Transnational Upward Social Mobility in the Course of South-North Migration

Social mobility is rarely studied with a transnational scope. But, especially in the Global South, upward mobility is connected with geographic mobility and, very often, migration. Given global inequalities and significant differences in income (Milanović 2020), South-North migration seems to be attractive even for people from low-income families. At the same time, achieving social mobility through migration appears particularly unlikely for this group of people: (Poor) people from the ‘Global South’ rarely have the necessary resources to migrate to the ‘North’, and migrants often enter the most precarious segments of Northern labour markets (Krings 2020).

In my paper, I focus on rare cases of migrants who - despite these improbabilities - migrated to Germany from countries of the ‘Global South’ and established themselves on the labour market in positions similar to the German middle classes. The empirical basis is formed by 17 biographical-narrative interviews with people who grew up in various countries in the South and less privileged families.

My empirical findings trace the strategies (Bourdieu 1979) and orientations (Mannheim 1980) in the migration and upward mobility process and contextualise them in global structures of inequality. Despite their different countries of origin, the upwardly mobile share similar experiences. Viewed through the lens of individual trajectories, I can show how migration laws, educational institutions, organisations and family orientations interact and channel migration in a way that makes educational migration attractive.

I conclude with a critical discussion of the extent to which ideas and concepts of ‘social advancement’ can be applied to South-North migration. In my study, social mobility appears as a family project, which questions the assumptions of mobility research on individualisation and conflicts between parents and the child generation.