Abstract
Social science research on migration reveals a strong groupist orientation. Numerous
studies are prone to methodological ethnicization, constructing strong collective
boundaries and implying homogenous collective identities embraced by ‘migrant
communities’. Migrants are usually perceived – if not from the systemic vantage
point of ‘societies of arrival’ – then from meso-perspectives, inquiring into collective
dynamics while taking ‘ethno-national’ boundary-lines for granted. This working
paper reverses the perspective of observation, putting individual persons in the forefront.
It deploys the lens of ‘belonging’, distinguishing between ‘belonging to’ and
‘belonging together’. The analysis follows the individual migrants’ politics of the self,
studied against the backdrop of collective dynamics, i.e. combining interpersonal
with collective dimensions. From the personal point of view, the superdiversity of
contemporary societies renders belonging a complex, often contested and always a
self-reflexive condition. Belonging today is ever multiple and the different components
of belonging are often difficult to combine together. The biographical navigation
is therefore full of challenges, but also bears new possibilities. The problematic
of belonging and the entailed social boundary work are analysed drawing upon
Fatih Akin’s narratives - whose films and interviews have time and again portrayed
migrants’ complex pathways. The perspective suggested here is meant to complement
the recent efforts challenging groupist assumptions in migration research while doing
justice both to individualisation as well as to the dynamic processes of collective
boundary-drawing and communitarian positionings.
