Conceptualising the social positioning of refugees reflections on socio-institutional contexts and agency with a focus on work

ABSTRACT

Presently, European and other countries are facing public (and scholarly) discussions surrounding the possibilities of successfully integrating refugees into their respective national labour markets. Such debates often disregard the complex circumstances under which refugees are received in a given nation-state. For this conceptually oriented article, we draw on the example of Austria as a receiving state, as it shares many characteristics with other receiving nation-states in the global north. Theoretically, we base our argument on the assumption that societies are socially unequal. Such inequality is institutionally co-constructed, as we will show in this article. Yet empirical examples assist in understanding how refugees are also actors who are not only exposed to such institutional and varying social environments. Rather, they also reinforce and/or change these circumstances by their own agency.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• institutional environments
• everyday lives
• meaning of work
• qualitative research

1. Introduction

Compared to previous years, Austria has experienced large numbers of asylum seekers arriving to and passing through the country by 2015. One focus of public discussions since then has been on former refugees’ integration in their new countries of residence. Scholarly contributions in this respect have mainly focussed on the situation in cities and have not yet been able to integrate both refugees’ agency and the circumstances they find themselves in when considering the issue of integration, especially in terms of work. In this article,¹ we make a conceptual contribution by arguing that complex social and institutional contexts matter that are currently are only discussed in part. In order to do so, this paper draws on examples from a small-scale pilot study.² We argue that the qualitative case studies discussed below reveal a myriad of discriminations and group-specific problems that accumulate within certain legal and socio-economic settings in refugees’ everyday lives. The study was carried out in Austria – a country that can be conceived as a showcase for other Western or European countries, as it has rapidly crossed a variety of different phases in terms of political and public attitudes towards refugees. In 2015, it also took in quite significant numbers of refugees compared to its total population and to other Western countries. Austria has also been chosen as a reference point, as it is an example of how a European nation-state may construct its role within a complex international setting – with very specific implications for refugees in this country.

1.1. Refugees’ immigration environments: the legal framework and its consequences

We propose that the social positioning of refugees may best be understood if we think of their agency as powerful, yet as restricted and enabled by very specific social contexts. Based on Carling’s definition of the emigration environment (Carling 2002, 13) as ‘the social, political and economic context’ and the ‘nature of migration as a socially and culturally constructed project’, we suggest reflecting on refugees’ immigration environments. Within such environments, legal arrangements are especially decisive for refugees.³ Considerable research has been carried out over the last years in this respect (for an overview, see also Täubig 2009). Life in mass accommodations, the requirement to wait for decisions, restriction to small geographic areas, factual exclusion from the labour market and few possibilities to participate as consumers in society are the main features of everyday life experiences during the asylum process. Research has established that many recognised refugees face difficulties in gaining access to employment as a result of their exclusion during the asylum process (UNHCR 2013, 32; Neuwirth 2007; Ammer 2011; Kraler et al. 2013, 103). The scarce empirical findings on the phases following positive asylum decisions⁴ focus on including (former) refugees in the labour market from an ex-post research perspective (Auer 2018; Ballarino and Panichella 2015; Borjas 1999; Lundborg 2013; Schultz and Kolb 2018). This provides us with relevant insights into patterns of discrimination and the importance of remaining active in society. Studies on labour market integration and internationally comparative research on policies targeting access to the labour market have already yielded substantial results (Fasani and Frattini 2018; Bratsberg, Raaum, and Røed. 2018; Obschonka and Hahn 2018).

The refugees interviewed for this investigation were confronted with the specific legal situation in Austria which structures their life chances to a considerable extent.⁵ These legal provisions create three different groups – omitting those who are illegalised in this process (Kronauer 2009): Firstly, asylum seekers have no access to wage-earning employment (except for a few seasonal work possibilities) and are thus also excluded from benefits deriving from contributory schemes (Ammer 2011; Kitzberger 2016). During the asylum procedures that often last for years, asylum seekers are provided with basic needs coverage (‘Grundversorgung’) which entails assigned (or privately organised) accommodation and food as well as a small monthly allowance for personal needs. Secondly, individuals can be granted subsidiary protection: Although not discriminated against through labour market provisions, this group nevertheless experiences legal discrimination in other fields, such as denied access to public housing (which is a very important structural factor in Austria) and restrictions in accessing childcare or family allowances (Ammer 2011, 323). This differential legal treatment forces persons under subsidiary protection significantly more often into unemployment, underemployment or unskilled and low-paid work (Berger et al. 2016). Thirdly, recognised refugees have de jure immediate full access to wage-earning jobs in Austria. Empirically, however, we see that unemployment within this group tends to be high in comparison with the local population. Moreover, even if employed, former refugees are often confronted with underemployment, dequalification and low-paid jobs characterised by unhealthy work conditions (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2013, 61).

While legal provisions do not discriminate against recognised refugees, they may still – in combination with other structural factors – lead to clearly discriminatory outcomes that (re-)produce social inequalities along the, hence dividing, lines of ‘refugeeness’ (Lacroix 2004) vs. ‘non-refugeeness’ within a nation-state. While empirically well-proven (Berger et al. 2016), few policies and measures in Austria proactively address the existing barriers for refugees on the national, regional and local levels. This is often combined with a more or less racist government rhetoric that casts the blame for poor labour market integration on the refugees themselves (Horvath 2014).

2. Initial empirical results and their conceptual strengths

Refugees’ immigration environments differ not only by nation-states, but also between regions within a given nation-state. While our knowledge regarding their urban working and living conditions is limited (Jacobsen 2006; Koizumi and Hoffstaedter 2015), even less empirical research has been carried out on refugees settling in rural areas upon receiving a positive asylum decision (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2013, 44). Characteristically, rural areas are comparatively more difficult to reach by (public) transportation means. Such areas are referred to as peripheral, as these areas are also equipped with less sophisticated infrastructure and thus provide a highly specific environment for refugees. We differentiate between zones with higher densities of housing, working places, schools and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) addressing the needs of refugees and migrants, as well as self-organised NGOs and religious institutions. From these ‘central’ zones, we differentiate peripheries that – in themselves – are heterogeneous. Some research has been done on re-scaling processes and migration, which are beneficial for such a perspective (Glick Schiller and Çağlar. 2016; Schiller, Nina, and Guldbransen 2006).

Southern Burgenland, a border region in Austria, was chosen for our pilot case study. The share of first-generation migrants in the overall population is significantly lower than elsewhere in Austria. In 2007, Burgenland was still classified as an EU region in need of economic development programmes, even after 11 years of respective EU programme interventions. It is characterised by the lowest gross regional product per capita of all Austrian federal states (Statistik Austria 2016) with minor industry. Thus, earnings are lower than in the rest of Austria and the share of work commuters is habitual. In terms of refugees, there are only a few charitable organisations within easy reach by way of public transportation, whilst state-provided social services accessible to refugees are scarce. We concur with Nina Glick Schiller and Ayşe Çağlar when they state that ‘(…) funding streams for social services including migrant-based organisations are differentially distributed across different cities and geographic regions’ (Glick Schiller and Çağlar. 2016).

This paper is based on the initial results of a qualitative project⁶ focusing on the life worlds of refugees in peripheral Austrian regions who had recently received a positive asylum decision. In order to study the living conditions in general from the actors’ point of view, we adopted a constructivist Grounded Theory approach (Charmaz 2006). By means of preliminary field contacts with NGOs, we had been referred to two families living in Southern Burgenland in two different places briefly introduced below. Both families had been referred to us by an NGO worker based in the province capital and were chosen according to our research interest in everyday life worlds under the specific circumstances of smaller rural communities. In order to overcome methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Schiller 2002), it was our aim to carry out interviews with refugees coming to Austria from different nation-states. We decided to include only families in our research in order to focus on generation relations as well. We carried out problem-centred qualitative interviews (Witzel and Reiter 2012) combined with a graphic approach to social relations (Scheibelhofer 2006) with two members of each family. The interviews that lasted between 50 minutes and nearly two hours were embedded in extended visits at the interviewees’ homes. The transcripts of the records were analysed with initial and some focussed coding accompanied by memo writing (Charmaz 2006). Due to a lack of funding, the interviews had to be carried out by a white, middle-aged academic with no proficiency in the interview partners’ first languages. This had consequences for the data obtained, as the social process was influenced by power asymmetries embedded in the interview situation. As a result, in can be assumed that the topic of being thankful to the state and people of Austria was stressed at several points in our exchange. Coding the interview material thus also implied permanent reflections on both the researchers’ and the interviewees’ positioning (Kirpitchenko and Voloder 2014). These reflections and their implications for the main codes were discussed with two migration researchers and in seminars including students with refugee backgrounds. It was also part of the analysis intended to take into account the differing language repertoires (Fritsche 2012) of the persons involved in the interview situations. The empirical examples given here should highlight the major aspects of this conceptually oriented article.

2.1. Complex interrelations: living conditions and work

Finding and maintaining employment are complex issues embedded in institutional, social and individual circumstances. From the outset, our pilot study showed that the refugees’ living conditions impede the process of finding work. In this first empirical section, it is our aim to reconstruct this complexity. We met with the Bisultanov⁷ family from Chechnya. Together with their daughter, their two sons and their three-year-old grandchild, Lida and Mikail were living in an apartment of approximately 60m² in a municipality with 4,500 inhabitants. They had moved to Austria five years before, with four family members being asylum seekers and receiving the right to subsidiary protection a year before. Learning German and finding a job were the most pressing and recurring topics in our conversation. Prior to her flight, Lida, at the time of the interview in her mid-forties, had worked as a cook. Working again in her métier would have been her dream, yet she dared not even consider this possibility. Instead, after having completed a series of German classes, she applied for low-qualification jobs such as cleaning and kitchen help, yet unsuccessfully. Her husband Mikail, in his late forties, had worked as a car mechanic before leaving for Austria. In this country, his work experience would not be recognised and thus he successfully obtained a forklift licence financed by the Austrian Public Employment Service (AMS). Yet despite searching for work for nearly a year, Mikail found no job that would match his qualifications. He was convinced that younger applicants, including refugees, would be more successful in finding a job, whilst his wife Lida thought her German was not sufficient for her to find work. At the time of our conversation, neither spouse received assistance of any kind, be it from an NGO or a private person, to find a job. They emphasised that they were willing to move to another region in Austria in order to find work, even if this would mean that their children needed to change schools.

At the very beginning of his job search, Mikail managed to find work by himself. Yet he was not able to actually start working because of highly peculiar circumstances. During one of his asylum-seeking interviews in Vienna, he referred to this job opportunity. A translator working for the Austrian authorities was present at the interview. According to Mikail, this translator was later on found handing over information on Chechens in Austria to the Russian secret service. After several politically motivated shootings on Chechens in Vienna, Mikail was too afraid to show up at the workplace. On the occasion of my second visit to the family, thirteen-year-old son Denis showed me a search warrant on the computer, issued by the Russian authorities for his father. Mikail explained that the warrant claimed he had committed a crime in Russia during a period in which he had actually already relocated to Austria as an asylum seeker. Due to the politically motivated attacks on Chechens in Vienna, Mikail decided that it was too dangerous to work there. Another consequence was that the family preferred not to have much contact with other Chechens in Austria in order to reduce the potential risk of an attack by the Russian authorities. Mikail and Lida were thus living in constant fear of being discovered and injured. Another fear stemmed from their understanding of the Austrian regulations of subsidiary protection: According to the family, the officers at the district authority (‘Bezirkshauptmannschaft’) in charge of handling the family’s legal status had told them that they would need to have regular employment for at least six months in a year in order to renew their right of residence in Austria. This information not being in line with legislation, we found that it had put considerable and avoidable stress on the family. Being isolated from other sources of information, most importantly from fellow migrants and NGOs providing legal advice, the family was forced to trust the only source of information they had.

Lida and Mikail seemed physically and emotionally exhausted and rather disillusioned with their lives. In addition to the difficulties in finding work, the family was also limited to unfavourable living circumstances: It was difficult to find an affordable apartment after the asylum process had ended. In Austria, the basic needs coverage mentioned above ends after a maximum of four months upon receiving the right of residence. Thus, state-funded housing and basic living costs are no longer automatically provided. Legal refugees and those granted subsidiary protection need to move out of their accommodation, begin searching for a job and a language course, apply for social benefits, and – if they have children – identify childcare institutions and schools in their new environs within a very short period of time. In this phase, the Bisultanov family first made online attempts to find an apartment in Vienna, only to understand that estate agents in that city request commissions and a payment of deposit. While social assistance covers accommodation costs under certain circumstances, it does not cover commissions or deposits. Mikail then changed the search mode and finally found an affordable dwelling place where we met them. The apartment building was rather derelict and accommodated immigrants as tenants, and the house owner was not prepared to carry out urgent restoration work such as repairing water pipe breaks. The Bisultanov family was living in a flat on the top floor with obvious rain water damage on the living room ceiling and buckets arranged strategically to collect the water. Mould was also clearly visible. The rather small home left little room for the family members’ needs. Denis had no privacy, nor did his sister with her toddler daughter. In addition, the daughter had serious health issues and required constant medical care. On top of that, she had also experienced domestic violence from her husband from whom she had separated. Looking for a job, preparing for school, learning a new language and dealing with a variety of difficulties faced by the family members was altogether hard to comprehend.

Another family we interviewed for this study were the Dadrians who had come to Austria thirteen years previously. For the past six years, the family had been living in a municipality in Southern Burgenland with approx. 1,000 inhabitants in the rural Hungarian border region with few work opportunities. Marjan, a woman in her fifties, had immigrated from Iran with her husband and their two teenage children (17 and 19 years old at the time of the interview). At the time we met, the family was living in this village to which they had moved after their basic needs coverage had expired.

While the family’s living conditions, including employment opportunities, seemed positive at the time of the interview, the biographic research approach revealed the difficulties Marjan had experienced while looking for employment a couple of years earlier. According to legal regulations, as an asylum seeker in Austria, Marjan could not work, or search for work, during her first five years of residence, and only after this period could she access the services of the AMS. Work opportunities are scarce in this part of Austria in general, yet refugees face intersecting and additional difficulties compared to the rest of the population, e.g. work places not being reachable by public transport or not offering suitable working hours. Thus, most employed long-term residents own cars, many of them also opting for daily or weekly commuting. At that time, Marjan did not have and could not afford a driving licence. She thus asked the local AMS office and other institutions for possibilities to help her pay for a driving licence (amounting to approx. € 1,500). Marjan was denied assistance and needed to save money herself, thus delaying her successful job search. While the AMS refused to finance her driving licence, it offered her German language courses which she found very helpful. In order to receive unemployment benefits, Marjan was additionally obliged to attend AMS courses on how to apply for a job. However, she did not benefit from the lessons whatsoever. Marjan’s opinion on this topic was very much in line with the criticism of these and similar AMS activation measures recurrently expressed by relevant organisations (e.g. Breitenfelder and Kaupa 2014).

During the interview, Marjan was still enraged about the AMS practice she had experienced several years earlier:

Then we got asylum, we got the right to work, but I had trouble driving! (…) So I went to the AMS: I need a driving licence. Without it, it’s impossible. And they said: We cannot help you. (…) For two years, I saved the money then and I asked so many people! Once I was even in (..) and asked the boss of AMS, I think, there was a meeting on women and public transportation – and we even went there. I said: I need the licence. Without, I cannot drive to work. – No. No way. – Then I saved the money myself, in March, I began and on the 15th of April, I passed the theoretical test. And by the end of June, I passed the driving test. And – at the end of August, I began to work. – Then, I went back to AMS, the guy didn’t believe I had a driving licence! Didn’t believe! (Interview protocol translated, 9).

This section on the interrelation between living conditions and gainful employment aimed to highlight the sometimes astonishing and sometimes well-known entanglements between diverse aspects of everyday life the individuals in both families were confronted with in their search for work. While it has been well researched that especially women in peripheral areas are disadvantaged due to restricted access to own means of transportation (Schwanen et al. 2015; Curl, Clark, and Kearns 2017), and in view of the results of many studies on refugees’ poor housing conditions (Kraal and Vertovec 2017), we were nonetheless astonished at the impact of political prosecution which expands transnationally and affects the chances of refugees significantly.

2.2. The meaning of sociabilities in peripheral places for finding work

According to the Bisultanov family, assistance provided by the state institutions in entering the labour market was limited to financing a forklift licence and language courses. The language courses were provided by an NGO operating nationwide. Otherwise, few or no services were accessible to the family. The former German teacher in the NGO in question was nonetheless significant enough for Lida to mention when we asked her to draw a graphic sketch involving all persons presently most important to her (for the method of qualitative graphic network analysis, see Scheibelhofer 2006). She referred to the NGO worker as a friend with whom she maintained contact. Such ‘sociabilities’ with long-term residents have been described in a study recently carried out by Nina Glick Schiller and Çağlar (2016). Referring to ‘sociabilities’, the authors described a situation occurring in disempowered cities in which all residents face limited institutional support and economic opportunities and in which social relations emerge between ‘newcomers’ and those who have been living there for a longer period. Glick Schiller and Çağlar found that ‘without well-funded institutions to assist in settlement, our respondents searched for individuals who might help them’ (Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2016; for this section including the next paragraphs, see 24 ff.).

In the case of the Bisultanovs, sociabilities with long-term residents resulted mostly from institutional spaces: While the former German teacher provided emotional support and friendship, the family also told us about their ongoing social exchange with their former landlord. During their asylum process, the family was sent to this landlords’ house as a requirement linked to their basic needs coverage. While significant research has been carried out on the often unhealthy living conditions in such former small hotels or private houses (Rosenberger and König. 2010), Mikail spoke highly of their former landlord who was still in regular contact with the family and had tried to help them find employment during this difficult period.

In rural Austrian areas, such sociabilities initiated in institutional settings seem to be highly relevant for refugees in terms of access to employment and labour: For example, Marjan had already been offered a small job helping out at the former boarding house when the family was still in the phase of basic needs coverage. By owner’s agency, Marjan met a resident who planned to emigrate to the United States. After months of continuous contact, he offered to rent his house to the family which he had recently inherited and which needed renovations. However, he asked the family only to move in after his departure, as, according to Marjan, he feared his neighbours’ reactions. Glick Schiller and Çağlar describe the sociabilities as ‘although the relationship was unequal in terms of social, economic, and cultural capital, both sides found sources of satisfaction’ (Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2016, 27). This may also be a fair description of the relationship between Marjan and another important local figure: Marjan managed to take out a loan and buy the house with the help of an employee of the local bank, who then became her friend. She recalled negative reactions on the part of the neighbours as to how a refugee family would be capable of buying property in their neighbourhood. Chatting before our interview, Marjan told us what had happened a week before when she had ordered a new front door online: Once delivered, Marjan and her husband Dariush realised that it would not fit as expected, and so Marjan called her friend, the bank clerk, and he readily came over and helped them fix the door into the walls. Marjan was able to establish a relationship that expanded from a mere customer-officer relation to friendship. In financial terms, providing Marjan with the loan meant substantial progress in her life now firmly established in this village.

While individual neighbours have so far not emerged in our research as ‘proximal sociabilities’ (Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2016), we encountered workplace sociabilities when talking with Marjan. Sketching out the map of important social relations during the interview, Marjan put her boss very close and struggled with the description of their social relation. On the one hand, she clearly perceived the owner of the restaurant and hotel where she was working as her boss, but on the other, she stressed that she would talk with the lady about anything, adding that they spoke about nearly everything in their daily chats.

Important and meaningful social relations are thus forged out in manifold ways: While living in the neighbourhood was (until then) not important, workplace-related sociabilities, as well as institutionally based social relations, were highly relevant to the interviewees. In the following section, we will discuss alternative forms of work that contribute to meaning-making and social relations in a transnational sense as well.

2.3. Work and its importance within and beyond market economy

Research on refugees and the importance of their ability to work in a market economy has been the main focus in much current research in this field (Willott and Stevenson 2013; Colic-Peisker and Tilbury 2007; Nunn et al. 2014). While many refugees stress the importance of being fully fledged members of society by means of stable (self-)employment, researchers involved in the sociology of work also point out how closely our value systems relate to work that is usually understood as gainful (self-)employment in a time of global capitalism (Hodson and Sullivan 2002; Beck 2014). For long, feminist researchers have emphasised that the distinction between unpaid reproductive work and paid work organised through the labour market is to be questioned in order to make visible the related gender inequalities (Ferrant, Pesando, and Nowacka 2014). Neoliberal restructuring renders the difficult access to stable work even more acute in the case of immigrants, as accessing social citizenship largely depends on labour market activity (Soysal 2012). Researchers interested in the nexus of sustained development and work also point to the social and ecological implications of actual labour market organisation (Aigner et al. 2016; Docherty, Forslin, and Shani 2002). While we do not want to question the importance of non-discriminatory access to the labour market, focusing exclusively on work provided through official labour markets may lead us to overlook practices that exceed our classic concept of work for both migrants and the long-settled population. If we define work too narrowly in the sense of gainful (self-)employment (for recent scholarly debates on this issue, see the articles in Docherty, Kira, and Rami Shani 2008), we may also miss out on activities that empower refugees by participating in society in various ways of working.

In the case of Marjan and Dariush, it was their specific practices of collecting and reusing goods that could be perceived as work in a broader sense. These activities proved highly valuable for Marjan, as they also variously induced appreciation from others. From their first lodging with an NGO onwards, Dariush went through the neighbourhood and brought home the goods they could use to furnish their rooms. Laughingly, Marjan recounted the story of NGO workers bringing interested visitors to her home because it was so nicely arranged. When Marjan gave me a tour of her house, she started by showing me the attic.Four vacuum cleaners were lying there, one beside the other along with bags full of clothes. The clothes were to be sent to a single mother and a friend of hers living in Marjan’s country of origin. Marjan said everyone would benefit this way: The people around her knew that she collected nearly everything and that they could bring her usable things they no longer needed. In turn, her friend was happy, as she could not afford the high-quality clothes and goods Marjan sent her. Marjan strongly believed in the moral value of reusing products of good quality. Regularly attending flea markets was a hobby she shared with her husband. Workers at the local waste disposal site put aside objects they deemed of interest to the Dadrian family, as they dropped by every now and then to pick up items that were still intact. Online, Marjan also checked the value of objects she had purchased and proudly showed me a bracelet her daughter wore during a brief chat in the kitchen with her mother. According to a well-known online marketplace, it had tripled in value since Marjan had bought it. She also highlighted that with her thrifty strategies, she could save a lot of money for the family budget to be invested in renovating their house. Her husband suffered from a walking disability and was only able to work two days a week as a taxi driver, thus contributing little to the family income.

The Dadrian family employed highly creative strategies that influenced their lives in manifold ways: Social recognition, meaning-making, transnational sociabilities and also making up for consumption needs that could not be satisfied due to the family’s financial situation were attained with such active strategies.

3. Concluding remarks

The aim of this paper was to highlight the opportunity structures and life chances that a society provides for refugees – by simultaneously focusing on the agency of refugees themselves when dealing with the socio-institutional settings they are confronted with. The case studies provided powerful examples of the complex intertwining between these settings. Legal regulations establishing certain categories of refugee and the consecutive social construction of ‘refugeeness’ have a considerable impact on the social positioning of refugees. This social positioning nowadays largely depends on refugees’ positions in the labour market. Such positions, however, are not solely the consequence of enhanced language skills, formal and informal qualifications and social skills to be attributed to refugees themselves. Rather, refugees need to act within (and/or against) certain environments that entail social, political and economic contexts. Agency is thus highly structured but not determined by these factors, as the qualitative interviews discussed above have shown. Taking the two families as examples, we identified the impact of specific scalar places they had chosen (based on their restricted life chances connected to the specific opportunity structures at hand): A province with complex socio-economic situations for all the residents living in peripheral places, with little industry, tourism or other employment opportunities, tends to be an even more difficult place for refugees to settle in as they face additional discrimination (discussed in line with intersectional research above). Seemingly minor obstacles, such as not owning a car or a driving licence, contribute significantly to labour market exclusion. Poor housing conditions that are shared with many others may also not be the best conditions upon which to continue the painstaking and long process of looking for work. In terms of emotional stability, this preliminary fieldwork showed that misinformation on or misinterpretation of residency laws can contribute to feelings of insecurity and instability. Even apprehended political prosecution for being ‘visible’ to foreign authorities may impede people from starting to work. This plurality of issues has been discussed above under ‘interrelations of gainful employment and broader living conditions’.

Based on this pilot study, and when focusing on the issue of work, we propose to more intensively integrate the concept of sociabilities into refugee studies. This concept was developed by Nina Glick Schiller and Ayşe Çağlar (Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2016) who brought forward three forms of how social relations between newcomers and others can be initiated, differentiating between sociabilities connected to institutional spaces, proximal and workplace sociabilities. While we found no cases in which neighbours would be important for ‘proximal’ sociabilities, the concept of workplace proximities and institutional proximities proved helpful. Based on the examples above, we also argued how such sociabilities contribute to finding and maintaining work for the interview partners.

We also established that defining work exclusively as standardised gainful (self-)employment in a market economy means falling short of important aspects of the social realities refugees are able to forge for themselves. As the case of the Dadrian family showed, alternative forms of work that are highly creative and empowering can contribute in many instances to the social facets we usually attribute to (self-)employment, such as providing oneself with economic resources needed for sustaining the family, securing respect of significant others, as well as finding and pursuing meaningful activities.

International studies have shown that, compared to the native population, refugees encounter either unemployment, underemployment, employment not matching their qualifications and/or substandard earnings. In order to understand these empirical results from the migrants’ perspective, a deficit-oriented approach is commonly adopted. Studies have generally compared the levels of formal education and found them to be lower for refugees. When migrants hold degrees, the national authorities frequently question whether the educational standards of their home institutions are comparable to those in the country of settlement. Seukwa has pointed out that such an approach does not allow to perceive the broadness of competences a person has been able to acquire through formal and informal learning processes (Seukwa 2013). Additionally, finding and maintaining a job requires a stable life situation that encompasses dimensions other than ‘only’ education and prior work experience. Based on our fieldwork, we also stress that the stability of the one’s living situation is a condition sine qua non for a refugee to be able to work in the first place (ibid. 12). Yet many more circumstances prove to be important, including the individuals’ living conditions, their financial and (perceived) legal situations and their families as well as a perceived transnational political threat.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For discussion, comments and critique of earlier versions of this article I want to thank Vicki Täubig, Andrea Fritsche, and Clara Holzinger.

2. The article is based on a qualitative study described in detail in Section 2 of this article see Scheibelhofer and Luimpöck (2016).

3. Their entanglement with other life spheres resonates well with the approach taken by Wissink, Düvell, and van Eerdewijk (2013), which identifies socio-institutional environments as crucial for the social positioning within a society. It builds on Carling’s concept and perceives the legal frameworks, the state authorities acting upon these frameworks as well as NGOs’ and other actors’ interventions as part of such a socio-institutional environment.

4. In this paper, we focus on this subgroup in order to conceptually clarify the basis of our argument. In order to overcome methodological nationalism in this respect, future conceptual work shall include the situation of undocumented refugees and those who are deported.

5. Since 1999, the asylum procedure in Austria has been standardised to a certain extent as a result of the EU working on a Common European Asylum System (CEAS) (for a discussion of the minimum agreements settled, see Ripoll Servent and Trauner 2014, 326; Asylum Information Database 2013, 8).

6. For a more detailed description of the pilot study and the region, see Scheibelhofer and Luimpöck (2016).

7. All names and details of the cases have been changed in order to maintain anonymity.