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Sep 3, 2017 - In 1908, the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote an essay about 'the stranger'. Simmel described 'the stranger' as a social figure whose position is ...
European Journal for Sport and Society

ISSN: 1613-8171 (Print) 2380-5919 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ress20

Migrant background, culture and ethnicity: sociological terms without explanatory value?! Ansgar Thiel & Klaus Seiberth To cite this article: Ansgar Thiel & Klaus Seiberth (2017) Migrant background, culture and ethnicity: sociological terms without explanatory value?!, European Journal for Sport and Society, 14:3, 183-185, DOI: 10.1080/16138171.2017.1360553 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2017.1360553

Published online: 03 Sep 2017.

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EUROPEAN JOURNAL FOR SPORT AND SOCIETY, 2017 VOL. 14, NO. 3, 183–185 https://doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2017.1360553

EDITORIAL

Migrant background, culture and ethnicity: sociological terms without explanatory value?!

In the case of the person who is a stranger to the country, the city, the race, etc., however, this non-common element is once more nothing individual, but merely the strangeness of origin, which is or could be common to many strangers (Simmel, 1996[1908], 41).

In 1908, the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote an essay about ‘the stranger’. Simmel described ‘the stranger’ as a social figure whose position is characterised by being near and far at the same time. In Simmel’s concept, the stranger is not a visitor who comes and leaves shortly after, but who stays without a foreseeable date of departure. According to Simmel’s work, it is the ambivalence of proximity and distance that shapes the stranger’s relation to society. The stranger is part of a society, but at the same time he/she is perceived as being significantly different. More than 100 years after Simmel’s essay, modern societies still have their strangers. Even more, the labelling of certain population groups as strangers is as omnipresent in the public discourse as ever. A typical example are the millions of labour migrants in Europe and their descendants. The terms used to label these groups are manifold: guest workers, foreigners, migrants, immigrants, people with migrant background, or post-migrants. A closer look at the people who are categorised by these terms reveals that many of today’s strangers have not migrated themselves, but were born and grew up in the respective countries. Modern strangers are also not necessarily different from ‘natives’ regarding their citizenship or first language. Nevertheless, they are still named as British Asians, German Turks or French Algerians. Although for some time now, sociologists have exposed the idea of the ‘classical stranger’ as no longer valid to describe the structures of modern society (cf. Harman, 1988, Stichweh, 1997), the concept of the stranger is still powerful in social science. The number of studies that use terms such as migrant background, culture or ethnicity as differentiating categories in order to explain behavioural variance in people on a group statistical level is huge. In many of these studies even people whose parents do not have migration experiences themselves are labelled as (im)migrants. This points to terminological insufficiencies within the scientific debates. Even if it is not intended by the researchers, these paradigmatic distinctions define population groups as ‘originals’ and label ‘the others’ as deviant. Such distinctions are also methodologically highly problematic. Brubaker, Loveman, and Stamatov (2004, 53) state that ‘the phenomena we call race, ethnicity, and nation surely count among the most significant social and cultural structures – and among the most significant social and political movements – of modern times. Yet they continue to exist only by virtue of being reproduced daily in and through the quotidian ways of thinking, talking, and acting of countless anonymous individuals’. They are, therefore, rarely appropriate to explain the behavioural variance of the concerned people. One of the most commonly used concepts in this regard is culture. In social science, variance in attitudes and behaviour are often explained by alleged differences of the

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autochthonous culture of a host country and the cultures of the migrants’ countries of origin (or those of their parents or grandparents). In this understanding, culture is a clearly distinguishable, homogeneous, and deterministic construct (national culture, lead culture, etc.). This concept of culture is closely connected to the idea of the nation-state. Historically, ‘it was a central part of the nation-state project to define all those populations not thought to represent the “national culture” as racially and culturally different, producing an alterity that contributed to efforts to build unity and identity’ (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002, 305). Until today, the ‘culturalization’ of differences on the basis of the nation-state concept is a fundamental mechanism of ‘othering’. The problem of cultural othering, however, is that modern societies are per se characterised by migration and globalisation processes. Cultural homogeneity in the sense of the nation-state concept is, therefore, the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, cultural differences in pluralised modern societies are mostly found on the level of lifestyles. The group of migrants, for example, is anything but homogeneous. Wippermann and Flaig (2009) showed for Germany that most people with a so called migrant background show a high identification with Germany, speak German and share fundamental values, even if they do not have a German passport. Even if the home country of their ancestors is relevant for their ethnic identity, it does not determine the basic values and moral concepts of these people with migrant background. According to Wippermann & Flaig (2009), ethnicity, religion, and migration can be relevant factors of the individuals’ life-worlds, but they are not constitutive for the individuals’ milieus. And evidently, many practices, values and norms of the alleged culturally different group are also found in the social milieus of the €kefeld who autochthonous population. Hence, one can agree with the sociologist Martin So €kefeld 2004, once wrote: ‘Culture does not explain anything, it has to be explained’ (So translation by AT & KS). The same holds true for ethnicity. Sociology has to ‘observe, describe, and classify the social world as clearly as possible in well-ordered terms in accordance with the scientific ideals of coherence, consistency, and €tz, 1944, 500). Given the methodological shortcomings of the analytical consequence” (Schu discourse about the stranger, sociology should focus on the stereotyping, stigmatising, and discriminating force of the concepts ‘culture’ or ‘ethnicity’, rather than trying to explain behavioural differences with these concepts. For example, in the public debate in Europe, migrants and their descendants, particularly Muslims, are often described as either fundamentalist people or as pitiful outsiders (cf. Wippermann & Flaig, 2009). More sophisticated sociological analyses are needed in order to show that these insinuations do not reflect social reality in its complexity. For example, in quantitative social scientific studies, immigrants and their descendants ‘are rarely compared with sectors of a national population that they resemble in terms of income or education. However, when such comparisons are made, immigrants often do better than the non-immigrant population’ (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002, 310). Hence, taking a closer look at the people, their values, attitudes, lifestyles, preferences, and beliefs instead of applying deterministic and simplistic concepts of cultural difference could de-construct stereotypical perceptions of so called strangers. The few studies that exist in this regard show that the stranger is not as different from the ‘local’ as many believe.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Ansgar Thiel and Klaus Seiberth €bingen, Institute of Sports Science, Eberhard Karls University Tu €bingen, Germany Tu [email protected] ß 2017 European Association for Sociology of Sport