school, while in medicine more than 70% of all second-generation individuals with a medical degree have received it from a university abroad. In both cases, the second generation benefts from second-chance options offered by the Norwegian education system that allow them to enter elite occupational felds through alternative pathways.

At the same time, being provided access to a feld is not equivalent to being accepted on the same terms as their majority peers after employment has been secured. Many of the informants in our study – regardless of their pathways into the professions – describe how they experience a 'burden of doubt' concerning their capacities and competence, as well as a 'burden of representation' where the actions and competence of one individual are seen as indicative of the entire 'group' (cf. Puwar, 2004). Yet the very same visibility that creates these burdens can be an advantage that allows second-generation professionals to stand out from the crowd – provided that they are considered suffciently competent in the frst place.

As such, second-generation professionals in Norway can best be considered as both insiders *and* outsiders. They have been able to access elite professions in which

representatives of their 'own group' had been virtually absent. This makes them the 'pioneers' that are the subject of this volume. Furthermore, the high entry requirements of the elite professions and their merit-based recognition might provide some protection against discrimination, as professional boundaries might become more important than ethnic boundaries (cf. Drange & Helland, 2019). At the same time, second generation professionals from lower-class backgrounds are still, as Puwar (2004) has pointed out, 'space invaders'. Formally having the same access to employment and earnings does not necessarily protect them against subtle acts or processes of exclusion, and the 'otherness' of the second generation might be lurking under the surface, waiting to become sharply visible.

#### **References**


Statistics Norway. (2010). *Immigration and immigrants 2010*. Statistics Norway.


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## **Chapter 7 New Social Mobility: Pioneers and Their Potentials for Change**

**Maurice Crul, Jens Schneider, and Andreas Pott**

#### **7.1 Introduction**

The frst research on the children of immigrants dates back to the 1980s. Researchers started to look at how the children of migrants in Europe or the US were performing in education and how the oldest age group was transitioning to the labour market. At that time, most of these youngsters had migrated, often together with their mother within the framework of family reunifcation. This group, mostly labelled as the '1.5 generation', especially in US studies, had a particularly hard time in their new environment, having had to leave friends and family, learn a new language and adapt to a new school and neighbourhood environment – environments that were mostly unprepared to help ease the adaptation process. Research on this group showed high levels of school drop-out, especially among girls, strong overrepresentation in vocational tracks and a signifcant percentage of diffcult transitions to the labour market in combination with high unemployment fgures and unstable labour market careers. For a long time, these outcomes dominated the rather negative view on the children of immigrants. Slowly, but steadily however, the next generation came of age: those who were born in Europe and the US. At frst, most of the research and statistics did not distinguish between this new 'second generation' and the previous age cohorts, thereby masking the signifcant progress and social mobility of large parts of the second generation in comparison to their parents and the 1.5 generation.

But, although they were doing much better than the 1.5 generation, the second generation ─ particularly the children of low-educated migrant parents ─ were still doing worse than the children of non-immigrant parents. Therefore, most of the

M. Crul

J. Schneider (\*) · A. Pott

Universität Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany

e-mail: jens.schneider@uni-osnabrueck.de; andreas.pott@uni-osnabrueck.de

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: m.r.j.crul@vu.nl

J. Schneider et al. (eds.), *New Social Mobility*, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05566-9\_7

research conducted throughout the 1990s still focussed heavily on integration problems and disadvantaged outcomes in school and the labour market. Along with the growing demographic relevance of this group of pupils and students, there was also a growing research community across different countries and continents trying to explain the factors underlying their performance. This research included looking at the importance of parental lack of education, assumed cultural differences or school factors like the positive impact of pre-school on learning the national language at an early age or the relevance of selection age for explaining this group's overrepresentation in vocational tracks. American theories like Segmented Assimilation and New Assimilation were largely built on empirical studies analysing the differences *between* groups; they showed that social class background, migrant group characteristics and reception context are the most important factors for explaining differences between various ethnic groups and between ethnic groups and the majority group. The authors of these theories, and others who used their frameworks, largely evaluated the social mobility of the second generation in comparison to their parents, the frst generation. Even though one of the paths in Segmented Assimilation Theory was coined 'downward assimilation', when empirically tested this mostly amounted to children remaining stuck in the same socio-economic layer as their parents or only moving up from unskilled to skilled labour.

Most of the second generation did move upwards in comparison to their parents. For many migrant groups this should not come as a surprise since the frst generation of labour migrants arriving in the US and Europe from the 1950s onwards was predominantly low-educated and had often been recruited to perform the lowest level of unskilled work. In terms of social mobility, it was almost impossible to 'move down' in relation to one's parents. Many members of the second generation have acquired a lower middle-class position on the basis of skilled work for which a vocational diploma or a secondary school degree was needed. They have defnitely moved up a rung on the social ladder compared to their parents, and their socioeconomic position is stable enough to allow them to live well and provide for their families – a big step compared to how their parents had to make a living and struggle to make ends meet as low-paid migrants on the fringes of the labour market in a new country. The term 'success', as discussed in this book, is largely reserved for people in highly-skilled professional functions. We should not, however, forget that there is also a much larger group among the second generation whose parents are proud of their children's careers in skilled professions and (lower) middle-class life situations which justifably could – and should! – be labelled 'successful' with respect to the social starting positions of their families. Nevertheless, this book deploys a more restricted and narrow understanding of 'successful', because we wanted to dedicate a book especially to the most successful group among the second generation.

#### **7.2 Pioneers and Agents of Change**

Why focus on the successful group? We were motivated to do this for several reasons. First of all, the group that has managed to consolidate a position in the upper ranks of the labour market is a very interesting one because it is exceptional. As researchers who have studied social mobility for almost 30 years, we have got to know some extraordinary people from this subgroup. We frst interviewed some of these people in the early 1990s when they were still at school or university and have kept in touch with them over the years. Even back then, we were struck by their energy and determination. Often, they were not only studying, but also setting up mentoring programmes and homework projects in their communities and/or advising their younger siblings and nieces and nephews. Gradually, many of them also became spokespersons for their communities and their generation. We started to discover them in journalism and political parties, we recognized them as young writers and columnists trying to rephrase the often predominantly negative narratives about their communities. With their energy, smartness and fawless language capabilities they were conquering the minds of many of the people in the world around them. More and more, people were not only talking *about* this group, but this group was talking back and demanding a place in society that corresponded to their level of education and qualifcations. This is why we think that the importance of this group, even if it is still relatively small, cannot be overestimated. This subgroup is not only mobile on an individual basis, but it also plays a crucial role in the emancipation of their communities in society at large. Its members have torn down many barriers, an achievement from which the following generations are already reaping great benefts. Without these pioneers and their optimism and persistence, we would never have seen the steep social mobility and society-changing effects that this book describes.

Most remarkable and important are probably the *pioneering girls* who were the frst in their family and community to continue studying after secondary school. They went to university and after graduating they were the frst in their family to enter the labour market to take fulltime jobs with good salaries. Consequently, in some communities they were also the frst to break with the tradition of early marriage and to claim a say in choosing their partners. These ground-breaking paths entailed hard work and, in some cases, a lack of understanding from their home communities. But the social mobility of second-generation women has been particularly stunning in comparison to their mothers: while the mothers had received even less education than their husbands – and frequently not any education at all – the daughters have surpassed even their brothers and other male relatives with regard to their level of education. In non-immigrant working-class communities in European countries in the frst half of the 20th century, it usually took two generations to move up to that level, i.e. from mothers with only primary education via daughters who achieved a secondary school diploma and probably some vocational training to granddaughters going to university. One of the purposes of this book is to fll a gap here as the emphasis on examining the, on average, poorer results of children of migrants compared to children of non-migrants tends to blank out this extraordinary mobility.

In the public debate we often see competing discourses that either portray a negative or a positive picture of the second generation. We still fnd higher drop-out rates and underemployment or unemployment fgures which need to be researched and discussed, but we also see a growing number of individuals who have done very well at school and/or on the labour market. We certainly need research into both patterns to give us the full picture, i.e. to address barriers and identify success factors. We believe that by studying individuals who have made it 'against all odds', i.e. by studying their individual or family characteristics, the support they received and the institutional arrangements that enabled their success, we can obtain clear indications about the factors that have held the less successful back. It is important to know these barriers, but only by studying the successful group can we understand how to overcome them. This is why we think that research on social mobility and inequality is not complete without studying the successful group.

Identifying success factors is also important for policy making. Policies are often developed to address 'problems'. With the successful group, however, the focus shifts to *what has worked* for them in practice. One example is the many alternative pathways they have taken or even created by themselves to sidestep or overcome barriers on their way. This includes taking longer routes through vocational education to fnally reach higher education institutions and using internships and student jobs to obtain their frst job as well as changing jobs or starting their own frm if they come up against a glass ceiling. The actions and decisions of the several hundred upwardly mobile individuals observed in different European countries and analysed in this book form a kind of alternative 'strategy handbook' on how to become successful in education and on the labour market in European countries.

#### **7.3 Theoretical Concepts and Advances in Building a Framework for New Social Mobility**

Crul (2000) and Pott (2001) were among the frst researchers to study the successful group in the Netherlands and Germany respectively. They identifed the following elements as some of the crucial factors that enable people to embark on steep upward mobility pathways: 'hidden' resources in the family, understood as resources that educational institutions are generally not aware of (e.g. pre-migration qualifcations or the role of elder siblings); support from 'signifcant others' (e.g. individual teachers, neighbours, or members of the wider family or community) and 'ethnicity' as a useful resource that social climbers have learnt to mobilize in order to have more options or to cope with mobility-related challenges. Adding to this, international comparative research led by Crul and Schneider accounted for the importance of institutional arrangements in education and on the labour market. By comparing the same ethnic groups with the same starting position (all born in Europe) in seven

countries in the international TIES survey, we found signifcant differences in education and labour market performances in the early to mid-2000s (see Chap. 2 for details). As a result, we developed the Integration Context Theory, which predicts school outcomes on the basis of the availability of pre-school education, the amount of contact hours in school, selection age for and permeability between different tracks in secondary education (especially for moving up from vocational to academic tracks) and whether second chance options for 'late bloomers' (Nicholas et al., 2008) had been built into the school system (Crul & Schneider, 2010; Crul et al., 2012). For the transition to the labour market, institutional arrangements, especially regarding internships, traineeships and on-the-job training, proved to be important. With this approach we moved the discussion from individual level factors towards institutional factors, and developed a reading of social mobility as being *co-produced* by social contexts and different actors, including the upwardly mobile individuals and their families.

The TIES survey revealed that there are enormous differences between countries in terms of the size of the successful group in education and on the labour market. It also revealed important differences regarding the sectors in which people were able to develop a career and the professional level they were able to attain in the labour market. In particular, professions requiring a university diploma – which is the case for the vast majority of highly-skilled and well-paid professions – are diffcult to access if obtaining the qualifcations required for university entrance is only possible for a few. All this also shapes the experience of the most successful group. Right up until the 1990s, many of our respondents in Germany had been the only Turkish-German student at their *Gymnasium* and had not come across anyone else with a similar biography until university, which was not at all the case in Sweden and France. While many of our respondents in the Netherlands had found their frst job through an apprenticeship, this was almost never the case in France. These and other similar fndings were the main starting point for the various projects in the *ELITES/Pathways to Success* consortium across Europe whose fndings are discussed and compared in this book.

The chapters in this volume apply the Integration Context Theory to reconstruct mobility trajectories by looking at different institutional arrangements in different sectors of the labour market. Despite all differences, one striking similarity across countries and sectors is that children of immigrants still only constitute a minority share of the personnel. This has several implications: (a) always being the frst or one of the frst ones – the frst person with a migrant background, the frst 'Turk' etc. in the company, the frst academic in the family – can be stressful, but it is also an element of a self-triggering dynamic that gives self-esteem and self-effcacy, and thus continuously recharges energy and motivation; (b) this results in a habitus of simply 'moving on', despite the continuous experience of being observed as an exception and as 'different' (including discrimination) – which is interpreted as the price for success. Beyond this shared experience, the authors confrm the relevance of country differences, but also fnd major differences between different labour market sectors. The chapters thus assess the role of specifc institutional arrangements with regard to accessing and developing a career within each sector: Keskiner, Lang, Konyali and Rezai, for instance, look at the business and law sectors in France and Germany and demonstrate huge differences in sector-specifc opportunities and what is needed to become successful in the felds of business and law. While in the law sector it is mainly educational credentials that open doors, the business sector also offers alternative pathways that rely less on symbolic educational capital and more on practical achievements, such as hard work and contributing to the company's success. In their chapter, Fibbi and Aparicio-Gómez compare the educational sector across fve countries and fnd very different institutional arrangements as a result of historical country differences regarding the symbolic role and place of school education in society. This corresponds with variations in how the teaching profession is valued and how promotion in the respective sector works. Also, the fact that it is possible to set up a new public-funded school on a private initiative in the Netherlands, while this is totally unthinkable in France, has major consequences for teachers' opportunities to become a school director or manager.

As Integration Context Theory generally emphasizes the importance of institutional arrangements, the chosen sector approach made us zoom in on the practicalities of becoming successful in a profession or a specifc sector. In addition to individuals and their actions and decisions, the structures and rules of professional sectors strongly co-produce what we observe as social mobility careers. This has proven to be a very fruitful approach as it has yielded much more detailed insights into the barriers and opportunities for attaining professional success and the ways in which individuals respond to and make use of these contextual conditions in relation to their own resources. It also explains why some of our respondents hit a ceiling in a certain sector at a certain level and had to radically readjust their pathway either by starting their own business, for instance, or by opting for the teaching profession as a second-best choice.

#### **7.4 A Strategy for Success: Building-Up Capital 'On the Way'**

In addition to the differences between countries and sectors we also identifed *commonalities* that propelled upward mobility across countries and sectors.1 One of the most central commonalities is what we have coined the *multiplier effect*: almost all our respondents came from families that according to Bourdieu's theory of reproduction did not have the levels of cultural or social capital which would generally be recognized as conducive to upward social mobility and to the positions they fnally achieved. However, we discovered that the requisite cultural and social capital had been accrued 'along the way'. An important factor, as Keskiner and colleagues also

<sup>1</sup>See the special issue on "The Upcoming New Elite Among Children of Immigrants" in *Ethnic and Racial Studies*, Vol. 40(2), 2017, for a number of articles from the ELITES project that compared professionals in Sweden, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

observe in their contribution, is the contextual transfer of one type of capital to another type that is more useful for a specifc moment, context or next step: for example, a young person may acquire cultural (and symbolic) capital in the form of a high school diploma that gives access to university or a prestigious higher education institution. These diplomas can be a means by which to gain access to (upper) middle-class peers with a non-immigrant family background who possess relevant social capital. We can see how each consecutive step in their trajectories produces contacts with new people and access to the types of social (and cultural) capital they need to take the next step in their career. This ability of our respondents to tap into and absorb these new forms of capital goes a long way to explaining why they have made it 'against the odds'.

As Schneider, Konyali, Waldring and Pulinx explain in Chap. 3, these 'soft skills' derive from being 'second generation': these individuals have had to fend for themselves at school and elsewhere from a very early age; often their parents were unable to help them beyond providing a supportive emotional environment, simply because of language problems, a lack of information on the educational system or long working hours in shifts or in their own small businesses. Developing these special self-help competences as part of their childhood and youth socialization has made them resilient, creative and prepared for dealing with new environments and uncertainties, in fact all this has become second nature to them. In this respect our respondents resemble social climbers from non-immigrant families. Yet, being a child of immigrants has made a specifc difference in nearly in all of the cases we examined. Most of our respondents emphasised that the starting point of their success trajectories were their loving, but often also strict parents who took care of them materially and emotionally, and had high ambitions for them. To some extent, these ambitions were related to migration: as Louie explains, the children took on and carried their parents' 'migration project' to a successful end. This is called the 'immigrant bargain' or 'immigrant optimism' (see e.g. Louie, 2012): even though the parents did not usually have the practical means or skills to actively provide what their children needed to become successful, the children felt an obligation to do anything they could to fulfl their parents' dream and not disappoint them – which can be both a strong motivation and a heavy burden to carry.

The 'multiplier effect' explains why some individuals were able to achieve this: in order to tap into the social and cultural capital offered by people outside their families, our respondents needed to be very sociable, adaptive and resilient. As Chap. 2 shows, the upward mobility pathway of much of our target group was not a straight success story from primary school to the labour market. Most of them had to overcome failures and barriers along the way, which is typical of social mobility in general. Some were not successful at secondary school and many had to start their secondary education in the lowest qualifying tracks which forced them to take long detours towards higher education. But even after obtaining a higher education diploma, many found it extremely diffcult to fnd a job that matched their capabilities, and often reported that obtaining a permanent contract or promotion had not been a smooth process. Because we selected on the dependent variable of 'success',

we only got to speak to people who had been persistent and resilient enough to overcome failures and barriers. Actively building up relevant social networks and looking for support and mentors to guide them through various stages was an important factor across countries and occupational sectors.

The initial empirical evidence which made us defne the 'multiplier effect' largely came from looking at the statistical data on educational careers and transitions to the labour market. The *qualitative* fndings in this book have now allowed us to assess the importance of social and cultural capital in building a professional life in different sectors more accurately and in much more detail. Some sectors rely heavily on social networks and connections, while others put more emphasis on educational credits and specifc qualifcations. But cultural capital is not only about education, it can also take the form of 'ethnic capital' in terms of language skills and familiarity with everyday cultural aspects of 'ethnic communities'. This again can be closely related to specifc forms of social capital that facilitate access to certain markets or particular clienteles. These kinds of differences become manifest through the comparative focus on different sectors and differences within the same sectors across countries. In some countries, for example, teachers are supposed to be strictly neutral and play down their 'ethnic' background and cultural skills, while in other country contexts these forms of 'ethnic referencing' are valued and seen as an asset which should be actively made use of in how they teach and reach out to pupils and parents with a migrant background.

#### **7.5 The Paradoxes of New Social Mobility**

The empirical chapters in this book uncover a number of ambiguities, tensions and paradoxes that appear to be inherent to the studied New Social Mobility. One of them is the so-called *integration paradox* that has been described repeatedly in recent years (e.g. van Doorn et al., 2013; Lee & Zhou, 2015; Verkuyten, 2016; Steinmann, 2019; Tran et al., 2020; El-Mafaalani, 2020; Lajevardi et al., 2020): The 'better integrated' individuals from an immigrant background are, i.e. the higher their educational achievements and the more successful they are on the labour market, the more likely they will be in direct competition for jobs and leading positions with peers from a middle-class non-immigrant background – which once again raises the likelihood of being confronted with different kinds of conficts involving discrimination and stereotypes.2 On the one hand, their presence in these workplaces is proof of their ability to become just as successful as people without a

<sup>2</sup> It should be noted here that many of their non-immigrant competitors for job promotions and positions are very likely to have been raised in neighbourhoods and social environments with very low shares of families and peers of immigrant descent. By contrast, many of their working-class and 'co-ethnic' peers working in blue collar-jobs have colleagues of non-immigrant background who were more likely to grow up in more mixed neighbourhoods and schools, and with much larger shares of peers and friends from immigrant families.

migration background. They have ticked all the right boxes for what people usually mean when they talk about being 'well-integrated into society': they speak the national language fuently, they are aware of and able to perform in the mainstream environment, they have been successful at school, and now they are working in a prestigious profession. Thus, based on these efforts and accomplishments, they could rightly expect to be treated as an equal and for the topic of 'integration' to no longer be relevant. This, however, is frequently not the case. 'Ethnic' stereotypes are not less common in the upper strata of European societies, and being confronted with jokes and stereotypes about their 'ethnicity' is even more likely when working in an organization with hardly any other staff members of diverse backgrounds.

Another aspect of this can be called the *meritocratic paradox*: As research into elite reproduction has shown, for some positions − especially top positions in business − family and social relations tend to be more important than measurable merits such as management and team-leading skills (e.g. Hartmann & Kopp, 2001). And even in felds with a strong meritocratic discourse, where formal educational credentials play an important role – such as professions in the upper strata of the law sector – the meritocratic principle shows shortcomings that put especially the offspring of less affuent and less educated families in a disadvantaged position (cf. Lang et al., 2022). Our selected respondents could serve as excellent illustrations for the meritocratic principle as their achievements were certainly not aided by parental social capital. At the same time, they can observe on an almost daily basis that quite frequently it is not only their achievements and professional performance that are the deciding factor when new opportunities arise in a frm. Yet, many respondents reproduce meritocratic discourses themselves by referring to their own hard work, persistence and resilience to explain their individual successes – in our view not least because this is an inherently effective argument to counter attempts by colleagues or superiors to make their 'ethnic' and social background relevant within the work context. Also, given the exceptionality of their successes and that it is necessary to have a strong personality and determination to pursue these types of pathways in the face of all kinds of adversities, their use of a meritocratic rhetoric is perfectly understandable. But, in doing so they reproduce a discourse that is also widely used to justify the lack of targeted measures to overcome biases and promote the access of youth of immigrant origin to felds in which they are clearly underrepresented: if they did not get the job or promotion, they have apparently not worked hard enough and are therefore to blame for their lack of success. Chin also emphasizes that the playbook for Asian Americans to become successful relies heavily on the belief in the meritocratic principles of hard work and outperforming competitors (Chin, 2020). Many of her respondents originally believed that they could overcome discrimination and stereotyping with hard work and by adjusting to the mainstream organizational culture. But many of them went on to discover that this only works up to a certain level before getting stuck or coming up against the 'glass ceiling'. The paradox of the belief in meritocracy is that this strong emphasis on individual achievements automatically downplays the importance of structural mechanisms that prevent equal opportunities. The fact that issues like discrimination and exclusion are hardly discussed or are even dismissed contributes to their perpetuation.

Yet another angle or perspective to this is what could be called a *discrimination paradox*. As observed above, while moving up the ladder our respondents were more likely to be exposed to experiences of everyday stereotyping and racism, but they also developed an increasing awareness of discrimination and stereotypes. Yet, interpreting certain types of experiences as discrimination or even racism apparently carries a number of 'risks'. It is often diffcult to clearly identify a remark or an action as discriminatory or stereotyping and thus as a behaviour to be contested. It also makes a difference to our respondents whether they perceive a remark as being badly intended or as a naïve comment prompted by a lack of experience with people like them. It is quite likely that they were not only the frst persons with a migration or Muslim background to attain a prestigious position in their professional feld, but also the frst such person whom many of their colleagues had met at such close quarters. This is also why they felt uncomfortable about interpreting the many peculiar questions they received as stereotyping. In many of the mobility pathways we reconstructed, these questions stopped at some point and the respondents were able to feel like they were just 'normal colleagues' (see Chap. 3 for examples and details). However, in some cases the questions and remarks did not stop and some colleagues or superiors continued to emphasize their 'ethnic', 'Muslim' or 'migrant' identity aspects over other parts of their identity. It was only at that point that our respondents began to understand these questions as an issue for which they needed to fnd adequate answers and coping mechanisms. They often felt that it is their responsibility to counter stereotyping or outright racist remarks and to defend 'their' ethnic group or religious convictions. At the same time, making stereotyping and discrimination an issue every time they occur is generally not a good strategy if you want to pursue a career in an organization in which you are in a clear minority position. The paradox lies in the fact that they cannot change the organization if they do not make people aware of discriminatory and offensive practices, but doing so entails the risk that they will come up against certain limits and boundaries. Moreover, countering this kind of stereotyping may mean having to make an effort on an everyday basis and all of the respondents were aware that they may be exposed to experiences that place them in a diffcult position at any moment. The fact that they have come this far in their careers and that they have received a great deal of support from people without a migration background on their long path to success has shown them that not everyone excludes or discriminates against people of migrant descent. Some had had negative experiences with teachers, but many of them had also had teachers who had made extra efforts to help them progress.

The *social and cultural capital paradox* refers to the fact that, familywise, our respondents are not well-equipped for educational and labour market success, while – as all chapters in this book emphasize – both cultural and social capital are of crucial importance for making a career in the more prestigious professional felds. Social capital is crucial for accessing and making use of relevant professional networks. In most professional felds, networking is important for entering the labour market and gaining promotion. However, in many professional felds, diplomas and marks serve as 'objective measurements' for talent and qualifcation: obtaining good educational credentials is thus an important way in which to bypass or minimize disadvantages based on one's background or presumed 'ethnicity'. The mechanism to compensate for the lack of social and cultural capital in one's family is described above as the 'multiplier effect': what started at quite a young age, i.e. reaching out to teachers and other adults or peers without a migration background, continued in the labour market by building relationships with mentors and sponsors in leading positions who could offer advice and help with obtaining relevant information and network contacts. This is not to say that our respondents entered this world of business relations without any help from their families. As described above, many of our respondents describe their parental and family environment as being highly supportive in emotional and social terms. Their parents were both an example of what hard work can achieve and the limits in place when one lacks the symbolic capital of school diplomas and academic titles. Their parents worked even harder so that their children could focus on their educational careers, and they helped them to develop self-effcacy skills as much as they could. The paradoxical situation arises from the fact that moving up educational and professional ladders and developing new social and cultural capital on the way also affects the social and cultural life and preferences of 'climbers': the more that parents help their children to climb and become successful, the more likely their children are to develop sociocultural preferences – e.g. as regards language use, religious practice, cultural references – that are different or even 'alien' to their parents. Being upwardly mobile and successful opens up new social networks, but it also often leads to a feeling of growing distance to childhood friends and even to one's own family.

Schneider and Lang (2014) describe the strategies that many of our respondents have developed to 'bridge' this potential distance by putting a strong emphasis on maintaining intensive relationships with their parents and siblings. An interesting way to connect both their social lives and their professional relationships resides in what can be called the *ethnic capital paradox*. The picture that arises from zooming in on the development and details of individual careers in a comparative, countryand sector-related perspective is quite complex: Being perceived as 'Turkish' is a disadvantage mentioned by many respondents, but in combination with speaking Turkish it can also help one to make a career in a prestigious law frm (e.g. by becoming responsible for a 'Turkish desk' in the company) or to serve a very specifc – and therefore also limited – niche (e.g. doing legal services for the local Turkish consulate). A subgroup of respondents in several sectors makes use of 'ethnic resources', such as their knowledge of Turkish, their special position as a teacher with a migration background (especially towards children and parents of similar backgrounds), access to different clienteles with a migrant background, or the mobilization of ethnic network contacts that allow access to a certain market. In this regard, 'ethnic capital' can be an asset when it serves as a selling-point in the competition with those with other 'backgrounds'. In several cases, however, it mainly served as a jump start or helped someone to take the next step in their career, becoming less and less relevant in the later stages of their careers. In other cases, ethnicity became relevant only at a later stage or was a crucial element for establishing oneself as a professional. More than a few of our respondents had resorted to the social networks developed by their families in their local home communities (cf. Lang et al., 2022).

But, as the chapter of Midtbøen and Nadim shows, 'ethnic capital' can also become a 'trap' that blocks opportunities for promotion. It can lead to social climbers ending up in a niche or constantly having to take on extra tasks related to their background and cultural skills (e.g. serving as an interpreter for other doctors in their hospital). Even if they do not have to represent a niche, these extra tasks can be a burden on their career as they often require an additional time investment and go unrewarded. Social climbers must be careful not to limit themselves and obstruct their future careers by playing the ethnic card or by ethnically framing their professional specialization too easily. They originally took up certain tasks, such as dealing with certain clienteles or partners because they saw that the organization they work for was unable to do so adequately. These are fne opportunities to demonstrate the added value of more diverse competences and skills in the organization. However, in some contexts, rather than the organization changing to become more inclusive, the 'problem' was delegated to the professional of migrant descent who thus risked becoming responsible for helping and supporting these clients. Thus, social climbers have to develop an awareness of the double-edged character of 'ethnicity' as a resource in professional environments.

#### **7.6 Overlooked Potentials**

All of the interviews are full of these nuances, ambiguities and paradoxes. Rather than trying to make a coherent and straightforward story, we have tried to work with these nuances and self-refections to paint a rich and complex picture of what we call *New Social Mobility*. Yet, despite these complexities and the considerable differences produced by the different institutional arrangements across countries and occupational sectors, it was also surprising to fnd so many similarities in the abilities our respondents had developed to 'navigate' the specifc challenges and opportunities of a given institutional setting. There were also similarities regarding their strong sense of belonging and being part of both the professional feld and workplace organization and their respective city and country. As Chap. 3 develops, our respondents show that they are very well able to bridge or reconcile possible differences and different expectations between the 'cultures' and requirements of their professional felds, their family, 'ethnic' or religious background and their widely mixed circles of friends and acquaintances. They have developed the capacity to integrate and balance these different spheres and sometimes contradictory expectations in successful ways.

Studying the mobility pathways of professionally highly-successful children of immigrants in Europe allowed us to detect the immense potential of this group. We can see these 'second-generation pioneers' in an increasing number of relevant positions, including more visible ones in politics, television and organizations. This is mainly because they have worked their ways into these roles, hardly ever because they were actively invited to take them on. Many central societal and political debates look different once successful 'second- generation pioneers' raise their voice. These people have the potential to change debates and push forward overdue developments in various contexts. To name just a few examples: how can we equip our schools to deal with the increasing super-diversity of their pupils and students (not only in terms of 'ethnic' backgrounds, but also with regard to legal status, linguistic competences, and many other aspects)? How to raise awareness for the toxic and destructive effects of racist ideologies? How to push forward 'progressive ideas' on gender equality both in mainstream society and migrant communities? What is needed in the debate about the position of Islam as a major religious belief in many European countries? How can 'late colonial' relationships between Europe and countries in the Middle East and Africa be overcome?

It should be understood as a great failure on the part of Europe to have overlooked this potential for so long. It is a failure that has operated at different levels. As repeatedly stated above, the mobility pioneers have made their way up *against the odds*, odds that have been imposed on them by society at large and its institutions: educational systems fail in their task and raison d'être when many young people are not given the opportunities and support that would enable them to deploy their talents and interests to the full; companies, organizations and public institutions miss out on talent and potential – and betray the principle of meritocracy – when they are more concerned with a new candidate's name and background than with their actual qualifcations and professional potential. But this failure is also a discursive and symbolic one: despite the fact that, for example, football players from diverse backgrounds in national teams have become a normal sight since the early 1990s (at least in countries such as France, the Netherlands, England, and, with a certain delay, Germany and other European teams), diversity is still not an unquestioned part of symbolic and discursive representations of nationhood and belonging. This contradicts the demographic development which has made diversity in a growing number of European cities 'normal', especially among the younger age cohorts (Crul et al., 2013; Schneider, 2018). In contrast, the notion of 'migration background' has evolved from an advanced new category in demographic statistics and social science research to a new 'discursive prison' (cf. Mannitz & Schneider, 2014; Will, 2019). It has the potential to confne future generations of native-born youth into a collective category for all kinds of 'Others', juxtaposing them against a 'National Self' and reproducing the myth of ethno-racial homogeneity. Listening to socially mobile second-generation pioneers could make an important difference here.

#### **7.7 Why Do We Speak of** *New* **Social Mobility?**

We have put 'New' before 'Social Mobility' in the title of this book, because the mobility we describe differs in several ways to the social mobility of people from working-class non-migrant backgrounds: the social mobility trajectories are different, as are the identifed social mobility mechanisms. Furthermore, the barriers that the 'new social climbers' have to overcome are also different due to their visibility and the fact that they are more likely to have experienced exclusion or discrimination on ethnic, racial or religious grounds. These three main differences in mobility processes can be characterized as follows:

The research designs of the underlying 'Pathways to Success' projects in this book all focus on the respondents' pathways from primary school up to their present professional position. This approach enabled us to retrospectively reconstruct all the different steps they had taken in their careers. We found that many had not been very successful at the start of their school careers. A large proportion, for instance, had entered secondary education in lower vocational tracks and had only reached higher education through long step-by-step mobility pathways or persistent struggles to obtain recognition of their true potential and ambitions. In principle, this also applies to socially mobile children of working-class parents without a migration background, but the scale is much larger for the second generation and the pathways have also often been much longer. A case in point here is provided by the Netherlands: twice as many second-generation Turkish and Moroccan youths used the long route from lower vocational education to gain access to higher education than their peers without a migration background (Crul, 2018). The latter could frequently use stepping stones within secondary education to advance to a pre-academic track which only takes 1 year extra. In contrast, their second-generation peers often had to take the longer route from lower to middle to higher vocational education – which takes at least 3 years longer.

We also fnd these alternative routes and pathways in the labour market, usually as a reaction to and strategy to deal with blocked opportunities. Respondents would, for instance, make use of a job opportunity in Turkey to advance their careers if they felt that they had hit a glass ceiling in Europe. Coming back with the managerial experience and prestige gained in Turkey, they were then able to advance further in their chosen career. Some even switched to another professional feld or started their own business when they saw few opportunities along the normal mobility pathways in their companies.

The social mechanism that produces the studied upward mobility patterns entails what we described earlier as the 'multiplier effect'. This effect seems to be specifc to the combination of coming from an extremely low educational and class background *and* having a migrant background. Being illiterate or having very little school experience – moreover in another country – has all kinds of severe consequences for the ability of parents to help their children. It constitutes quite a different challenge in comparison to the situation of a child from a non-immigrant family whose working-class parents had left the educational system after 10 years of schooling. At the same time, by contrast, the climbers' low-educated parents usually had high ambitions for their children and many of them, despite having few economic resources, made sacrifces to help their children take the long route towards high-prestige professions via higher education, even though this meant that these families had to forgo the extra income that this young person would otherwise have contributed to the family for several years.

Many migrant parents of our interviewees had never had the opportunity to pursue an education that would have corresponded to their intelligence and motivation. This means that there is a lot of hidden talent among this group of parents, talent which is now being used to support their children in various ways. Often our successful respondents emphasized that their low-educated parents were actually very bright people, and the fact that they had been unable to attend school had motivated them to give their children the unconditional support they required to take advantage of every available educational opportunity (see Chap. 3). Another aspect of this is that immigrant parents – because of the 'migration project' and the motivations behind it – usually aim higher than many working-class parents without a migration background. The professions that are often perceived as being 'prestigious enough' to fulfl migrant parents' expectations or preferences are in line with the professions that generally and most typically represent 'success', in particular law and medicine (see Chaps. 4 and 6).

Social mobility mechanisms are also different with regard to the additional ethnic barriers which add or aggravate class barriers and impede the acquisition of required social and cultural capital. Our second-generation respondents were, so to speak, 'double outsiders', who also had to cross the boundaries of perceived 'ethnic' differences. As the mobility stories in this book tell, they had to pro-actively acquire a place in a middle and upper-class environment that was not only overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, 'white', but which was also not eager to include them. Often, they found individual sponsors and mentors who helped them to access and learn how to navigate these 'unknown waters'. The fact that they managed to fnd these sponsors and mentors shows another characteristic that is typical of our respondents: their extraordinary social skills. Once again, these skills can be traced back to a specifc part of many second-generation life stories. From a very young age, many of our respondents had had to translate for their parents, talk to authorities and advocate for their parents and families. This trained them to 'read' and to deal with people without a migration background; this dual socialization has become second nature to them, making them well-equipped to successfully navigate unfamiliar professional contexts.

Navigating unfamiliar professional contexts is an aspect they share with workingclass peers from non-immigrant families as learning to understand upper-middleclass values and codes of conduct is a cultural challenge for anyone from a working-class background. They will often make the same 'mistakes' and need to learn similar habits in order to belong. However, when they succeed, non-immigrant working-class respondents are able to become 'invisible' in middle-class environments over time. This is a major difference to the second generation: their physical appearances or names remain visible and still continue to be associated with being 'odd' in the mainstream culture of their professional felds. In the case of our respondents, gaining acceptance in a typically upper or upper-middle-class professional environment required a constant and proactive bridging of class and 'ethnic' boundaries.

And this leads us to the fnal major difference: the impact of discrimination and racism. Although class snobbism can be a strong source of discrimination, ethnic, religious and racial discrimination is much more widespread and can have more serious consequences. Many of our respondents mentioned exclusion from networks, discrimination when applying for jobs or a promotion, and everyday racism in the form of 'othering' jokes and questions about religious and cultural habits. The work and effort needed to remain unharmed and sane despite everyday discrimination should not be underestimated, especially when someone is bypassed yet again for a promotion at work, or is not being offered equal opportunities for professional development. That familiar feeling from school of having to work twice as hard as their peers without a migration background just to draw even, is perpetuated in their professional careers, at least up to a certain level. This also takes a heavy toll on people's private and family lives.

Because of these differences we argue that it is justifable to talk about *new* social mobility in Europe. We acknowledge that there are a number of commonalities with lower-class people without a migration background. But the differences are important enough to emphasize them – not least, because they teach us more about the habitus and perceived boundaries of various middle-class domains. They will help us to direct further comparative research into (a) specifc forms of social mobility of this group and the key factors which explain their social mobility; and into (b) the changes needed in these crucial professional felds to become better equipped to deal with the wider demographic changes in society. Here, we also see three major *lacunae* in much of social mobility research: frstly, we need more (statistical) data that would allow a more systematic comparison between social climbers of immigrant and non-immigrant backgrounds, including the frequencies of occurrences of discrimination and racist and/or classist exclusion. Secondly, more research is needed into the differences in social mobility processes between the second and third generation: Do patterns become more similar to social mobility in nonimmigrant families, or does visibility based on names and physical appearance continue to make a relevant difference? Comparative studies on countries with more established immigration processes, such as the USA or Canada, could give important clues regarding similarities with and differences to these processes in Europe. Thirdly, how do working environments change and develop when they become more diverse and the presence of colleagues of diverse visible backgrounds has become a kind of normality? And what does this mean for future social climbers with an immigrant and non-immigrant background?

#### **7.8 The COVID-19 Pandemic and New Social Mobility**

We conducted the feldwork for this study just a few years before the Covid-19 pandemic. Considering the different factors that have produced New Social Mobility and enabled children of immigrants to successfully pursue far-reaching mobility pathways, we now ask the following questions: What could be the impact of the pandemic? How do and will pandemic-related restrictions and economic consequences affect current and future mobility careers of children of immigrants? We

would certainly argue that the pandemic has impacted opportunities for accruing network contacts and for gaining access to and the trust of mentors and sponsors. As shown, our respondents have been extremely dependent on informal personal contacts to gain access to relevant upper middle class contexts in their professional felds and to obtain the knowledge and information required to navigate a specifc corporate or institutional setting. This dependency is a disadvantage if a large part of everyday work is conducted online and there is scant opportunity to meet people physically. Also, it will be more diffcult to counter stereotypes that colleagues might have when they refer to visible 'markers of difference', like a headscarf, an Arab name or black skin. On the other hand, one could argue that online working environments make the playing feld more equal, because people are more likely to be judged on their accomplishments rather than on how they 'ft' into a team on the basis of presumed similarities and differences. This could actually show others that the second generation is in fact used to working harder than many of their peers from a non-immigrant background. An online environment also lends itself less to the typical 'old boys' networks' deals that take place in corridors, the canteen, corporate drinks events or after-work meet-ups in the pub.

Moreover, the pandemic has made it even more apparent that there are huge labour force shortages in Western Europe. After the emergency stop to many economic activities in order to fght and control the pandemic, immense labour shortages have become visible in many professional sectors,3 especially in the health sector. We started this book with the story of the Turkish-German vaccine developers, but this sector houses a much larger contingent of medical specialists, doctors, nurses and other health workers of migrant descent. The need for more health and care workers is on the agenda of every European government. Similar to the vocational sector in recent years, many highly-skilled professions will no longer be able to 'afford' an anti-diversity attitude in their recruitment strategies. This might open up new opportunities for the second and third generation offspring of immigrant families who have long been an overlooked and neglected 'reserve' in the labour force.

Overall, we would expect that the members of the second and third generation who are now entering professional occupations are likely to fnd more opportunities, including leadership positions, than many of the pioneers who had to struggle to gain a frst foothold in the professional sector. This new generation may also beneft from the experiences, examples and networks that the pioneers have built in various felds of society. In fact, many pioneers are already acting as sponsors and mentors for the next generation. When looking at the long-term impact, the greatest accomplishment of the pioneer generation is that they have broken a 'spell'. It is time that this accomplishment is recognized by both the public debate and social mobility research.

<sup>3</sup> In August 2021 the German Agency for Labour estimated the need for foreign labour in the German economy at around 400,000 persons *per year* (https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/konjunktur/migranten-scheele-arbeitsagentur-mangel-arbeitskraefte-101.html).

#### **References**


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