Transnational Mobility and Social Positions in the European Union: The Role of Social Comparison

Over the last years, the life chances of mobile people within the European Union (EU), a space that offers freedom of mobility, have become a vital field of research. This is an important site of research because spatial mobility holds the promise for social mobility. Previous studies predominantly focus on the objective social position of migrants. Therefore, we know little about how migrants’ social positions vary with respect to the subjective perceptions of socioeconomic status and heterogeneities, such as age, gender, legal status, and ethnicity. Unexplored are the social mechanisms that underlie how and under what terms migrants evaluate their social position according to their spatial mobility trajectory and other heterogeneities. Of particular interest is the mechanism of social comparison. Migrants from inside the EU and from outside into Germany may rely on more than one (national) frame of reference and refer to multiple norms underlying comparisons. Through a mixed methods approach to the study of social positions in transnational spaces we are able to account for the interplay between the markers of objectively verifiable social positions and their subjective assessment by migrants. Drawing upon both quantitative data from the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample and qualitative interviews with migrants in Germany, we discuss the role of social comparisons as a crucial social mechanism involved in the nexus of spatial mobility and social positions.