Life Strategies of Migrant Families in Marginalised Urban Areas

The life of migrant families in marginalised urban areas often takes place under difficult economic and social conditions. Families develop specific life strategies to deal with these circumstances. This research has significance to both migration and urban research, but is an area that has been largely unexplored to date. This study will utilise a qualitative methodology to identify the life strategies used by migrant families in marginalised urban areas in Stuttgart (Germany), Klagenfurt (Austria) and Basel (Switzerland). The key focus will be to find out how families seek to engage in education and earning opportunities. Research questions will examine the resources that are available for migrant families in marginalized urban areas and, identify commonalities and differences amongst family groups within various local, social and political contexts across the three selected countries. This research provides a platform for in-depth analysis - across international borders, generations and gender - of the life strategies employed by families and individuals within family groups as well as a means of identifying the social- spatial factors of "day-to-day" life and discrimination they may encounter. The research has the potential to contribute valuable knowledge to improving the broader discourse on migration and integration.

The present study has investigated life strategies of and within families from a migration background in underprivileged neighbourhoods in medium-sized cities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. A special focus here was on questions concerning education and work. Overall, it was found that the context of migration was of differential importance for both the individuals and families concerned. On one hand, their social positioning in society and the associated possibilities was shaped by that migration background; on the other, migration as a family experience also plays a key role as an option for action in their current perspectives and everyday practices. Migration experiences are thus intertwined in multifaceted ways with the life strategies present in migration families. However, the findings show that migration families living in difficult circumstances certainly develop a sense for invention and creativity in dealing with the precarious conditions of living they may find themselves in. They develop new competencies, and in this way also create new possibilities for the coming generation. It also proved possible in the study to reconstruct that the families facing restrictive conditions of life find themselves constrained by circumstance to proceed on their own account down certain pathways, detours and in special directionspathways associated with enormous effort, stress and also various risks.In respect to the differing national contexts which the study encompassed, it was found that the respective life strategies in the three countries differ very little. However, it was revealed that the options to shape their lives open to migration families depend decisively on their legal status and the availability of resources, as well at the extent to which they are affected by everyday and/or structural forms of discrimination. Yet we find that here in the various national contexts, similar structural obstacles tend to prevail. However, the experiences vary in part in the different local contexts. That depends above all on the extent to which the phenomenon of migration is viewed in a given local space as normality or deviation.The life strategies clearly show that the families actively utilize their available resources, and that the actions of individuals are in part very consciously oriented toward achieving specific aims, such as making it possible for their own descendants to have a better life. The knowledge gained in the study sheds new light on the situation of migrants in society, and thus on various conjunct contradictions and unreasonable demands and impositions. It is possible to derive from this a range of theoretical, methodological, political and practical conclusions that serve to justify the need for developing a different kind of research on migration.