The Dynamics of Immigrant Agency

‘[A] response to the current calls in migration studies to democraticize and decolonize migration research and to abolish the hierarchy between the researcher (= citizen) and the researched (= migrant). Such an emancipatory intention resonates with the author’s methodological program to develop an ‘immigrant agency theory’ on the basis of Grounded Theory methodology by reconstructing ‘sayings’ and ‘doings’ around migrant agency ‘from below’.’
—Anna Amelina, Professor of Sociology, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany

This open access book explores the dynamics of human agency within the complex context of settlement-oriented immigration through an in-depth case study of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who embarked on their journey to Germany during the 1990s and early 2000s. Employing a transnational lens and an interpretive approach, the book presents a novel empirically grounded Immigrant Agency Theory. Bridging the realms of integration and transnationalism, the Immigrant Agency Theory is a multifaceted analytical tool encompassing representational aspects (identity formations and frameworks), expressive dimensions (language use, multilingual practices, and translanguaging), and operational facets (e.g., contrasting (non)economic actions as entrepreneurship and active leisure). These elements serve as mechanisms facilitating transition, engagement, resistance, and the expression of flexible ethnic boundary-making, cultural pluralism, and the maintenance of difference through auto-exoticism as exemplified by the studied population groups. This monograph is valuable for sociologists, migration scholars, social linguists, researchers of cultural studies and Eastern Europe interested in understanding the correlation between historical events and East-West European migration processes during the transition period of the Soviet and post-Soviet space.

Tetiana Havlin is a sociologist, researcher, visiting professor and chair for Intercultural Studies at Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany. Previously, she worked as a research associate in the 5183 DFG Research Unit Transborder Mobility and Institutional Dynamics at the University of Siegen, where she completed this monograph as a habilitation project. Her key research areas are migration and transnationalism research, empirical social research, and cultural sociology as well as gender and intersectionality studies.