https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418809515
Qualitative Inquiry
2019, Vol. 25(8) 799­–810
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1077800418809515
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Article
The Problem
In Germany, debates on immigration and related integration
policies continuously appear on the political agenda. In
times of expanding postwar industries, immigrants were
considered as “guest workers” who were supposed to leave
after their job was done. However, they turned out to well
match Georg Simmel’s notion of the stranger as the “person
who comes today and stays tomorrow” (Simmel, 1908/1950,
p. 402). Former “guest workers”—mainly from Turkey—
made their families follow them or founded new ones in
Germany. At the end of the cold war era, immigration from
Eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union (FSU),
intensified. Many of these immigrants of the first generation
or following ones were struck by the upheavals of the
German economy, which destroyed many unskilled or
industrial jobs and led to refined requirements for regular
employments. Many long-term immigrants found themselves
long-term unemployed and became qualified for
social benefits. As welfare recipients, they are entitled to
minimum financial benefits including housing costs. At the
same time, they are obliged to accept any job or measures to
improve their employability mandated by the “Jobcenter”
(as they are called in Germany) as the cognizant welfare
authority. However, the labor-market placement of welfare
receiving immigrants appears to be complicated and in
many cases inefficient. Therefore, this particular group is
considered as problematic and sometimes hard to handle by
some Jobcenter staff as well as in the wider public, assuming
they lack the will to integrate themselves.
This concern is part of what constitutes the topic of an
“integration problem” in public discourse. The situation
outlined earlier is the wider context of a qualitative research
project initiated and designed by the Institute for
Employment Research, the Federal Employment Agency’s
research institute, and commissioned to the Freie Universität
Berlin. This research turns the perspective from what is perceived
as problematic in parts of the society to exploring
what sort of problems immigrants experience in a lifesituation
in which they do not find access to the labor-market
and have to depend on welfare. The study finally reflects
possible shortcomings of the Jobcenters’ integration policies
toward immigrants.
809515QIXXXX10.1177/1077800418809515Qualitative InquiryFlick et al.
research-article2018
1
Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany, Germany
2
Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Nuremberg, Germany
Corresponding Author:
Uwe Flick, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany, Habelschwerdter Allee
45, Berlin 14195, Germany.
Email: Uwe.Flick@FU-Berlin.de
Walking and Talking Integration:
Triangulation of Data From Interviews
and Go-Alongs for Exploring Immigrant
Welfare Recipients’ Sense(s) of Belonging
Uwe Flick1
, Andreas Hirseland2
, and Benjamin Hans1
Abstract
Integration of immigrants is a major political and societal topic in societies such as Germany, although there are different
ideas about when integration is achieved. For analyzing integration from the immigrants’ points of view, data triangulation
of talking (episodic interviews addressing migration histories) and walking (mobile methods—go-alongs) reveals several
levels of integration experiences. After outlining space and belonging as relevant theoretical concepts and the methods
triangulated in a study, four case studies of immigrants from Turkey and the former Soviet Union in Berlin are presented.
The immigrants’ perceptions and aspirations toward belonging, participation, and integration are explored and compared
from an intersectional perspective. We find differing ways of positioning toward the German majority society, of getting
connected to it and coping with unemployment. Relations of work and social integration or marginalization are discussed
based on the case studies and the relevance of using various kinds of data is demonstrated.
Keywords
data triangulation, episodic interview, mobile methods, migration and unemployment, work and integration
800	 Qualitative Inquiry 25(8)
Accordingly, this study is interested in biographies,
labor-market aspirations, personal networks, and forms of
integration in everyday practices. Therefore, it triangulates
several qualitative methods like (multilingual) in-depth
interviews, focus group interviews, qualitative networkanalysis,
and go-alongs. The study focuses on immigrants
with a Turkish for FSU background, as these two groups
represent the largest subgroups of immigrants (Knuth &
Brussig, 2010) in Germany.
This article covers only part of this research as it mainly
addresses two aspects: (a) Methodologically, it focuses on
the triangulation of in-depth-interviews with go-alongs.
Considering methods as a means related to specific ends,
we further show how the use of these methods is (b) related
to our findings. After discussing briefly the relevant conceptual
framework of the study, the methodical approach is
outlined before we present some exemplary findings.
Finally, we will briefly reflect the use of these methods and
discuss how these findings relate to a better understanding
of why immigrant welfare recipients face and suffer from
difficulties in entering the labor-market.
Integration, Urban Spaces, and Places
Transnational migration studies usually tend to focus on the
economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of the subject
(Levitt & Jaworsky, 2007), often emphasizing one of
these aspects. One controversial issue within the (public)
German debate is “assimilation” (Esser, 2010), demanding
immigrants to adopt the receiving country’s norms and values
and a high degree of identification. In contrast, a more
multiculturalist perspective advocates the necessity of the
receiving country’s structure and beliefs to change as well:
In many cases, the state historically defined the nation in a
racially or religiously exclusive way—e.g. as a white/Christian
nation. These exclusionary definitions of the nation must be
challenged and repudiated if newer immigrant and refugee
groups are to be fully accepted and integrated. (Kymlicka,
2003, pp. 151f.)
Thus, multicultural approaches foster a different understanding
of integration: It is seen as a mode of coexistence,
mutual understanding, and cooperation. This mode should be
created by going beyond the conception of an ethnically or
culturally defined society and its nation-state, in the end aiming
at economic, political, social, and cultural participation.
Our study interest is oriented on the micro-level of integration
as “the process of becoming an accepted part of
society” (Penninx, 2005, p. 141). Such an approach is
action-oriented and does not determine whether integration
is achieved by assimilating or in a multicultural mode.
Therefore, it might avoid the divisive question at which
point of the process an immigrant is “really” integrated and
is no longer an “immigrant.”
Looking at integration from a micro-level everyday
point of view takes into consideration the manifold ways
people try to get along with the people around them and the
environment they live in. This approach looks at how people,
in our case immigrants, participate in the socio-ecolog
ical or spatial surroundings as spatially and socially
“located” selves, interact with this environment, and get
connected to it. It also focuses on how people develop a
sense of belonging or, on the contrary, of alienation. “Sense
of belonging” is a notion used in manifold contexts and a
multidimensional concept (Antonsich, 2010b). It encompasses
a conceptual, imaginary, level—as in the case of
identities based on belongingness to a nation state as an
“imagined community” (Anderson, 1983)—and a “politics
of belonging” (Yuval-Davis, 2006, 2011). It also is related
to subjectivity, since experiencing and expressing feelings
of belonging are often linked to certain spaces and places at
the interface of the private—household and workplace—
and the public, consisting of the associational sphere of
communities and neighborhoods up to the politico-cultural
sphere of the nation state (Duyvendak, 2011). The positioning
within these fields contributes to the production of
belongingness or enables it as feeling “at home” (Antonsich,
2010b; Boccagni, 2017), which surely is part of a personal
identity.
Sociological theories see modern identity as socio-historically
“mobilized” (Giddens, 1991) and “fluid” (Bauman,
1997, 2001), shifting from inherited or acquired characters
to a more self-liberated focus on “identification” (Bauman,
2001, p. 152). This concept indicates that—willingly or
unwillingly—we identify ourselves or get identified with
something, pointing to choices that were made more or less
consciously. Thus, identities do not exist on their own but
rather are a “mobile, often unstable relation of difference”
(Gupta & Ferguson, 1997, p. 13). To become socially powerful,
they have to be acknowledged by relevant others.
Thus, they need to include a performative dimension as
they have to be displayed through actions and contribute to
an individual’s social and cultural positioning. Even in
times of a “liquid modernity” (Bauman, 2001, p. 146), individual
placements in society are related to places to which
individuals gain access and are attached with (Easthope,
2009). While in sociology, the concept of “space” refers to
structure and social ordering (Agnew, 2011; Löw, 2008),
the sociological and geographical notion of “place” refers
to meanings and values associated with its materiality,
emplacing difference and hierarchy as well as enabling
proximity, interaction, and community (Gieryn, 2000).
Thus, accessing and using places is highly distinctive,
reflecting power structures and social inequality. Using
place and being attached to it become some of the crucial
aspects of an individual’s personal and social identification,
closely related to the opportunity to develop a sense of
belonging (Antonsich, 2010a).
Flick et al.	 801
Most literature on these topics addresses questions like
how places become or are made meaningful, what their
impact on behavior is, which power effects they exert, and
how attachment to place is created (Antonsich, 2010b;
Lewicka, 2011a). Our study turns that perspective around
and asks what—referring to integration—can be learnt from
observing the use people with an immigration background
make of the (urban) environment they live in and which at
the same time surrounds them. To be able to make (a certain)
use of space and places is a means to encode oneself in
the flux of social life and society, maybe finally ending up
with creating a sense of “being at home.”
In our study, the aforementioned considerations made us
look at how our participants are related to their spatial surroundings
in Berlin, a city that offers a differentiated urban
environment and a broad variety of places for almost any
activity, taste, and lifestyle. Of course, we are aware of the
sometimes overt, sometimes latent boundaries that regulate
access to these places economically, socially, and culturally,
which means—on the level of subjectivities—habitually
(Bourdieu, 1979/1984). Nevertheless, within that conceptual
framework, the individual attachments of people with
places and the activities places enable and demand at the
same time can be understood as selective choices. These
choices sometimes are consciously made, sometimes
imposed by circumstances (e.g., lack of money, repudiation,
or self-estrangement). Therefore, these choices reflect different
modes of actively appropriating the socio-spatial
environment just as the kind of relatedness toward the social
and cultural values materialized in the places that meaningfully
shape the environment (Agnew, 2011; Löw, 2008).
Such an analysis has to be sensitive toward intersectionality
(Blokland, Giustozzi, Krüger, & Schilling, 2016) and
thus take into account “multiple, intersecting, and complex
social relations” (McCall, 2005, pp. 1772-1773) that evolve
from or form the basis for different place attachments and
realizations of local participation. Especially immigrant
welfare recipients are vulnerable and might be subject to
discriminating ascriptions like being perceived as lazy
scroungers (Fohrbeck, Hirseland, & Ramos Lobato, 2014)
or suspected to retreat into a parallel society and—as far as
Jobcenters are concerned—not willing to comply.
Thus, the research questions pursued in the study and
this article are located on two levels: First, we are interested
in how the process of migration and integration is experienced
and presented in a biographical perspective: How are
the processes of migration and efforts to become integrated
on the level of social environments and work understood
retrospectively? What becomes visible in talking about
these processes in interviews? Second, we focus on how the
result of these processes and efforts materialize in the current
situation: How do immigrants in their present situations
take possession of the social and spatial environments
they live in? How are these environments used and what is
used of them? What becomes visible of this using and taking
possession when walking through these environments
with the immigrants? What do both levels reveal of processes,
experiences, and evaluations of integration on the
participants’ sides? Thus, we triangulate theoretical perspectives
addressing these two levels. Empirically, we work
with a data triangulation based on several methodological
approaches on these levels.
Method and Data Triangulation
This study is case-oriented, which means that we did not
only try to collect statements but tried to reconstruct several
interrelations between:
1.	 Participants’ biographies as immigrants trying to
arrive in German contexts and belong to their new
surroundings;
2.	 Their conceptual frameworks for interpreting their
life-situations, especially the role of paid work and
subsidies as related to biographical experience and
habitus;
3.	 Their perception of the institution “Jobcenter” and
its influence on labor-market placement;
4.	 Their perceptions and presentations of the social
and spatial environments they live and move in; and
5.	 Their conduct of life in general and their future
aspirations.
In this article we focus the triangulation of two kinds of
data (interviews and go-along), although in the study we
also used other forms of data. Triangulation is no longer
aiming at confirming results with those obtained by a second
method. It rather aims at unfolding the complexity of
phenomena under study by complementing several theoretical
perspectives with each other and various methods
with each other. Such a methodological triangulation can
be applied within a method or between methods (Denzin,
1989). It allows to triangulate several kinds of data in a
systematic way for a wider or deeper understanding of
what is studied (see Flick, 2018). In our example, data triangulation
referred to several levels.
Data were collected in episodic interviews (Flick, 2014),
which, when needed, were carried out in a multilingual way
(sometimes with the help of native-speaking research assistants).
In such an interview, open-ended questions and situation-related
narratives are triangulated within the same
interview. The interviews referred to the interviewees’
experiences and processes mainly in the past and their current
concepts (of work or belonging, for example). Both are
reported in talking to the interviewer. In our study, we
applied between-methods triangulation by using go-alongs
(Carpiano, 2009; Garcia, Eisenberg, Frerich, Lechner, &
Lust, 2012; Kusenbach, 2003, 2018) in addition to the
802	 Qualitative Inquiry 25(8)
interviews to literally bring our research on site (Carpiano,
2009; Hall, 2009).
Go-alongs are a specific person-centered (concentrating
on a specific participant) and interactive (between participant
and researcher) form of ethnography, which focuses on
specific places (relevant for the participant). The approach
is systematic in the selection of the participants and the
focus of the research activities (Kusenbach, 2018, p. 349).
Go-alongs can also be seen as a form of within-methods
triangulation. They combine mobile methods (walking),
observation, conversations with, descriptions, and explanations
by the participant (talking). By sharing space, time,
and experience with the study participants, we wanted to
see how their everyday lives are rooted in the use of space
and places. So, we asked participants to display on a map
those places in their neighborhood and/or entire Berlin that
are relevant to them and describe their everyday activities.
Then, we asked them to show us around from place to place
by either walking or using public transport.
Participants were invited to describe in detail what the
respective places mean to them, which activities they associate
with them, and to further tell us whatever seemed
important, for example, their aspirations and past experiences.
The go-alongs covered “trails” as well as “tours”
(according to Kusenbach, 2018, pp. 350-351). They lasted
five hours on average. The (male) third author of this article
accompanied the participant and documented the process.
Where necessary, a native speaking research student supported
the researcher. Some of the conversations with the
participant were recorded and transcribed, others were documented
in field notes. After the “go along,” the researcher
repeated the tours, this time supported by a colleague who
had not taken part in the original go-along. Being asked
about the tour and the participants’ reactions and attitudes
toward certain places did not only help to complement field
notes but also allowed to triangulate the original choice by
confronting it with an outside perspective, relating the participants’
choice and comments to the overall urban environment.
These various types of data were collected, related,
and analyzed in a data triangulation (Flick, 2018; Flick,
Hans, Hirseland, Rasche, & Röhnsch, 2017).
Samples
For reasons of contrast, our sample consists of twenty cases
each with a Turkish and FSU immigration background.
These two groups represent the largest subgroups of immigrants
(Knuth & Brussig, 2010) in Germany and differ in
terms of education, culture, and gender. According to differing
conditions in their home countries and reasons for
immigration, the Turkish subsample is less educated in general
than the FSU one. All participants have stayed in
Germany for at least five years, most of them considerably
longer. For this article, we focus on what the use of the go
along method could reveal, complemented by some insights
from the earlier episodic interviews. The subsample of the
participants of the go-alongs were chosen by contrastive
criteria after they had been interviewed and agreed to show
us around in “their” urban environment and the places in it
they preferred. All in all, forty participants were included in
the interviews, and ten of them in the go-alongs.
On the FSU side, the subsamples for the go-alongs
included three male and two female participants between
twenty-seven and fifty-three years old, among them scientists,
psychologists, and technicians with an academic background,
who came to Germany between 1990 and 2011.
The go-along was done in German or Russian, and one case
in a combination of both languages. The Turkish subsample
for the go-along include three male and two female participants
between thirty-six and fifty-three years old, who came
to Germany between 1972 and 2008 plus one participant
who was born here. Their professional backgrounds were
not based on any formal or even academic training. They
had mostly worked in practical contexts. The go-along was
mostly done in a mixture of German and Turkish.
The research was conducted in Berlin, a large German
city that consists of a variety of different districts. Each of
the districts is grouped around (sub-)centers and shaped by
different quarters with particular characteristics—such as
more (or less) pronounced immigrant cultures, infrastructures
oriented on leisure or consumption, points of (cultural)
interest, and so on. As our participants’ homes are
spread all over the city, the go-alongs were carried out in
different spatial contexts that provide insight into a broad
variety of opportunities for space-usage and participation.
These contexts can be sorted according to their localization
within the overall context of the city at large, ranging from
diverse quarters near the center to more homogenous
peripheral suburban neighborhoods. The central quarters
offer greater choices, for example, of food supply or cultural
activities in a broader sense, like a variety of different
cafés, clubs, bars, restaurants, churches, and mosques.
These quarters provide chances to get in touch with the kind
of people (and activities) someone prefers. Looking at our
participants, we were interested in the actual usage of
places, perceptions of opportunities and aspirations, and
possibly efforts to enhance participation in everyday life,
for example, by commuting within the city.
Examples: Spaces, Places, and Modes
of Belongingness
By looking at four contrasting cases, we will exemplify different
space- and place-related modes of belongingness.
These modes appear through different choices, perceptions,
and usages of urban places that refer to aspirations and positioning
and thus to forms of integration and participation.
Seen from an intersectional perspective, all cases have in
Flick et al.	 803
common that they need to handle similar living conditions
and challenges as they share the same status: being unemployed
and welfare recipient and having an immigration
background. Having no job means no access to the pivotal
social arena for acquiring recognition as a valuable member
of society. It also means less chances to interact and cooperate
with local people, to become a part of the ordinary
everyday life, and to establish relationships and sometimes
even get friendly.
In meritocratic, labor-oriented societies, access to the
labor market still is the crucial field of integration. Our participants
are welfare recipients with an immigration background.
Therefore they risk to be suspected that they have
come to Germany for living on social benefits, as these
social benefits often are higher than the regular wages in
their home countries. Furthermore, living on benefits means
to be poor and a marginalized person within the consumption-oriented,
highly commercialized settings of a wealthy
German city, where access to certain places is—more or
less overtly—money driven. This also applies to housing,
since welfare recipients only have limited choices in this
field. In Germany, the larger part of the population lives as
tenants. Many landlords are reluctant toward welfare recipients,
while welfare benefits only allow for housing at limited
(low) rent in small apartments, which sometimes are
allocated by the city’s housing offices. All in all, one could
expect that our participants have comparatively little choice
in how and where to live. Regarding senses and modes of
belongingness, this raises the questions of how to create a
satisfactory social life corresponding with one’s own aspirations
and beliefs, of where to participate and of how and
where to meet (which) people, and finally to capture one’s
share as a citizen in public space or—on the contrary—
become marginalized and feeling extraneous.
The selection of the case studies for this article was
guided by the idea of including contrasting cases, as they
differ in age, duration of residence in Germany, migration
histories (and related expectations), and educational and
ethnic backgrounds. Accordingly, differences in the individual
aspirations and realizations of local participation and
corresponding senses of belonging can be expected. We
start with two cases, Natalya from the FSU subsample and
Orhan from the Turkish one, who both live in the same district,
just about one mile away from each other.1
Sharing the
same space, the same quarters, and cultural scenes are in
reach for both. So they could organize their everyday life
around the same places and share similar experiences. Thus,
their actual choices of places and activities, becoming visible
during the go-alongs, are well suitable to illustrate—by
additionally consulting interview data—the theoretical
assumption that choices of place are indicators for different
modes of (feelings of) belonging and integration or alienation
and exclusion on the opposite, which reflect biographies,
life(style) aspirations, and concurrently coping with
the present situation. Two complementary cases—Larissa
and Cahide—complete the picture because these four cases
exemplify the basic structures identified in the analysis of
the whole sample.
Natalya—From the Sidelines
Natalya, aged forty-five, studied psychology in Latvia and
migrated to Germany in 2011 because she lost her job after
falling seriously ill with cancer. Her sister already lived in
Germany, and she expected to get better medical treatment
here. In the interview, Natalya presents herself as rather
open to her new environment, but she only speaks Russian
and sees this as an obstacle against her integration into the
labor market and into the social environment. Due to a lack
of language skills, she was not able to work in her profession.
Instead, she found a job as a health care assistant for
about a year, which she had to quit when her cancer had to
be treated again. In addition, she mentions that she has to
take care of her child and is handicapped by her cancer,
which prevents her from doing physical work (nursing).
Subsequently she became continuously unemployed and
finally dependent on welfare. Natalya lives with her twelveyear-old
daughter in a small but decent apartment in a quiet
street in which rainbow flags, sex shops, and clubs tag a gay
area, but there also are Israeli restaurants, ordinary cafés,
and residential buildings. She distances herself from the
public presence of gay culture, whose members for her too
often and too explicitly show their sexual orientation in
public. She does not want to identify with the close neighborhood
and, thus, does not intensify contacts in the immediate
surroundings.
Nevertheless she likes her apartment mainly because it is
situated close to the city center, so her daughter’s school
and places Natalya likes in particular are in walking distance.
As the center and most important place of her everyday
life, she presents a nearby fancy shopping promenade,
which is widely known among the inhabitants of Berlin and
beyond. The street is a broad avenue with much space for
pedestrians for strolling around and window shopping.
There are lots of luxurious shopping malls, boutiques, restaurants,
and cafés. Being a central road axis, there are also
many pedestrians, either workplace commuters or tourists
heading to a nearby train station. Natalya sees and uses this
environment as a kind of escape where she can watch all
different kinds of people, like tourists with backpacks or
business men, people dressed casually or very fancy. The
broad sidewalks and car-free places allow to stroll or have a
rest on a bench and watch the lively scenery, without being
spotted and eyed skeptically and/or being perceived as an
outsider. She positions herself as follows:
I like to walk there [in the shopping street], because you meet
many different people there. I like to observe people, how they
804	 Qualitative Inquiry 25(8)
behave, what they do. And they are all different, how they act.
This is also a touristic place, there are many tourists. (Excerpt
from the observation protocol, translated from Russian/
German)
This street and its places allow Natalya to just roam
around and watch people. To do so gives her the impression
of being one among others, while in more immediate social
contacts, her limited German language skills prove to be an
obstacle to communicate. By simply being there, she can
imagine herself to be part of the luxurious world of consumption.
Being restricted to the passive role of a spectator,
she is taking part in something that she cannot really become
part of, for example, as a female consumer. As a daydreaming
observer, she does not really get connected to the world,
which surrounds her in the sense of becoming part of a
social network. For her, that does not seem to be a problem
that really bothers her. Referring to her professional identity
as a psychologist, she mentions that she rather likes to
observe different people and their behavior—which to her
seems to be satisfying.
Her place for networking and social bonding is a Russian
amateur theater, which is located equally close to her home.
Apparently, she still identifies with her profession and with
a middle-class life. This place enables her to engage in culture
and exchange of ideas without restrictions imposed by
missing language skills and marginal status. She needs to
manage the balancing act between presently being marginal
by status and background and her aspiration to gain back
the recognition as a highly educated middle-class professional.
She manages this by grounding herself in ethnic cultural
activities on one hand, and imagining herself to be part
of an anonymous consumer and tourist culture on the other.
Strolling around the shopping promenade helps her to normalize
her marginal position and to sustain a self-satisfied
sense of herself by presenting herself as a metropolitan citizen,
merging in anonymity.
Orhan—Loss of Community
In the interview, fifty-three-year-old Orhan who is of
Turkish origin mentions that it is important for him to know
and to get in contact with people, to use the public sphere as
a place to interact and to be recognized. When he came to
Germany in 1977 as the son of working immigrant, Orhan
was seventeen years old. He started an apprenticeship as a
machinist, which he abandoned, taking up several jobs in
diners and factories, until his last employer closed down in
2004. He mentions that he now regrets not to have finished
a formal training. He sees this as one of the main reasons for
his unemployment besides his age and the disappearance of
industrial work in Berlin. He also reports that he experiences
being unemployed and staying at home as very stressful.
He also tells how he decided to go back to Turkey
without his older children, where he also failed to make a
new start. After a short time, he returned to Germany. Since
then he could not find a new job and became dependent on
welfare.
Living close to Natalya, in the go-along, Orhan chooses
different spatial contexts and thus reveals an alternate perception
and usage of his spatial environment. In contrast to
Natalya, Orhan lives in a social housing building placed
close to an urban main road with much traffic and less amenity—compared
with Natalya’s favorite promenade, which
still would be in walking distance. Nevertheless, this main
road is the major axis of Orhan’s tour and offers different
shops, diners, and restaurants close-by, covering most daily
necessities at low prices. This includes some Arabic or
Turkish grocery stores, shisha bars, or kebab shops, and
several pedestrians appear to have Mediterranean or oriental
backgrounds. Once a week, he visits a neighborhood
center, where a breakfast for unemployed people is organized.
The purpose is less to provide food but rather to bring
people together. He visits this place to meet people in a
similar situation. He prefers this particular spot from similar
alternatives in reach, because it is situated at a small square
with further cafés, restaurants, and shops, which are mainly
frequented by the middle-class residents of the quarter.
As a financially restricted welfare recipient—just as
Natalya—he is not able to attend these amenities. But offering
an outdoor area, the neighborhood center provides its
visitors the opportunity to feel like sitting in a street-café just
as the people in the commercial cafés next door or on the
opposite side of the street. For those who are financially
excluded from that type of public life, the neighborhood center
offers an occasion to “legitimately” sojourn in this environment
without being forced to spend (much) money or
being suspected as a dubious person hanging out at the corner
the whole day. That is why the neighborhood center—for
him—provides proximity to the middle-class milieu he used
to belong to during the times he was employed.
Orhan also uses other places in public to maintain his
social life such as an ice cream parlor, a public park, and a
Turkish teahouse, where he occasionally sees friends and
acquaintances and discusses politics. Orhan has to show
only a few specific places he likes or visits frequently. His
narratives about activities in his neighborhood are mainly
referring to memories of his better past, the times after his
migration in the late 1970s until he became unemployed
twelve years ago. Since his arrival in Germany at the age of
seventeen, he has been living in the same part of the city
and considers himself a legitimate part of this socially and
culturally mixed neighborhood. His neighborhood and his
biography seem to be indissolubly entangled. During the
go-along, he talks with one of his neighbors in the café or to
people in the teahouse we visited. He talks about regular
meetings with one or two good friends—all of them of
Turkish origin, too.
Flick et al.	 805
Since the beginning of his enduring unemployment, his
view of the quarter has changed according to the fractions
of his life-course. In his perception, the neighborhood
seems to be less multicultural than before as former friends
have moved or have deceased, and his social embeddedness
has decreased:
In the past it was even more beautiful here. Multi-cultural,
many foreigners, of every nationality, many Yugoslavs. Now
they have become less. The atmosphere was totally different in
the past. . . . [This city] is my second home. In the future it
could be my first, but it’s like that, sometimes I am still
“Kanake” [derogatory for people of Turkish or Mediterranean
origin] for the Germans. Sometimes they do this, the Germans,
I can see it in their eyes. They still have—I am a bloody Turk,
some, not all, but many think like that. (Excerpt observation
protocol, translated from German)
He reports that he quite often feels lonely and disconnected
from the world around. One reason surely is the lack
of meaningful occupation. This comes with fewer and fewer
opportunities to become acquainted with native Germans.
He is somewhat thrown back to acquaintances within the
Turkish community, which, according to him, becomes
increasingly politically and culturally fragmented. Orhan
sees his immigration as an emancipatory life-event. He
experienced new freedoms and attitudes toward life, which
harshly contrast with what he describes as the traditional
Turkish lifestyle. This lifestyle was dominated by social
control, religious dogmas, gender inequality, industrial and
technical backwardness, and so on. After his migration, he
enjoyed his new lifestyle. In his biographical narrative, however,
he also expresses an enduring lack of acceptance by
Germans, resulting in disappointing and insufficient contacts
and the feeling of not really being integrated. At the
same time, he has only limited identification with people of
his own origin. In his view, the Turkish community is split
between antagonistic religious, political, or ethnic fractions.
Each puts pressure on people to follow their respective
agenda, which he refuses. This consequently restricts the
places he wants to join to feel comfortable. So he finds himself
torn between a no-mans-land among Germans and a far
from homogenous Turkish community. Orhan feels that he
does not belong to either group and was more and more isolated.
He misses a community that could compensate the
emptiness evoked by the lack of his most important place to
evolve a sense of belonging—his (lost) work.
Larissa—Tapping the City
The interview with Larissa shows that she is twenty-seven
and a cultural scientist and that she immigrated to Germany
from Russia with her parents as a ten-year old. She was successful
at school and has recently passed a university degree
in cultural studies in a different town. After finishing her
studies some two years ago, she moved to Berlin because of
its metropolitan-like character to settle there and find herself
an adequate job—unsuccessfully so far. In the interview,
Larissa draws a picture of herself as an “almost-still”
student, who has not (yet) managed to establish herself on
the labor market and gets along with various internships.
During the go-along, Larissa presents many places in her
immediate neighborhood. They include a small kiosk across
the street where she buys cigarettes and frequently chats
with the owner, a park, a shopping mall, and a fitness center
she visits consistently. Living in a quiet part of a district at
the edge of the city center, she uses her immediate surroundings
mainly for ordinary activities of everyday life,
such as shopping, sport, or relaxation. However, when talking
about important places, she mentions places scattered
across the whole city. She meets friends and former housemates
at their places in other districts or commutes through
the city to visit trendy bars and to see friends there. Larissa’s
way of coping with her situation and her access to her urban
environment can best be described as driven by the desire
for appropriate space and places.
Compared with the other cases in our sample, she is well
connected to people who are engaged in jobs and middleclass-oriented
leisure activities. Sometimes she sees former
colleagues she met during an internship in the city center. She
also volunteers in a German-Russian cultural organization.
So Larissa often moves around all over the city, visiting a lot
of different places, like parks, her gym, and bars for different
purposes such as seeing friends, maintaining networks, or to
simply relax. At first sight, her lifestyle seems to be metropolitan
and student-like. However, she also expresses that she
is much afflicted by her unemployment. She uses these places
and activities, especially sports and voluntary work, for
structuring her days, for having a reason to leave her apartment,
and for having the feeling of doing something meaningful.
The places she presents or talks about are not
associated to Russian culture, except for the cultural organization.
But many people within her broad network of friends
and acquaintances have either a Russian background or are
related to Russian culture through Slavic studies. Having
studied Russian culture at a German university, Larissa can
use her professional and ethnic background for participating
and engaging in the cultural diversity of a city. She makes as
much use as possible of the opportunities offered.
A small town, that’s not my thing. Well, I always wanted to live
in a big city und somehow experience a little more, more
possibilities. . . . Although I still have problems to find a job I
really want to make it here. During the times, one has built
something up, well a circle of friends, yes, some kind of
network. . . . Many of my friends are Russian Germans, but
also others, who occupationally have to do with Russia, my
boyfriend for example, who works as an executive consultant
806	 Qualitative Inquiry 25(8)
in the renewable energies’ sector for Eastern Europe. (Excerpt
from the observation protocol, translated from German)
The existence of Russian networks and organizations
frame her possibilities to get and remain in touch with people
of her own age, who share similar cultural and professional
interests and backgrounds. At the same time, she also
visits places, which are not exclusively Russian but more
part of young urban professional leisure activities performed
by native Germans as well.
Larissa’s relation to her social and spatial environment
differs significantly from Natalya’s and Orhan’s. For better
understanding these differences, we should look at the conditions
of these cases. Larissa is much younger than Natalya
and Orhan, and she received most of her education in
Germany, being highly committed to the implicit promise
of especially higher education as a key to social advancement.
For her, being unemployed can still be seen as an
extended transitional phase between studying and taking up
her first “real” employment, which is not unusual for university
graduates. Thus, her position seems to be somewhat
respectable, since she is not considered to be a “real” unemployed
person, at least socially. Furthermore, although she
is entitled to receive means-tested welfare, her parents help
her out financially at times. In both respects, she is better off
and has to restrict herself less than Natalya and Orhan.
Larissa has lived in Germany for most of her life and
presents herself as—and aspires to become—part of a universalistic-oriented,
metropolitan middle-class. But she
feels that being of Russian origin still is of importance in
various respects. One aspect is that she tries to stay in touch
with her ethnic and family backgrounds, trying to make use
of her training and bicultural skills on the job market.
Another aspect emerges when she talks about an incident
during a job interview, when she applied for a job at a radio
station and was rejected because of her alleged Russian
accent. The experience of being perceived as Russian and
accordingly not as a “real” German overlays her ambiguous
self-perception, making her doubt whether she really
belongs to the majority society or is rather restricted to ethnically
defined niches.
Cahide—Secluded Security
The cases outlined so far presented a choice of places that
could be described as multicultural in the sense of being
open to both immigrants and Germans. In contrast, the next
case tells a story of deliberate seclusion.
In the interview with Cahide, a Turkish woman of fiftythree
years, we learned that she came to Germany during
her childhood in 1972. Due to family, language, and social
problems, she could not finish school and obtain a degree.
Nevertheless, she worked for many years as a nursing auxiliary,
until this kind of work began to require a formal
training and degree. She married quite early and has three
children. When she lost her job, she became ill in addition.
She got divorced and lost her youngest child in a car accident.
All these problems stress her very much, and the
increasing health problems prevent her from taking on a
full-time job. Instead, she tries to do volunteer work.
The go-along shows that she lives in a working-class district
at the edge of the city-center where unemployment
rates are relatively high and housing is affordable. The
vicinity is shaped by a mix of many Turkish supermarkets
and cafés, small owner-run shops, and traditional German
corner pubs. During the go-along, Cahide strongly emphasizes
her preference of exclusively Turkish places and communities.
The places she presents are all located in her
immediate neighborhood: There is the playground across
the street, which she often visits with her grandchildren. In
some Turkish supermarkets, food seems to be cheaper than
in German or company-run supermarkets. A butcher sells
halal meat. In a public park, she meets friends exclusively
of Turkish origin. She volunteers in an Ottoman-Turkish
cultural club, which she describes as a wider family.
Although not only Turkish immigrants frequent the park
and the playground, she uses them to meet exclusively
Turkish friends or family.
When talking about her life and about the places we visit
in the go-along, Cahide stresses the importance of family,
and the mutual support and warmth she experiences when
she spends time in the Turkish club. In the streets of her
neighborhood, she is often greeted by people with the same
backgrounds, and she complains that Germans would not
do that. In her opinion, Germans are too different from her
and socially difficult in general. For instance, in her eyes,
they would accept help only in emergencies, are quite
pedantic when it comes to money, and drink alcohol. These
are things Cahide vehemently dislikes and which for her
make up major cultural differences between Germans and
Turkish. Compared with other cases, during the go-along as
well as in the interview, Cahide widely complains about the
treatment she experiences at the Jobcenter. She feels mistreated
when she is offered an inadequate job without taking
her fragile health condition into account or when she feels
that her former working-life is not sufficiently acknowledged.
Similarly, she blames the German society for having
forgotten the large contribution of Turkish working immigrants
to building up the German economy. From her perspective,
Turkish were treated as welcomed guests in the
past. Today, when—as she mistakenly believes—jobs
become scarce in general, the Turkish are only seen as foreigners,
which she feels is signaled by the way the Jobcenter
treats her.
According to her narrative, Cahide feels rejected both by
German institutions and by the social majority. Thus, she
retreats as much as possible from a society she does not
perceive as multicultural at all. Thus, she secludes as much
Flick et al.	 807
as possible in a Turkish cocoon. This cocoon is made available
through an extensive Turkish-typed infrastructure and
environment in her neighborhood enabling her to live comfortably
in a social niche. Therefore, Cahide can convincingly
express a feeling of belonging to her district even
though she rejects the German society as much as she feels
rejected by it.
Well, as I said, with Germans it is like that, only if it has to be.
With us it’s different, with us everyone is always welcome.
“Please, stay a little longer, have something to eat. It is so cozy,
let’s drink a tea. Sleeping? You can sleep tomorrow.” That’s
how we are. Naturally Germans have their principles and they
cannot change. . . . Mentalities differ and of course you would
expect that, wherever you are, be it at hospital, “Jobcenter,”
police or wherever, when I go to the discounter, I shop and
when 10 cents are missing, I have to put something back. . . .
Most Germans thought we would go back. But suddenly we
stayed, then we were not welcome anymore. Then we were
foreigners, yes, then we were foreigners. (Excerpt from the
observation protocol translated from German)
While Cahide’s biography, her social and educational
background, and her feeling of rejection by the majority population
appear to be quite similar to Orhan’s narrative, she
finds a very different way to locate herself socially and
locally. She completely merges into her ethnic community.
She adopts corresponding practices to become more and
more involved in her cultural club and into the general
Turkish public present in her neighborhood. Contrary to
Orhan, who feels ambiguous and in between, Cahide transforms
the felt rejection by German institutions and society
into a strong sense of belonging to her ethnic community that
represents a safe haven of sociability and association for her.
Discussion
Finally, we would like to briefly address two topics: (a)
What is the benefit of a methodological approach that combines
interviews with a mobile method of on-site observations
(walking) and conversations (talking) as in our
go-alongs? (b) What does the combination of verbal and
mobile observational field data contribute to a (deeper)
understanding of the integration problems discussed in the
introduction of this article?
Our answer to the first question is that the use of mobile
methods enabled the researchers to get more deeply in touch
with the current reality of our interviewees’ lives. This goes
beyond of what would have been achieved by only applying
face-to-face interviews addressing their histories. Even
though our interviews quite often took place at the interviewees’
homes, doing an interview necessarily remains a
somewhat artificial setting. Being shown around places relevant
in our participants’ everyday lives, following (some
of) the ways on which they move (and how) was something
different and brought us closer to their lived experiences—
compared with the reports about experiences in interview
data. Thus, we highly appreciate our participants’ readiness
to spend their time with and for us. Being shown around
provided an impression of how different and at the same
time (to a smaller degree) how similar our private lives and
our access to places and the opportunities for activities
offered by a large city are and how comparatively well off
and privileged we as researchers are.
Beyond these “subjective” reflections, there are some
“practical” or—more specifically—“utilitarian” aspects,
too. Going along with the participants raised lots of topics
and created stimuli for narratives and descriptions that—as
we could see when analyzing data in more depth later on—
would not have emerged in the interviews alone, no matter
how sensitive we tried to be during the interviews.
Discovering some aspects that were completely new or the
occasion to deepen topics that were held implicit in the
interviews was one of the benefits. Going along as a shared
activity creates a different situation that gives more space to
the participants for spontaneous reflection and talk. That
enriched our set of data in a way that could hardly have
been provoked by simply putting questions or trying to
evoke narratives through invitations to talk in an solely
interview-based design (especially if the participant does
not feel secure in a more or less “foreign” language). To
literally see what is part of our participants’ lives proved to
be a source to further elaborate assumptions resulting from
what the participants said during the go-alongs as well as in
the interviews. So, the idea that go-alongs are useful as a
means to make things visible worked out at least for the
purpose of answering research questions posed in this particular
research project.
This leads to answering the second question: What did
we learn from this data triangulation when analyzing interviews
and go along protocols in a related manner? One
thing is that in the interviews, the topic “Jobcenter” was
addressed in different ways—from a harsh critique based on
disappointment and frustration to fanciful expectations
about what the Jobcenter could or should do for helping to
change the participant’s situation. Within all go-alongs, not
only the ones presented earlier, the Jobcenters were not
even of minor importance as far as the choices of relevant
places were concerned. In one case, in which the route to a
place of personal significance had to pass the cognizant
Jobcenter, our participant tried to avoid a deeper conversation
about that particular place, showing symptoms of anger
and tension and tried to pass by as quick as possible. This is
astonishing insofar as the Jobcenters define their role as a
social service responsible for managing support to overcome
neediness and unemployment, officially describing
their clients as “customers.” And indeed, for jobless welfare
recipients, the Jobcenter is a place and institution of crucial
importance regarding their present life-situations. There is a
808	 Qualitative Inquiry 25(8)
clear contradiction among the cases regarding the participants’
evaluation of their experiences. Jobcenters are perceived
as a spot of reinforced discrimination as in the case
of Cahide, for example. But Jobcenters are also described as
an awkward and clueless institution. Then they are seen as
unable to provide the assistance needed to overcome the
precarious situation the participants find themselves in, and,
at the most, as capable of providing some money and occasionally
publically funded short-time jobs.
Furthermore, the case studies show that welfare recipients
with an immigration background are far from being a
homogenous group as often suggested by statistics and
parts of institutional and public discourse, which in turn
sometimes encourage the ascription of prejudices.
Accordingly, the case studies presented in this article and
within our overall sample point to the fact that participants
mostly feel disadvantaged and under scrutiny because they
bear migration backgrounds. Experiences range from moderate
rejection as illustrated in the cases of Larissa and
Orhan to Cahide’s assumption of being a victim of massive
(institutional) discrimination. Following Thomas’s theorem—“If
men define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928, p. 572)—these
impressions are important for our participants’ inner reality
and consequential. The feeling of not “fully” belonging to
society is either expressed in the doubt whether one will
ever really gain access emotionally, socially, economically,
or finally remains marginalized. This feeling runs through
the narratives in the interviews and is reflected in the participants’choices
of spaces and places during the go-alongs.
Both indicate a link between our participants’ disrupted
senses of belonging and their specific relations to their personal
maps that mark the boundaries of their social lives.
The relations to their maps expressed by our participants
inform us about different positions and modes of belongingness.
We see the position of a spectator and observer as in
Natalya’s case. Orhan’s position can best be characterized
through the loss of what he used to consider as “his” space
and place relations, feeling alienated from the present and
trying to regain a better past. Both cases find themselves in
different trajectories as Natalya still expects to eventually
find her way in while Orhan rather sees himself to be pushed
back. His impression of sitting on the fence is typical for
FSU and Turkish participants who only have little hope of
ever finding a proper job again. These participants are preoccupied
with the question whether to stay or to remigrate
to their home countries. This preoccupation makes it hard
for them to really make efforts in either direction—to further
establish here or to go back.
The case of Larissa is different. She finds herself on a
typical—in her case extended—trajectory from university
to job. Her life is not that far away from her aspirations as
she still can make use of her status as a well-educated young
academic to get in touch with different people and their
lifestyle on an everyday basis. She does not find herself in a
spectator role but feels herself involved in a participatory
way. Nevertheless, her present situation is characterized by
a sneaking suspicion that she might be subjected to latent
rejection, since her alleged accent might be seen as a sign of
“imperfect” assimilation. Thus, she tries to make the best of
the situation through participating in multicultural activities
at the junction between Russian and German culture and
economics (which are enabled by a globalized popular club
culture as well as economic interconnectedness).
Adifferent way out of the immigrants’situation of sitting
on the fence is to take sides completely as in the case of
Cahide. She seeks and finds shelter in her secluded Turkish
community, which to her offers the comfort of being able to
not only feel but also practically be “at home.” However,
the price for this feeling “at home” is her remaining welfare
dependency. This leads to the unavoidable confrontation
with the Jobcenter, which represents the “German” culture
and work-oriented, participatory values and which demands
respective activities. There are similar cases within the FSU
sample who prefer to spend their time almost exclusively
with their families, which are at the same time strongly
committed to religious communities like Jehova’s Witnesses
or (Russian) Jewish parishes.
More or less overtly and more or less consequential, it is
the lack of work that constitutes an emptiness—or
in Cahide’s case with regard to the Jobcenter: a rupture—in
the participants’ life-worlds and everyday lives. Even
in Larissa’s case, participation in her scene is related to the
option to find a proper job at some point. She is aware of
that, being worried and impatient that she has not found one
yet, although her chances to find a job do not seem to be
bad. Presently, she still is connected to potentially helpful
networks (Granovetter, 1995) by having access to their
respective places and activities, which keeps her going and
currently functions as a remedy against resignation.
Considering this aspect, Natalya’s and Orhan’s present situations
do not seem as promising as both are not connected
to the active middle of a work-based society and, thus, do
not even peripherally belong to it.
However, a closer look from an intersectional perspective
suggests that integration is a much more complex process
than just bringing people into jobs. None of the participants
of either subsample migrated to Germany for living in a
secluded community. But as the case of Cahide shows,
assumed or experienced rejection or discrimination and a
distorted sense of belongingness toward the majority society
fosters alienation and seclusion. This might become an
obstacle against efforts to enter a labor-market dominated by
Germans again. Even finding a job does not ensure—according
to Penninx’s (2005) definition quoted earlier—that people
will automatically become a fully “accepted part of
society.” Neither does it ensure in turn that they develop a
respective sense of belonging and relatedness to the various
Flick et al.	 809
fields of social and public life as mirrored by the interrelatedness
of social placements and places. But having a job
would at least mean to overcome restrictions imposed by
being an unemployed welfare recipient, running the risk of
being quite frequently perceived as a somewhat dubious and
marginal person. Taken by itself, employment promises an
enhancement of our participants’ life situations and their
placement in society. What remains is their risk as people
with a migration background to find themselves stuck
between different cultures and different kinds of people and
their respective habits.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The
study is part of the official evaluation of the German Welfare
System according to Social Code II, financed by the Federal
Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
Note
1.  All names have been changed.
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Author Biographies
Uwe Flick is a professor for qualitative social and educational
research at the Freie Universität Berlin. Before that, he worked at
the Alice Salomon University in Berlin in the fields of health services
research, which is still his major area of research, with a
focus on vulnerability and service utilization. He is author or
editor of numerous textbooks and handbooks, most of which have
been translated in several languages in Europe, Latin America,
and Asia. Books include An Introduction to Qualitative Research
(6th. ed., 2019, SAGE), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data
Analysis (2014, SAGE), Introducing Research Methodology—A
Beginners’ Guide to Doing a Research Project (2nd ed., 2015,
SAGE), the Qualitative Research Kit (2nd. ed., 10 Vols., 2018,
SAGE), and The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection
(2018, SAGE).
Andreas Hirseland, Dr. rer. pol., is deputy head of the Research
Department “Joblessness and Social Exclusion” at the Institute for
Employment Research, the Research Institute of the Federal
Employment Agency. Recent research interests include qualitative
research designs and methods, welfare state, and poverty. Recent
publications include Fohrbeck, Anna; Hirseland, Andreas; Ramos
Lobato, Philipp (2014): How benefits recipients perceive themselves
through the lens of the mass media—Some observations from
Germany. In: Sociological research online, Vol. 19, No. 4; »Die
wollen ja ein bestimmtes Bild vermitteln.« Zur Neupositionierung
vonHilfeempfängernimaktivierendenSozialstaat,SWS-Rundschau,
2014 No. 2, pp 181-200 (with Philipp Ramos Lobato).
Benjamin Hans was a research associate at the division Qualitative
Social and Educational Research at Free University Berlin. He
studied sociology at Bielefeld University and is interested in ethnography,
mobile methods, ethnic and national identity, borders
and boundaries, and urban and neighborhood studies.