If We Approach the Role of Social Capital That Migrants and Migrant Associations Produce

The Dynamics of Immigrants’ Habitus:

Post-nineties Turkish Immigrants from Bulgariaagainst the TurkishState

Through the internalization of the ‘objective’ legal and political structures, immigrants in receiving countries gradually develop a certain form of habitus. Meanwhile some fractions occur among those who supposedly share the same habitus. Although the Post-nineties migration from Bulgaria to Turkey differ in many aspects from the previous several big waves of migration from Bulgaria since the early 20th century, the formal migrant associations and the informal networks founded by previous immigrants as well as the state discourse have also shaped and defined the habitus for the ‘late-comers’ with certain discrepancies. What Bourdieu calls the “(im)possibility of a disinterested act” and the connection between social capital, power and conflict appear to be the main source of this discrepancies between the former and the latter groups of immigrants from the same sending country as well as the gap between their formal associations and informal networks. This gap and the former’s relative political power vis-a-vis the Turkish state could be captured well with reference to Bourdieu’s emphasis on the role of the social structure and the reproduction of privileges since he defines social capital as the outcome of inequalities rather than a solution to them. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Istanbul, this analysis is an attempt to shed more light on the notions of social capital in conjunction with the issue of immigration from a rather structural perspective yet still from the viewpoint of actors engaged in struggle in pursuit of their interests and also to supplement other prominent worksthat underlinecollective values and integration,such as Faist and Ostergaard-Nielsen regarding immigrants’ transnational practices and Putnam’s assumption of civic community.

References:

Bourdieu, P. (1998) Practical Reason. On the Theory of Action. Cambridge: Polity.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1999) The Weight of the World. Palo Alto: StanfordUniversity Press.

Faist (2000) The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces. Oxford:Clarendon Press.

Ostergaard-Nielsen, E. (2003). "The Politics of Migrants' Transnational Political Practices." International Migration Review 37(3): 760-786.

Putnam, R (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.