D_10 Migrant and Minority Conceptions of Social Cohesion: Transnational and Translocal Dimensions

This work package (WP) investigates which cohesion-relevant identities and imaginaries migrants and members of minority groups develop and how these shape their understandings and practices of social cohesion. Closely related to this are questions about the role of perceived and actual inequalities, hegemonic relations, and transnational and translocal identification options. Insights will be generated through empirical analyses with groups in Germany as well as through historical and transnational comparative research. This approach enables interdisciplinary exchange on how countercultures and hegemonic cultures interact, overlap, or compete across different contexts, diversity markers, and fields of impact. Central to the analysis is where and how concepts of social cohesion are reflected upon, imagined, and negotiated within these dynamic processes.

Social cohesion is a contested and conflict-laden concept, particularly for groups that experience less cohesion because they are not readily perceived as belonging to a majority society. Moreover, cohesion emerges through processes of negotiation and should be understood less as a fixed end state than as an ongoing practice. In this sense, cohesion is developed by minority groups within discursive conflicts between hegemonic and counter-narratives. This is especially true for social groups with limited political influence and reduced interaction with majority society, including (post-)migrants or those labeled as “foreigners.” These groups often experience only partial cohesion, even though the majority society expects them to contribute to overall social cohesion. Such partial cohesion is particularly likely in times of crisis or heightened uncertainty, when majority societies tend to demand more exclusive notions of cohesion and to exclude migrant groups. In these contexts, the available options for migrants and minorities to create and participate in cohesion become crucial.

Beyond identification with a nation-state (such as Germany), migrants and minorities may orient cohesion toward ethnonational groups or regions of origin. Another option lies in identification with a broader, supranational framework—most notably European cohesion.

The first main objective of the WP is therefore to empirically analyze how migrant groups perceive social cohesion, what forms of cohesion they experience, and which modes they adopt. Particular attention is paid to social representations of cohesion and to experiences of group integrity, with a focus on cohesion within society. The second main objective extends this focus by incorporating a historical dimension. Here, the emphasis lies on conceptions of cohesion as pertaining to society as a whole that migrant and minority groups—such as Jewish communities—developed in the face of multiple hegemonic and, at times, violently exclusionary conditions. The WP examines whether and how such conceptions succeeded in becoming part of hegemonic culture or even transforming it fundamentally.

This nexus is analyzed at different scales. Taking the diverse, “translocal” cities of Thessaloniki and Berlin as starting points, the WP explores the twentieth century to determine (a) whether and how individual migrants/minority actors, self-organizations, or alliances, in their struggles for participation and equality, also articulated visions or ideas of broader societal cohesion, and what these visions entailed; (b) whether and how these contributions were received and became effective at local, national, and translocal/transnational levels; and (c) whether such processes contributed to transforming these cities into translocal spaces, and whether translocality itself can be understood as a particular form of social cohesion.