The role of language skills in the settling-in process – experiences of highly skilled migrants’ accompanying partners in Germany and the UK

ABSTRACT

The role of the family in the international migration of highly skilled migrants has often been disregarded. Highly skilled labour migrants follow a concrete job offer abroad and are structurally integrated into the new environment through the work place. On the contrary, the migration of family members is subject to different conditions since most accompanying partners initially do not work. However, accompanying partners are described as managers of the settling-in process of the whole family [Yeoh, Brenda, and Katie Willis. 2004. “Constructing Masculinities in Transnational Space: Singapore Men on the ‘Regional Beat’.” In Transnational Spaces, edited by Peter Jackson, Philip Crang, and Claire Dwyer, 147–163. London: Routledge] and their experiences can be crucial for the duration of their stay. Our paper explores the experiences of mobility of highly skilled migrants’ accompanying partners in Germany and in the UK with regard to their strategies and practices during the settling-in process. The main focus is on the role of language, the establishment of new social networks and labour market participation. The paper draws on the concept of capital accumulation and conversion [Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Education: Culture, Economy, and Society, edited by Albert Henry Halsey, 46–58. New York: Oxford University Press] and asks how partners make use of their cultural capital language after migration. Our paper is based on empirical studies in Germany and in the UK, which focus on the migration and settling-in processes of highly skilled professionals and their families.

KEYWORDS:

• Accompanying partners
• settling-in
• language
• qualitative study
• Germany
• UK

Acknowledgements

We thank our colleagues working with us in the German projects and who are co-authors of the article: Josef Nipper, Marius Otto, Carmella Pfaffenbach, Günther Weiss and Claus-C. Wiegandt. We are grateful for also having worked with Günter Thieme who passed away in 2014. We thank the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for funding our studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Names are synonyms.

 

Additional information

Funding

Both of the German studies were funded by the German Research Foundation (59336 and 564804). The UK-study was supported by a fellowship within the Postdoc-Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (91506276-50015191). Any opinion, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors.