Dwelling after Migration. Materialism, Hope and Melancholia among Russian Speaking Migrant Middle Classes

• Applicant: Dr. Darja Klingenberg
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 431580190

The Phd-Project proposes a new lens of analysis for migration studies through the discussion of processes and practices of dwelling and settling in migration. It contributes to three questions: What can migration sociology understand through dwelling? How to understand dwelling in migration and how is Germany inhabited among Russian speaking migrants, especially within in the field of migrant middle classes? By discussing Russian-speaking migrants, a group often perceived as unobtrusive and unproblematic, and the quotidian problem of dwelling the project reflects how different migrant groups and matters become a research problem or on the contrary stay irrelevant. Thus through the focus on dwelling the project questions and broadens established modes of classification of mobility and migration, ethnic and identity focused perspectives as well as assumptions about cultural difference. Building upon spatial and mobility theory, intersectional feminist analysis and phenomenological perspectives the project proposes a theoretically and methodologically rich discussion of home making. It draws upon biographical interviews, sensory participant observation and documentary photography among Russian-speaking migrants living in bigger German cities. The heart of the empirical research describes three modes of dwelling in Germany and unfolds strategies and processes of staying mobile, settling down and setting up and decorating domestic space. The typology reconstructs spatial and material, praxeological and biographical dimensions of housing-arrangements, home-making practices and discourses on domesticity.As a result of this focus my work sheds new light on the often-overlooked migrations of Russian speakers to Germany and the experiences, difficulties and hidden injuries of migrant middle classes. Dwelling arrangements articulate social upward mobility ora decline in status. They reveal temporal, spatial and social orientations of migrants actors and open a situated perspective on local and transnational relations. Ways of dwelling convey notions of gendered and classed identity, moral economies and ideas of good life. The perspective on dwelling reveals ambivalences and subtle arrangements as well as a sense of entitlement, claims to cultural citizenship and melancholic believes in meritocracy that constitute middle class practices. Building upon this analysis the project sets the ground for a deeper understanding of problems and adaption strategies of migrant middle classes.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants