Juggling Resources. Within Group Relations and Social Mobility Among Iranian Migrants in Hamburg

Research widely agrees that social relations between Iranian transnational migrants are shaped by mistrust, and explains this phenomenon with the heterogeneity of their social backgrounds. Indeed, the thought that not only the relations of migrants with the majority society, but also within group relations are shaped by relations of power is acknowledged in the Iranian context, but still marginal in transnational migration studies. In this paper I want to unpack the notion of heterogeneity, and study it as a category of analysis. Building on literature that applies and evaluates Pierre Bourdieu’s approach to social mobility in the context of transnational migration, my aim is to trace the construction and deconstruction of social boundaries among Iranian migrants, and understand how these processes are related to the chances and hindrances they meet in striving for upward social mobility.
Thereby, I draw on data raised through various qualitative methods during long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Hamburg. The German port city was one of the first destinations of Iranian – mainly mercantile – migration and is historically linked to Iran through longstanding political and economic ties. Covering the period from the 1930s until today, the paper focusses on the agency of two transnationally active professional groups, i.e. import-export entrepreneurs and film professionals. More concretely, I trace how individual professionals engage with changing social, political, and economic conditions, and try to accumulate economic, social, and cultural capital in German, Iranian, and transnational social fields. Against this background, the complexity of their interactions with other people of Iranian origin both in public (associations, cultural events) and in private (family, friendship networks) settings unfolds and it becomes possible to identify the role markers of social difference such as class, gender, and ethnicity, but also education, and political and religious orientation play in these processes.
These considerations allow me to argue that the way Iranian migrants relate to one another is influenced by their social position not only in Iranian, but also in German and transnational social fields. Underlining the fluidity and relativity of social differences enables us to understand that relations of power develop among migrants when individuals or groups construct or deconstruct social boundaries to overcome barriers to their social mobility.