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This article scrutinizes the mobility regime of the EU by focusing on the challenges to belonging, which are incremental, but often neglected, aspects of the expansion of mobility rights. Based on a qualitative study of migration between Poland and Germany, one of the worlds’ most vivid and historically rooted migration spaces, I will argue that the enabled mobility in the course of the expansion of the EU beginning in 2004, created a situation for many to choose between two unsatisfying modes of belonging: Either choosing for the »Scylla« of migrating to what for some of them feels like unfamiliar social contexts with challenges for their belonging, mainly due to the shared beliefs of countries as framed by ethnic boundaries. Or, they can chose for the »Charybdis« of non-migrating, which is consequential because it implies resisting contemporary mobility discourses, which frame being »put in place« as lower life chances and modes for self-realization, mostly as a matter of class and gender., InterDisciplines. Journal of History and Sociology, Vol 7, No 1 (2016): Race, Gender, and Questions of Belonging

This paper provides detailed information about qualitative sampling for the “Transnational Mobility and Social Positions in the European Union” project. The sampling strategy is based on the SOEP - IAB Migration Sample survey. It is part of a sequential research design that uses various quantitative and qualitative methods to study the effect of spatial mobility on social positions and the role of social comparisons in determining how cross-nationally mobile people perceive their social positions. We describe how the quantitative part of the survey was used to create contrast groups that show different intersections of spatial mobility and social position as measured by the Erikson–Goldthorpe–Portocarero (EGP) scheme. In addition, we provide an overview of the main characteristics of these contrast groups. The section on outlook outlines further steps in this project and discusses the strategies used and the challenges faced in this mixed-methods research project.

This paper provides detailed information about qualitative sampling for the “Transnational Mobility and Social Positions in the European Union” project. The sampling strategy is based on the SOEP - IAB Migration Sample survey. It is part of a sequential research design that uses various quantitative and qualitative methods to study the effect of spatial mobility on social positions and the role of social comparisons in determining how cross-nationally mobile people perceive their social positions. We describe how the quantitative part of the survey was used to create contrast groups that show different intersections of spatial mobility and social position as measured by the Erikson–Goldthorpe–Portocarero (EGP) scheme. In addition, we provide an overview of the main characteristics of these contrast groups. The section on outlook outlines further steps in this project and discusses the strategies used and the challenges faced in this mixed-methods research project.

Transnational social spaces are multidimensional in terms of the socio-spatial categories - that is, local, global, and national - and different actors and institutions involved. Recent developments in transnational methodology argue for a thorough reflection on the challenges of methodological nationalism, essentialism, and researchers' positionality. Therefore, in designing and conducting transnational research, reflections on methodological challenges become a crucial step. Yet, as these challenges often remain to be discussed on a methodological level, their implementation still needs to be set out clearly to be useful for empirical research in transnational social spaces such as on social protection. For that reason, we discuss transnational research designs as well as different methods of data collection and analysis. We argue for a multisited and mixed-method research design, which includes the emigration and the immigration countries, as well as the involvement of research teams located across borders. Thereby, a combination of perspectives between emigration and immigration countries in transnational social spaces can be achieved. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The transfer of cultural capital across borders is a common topic in transnational sociology. While the majority of studies investigates the opportunities and challenges of adult migrants and their social mobility in transnational social spaces, children in transnational social spaces are predominantly acknowledged either as indicators for their migrant population's mobility rates or as 'left-behinds'. While the first branch of literature investigates migrant population only in relation to the immigration country, the other does argue from a transnational perspective yet the ramifications and challenges of co-present parent-child relations in transnational social spaces are an understudied topic. This article aims to raise awareness that the ways migrants raise their children in transnational social spaces is a crucial site to study the broader topic of the modes of the (re-)production of transnational social spaces. This is so because the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital is the main mechanism operating in the reproduction of unequal social structures and therefore also of transnational social spaces. Based on twenty semi-structured interviews with migrants from Poland in Germany, this article sheds light on migrant parents' childrearing orientations in relation to language and education. The article reveals that despite fairly similar orientations, parents have, dependent on their cultural capital, very different opportunities to fulfill their parenting needs.

In the ‘age of transnationalization’, spatial mobility is highly valued as a resource and accordingly ‘sedentariness’ is often symbolically devalued. Migration between Poland and Germany (mainly from Poland to Germany) has a century-long tradition. Not only has it yielded the emergence of a dense transnational social space, but is also considered as a re-enactor of cultural traits and symbolic meanings. Spatial mobility is tied to notions of social mobility and to projects of life-making. Since legal restrictions for Polish migrants seeking to work and settle in Germany have vanished, the quest for ‘normalcy’ has enhanced and pressures towards even more migration have increased. I argue that symbolic meanings of mobility are decisive for hierarchies in transnational social spaces. I have put main emphasize on families’ practices of caring for and caring about each other: the first being more a physical or material activity, while the latter is a more symbolic and emotional one. The interviews reveal that people draw multiple differentiations between migrant populations in terms of their migration reasons as well as between the mobile and the immobile. Those differentiations are embedded in the distinct feature of the transnational social space between Poland and Germany with assumed differences in terms of ‘modernity’. At the end the symbolic meanings of mobility also help explain the puzzle of why the emigration rates from Poland are constantly high, although Poland is a comparatively wealthy country.