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Migrating Cultural Capital: Bourdieu in Migration Studies
Author(s): Umut Erel

Source: Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 4 (AUGUST 2010), pp. 642-660
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Volume 44(4): 642-660

DOI: 1 0.1 177/0038038510369363
Migrating Cultural Capital: Bourdieu in

Migration Studies
I Umut Erel
Open University, UK
ABSTRACT
A Bourdieusian concept of cultural capital is used to investigate the trans

and contestations of migrants' cultural capital. Research often treated m
tural capital as reified and ethnically bounded, assuming they bring a set
resources from the country of origin to the country of migration that
do not fit. Critiquing such 'rucksack approaches', I argue that migratio
new ways of producing and re-producing (mobilizing, enacting, validatin
capital that builds on, rather than simply mirrors, power relations of
country of origin or the country of migration. Migrants create mechani
idation for their cultural capital, negotiating both ethnic majority and m
tutions and networks. Migration-specific cultural capital (re-)produces in
differentiations of gender, ethnicity and class, in the process creating m
idation alternative to national capital.The argument builds on case studies
Turkish and Kurdish migrant women in Britain and Germany.
KEY WORDS
Bourdieu / cultural capital / ethnicity / gender / intersectionality / migration /

specific capital / national capital / transnational habitus / women
Introduction
from Turkey in Germany and Britain I observed that whilst most were
When from affectedaffected
I was Turkey
by the bynon-recognition
researching theof qualifications
in non-recognition
and byGermany the mar-
racist labour agency and of Britain and qualifications subjectivity I observed and of that skilled by racist whilst migrant labour most women were mar-
ket structures, some were better able to get into skilled jobs than others. What
resources do migrants draw on to access skilled employment? How can the notion
642
Migrating cultural capital Erel 643
of cultural capital help us think through these experiences? While migration

research suggests that cultural capital plays an important part in migrants' occu-
pational and social mobility, this article critiques the tendency to reify cultural cap-
ital in 'rucksack approaches', arguing that migrants exercise agency by creating
new forms of migration-specific cultural capital. Cultural capital, according to
Bourdieu (1986), appears in three states: embodied, institutionalized and objecti-
fied. The two former are of interest here: in the embodied state cultivation is incor-
porated, perhaps best expressed in the concept of habitus, which includes bodily
comportment and speaking as markers of distinction. Institutionalized cultural
capital includes formal education. Yet cultural capital consists also of informal
education transmitted through the family, political parties, cultural groups, etc.
The convertibility into other forms of capital (economic, social, symbolic) distin-
guishes mere cultural resources from cultural capital.
The notion of cultural capital has been widely deployed to understand
skilled migration. My research also looked at skilled migrants but prompted me
to rethink the notion of cultural capital. In the first section I contextualize the
social construction of skilled migration to Britain and Germany. The second
section critiques 'rucksack approaches' in migration studies for reifying cultural
capital as transported from one country to another. Instead, the case studies in
the third section analyse how migrants create mechanisms of validating their
cultural capital, through dominant institutions and by engaging with migrants'
networks. The fourth section argues that a migrant group does not hold homo-
geneous cultural capital; instead, cultural capital is both the product of and pro-
ductive of differentiations of gender, ethnicity, and class within the migrant group.
This differentiated migrant group cultural capital can constitute forms of vali-
dating cultural practices as capital alternative or oppositional to frameworks of
national belonging. The conclusion summarizes the problems of a rucksack
approach. To address these issues, the article explores the following questions:
How do migrants actually create cultural capital out of cultural practices? What
is the role of intra-ethnic power relations in creating practices of distinction
within the locality of residence? How are inter-ethnic relations and forms of
crossing ethnic boundaries reflected in the ways in which migrants create
cultural capital?
I . Context: National Capital and Differential

Migrant Incorporation
Notions of skill in migration are historically and geographically specific. Migration

regimes, professional regulations and national policies play an important part
in the construction of the category of 'skilled migrant' and indeed, many
migrants experience a devaluation or non-recognition of their skills (Kofman
and Raghuram, 2005, 2006; Williams, 2006). The validation of skills changes
both within the time span of migrants' life course and with wider socio-economic
developments (cf. Liversage, 2009). Migrants actively constitute their cultural
644 Sociology Volume 44 ■ Number 4 ■ August 20 1 0
capital to fit in with the ethnically dominant culture of the society of residence.
Resources and assets such as language knowledge, accent or light skin can be
converted into 'national capital', to legitimize belonging (Hage, 1998: 53). The
negotiation of 'national capital' is important for understanding cultural capital
in migration. Germany and Britain present different pictures of incorporation
of migrants from Turkey. In Germany, mass migration from Turkey began with
the recruitment of 'guestworkers' in the 1960s, with family migration and polit-
ical refugees prevailing in the 1980s. In 2006, 1.7 million Turkish citizens
were resident in Germany, constituting a quarter of the foreign population
( Migrationsbericht , 2006: 158). Migrants from Turkey have long been con-
structed as the culturally and socially most distant Other (Finkelstein, 2006;
Mandel, 2008). They are overrepresented in unskilled occupations in industry
and services as well as among the unemployed. Despite the increasing educa-
tional success of second generation migrants, they still experience difficulty
accessing skilled jobs (Granato, 2006). One of the few sectors where migrants
have been able to access skilled employment is in social and educational jobs as
cultural 'mediators' (Lutz, 1991), specifically catering to a migrant client group.
Migration from Turkey1 to Britain began in the mid 1960s, as a small number
of students, professionals and migrants on the work permit scheme entered
(Dokur-Gryskiewicz, 1979). As a consequence of the 1980 military coup d'état
in Turkey, politically and economically motivated migration increased. Since
1989, asylum-seekers from Turkey, mostly Kurds, make up the majority of
migrants. While locally concentrated in parts of London, on a national scale
migrants from Turkey remain invisible (Enneli et al., 2005). For a variety of reasons
(Keles et al., 2009; Kiiçûkcan, 1999; Uguris, 2001), it is difficult to determine
the numbers of migrants from Turkey: estimates vary from 54,000 to 150,000
(King et al., 2008: 9-11). Migrants from Turkey have been largely 'invisible' in
policy discourse as they are ambiguously positioned in regard to the
'black-white dichotomy' that long structured British multiculturalism (Enneli et al.,
2005; Erel, 2009; Verto vec, 2007). In Britain, migrants from Turkey are con-
centrated geographically in London and economically in small and medium eth-
nic enterprises (Keles et al., 2009; King et al., 2008). During the 1970s to late
1990s they worked mainly in textile sweatshops, often owned by Turkish
Cypriots, and later by Turks and Kurds. However, with the increasing out-
sourcing to other countries, currently the main employment sectors are restau-
rant and retail industries (Keles et al., 2009; Kûçiikcan, 1999). Self employment
in the UK has long constituted an important strategy for (skilled) migrants,
while in Germany, foreigners' legislation restricted self employment of migrants
until the 2000s (Alberts, 2003). While in Germany racist representations explic-
itly target 'Turks', in the UK they tend to be constructed through the categories
of 'Muslim' or 'refugee' rather than nationality or ethnic origin.
These differential socio-economic conditions form the backdrop to my
argument. Rather than examining the role of British and German systems of
migrant incorporation, this article focuses on distinctions within the group of
migrants from the same country of origin. The concept of migration-specific
cultural capital explores the field constituted by 'being from Turkey'. It examines
the transnational, though locally specific, articulation of 'being from Turkey'
rather than the field of Germanness or Britishness.
2. Migration, Culture, Forms of Capital
While there have been diverse theorizations of cultural capital in migration

studies, one prevalent feature has been a 'rucksack approach' to cultural capital:
this views migrants as bringing with them a package of cultural resources that
may or may not fit with the 'culture' of the country of residence. I identify this
rucksack approach as a latent but salient tendency in migration studies. The
article makes explicit the elements of a rucksack approach dispersed in different
works of migration research rather than attempting to single out a particular
group of scholars for critique. I choose the term 'rucksack approaches' rather
than the notion of a 'rucksack school' of migration research to refer to elements
of theorizing cultural capital that appear in many diverse places.
Human and Ethnic Capital Approaches
Human capital approaches assume that 'different ethnic groups possess identi-
fiable characteristics, encompassing cultural values, practices, and social networks
that were formed in the homeland and transplanted with minor modifications
by immigrants in the new land and there transmitted and perpetuated from
generation to generation' (Zhou, 2005: 134). These approaches foreground the
assumed culture of the ethnic minority as an explanatory factor of how the
group fares according to measures of integration and social mobility. Cutler
et al. develop the notion of 'ethnic capital' defined as 'the set of individual
attributes, cultural norms, and group-specific institutions that contribute to an
ethnic group's economic productivity' (2005: 206). This definition collapses the
levels of individual and ethnic group, glossing over intra-ethnic differentiations
and hierarchies. It conceptualizes culture as ethnically bounded and assumes a
causal relationship between cultural traits of a group and economic perfor-
mance. Ethnic and human capital approaches assume that ethnic group bound-
aries can be assigned in a straightforward manner. But many scholars have
argued that group boundaries are contested in struggles over who can define
the content and boundaries of a group (Anthias, 2007; Yuval-Davis, 2006).
Cultural practices and forms can be invoked for different social and political
projects that are advanced or legitimized in the name of the ethnic group. Cutler
et al. (2005) further suggest that ethnic capital is inter-generationally transmit-
ted. However, other scholars argue that the meaning of ethnically specific
resources changes across generations, as do identifications (Erel, 2009; Fischer,
1986; Inowlocki, 1995; Lutz, 1995).
Human and ethnic capital approaches to migration take the 'cultural stuff'
of an ethnic group to constitute capital without exploring the process through
which resources are made convertible , which is how Bourdieusian approaches

view the constitution of cultural 'capital'. Ethnic and human capital approaches
do not differentiate states of capital (embodied, institutionalized, objectified)
and their alignment or mis-alignment in migrants' trajectories, missing out on
an important layer of complexity.
Attempting to combine human capital concepts with Bourdieusian theo-
rizations of forms of capital, Nee and Sanders develop the notion of 'human-
cultural capital that is fungible in the host society' (2001: 386) as a heuristic
device. The fungibility of human-cultural capital depends on how well cultural
practices and forms from the country of origin serve social mobility in the cul-
tural and institutional context of the society of residence (cf. Zhou, 2005). This
assumes that the society of residence assesses the cultural value of migrants' cul-
tural resources neutrally. It neglects that measures of cultural capital are shaped
by policy constructions of national economic interests, and protectionist pro-
fessional policies. More generally these approaches are limited by their reliance
on 'methodological nationalism'; that is, the tendency to analyse social phe-
nomena through the lens of the interests of the nation-state (Wimmer and Glick
Schiller, 2003). Furthermore, the idea of fungibility is based on an ethnocentric
view of 'success' rather than migrants' own potentially conflicting measures of
success (cf. Werbner, 2000).
Bourdieu's Theory of Forms of Capital in Migration Studies
In the wider social sciences, Bourdieu's theorizing of forms of capital has been
useful for exploring the role of capital, asset and resources in the study of social
stratification (Savage et al., 2005). Feminists critically examine uses of Bourdieu's
ideas for understanding gender (e.g. Adkins and Skeggs, 2004; Silva, 2005,
2008), critiquing Bourdieu's tendency to view women simply as repositories
and transmitters of cultural capital rather than looking at how they produce
and use it (Lovell, 2000). Yosso (2005) assesses the potential of Bourdieusian
theorizing for revaluing the cultural capital of people of colour in the US.
Weenink (2009) employs the notion of cultural capital to analyse how Dutch
parents construct a cosmopolitan habitus for their school-age children and pro-
ject its usefulness for a globalized job market.
In migration studies, Putnam's theorizing of social capital has been more
influential then Bourdieu's work. Some migration scholars have attributed great
explanatory potential to theories of social capital. However, this has been critiqued
by some authors for paying insufficient attention to qualitative, temporal and
spatial differentiations experienced by migrants (Ryan et al., 2008). Furthermore,
it has been critiqued for insufficiently taking gendered and classed power rela-
I tions in the constitution and uses of networks into account (Anthias, 2007). 2
Social capital is important for understanding the ways in which individuals are
positioned in fields. Yet Bourdieu's theory enables a thicker description as it engages
with how economic, cultural, social and symbolic forms of capital interact. It
also enables a deeper description by differentiating between different states of
institutionalized, embodied and symbolic capital. Bourdieu and Wacquant

emphasize the importance of the composition of an individual's overall capital,
made up of cultural, economic and social capital. This is further mediated by
individuals' 'position-taking' (2007: 99); that is, how they strategize to employ
their capital. The structure and volume of capital must be contextualized with
an individual's 'social trajectory' (2007: 99) of gaining and valorizing capital.
This is particularly relevant for understanding migrants' uses of capital, as the
temporal and geographic trajectories and dimensions of constituting and mobi-
lizing capital are key to understanding how migrants make use of them. A central
notion in Bourdieu's theory is that different forms of capital (social, cultural,
economic and symbolic) are interlinked. Indeed, what distinguishes mere
cultural resources from cultural capital is that the latter is convertible into other
forms of capital.
My interest is not in measuring the forms of capital attached to the posi-
tion of 'a migrant woman from Turkey'. Rather, I investigate the meanings of
cultural practices and forms, analysing some of the struggles about articulating
or challenging these meanings. Bourdieu and Wacquant suggest our studies
should be judged by their ability to specify theoretical claims (2007: 77). Thus,
this article contributes to the effort of specifying theories of migrating cultural
capital by exploring the intersection of ethnic, gendered and class positions.
Bourdieu's analysis in Distinction (19 96) focused on how cultural capital
reproduces existing hierarchical structures of economic, cultural, social and
symbolic capital. Indeed, he has been critiqued for dismissing the complex
contradictions and dissonances in people's positioning (Bennett et al., 2009).
Bourdieu has rarely explored how forms of capital are activated for resistant
purposes, yet he argues:
A capital does not exist and function except in relation to a field. (...) As a space of
potential and active forces, the field is also a field of struggles aimed at preserving
or transforming the configuration of these forces. (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2007: 101,
emphasis in original)
Here, I am concerned with how actors can get into the field, not only to increase
their capital but 'to transform, partially or completely, the immanent rules of
the game' (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2007: 99). I explore how migrant women
challenge and transform existing classificatory systems of cultural validation, in
the process constituting and contesting what I term migration-specific cultural
capital. There is an intimate relation between the formation of specific forms of
capital and of fields: 'People are at once founded and legitimized to enter the
field by their possessing a definite configuration of properties. One of the goals
of research is to identify (...) these forms of specific capital ' (Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 2007: 108, emphasis in original). Thus, this article explores how
cultural capital is constituted in a migration-specific field: how are cultural
resources valorized as capital, recognized, circulated and interlinked with social
and economic capital? The very act of migration disrupts ideas of linear reproduc-
tion of cultural capital, since migration means that 'the conditions of production
648 Sociology Volume 44 ■ Number 4 « August 20 1 0
of habitus' are not 'homologous to its conditions of functioning' (Bourdieu,

1990, quoted in Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2007: 131-2, footnote 84). Indeed, if
the state holds the monopoly of symbolic power, as Bourdieu asserts, racialized
and ethnicized migrants experience a further discontinuity of their cultural capital
as incongruous with the legitimate symbolic capital of the state they live in. Before
discussing migrant women's lifestories, let us consider how Bourdieusian theo-
rization of cultural capital has contributed to the study of migration and skill.
A Bourdieusian notion of cultural capital helps explain how educational
and professional institutions exercise nationally-based protectionism by not
recognizing qualifications acquired abroad, i.e. institutionalized cultural capital
(Bauder, 2003). Even where 'foreign' qualifications are formally recognized,
employers invoke criteria such as the lack of local professional experience. This
turns apparently neutral job specifications into 'national capital' (Hage, 1998)
and enables privileged access to skilled jobs for those considered properly part
of the nation - i.e. not migrants (Bauder, 200; Erel, 2003). This tacit national
capital contains elements of embodied cultural capital, such as the ability to
participate in locally-shared professional cultures. The concrete practices of pro-
fessional protectionism differentially influence migrants' trajectories. A Swiss
study of skilled female migrants found that although married migrants attain
Swiss citizenship quickly, they were categorized as dependants and therefore did
not qualify for financial and institutional help with (re-)skilling or recognition
of 'foreign' qualifications (Riaño and Baghdadi, 2007). Independent migrants
with access to this help were better able to realize their cultural capital (ibid.).
Racist and sexist stereotyping, such as gendered ethnicization as 'Muslim woman',
emphasizes the differential validation of embodied cultural capital and hampers
access to skilled employment (Erel, 2009; Gutierrez Rodriguez, 1999; Riaño
and Baghdadi, 2007). While some migrant women use their embodied cultural
capital of language skills and cultural knowledge to access intercultural jobs
working with migrants or ethnic minorities (Lutz, 1991), these jobs often entail
professional downgrading, offering little upward career mobility (Liversage, 2009).
On the other hand, migrants whose institutional cultural capital is transna-
tional^ validated can use it for professional and geographic mobility. Thus a
comparative study of German professionals working in Third World countries
and highly skilled migrants from the Third World in Germany found that
German professionals do not depend on the local cultural capital of the coun-
tries they work in because their 'western' cultural capital is universalized. Despite
having outstanding, transnational^ validated credentials, migrants from Third
World countries were, however, disappointed by their slow career progression
(Weiss, 2005). These findings elucidate the differential validation of particular,
nationally inflected forms of cultural capital in transnational contexts but do
not address how cultural capital from the migrant's country of origin articulates
with locally validated cultural capital, which I address below.
Migrants use transnational spaces of agency by translating 'the economic
and social position gained in one political setting into political, social and economic
capital in another' (Glick Schiller et al., 1992: 12). Kelly and Lusis (2006) argue
that Filipino migrants' cultural capital in Canada is articulated transnationally:

Migrants whose institutionalized cultural capital is devalued in Canada com-
pensate by validating their cultural practices, forms and assets as capital in their
place of origin in the Philippines. On the other hand, Filipino-ness signals a
habitus of being caring and reliable to Canadians, at once enabling and limit-
ing Filipino migrants' employment opportunities, notably in health and child-
care. Kelly and Lusis disregard significant internal differentiations 'according to
place of origin in the Philippines, socio-economic class, gender, length of resi-
dence in Canada, etc.' (2006: 835); conceding that this simplification is 'admit-
tedly problematic' (2006: 835), their focus is on the transnational scale. Here I
build on and widen their perspective to include the transformative aspects of
migration-specific capital. Intra-group differentiations need to be taken into
account, so as not to reify national identity as the key organizing category for
creating cultural capital. The case studies explore this issue to answer the over-
arching question of how migrants create new forms of cultural capital and
validation in migration.
Before that, I want to return to the problem of the rucksack approach. I
have critiqued human and ethnic capital approaches, but Bourdieusian approaches
to cultural capital, while sensitive to power relations, could enable a fuller
exploration of the dynamic role and agency of migrants to form and transform
cultural capital. Where human capital theorists conceptualize cultural capital as
a key that the migrant puts into her rucksack and, once in the country of immi-
gration, unpacks to see if it fits the 'keyhole' of the cultural system of the coun-
try of immigration, Bourdieusian scholars view migrants' cultural capital as a
treasure chest consisting of language skills, knowledge about customs and
lifestyles, professional qualifications, etc. Again, these are put in the rucksack,
but when unpacked in the country of migration, rather than looking for a 'fit',
according to Bourdieusian approaches the migrant engages in bargaining activ-
ities with institutions (such as professional bodies or universities) and people
(such as employers or managers) about the value of these treasures. In the pro-
cess of bargaining, the migrants' treasures are often undervalued, as she has lim-
ited power over the rules of the game (Kelly and Lusis, 2006: 836). Yet, she can
also add new skills and treasures to her chest that may not be seen as particu-
larly valuable in the country of immigration but are considered treasures in her
country of origin, thus negotiating and benefiting from differential 'exchange
value' (Bauder, 2003) of cultural resources, practices and forms in two national
contexts.
I want to focus on two related processes that have not been given suf
attention so far: first, migrants do not only unpack cultural capital fr
rucksacks, instead they create new forms of cultural capital in the cou
residence. They use resources they brought with them and others they
in situ to create quite distinct dispositions. Second, migrants engage in
mechanisms of validation for their cultural capital. These do not only
the dominant institutions and people but also engage with migrants' n
There has been considerable discussion about the role of migrant netw
650 Sociology Volume 44 « Number 4 ■ August 20 IO
the formation of social capital (Anthias, 2007; Ryan et al., 2008, 2009;
Sumption, 2009). However, the ways in which cultural capital both builds on
existing distinctions and creates new forms of distinction within migrant groups
merit further scrutiny. Migration-specific cultural capital negotiates existing
distinctions and creates new categories of distinction within a migration-
specific field. In this sense, cultural capital in migration is one way of elaborat-
ing systems of value alternative or oppositional to the 'national capital' (Hage,
1998) validated by the nation-states of residence and origin.
3. Differentiating Forms of Capital within Migrant Groups
Within a migrant group cultural capital is differentiated according to gender,

class, educational status and ethnic affiliation. This influences how social and
cultural capital can be mobilized (cf. Anthias, 2007). The following close read-
ings of lifestories of migrant women from Turkey in Germany and Britain
underline the situatedness of migration-specific cultural capital. The lifestories
of skilled and highly educated migrant women from Turkey in Britain and
Germany were elicited between 1998 and 1999 (Erel, 2009); thus, the article
does not intervene in current policy debates, but instead engages the lifestories
to refine the analytical concept of cultural capital. Lifestories evidence the ten-
sion between self-presentations and regulatory structures of migration regimes
(Erel, 2007). Interview partners were approached as skilled migrants: this incited
particular stories about professional 'success', often against the odds. The
following in-depth studies tease out how migrants create new cultural capital
and validation mechanisms.
Natan: Left-wing and Feminist Social and Cultural Capital as Enabling Mobility
Since she was a teenager, Nâlan strongly identified with a left-wing, socialist
subculture in Turkey, which affected her choice of profession, her social net-
works and her alternative gendered lifestyle. As a consequence of the 1980 coup
d'état her political networks were destroyed, as comrades were imprisoned or
persecuted. Indeed, Nâlan herself had to go underground for a while. At the
same time she was a young mother and experienced a change in her gendered
ascription as part of a 'normal family'. She became part of the fledgling
women's movement in Turkey, the only alternative political movement tolerated
in the post coup d'état period. When her marriage broke down, she wanted to
escape the economic and social pressures of living as a divorcee in Turkey.
Nâlan took up the offer from a friend in the women's movement to join her in
the UK. This friend and others from left-wing and women's movement net-
works 'took me by the hand' to find accommodation and a job and to regular-
ize her residence status. Thus, her geographic mobility was enabled by these
transnational networks built around a shared political and cultural identity. She
remained in unskilled work for the first few years of her migration. After gaining
Migrating cultural capital Erel 65 1
some legal and financial security and learning English, Nâlan integrated her
experience of political organizing acquired in Turkey, and as a migrant activist
in the UK, with her newly acquired knowledge of Britain and the professional
jargon of social work that her political friends shared with her. She capitalized
on this combination of transnational and local habitus and cultural resources
by converting them into employment in the social work sector. Thus, making
her transnational embodied cultural capital of political activist (which is ethni-
cally inflected but cannot be reduced to 'ethnic capital' in Cutler et al. 's 2005
sense) relevant to the local British professional environment of social work was
key to converting her cultural resources into capital. This first job enabled her
to access higher education and eventually become a professional. This realigned
the embodied and institutionalized states of her cultural capital from Turkey
and the UK. Nâlan's trajectory demonstrates the creation of a very particular
form of migration-specific cultural capital. This cultural capital was generated
in left-wing and women's political organizations both in Turkey and the UK,
however, cannot be counted as 'ethnic capital'. Instead, it contains elements of
cultural practices and resources that are subcultural within Turkey and within
Turkish migrant groups, as well as non-nationally defined forms of cultural
capital such as left-wing and feminist organizing principles and political ideas
(cf. Erel, 2009). These organizations also constituted a form of migration-spe-
cific social capital that enabled her access to key information: first for settling
and later for occupational mobility. Nâlan was able to build on this combina-
tion of resources; that is, the political migrants' organizations in the UK also
functioned as mechanisms for validating her cultural resources and making
them usable and convertible in the UK context.
In the next case study I argue that such validation of particular forms of
social and cultural capital depends on and goes hand in hand with a devalua-
tion of other cultural competences and resources that are defined as 'lack' and
found wanting.
Selin: Migrating Gendered and Ethnicized Marginalization
Growing up in a rural area as a girl from an ethnic and religious minority

(a Kurdish Alevi) structured Selin's access to formal education through unequal
development and structural gendered and ethnic discrimination. The unavailability
of secondary education in the village, her family's inability to arrange for
accommodation in the town and the difficulty of getting a place at school
because of her ethnic identity limited her access to education. Despite her strug-
gles, first to receive permission from her family to attend secondary school in
town and then to gain the school's admittance, she only received primary edu-
cation, thus had a low level of institutionalized cultural capital in Turkey. She
successfully evaded her family's plans to marry her as a teenager and instead
used her family's social standing in the community to become the first female
manager of a business in the local small town. In this role she gained esteem for
her personal integrity and helpfulness and was regularly consulted by the villagers
652 Sociology Volume 44 ■ Number 4 « August 20 IO
on official matters. Still, she did not feel that she fitted in with expectations of
'appropriate' sexuality. This motivated her migration first to a city in Turkey,
then to the UK. In both migrations, she made use of her family-based social
capital. Yet these networks limited her scope for economic and political agency
and for accessing alternative modes of doing gender. In the UK, Selin became
very active, doing voluntary work in Kurdish community centres. Like Nâlan,
she gained awareness of British multicultural and local government structures
and became involved in feminist migrant circles of the late 1980s and early
1990s. She appreciated these for providing her with lived models of alternative
femininities: 'I admired their freedom, their independence.' At the same time
she critiques the hierarchies within this group built on transnational dynamics
of distinction, such as the performance of cultural preferences for theatre or
classical music. Selin underlines that she felt inferior in relation to these
women's groups because of her lack of knowledge of both Turkish high culture
and English language and culture:
Look, I had no idea about any of these things, you know. Neither the theatre, nor
the music, whatever, [all of this was] Turkish , Turkish ! Let alone [English culture ],
this was Turkish [culture that was unknown to me]! And I wanted to catch up with
all of this, you know.
As Selin experienced it, the women who were prominent in these networks had
embodied cultural capital of an urban, western-oriented educated middle class.
They combined these shared cultural forms with new, locally developed femi-
nist cultural practices. They furthermore adapted local, British multiculturalist
discourses to validate their cultural capital as representatives of 'Turkish-speaking'
women. This claim to 'representing' Turkish-speaking women thus converted
their cultural resources into both political capital, as leaders of organizations,
and economic capital in the form of professionalizing this expertise to access
employment in the public and third sector as service providers for 'Turkish-
speaking women' migrants. This category of 'Turkish-speaking women' was meant
to include the subaltern Kurdish women who 'cannot speak' for themselves as
their language and ability to speak are denied.
One service provider for Turkish-speaking women shared a 'success story'
of one of their clients with me:
This Kurdish woman came to the UK through family reunification, and was socially
isolated in the home where her husband mistreated her. Through the efforts of the
service provider, the client first learned Turkish and then attended literacy classes.
She then learned English and could participate in British society. This empowered
her to divorce her husband.
While this story certainly shows how the client became able to participate more
fully and independently in the society she lives in, it begs the question why
learning Turkish should be a precondition for accessing these services in the first
place. It exemplifies how speaking Kurdish was constructed as not being able
to speak at all in a way that merits public recognition.
In this discourse, speaking Kurdish features not as a cultural resource in its

own right but as lack of being able to speak standard Turkish well. Thus, for
Selin, being part of these migrant feminist groups had ambiguous effects: it
enabled her to access alternative forms of femininity; at the same time her
Kurdish cultural identity was re-inscribed as 'lack' (of western-oriented Turkish
high cultural competence). In contrast with Turkish-identified urban, formally
educated women embodying middle-class cultural capital, she felt that her part
in this movement was that of the 'represented'. It did not allow her to capital-
ize on her cultural resources for occupational and social mobility. The 'social
valuation of population categories (e.g. women, migrants), both within a
minority ethnic context and within the wider society, can affect the value of
their resources as well as their ability to use them' (Anthias, 2007: 801). Her
Turkish feminist friends were able to present their own cultural resources of
knowing the language and culture of migrants from Turkey as 'representative'.
They thus gained an institutional validation of their cultural resources through
gaining employment or funding for NGOs. They could capitalize on their cul-
tural resources and convert them into political and economic capital. Selin, on
the other hand, was not able to validate her embodied knowledge of Kurdish as
a 'valuable' cultural resource, although in fact the majority of migrants from
Turkey in the UK are Kurds. I return to this point below.
Pakize: Mobilizing and Transmitting 'Valuable' Culture
Pakize comes from a western-oriented, urban middle-class family who valued

education only as preparation for an appropriate marriage. She married young
and had two children. Her divorce led to her being declassed and Pakize saw
migration as the only way to support herself and her children. In Germany she
felt this déclassement acutely as she not only worked in a factory but also
shared accommodation with largely working-class women from Turkey: these
were people 'whose language I could not even understand'. Through friendships
with Turkish urban middle-class women outside her workplace, whose
habitus she shared, she established contacts to enter white collar employment,
thus realigning her institutionalized cultural capital to fit with her habitus from
Turkey. Pakize worked for this insurance company for 10 years, dealing with
their migrant customers from Turkey. However, when the firm downsized she
became unemployed. During her job search, a friend from the Turkish classical
choir (see below) informed her about a new, funded opportunity for migrants
to retrain as educators. Pakize enrolled. When, shortly before her graduation, a
bilingual intercultural kindergarten approached her college to recruit
Turkish-German bilingual staff, Pakize applied. However, she doubted:
Will they take me? There are very good young Turkish and Kurdish women. And
these are alternative people, they will rather work with Kurds, etc. (...) I got an invi-
tation for interview. (...) They were very happy with the other applicant. But they
said we want you, because we want a person who speaks Turkish well.
Language is a salient marker of distinction within the migrant group: the

conversion of the cultural capital of speaking 'good Turkish' into economic
capital is a relational process based on the devaluation of other cultural forms
- i.e. the vernacular mixed language of second generation migrants or rural
dialects, deemed unworthy of transmission. Moreover, there are other ethnic
groups in Turkey for whom Turkish is a second language. Indeed, Pakize's
explicit fear that 'alternative' people might prefer employing Kurds rather than
Turks manifests an '(anti-) political correctness' discourse within the migrant
population, where actual power relations are fantasized as inverted.
In her leisure time Pakize actively reproduces Turkish cultural forms: a clas-
sical Turkish music choir and Turkish theatre group are focal points of her
social life. She enjoys participating because 'they teach you how to speak nicely
and the poetry too'. Thus, Pakize reproduces cultural forms valued in Turkey,
but also produces a social network in Germany to validate these forms. These
cultural activities form part of her self-production as a cultured person, com-
petent in Turkish cultural practices. This is a marker of distinction and an
important professional asset: her investment in embodied cultural capital is
vital for realizing her institutionalized cultural capital. Of course, the institu-
tional context is also vital: in this case, a Turkish-German parent group lobbied
the council to establish a bilingual intercultural kindergarten. This was the con-
dition for creating the role of bilingual, intercultural educator in the first place.
The interplay of these wider socio-political factors (the establishment of 'inter-
cultural' institutions in Germany) and the negotiation within the migrant group
from Turkey (over which 'Turkish' cultural forms should contribute to the
'intercultural' mix) created opportunities for Pakize to validate her cultural
resources as capital.
4 Disaggregating Forms of Capital
These case studies show the dynamic character of cultural capital in migration.
First, they exemplify the ups and downs migrant women experienced in the val-
idation of their cultural resources. While I focus here on the post-migration
period, the migrant women arrived with particular, internally differentiated
forms of cultural capital created in Turkey. The migrant women acquired, accu-
mulated and lost cultural capital at times in unexpected ways. This process can-
not be reduced to individual resources but is bound up with wider historical,
socio-political and institutional factors, even if these have only framed, rather
than focused, my discussion here. However, these case studies demonstrate that
individual and collective agency are important for creating new cultural
resources in migration and transforming cultural practices into capital.
Second, the case studies show that speaking of the cultural or social capital
of an ethnic migrant group is not useful as it glosses over intra-group hierar-
chical distinctions and exclusions. In the case of migrants from Turkey in
Germany and Britain, the most important social divisions articulating cultural
distinction were class, rural-urban divisions, western cultural orientation,
belonging to and identification with Turkishness or an ethnic minority identity
in Turkey, of which Kurdish identity is the most salient, and gender. The way in
which migrants identify or disidentify with these intermeshing social positions
enables them to mobilize particular forms of social capital. In the process,
boundaries of 'Turkishness' and the 'cultural stuff associated with it changed
their meaning. Migrants built on, but did not mirror, social divisions of the
country of origin in creating new forms of intra-migrant group distinction.
Third, by creating distinction, some actors privileged their own claims to
politically or professionally 'represent' the ethnic group. The outcomes of such
processes of validation, I argue, cannot be taken for granted. Migrants consti-
tute a migration-specific field in the local context of migration. Thus, Nâlan
and others were able to mobilize their cultural resources for gaining employ-
ment in the social sector as representing the interests of 'Turkish-speaking'
migrants in late 1980s' multicultural progressive local authorities. As a conse-
quence of the 1980 coup d'état, at this time in Turkey these left-wing intellec-
tuals were prosecuted and not unproblematically able to capitalize on their
cultural resources. Neither can we deduce the way in which cultural resources
are validated from their 'use value': Selin's Kurdish language knowledge was
constructed as 'lack' despite the fact that most migrants from Turkey in the UK
are of Kurdish ethnicity. The ability to convert cultural and social resources into
cultural capital depends on the socio-political ability of actors to define the
boundaries and content of the field of migration-specific cultural capital.
The historical socio-political contingency of this process becomes more
evident in the example of Kurdish language in the UK. Selin's story about the
devaluation of her Kurdish cultural knowledge refers to the 1980s and early
1990s. In this period, Kurdish identity in the UK was subsumed under the
notion of 'Turkish-speaking communities', encompassing Turkish migrants
from Northern Cyprus and Turkey and Kurds. This was a result of a political
alliance to demand recognition and resources within the London multicultural-
ist local government framework of the 1980s. In consequence, resources for
translation, interpreting or advocacy were not specifically targeted at Kurdish
migrants, in effect reproducing aspects of the ethnic and social marginalization
they had experienced in Turkey (Erel, 2009; King et al., 2008; Uguris, 2001).
Since then, a confluence of global, transnational, national and local developments
has led to an increasingly vocal socio-political articulation of Kurdishness in
Britain. On the global level, the Iraq wars of 1991 and 2003 contributed to
increasing international recognition and empowerment of Kurdish identity. In
Turkey, this in conjunction with other factors (such as EU candidacy negotiations)
led to a partial de-criminalization of expressions of Kurdish identity. On the
local level of London, Kurdish migrants have become more visible, partly
through economic success as small and medium business owners and effective
political lobbying. Finally, within the group of Kurds from Turkey, cultural
656 Sociology Volume 44 ■ Number 4 ■ August 20 IO
and linguistic factors have gained prominence. There are negotiations about
introducing Kurdish language as an examination subject at London schools,
local government publications are translated into Kurdish and advertise Kurdish
interpreting services, and local Kurdish language media have been established.
This thumbnail sketch points to the multiple levels on which socio-political
conditions for valuing cultural resources as 'capital' are created. Thus, over
time, knowledge of Kurdish language may increasingly become established not
as a 'lack' but as a resource to be turned into cultural capital.
Conclusion: What's Wrong with the Rucksack Approach?
I have analysed new forms of migration-specific cultural capital: migrants

actively create dynamics of validating cultural resources as capital, resulting in
new forms of intra-migrant distinction. This distinction can be used for occu-
pational mobility and/or to claim to culturally and politically represent the
community. These complex dynamics cannot be understood through a rucksack
approach that reifies the cultural resources of migrants.
The problem with the rucksack approach is that it views particular cultural
resources (e.g. Turkish language) and practices as ethnically bounded. This does
not take account of the multiple cultural practices and forms within a migrant
group (such as speaking Turkish and/or Kurdish). Furthermore, cultural prac-
tices within a migrant group are differentially validated in gendered, classed and
ethnic ways. Cultural practices acquire different meanings and validations
according to the local, national and transnational context. Rucksack
approaches do not adequately take account of the struggles over particular cul-
tural practices and the differential ways in which cultural practices articulate
with forms of femininity, ethnicity and class to create complex hierarchies of
distinction. In order to understand how cultural capital signifies distinction and
produces recognizable social identities and positionalities it is important to con-
sider the meanings the actors give to cultural practices. While the migrant group
is an important site for creating and validating cultural capital, migrants also
actively co-construct institutions for validating their cultural capital within the
society of residence. Migration studies should move beyond a rucksack approach
to analyse migrants' creative agency in constructing new forms of migration-
specific cultural capital.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Parvati Raghuram and Engin Isin for their close critical engage-
ment and insightful comments on several drafts and the Feminist Reading Group at
the Open University and Elizabeth Silva for generous feedback. I am also grateful to
two anonymous referees for their close readings and constructive suggestions.
Notes
1 Turkish Cypriots are numerically significant in the UK (60,000 according to King

et al., 2008); however, in this article I refer to migrants from mainland Turkey only.
2 Putnam's social capital approach in migration has already been debated and
critiqued in detail (e.g. Anthias, 2007; Ryan et al., 2008). Therefore I focus here
on notions of cultural capital within a Bourdieusian framework.
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Umut Erel
Is RCUK Academic Fellow at the Centre of Citizenship, Identities and Governance, at

the Open University. Her research interests are on gender; migration, ethnicity and cit-
izenship. Her recent publications are 'Constructing Meaningful Lives: Biographical

Methods in Research on Migrant Women' Sociological Research Online 1 2(4) and her
monograph Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship. Lifestories from Germany and Britain
(Ashgate, 2009). She is currently working on mothering, migration and citizenship, and
on conceptualizing issues of migration, gender and care in Europe.

Address: Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance, Faculty of Social Sciences,
The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK.
E-mail: u.erel@open.ac.uk
Date submitted March 2009

Date accepted September 2009

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Migrating Cultural Capital: Bourdieu in Migration Studies

Author(s): Umut Erel

Volume 44(4): 642-660

Migrating Cultural Capital: Bourdieu in

A Bourdieusian concept of cultural capital is used to investigate the trans

Bourdieu / cultural capital / ethnicity / gender / intersectionality / migration /

of cultural capital help us think through these experiences? While migration

I . Context: National Capital and Differential

Notions of skill in migration are historically and geographically specific. Migration

2. Migration, Culture, Forms of Capital

While there have been diverse theorizations of cultural capital in migration

Human and Ethnic Capital Approaches

which resources are made convertible , which is how Bourdieusian approaches

Bourdieu's Theory of Forms of Capital in Migration Studies

institutionalized, embodied and symbolic capital. Bourdieu and Wacquant

of habitus' are not 'homologous to its conditions of functioning' (Bourdieu,

that Filipino migrants' cultural capital in Canada is articulated transnationally:

3. Differentiating Forms of Capital within Migrant Groups

Within a migrant group cultural capital is differentiated according to gender,

Selin: Migrating Gendered and Ethnicized Marginalization

Growing up in a rural area as a girl from an ethnic and religious minority

In this discourse, speaking Kurdish features not as a cultural resource in its

Pakize: Mobilizing and Transmitting 'Valuable' Culture

Pakize comes from a western-oriented, urban middle-class family who valued

Language is a salient marker of distinction within the migrant group: the

4 Disaggregating Forms of Capital

Conclusion: What's Wrong with the Rucksack Approach?

I have analysed new forms of migration-specific cultural capital: migrants

1 Turkish Cypriots are numerically significant in the UK (60,000 according to King

Mandel, R. (2008) Cosmopolitan Anxieties : Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and

Nee, V. and J. Sanders (2001) 'Understanding the Diversity of Immigrant

Yuval-Davis, N. 2006 'Belonging and the Politics of Belonging', Patterns of

Is RCUK Academic Fellow at the Centre of Citizenship, Identities and Governance, at

izenship. Her recent publications are 'Constructing Meaningful Lives: Biographical

on conceptualizing issues of migration, gender and care in Europe.

Date submitted March 2009

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