„Migration background“: making and social reality of a scientific category

• Applicant: Dr. Anne-Kathrin Will
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 410871136

In 2005 seventeen new questions on migration entered the microcensus, the German representative population statistics. The division into Germans and foreigners in place until then had lost its discriminatory power concerning migration experience, because the immigration pattern had changed. Ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union immigrated in high numbers and the number of foreigners born in Germany grew. With the new questions on migration the so called migration background is generated. Hence the descendants of immigrants became visible in the official statistics as they were included in the group of "persons with migration Background" even if they were born in Germany with German citizenship.So far the invention, implementation and far reaching consequences in everyday life were rarely studied. Exceptions are studies about the use of the term migration background in the media (Scarvaglieri/Zech 2013) and in parliamentary discourse (Elrick/Schwartzman 2015). Only a (not yet published) PhD-thesis analyses the connections between statistical category and everyday life (Lang 2015, 2017). A recent article turns attention to the mismatch of statistical and obvious migration background (Bednaschewsky/Supik 2018).To close this gap, this project deals with the invention and implementation of the discriminatory feature migration background in the microcensus and its consequences in everyday life. The study is situated in the intersection of different research fields as there are:1) anthropological inquiries in classification systems, 2) studies in the field of anthropology of knowledge and postcolonial studies and their occupation with the connections between knowledge, politics and everyday life, 3) science and technology studies and 4) research on national and ethnic memberships. These four theoretical references should be combined and interrelated through different empirical approaches.These are a) research in statistical offices as the production facility of classifications, b) interviews with parliamentarians, responsible officers in ministries and statistical offices about the emergence and further development of the questions on migration in the microcensus, c) review of different migration backgrounds in other disciplines, d) mental maps of German belonging and ancestry, e) interviews with persons born in Germany who count as second or third generation immigrant and persons without migration background. The results will be discussed in a final workshop with experts from several disciplines and also from the statistical office, to reflect the impact of science on everyday life. Thus this study is meant to be a critical involved ethnography which contributes to the de-migrantisation of migration research through a critical reflection of statistical generated classifications of humans.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants