A Life-Course Perspective on Migration and Integration
A Life-Course Perspective on Migration and Integration
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移民与融合的生命历程视角
DOI：
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发表时间：
2011
影响因子：
2.5
通讯作者：
C. Diehl
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
C. Diehl
《移民和融合的一生视角》是一本编辑的文集，汇编了一些关于移民融合的文章。这是一本雄心勃勃的书，其主要目标是证明生命历程方法是这一研究领域的一个有用的范式，迄今为止还没有得到应有的关注。为了说明这一点，编辑们从介绍生命历程观点的基本假设的一章开始。在这样做的时候，他们界定了这一方法，认为一方面，这意味着不仅仅是用纵向数据进行微观分析研究，另一方面，它适用于比人口学家所感兴趣的现象更广泛的现象。
在此基础上，Wingens和合著者编写了11章，解决移民融合问题。本书的这一部分汇集了广泛的学者在这个问题上的经验工作。大多数章节都集中在德国，但有些章节将德国的情况与法国（图奇）或以色列（科根等人）进行比较，而其他人则关注其他欧洲国家，如奥地利（Latcheva和Herzog-Punzenberger）或英国（Muttarak）。实质上，移民在教育系统和劳动力市场的结构性融合及其家庭模式在卷中排名最突出，由关于身份，居住隔离和跨国活动的章节补充。在方法上，使用定量和定性方法，虽然前者显然占主导地位，使用面板和纵向数据以及国际，国家或地方研究项目的横截面数据。对生命历程范式的亲和力在各章之间有所不同。其中有些人，例如温兹奥、德·瓦尔克、孙或申克的贡献，比其他人更紧密地遵循了导言中提出的理论要求。Schunck在其基于SOEP的跨国活动分析中表明，跨国活动部分依赖于移民的财政资源，但这种关系随着停留时间的增加而变化。其他章节，如科根等人的章节，从一个更“经典”的微观分析角度出发，询问特定群体的接收背景的作用，并考虑到移民前获得的个人资源。还有一些研究，例如Latechva和Herzog-Punzenberger的研究，更明确地论述了生命阶段，并大量使用了“生命过程术语”，但仍不清楚他们的结果在哪些方面超出了现有的整合研究结果。
在最后一章中，编辑们详细阐述了生命历程和整合研究之间的关系，具体说明了前者的理论含义：最重要的是，整合作为一个过程，而不是一个国家的研究，机构的考虑以及结构条件，并随着时间的推移代际变化和变化的调查。在此基础上，他们回顾了以前的文章，并讨论了这些文章是如何考虑到生命历程视角的基本原则的。
与许多编辑的书籍不同，这卷书有一个明确的理论信息和一个可见的红线。基本论点是，几乎从本质上讲，融合研究要求从生命历程的角度来看待问题，因为这一领域真正关心的是移徙作为一种根本性“过渡”的后果及其随着时间的推移和跨越几代人的长期影响。有人可能会补充说，这一论点有时甚至走得太远，例如，编辑们声称，“通过将微观层面的决策与中观或宏观层面的社会结构和制度动态地联系起来，这种方法避免了个人主义和生态还原论”（第294页）。事实上，上述理论要求对于任何解释性的经验整合研究都是不可或缺的。这一实质性领域的基础研究问题不能回答，否则：为什么有些群体比其他群体整合得更快？为什么族裔联系和认同促进了一些群体的结构性融合，却阻碍了另一些群体的结构性融合？社会距离和歧视在解释特定群体的适应模式中扮演什么角色？
在这一点上，人们想要赞同所有关于有效整合研究应该做什么的声明，包括生命历程方法是“一套理论指导而不是一个统一的理论”的论点（第288页）。然而，这些准则往往被忽视或没有得到充分考虑，与其说是因为缺乏明确的生命历程观点，不如说是因为这种方法需要大量的数据：关于少数群体和多数群体成员的最新、可比较的纵向数据，最好辅之以定性研究，仍然很难找到。总之，这本书很好地表明，生命历程方法是一个有益的提醒之间的理论原则，应该指导实证整合研究和魔术子弹为那些感兴趣的主题。
“A Life-Course Perspective on Migration and Integration” is an edited volume that compiles a number of articles on immigrants’ integration. It is an ambitious book whose main goal is to demonstrate that the life course approach is a useful paradigm for this research field that has so far not received the attention it deserves. In order to show this, the editors start out with an introductory chapter on the basic assumptions of the life course perspective. In doing so, they delimit the approach by arguing that, on the one hand, it means more than micro-analytical research with longitudinal data and that, on the other hand, it is applicable to a much broader set of phenomena than those of interest to demographers alone.
Based on this, Wingens and coauthors have compiled 11 chapters that tackle the issue of immigrant integration. This part of the book brings together a broad range of scholars working empirically on this issue. Most chapters focus on Germany but some compare the German situation with that of France (Tucci) or Israel (Kogan et al.), while others look at other European countries such as Austria (Latcheva and Herzog-Punzenberger) or the UK (Muttarak). Substantively, the structural integration of migrants in the educational system and the labor market and their family patterns rank most prominently in the volume, supplemented by chapters on identification, residential segregation, and transnational activities. Methodologically, quantitative and qualitative methods are used, though the former clearly dominate, using panel and longitudinal data as well as cross-sectional data from international, national or local research projects. The affinity to the life course paradigm varies between the chapters. Some of them, the contributions by Windzio, de Valk, Sohn, or Schunck, for example, follow the theoretical imperatives raised in the introduction more closely than others. Schunck shows in his SOEP-based analysis on transnational activities that the latter are partly dependent on migrants’ financial resources, but that this relationship varies with increasing duration of stay. Other chapters, such as the one by Kogan et al., start out from a more “classical” micro-analytic perspective, asking about the role of group-specific reception contexts and taking into account individual resources acquired before immigration. Again others, for example the study by Latechva and Herzog-Punzenberger, address life phases more explicitly and make heavy use of “life course terminology” but it remains unclear in what regard their results extend beyond existing findings of integration research.
In the concluding chapter, the editors elaborate on the relationship between life course and integration research by specifying the theoretical implications of the former: most importantly, the study of integration as a process rather than a state, the consideration of agency as well as structural conditions, and the investigation of generational change and changes over time. Based on this, they review the preceding articles and discuss how these take the basic principle of the life course perspective into account.
Unlike many edited books, this volume has a clear theoretical message and a visible red thread. The basic argument is that, almost by nature, integration research calls for a life course perspective given this field’s genuine interest in the consequences of migration as a fundamental “transition” and its long-lasting impact over time and across generations. One might add that this argument is sometimes even taken too far, for example when the editors claim that “by dynamically relating decision-making at the micro-level to social structures and institutions at the meso- or macro- level this approach avoids individualistic as well as ecological reductionism” (p. 294). In fact, the above-mentioned theoretical imperatives are indispensable for any sort of explanatory empirical integration research. Fundamental research questions of this substantive area of interest cannot be answered otherwise: Why do some groups integrate faster than others? Why do ethnic ties and identifications foster structural integration for some groups but hamper it for others? What role do social distances and discriminations play in accounting for group-specific adaptation patterns?
In this regard, one wants to subscribe to all statements on what effective integration research should do—including the argument that the life course approach is a “set of theoretical guidelines rather than a unified theory” (p. 288). The fact that these guidelines are often ignored or not sufficiently taken into account might, however, have less to do with the absence of an explicit life course perspective than with the tremendous data requirements of such an approach: up-to-date, comparative, longitudinal data on minority and majority members, ideally supplemented by qualitative studies, are still hard to find. In sum, the volume does a good job in showing that the life course approach is something between a helpful reminder of the theoretical principles that should guide empirical integration research and a magic bullet for those interested in the topic.