Hi folks,
of course you are tired being asked for interviews. BUT this one should be fun and is different - let me promise you! For more details please do read the following letter.
Our goal is, to show as a result of our studie, how difficult the situation is in Germany for high qualified persons from abroad. Official institutions are going to learn from this to make things better ...
I'm very much looking forward to responses we do need desperately interviewpartners. (They are not easy to be found.)
So, thank you very much in advance und have a nice day
sincerely yours,
Ulli Ofner (ulof@zedat.fu-berlin.de)
P.S.our 'official' letter for more details
FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN
Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft u. Psychologie
Arbeitsbereich Interkulturelle Erziehungswissenschaft
Forschungsprojekt Kulturelles Kapital in der Migration

Dr. Ulrike Selma Ofner

Freie Universität Berlin
Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin (Raum KL 23/ 335) FU BERLIN

Zeichen: Of/es
Tel.: 030 / 838 56195

e-mail: ulof@zedat.fu-berlin.de
url: www.fu-ice.de/ab/staff/ofner.html




Ladies and Gentlemen,

we are looking for people willing to grant us an interview for our research project »Cultural Capital in Migration«. Since you are academically trained, we’d be glad if you accepted our invitation for an interview.

Ours is an interdisciplinary and internationally oriented team. We are financed by the Volkswagen Foundation (http://www.volkswagen-stiftung.de).

Highly qualified migrants contribute to the prosperity of »knowledge societies«, the most important capital of which is their members’ educational potential. Supporting and accepting professional degrees as well as facilitating formal entry regulations for immigrants opens opportunities for society. Limiting and neglecting these, on the contrary, can easily become a problem for all involved: The German labour market for instance is increasingly in need of high qualifications, but the Federal Republic so far hardly succeeds in recruiting academically trained migrants. The reasons for this discrepancy we intend to analyse in our study »Cultural Capital in Migration«.Therefore we’d like to have talks both with persons satisfied and those more or less unsatisfied with their job, their environment or the general situation in their country of immigration.

Since you are a highly educated migrant, we’d like to conduct a biographic interview with you. We don’t use a questionnaire because we are interested in whatever you’d like to tell us concerning the subject. Therefore we ask you for a non-prestructured [an unstructured] talk. It is a well-tried method letting the interviewees tell their biography without interrupting them and only asking questions afterwards. In any case] you are the one who decides what to talk about and what to leave out. Since we can’t trust our memory, we will be recording the interviews on tape. Of course, all data will be handled anonymously and in absolute confidence.

We aren’t solely motivated by scientific curiosity. The findings of our study are intended to improve the situation of migrants and will lead to recommendations for political and institutional action.

I’d be glad to meet you. Please contact me for further details or questions.

Yours sincerely,
Ulrike Ofner

P.S.: A few words concerning myself: After leaving Austria I studied Social Anthropology. My PhD thesis dealt with academically trained migrants of the so called 2nd generation of Turks.

Sure...why not.....btw, how much you are paying for each interview? :-)

as you know - something in live you don't get for money BUT in certain cases (to interviewpartners who are short off) we do pay 30 Euro ...
Thank you for your interest

I am not interested.

Hi trust7 members!

I would really appreciate if somebody would take the time to help with this study! At least it will be another small step to improve the life of foreigners in Germany and to open the eyes of the average Germans, how precious you are for our community :-)

Thanks
Detlef

@UOfner

Well, 30 € is not really much (except for 2 crates of delicious-german-beer ;-) ) , BUT to help the mankind and to open the eyes of the average Germans, I might be willing to immolate :-)

Just stumbled on this post now, looks like you're in Berlin so I will be willing to help. But I'm quite busy the whole day, so if you still want to go with it, we can arrange an appointment, just write me at daolwin on hotmail dot com.

D.

Czech beer is better than german beer.

Dear Akshay,

thank you very much for your humorous und nice reply. So I am waiting to contact you in a more direct way ...
In the meantime: Einjoy your beer - whether german or from abroad.
Have a nice evening
U.

Dear Dr. Ofner,

I'd have a simple (and almost rhetorical) question for you. Why are you repeateadly using the word "migrant" ?
I'd like to think it's because of lack of familliarity with the English language but I suspect it's not that. I'd bet you would use it in German as well.
To make things clearer, here's the relevant definition from Webster dictionary:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/migrant
(2. a person or animal that migrates.)
3. Also called migrant worker. a person who moves from place to place to get work, esp. a farm laborer who harvests crops seasonally.
Now here's the definition of the word I think it fits better:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=immigrant
1. a person who migrates to another country, usually for permanent residence.

Now, personally, I think that makes a lot of difference. It's the difference between someone comming to Germany just for a short period of time to get some work and than leaves, and someone that comes, maybe studies, works, pays taxes and "contribute to the prosperity of »knowledge societies«, the most important capital of which is their members’ educational potential" to use your own words, and **wants to stay/remain in Germany**, as this country becomes what it is also because of his work, effort, productive life spent here. He also builds future hier, a future in which he'd probably like to be included, maybe even his children or grand children...
It would be sort of fun and interesting to make a Freudian analysis of your choice of words (sorry, that sounds like a personal attack on you but it's not, I believe this thing can be seen throughout the whole German media)...
You might say that the word migrant fits because most of the people you address are young, and so they are in Germany for not enough time to be considered immigrants, maybe they are just passing by, and will leave after they won't be needed.... But you use the same word when you speak about "2nd generation of Turks". How can you call a migrant someone that was born here ?
Ironic is that some german people are leaving Germany for some countries they consider better. I bet that when/if they come back after 30-40 years, or when their children/grandchildren will come back, they won't be called migrants, but.. hmm...who knows... maybe "spätaussiedlers" ?

MrX - not interested to take part at your interview (but aproving/encouraging others to do so)

PS: I did pay attention that you are from Austria. So, do you consider yourself a migrant as well ? Welcome to the club... > (no, being from Austria doesn't count so much as comming from turkey, india, etc... because EU countries seem to be building a common future. At least I hope so...)

@mrx

Indeed it is an interesting question. In England the politicaly correct term is Immigrant, as opposed to Foreigner. In German, I would think that "Migrant" is better than "Ausländer", but the difference between "Immigrant" and "Migrant" is not as relevant as for the second point raised. The question is what to call people born here living with a foreign passport? They can not called German, because by definition of the Constitution, "German is, who the german citizenship has". And even when they have a German passport, sometimes they are referred as <Nationality> with a German passport, <Nationality>-German, etc.

I think part of the reason is that here citizenship and the ethnic are quite cohesive. In England, for example, you can be British without being English. But in Germany, it's hard to be German without being German, and even more if you are a first generation immigrant.

But the question remains, what would be a better term than Migrant/Immigrant, for a second generation "foreigner"? Resident? Inhabitant?

-a

hello again,
sorry, i was in a bad friday night mood when I wrote that tirade.
@aalvarez
I'd rather be called "migrant" by someone if this is the way he thinks about me than be called some made up politically correct word.
I wonder if there's another land where people that obtained citizenship and don't have another citizenship are called "<nationality of parents>-<nationality of current citizenship>"...
No, let me rephrase that, is there another land where it doesn't sound absurd/funny to call people in the above described situation like "<nationality of parents> with <current nationality> passport" ?

Hi, Leute,

Have a look for my case: (some points down, called "niederlassung Erlaubniss") - this is an excellent example that foreign Scientists in Germany is absolute "nichts" and must struggle with the people from Ausladbehörde (by the way, these burokrats in our Stadt even couldn't speak English - three classes of education oder...?)

Grüße

Dear "foreigners",

(I ' m an allien foreigner myself by the way) due to a longer absence I didn't have a look to new messages. Please forgive me !!
By the way: We are still looking for interview partners - frustrated or lucky ones ...

Have a nice weekend
sincerely yours,
Ulli