Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Van Meeteren, Masja
• Engbersen, Godfried
• Van San, Marion

Titel

Striving for a Better Position: Aspirations and the Role of Cultural, Economic, and Social Capital for Irregular Migrants in Belgium

Ist Teil von

• The International migration review, 2009-12, Vol.43 (4), p.881-907

Ort / Verlag

Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2009

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Drawing upon 120 semi-structured interviews with irregular migrants in Belgium, this article focuses on their aspirations and the resources needed in order to realize these. It is demonstrated that specific aspirations require specific forms of capital. A typology is constructed, based on three types of aspirations with corresponding resources. First, investment migrants, who aspire to return and invest in upward social mobility in their country of origin, require job competencies (cultural capital) and social leverage (social capital). Second, legalization migrants, who aspire to obtain legal residence, require different forms of capital, depending on the marriage market they are active in. Third, settlement migrants, aiming at residing legally or illegally in the receiving society, require both social support and social leverage (combined social capital). These findings indicate it is important to adopt a contextualized approach studying the mechanisms through which various forms of capital lead to different outcomes for irregular migrants.