| hard to refute, which have a positive bearing on future research. Seventh, then,—since migrants move from one locality to another, if we are to grasp what is happening it is better to look at both ends of the emigration process,—that is, to study the migrants in a "social field" which includes both the situation back "at home" and at their area of reception. At this point, they praise Mayer for using the idea of " social network" and propose this term as a way of guiding research by analysing a structure of social relationships in the amorphous "rural-urban" field which they have advocated. Mayer's account offers two contrasting types of migrant. The " Red" Xhosa are illiterate and lack the skills to do more than unskilled jobs, the demand for which is high in relation to the number seeking them. Hence, for several reasons, their values and ambitions remain centred on the village, and they confine their urban social network as far as possible to co- villagers and kin,—people like themselves. This perpetuates their isolation from urban norms and new social skills. Isolation reinforces isolation. The "School" Xhosa, on the other hand, are already literate and oriented to town values, so that they seek to exploit urban opportunities. Hence, they form open-ended urban social networks in addition to their home ties and, thus, are exposed to urban norms and values, which they must adopt to remain acceptable in urban situations. Two more unexceptionable propositions follow, both highly relevant to our discussions. Eighth, the form and nature of people's social networks change over time and, therefore, it is possible to relate certain stages in the life-cycle with certain kinds of social network. Ninth, occupation not only determines whom one meets, but also the degree of commitment to urban relationships. Self employed men, who do deals or need customers, must diligently cultivate a wide network for simple economic reasons. This paper, apart from its implicit warning against simple-minded models, makes very clear how little we know in detail about the social relationships of migrants in Europe, and suggests fresh and largely unexplored lines for research. Their fundamental point, which they stress at the end of their article, is the relation between the forms, types and quality of the social networks of immigrants, and the acceptance by migrants of the norms and meanings of the host society; and beyond this, the generation of new norms for dealing with the new social situations which migration creates for both migrants and natives. This process is plainly subtle and highly variable, yet absolutely fundamental to the way migrants become minorities. Such processes are not open to examination by simple precoded questionnaires, but can only be elicited, if at all, by "social immersion"—research of an anthropological |
| type,—where close personal links are established with a set of informants over a considerable period of time. The third task attempted in these papers may be called prediction, plausible guessing, forecasting or divination, according to taste. Successful analysis should make this possible. Some forecasting is simply statistical extrapolation from the present, but some depends on the assumption that social processes in train at present have been correctly identified, and without serious omissions. Bohning, for example, suggests tentatively that German racism is not dead. Present tolerance, which he suggests is related to a sense of guilt about the Nazi regime, may not survive indefinitely, especially since he predicts (plausibly) that the demand for labour will force Germany to recruit further and further afield, bringing to Germany people increasingly far culturally, and even, eventually, racially from the Germans themselves. Forecasting is essential both for "science" and for policymakers. But social forecasting is always difficult, given the range of complexity, and the ever-present possibility of untoward events. Fourthly, directly or indirectly the papers are concerned with what ought to be, or ought not to be, and in some cases with policies intended to achieve the one and escape the other. Lambert, for example, presents his account as if it were the inevitable result of social forces, yet, implicitly, also gives us the impression that he thinks the urban managers could have been more perceptive and reasonable. Deakin and others approve the shift in Britain away from the assumption that the aim is to make all the immigrants culturally indistinguishable from the natives as fast as possible, to an acceptance of amiable pluralism. They also imply that greater efforts could be made in the key fields of housing and education. This heterogeneity of aims and approaches, partly a result of the differences of disciplines and occupations, adds to the difficulty of producing mutually relevant and comparative papers. But the whole subject is made very much more difficult by the extraordinary speed with which aspects of the situation change. Already the tide of Italian migration to Germany has slackened, and Italians are being replaced by Turks, Greeks, Portuguese and, most recently, Yugoslavs. A German recession or a change in British law can transform a situation in a matter of weeks; and political events such as the electoral speeches of Mr. Enoch Powell in England in 1970 can alter at least the newsmen's view of the relations between "races". But even without startling events, change is endemic. After ten years the first immigrants who have remained are ten years older and are likely to have households and children born in the host country. Others have returned to give information to the compatriots, so that the later waves of migrants come with fuller knowledge and to positions prepared for them by their kin and neighbours,—even if, as Singh suggests for Indian students, the migrant |
| paints his success in somewhat rosy terms. In thirty years, the host society will have a crop of young adults born within its frontiers of immigrant parents. Serious empirical research is liable to be out-of-date before it is finally published, and even contemporary comment may appear misjudged before the ink is dry. So far, I have simply sought to point out the problems in achieving genuine intellectual co-operation in a field as complex as this one, — problems which derive from a heterogeneity of assumptions and aims, and from kaleidoscopic changes. In the course of these papers, a great many factors,—variables,—have been mentioned. To these I now turn. II - ON VARIABLES: THEIR SORTING AND RANKING One way of bringing home the difficulty of systematic and cogent study of the problems is to look at the variables which the papers have implicitly or explicitly discussed. Much sociological literature is full of references to variables, — dependent variables, independent variables, intervening variables, interdependent variables and so on. In practice, the possible variables in any given social event or social situation are legion; a finite list is never possible; and, moreover, the variables on any list are hardly ever mutually exclusive. It is often a relatively arbitrary matter whether we divide the "variables" into three or five or seventeen. Even if distinct variables can be listed with confidence, the relations between them may be so complex that to weigh their relative contribution in a causal sense may be impossible. Advances in conceptual analysis are almost invariably in the direction of correcting simplifications, — as Garbett and Kapferer's paper illustrates. To illustrate these points, I list some of the variables mentioned in the papers or in the discussion. 1. The Host Country (i) The economy: the degree of general prosperity, and wage rates. The level of employment: unemployment or over-employment, in particular, the kinds of jobs which are undermanned; these may be jobs natives dislike, as Haddon says, quoting Peach; or as Paci claims for North Italy, new sectors in new industries, which natives are slow or unwilling to move into. (ii) Political and administrative arrangements: here we contrast the rigorous and unyielding German arrangements for controlling immigrants, giving them jobs and houses but keeping them dependent and firmly defined as foreigners allowed on sufferance, with the British assumption that no special initial arrangements at all were necessary if British citizens who happened to be black,—or brown and non-anglophone, — chose to come to work in their mother country. As Lambert shows clearly, the existing |
| arrangements for housing, education and keeping order, not to mention, as he does not, also methods of selection for jobs, all forced the immigrants, without malice or intent, to become a distinct and underprivileged group in the society. (iii) Values, assumptions and attitudes: much more subtle and difficult to pin down are the attitudes, beliefs, values,—that is, the meanings which the natives attach to the foreigners' characteristics, and the resulting behaviour towards them. These are clearly not uniform, but vary in different sectors of the host society. Here history is clearly relevant, introducing a further unmanageable dimension. Some emphasise the relevance of the recent colonial past on both sides in the relationship. Bohning refers us to Nazi racism and xenophobia, and to the wartime experience of conscript labour. Raveau refers to French racism, and clearly here,too, the very recent colonial past is also relevant. The relation between emotional, possibly even biochemical levels of response, and explicit, cognitive level of ideas about the history and characteristics of oneself and the foreigners is complex, and even establishing for populations of mixed liberals and conservatives, permissive and authoritarian personalities, working class and owners, elites and intellectuals, what their assumptions, attitudes and beliefs are, is extremely difficult. It is a little facile, therefore, to offer to explain the differences in the reaction of Spaniards and Italians to the Dutch in terms of "difference of values", unless we can define the terms precisely and show empirically that two (or more) clearly different kinds of behaviour are correlated. (iv) (if indeed it is a separate variable from those already listed). The extent to which the immigrants are or become an "underclass" in the host society. Paci points out that many migrants from south Italy to the Lombardy have taken over skilled or even managerial jobs in new industries or new sectors of industry. Yet there are still enough unskilled relatively unsophisticated southerners in the North for their stereotypical reputation as an underclass to survive. 2. The Immigrants (i) What is the state of the economy in the exporting country relative to the host country? What is the level of wages and the level of employment? (ii) The method of recruitment. Who is chosen? How far can people choose freely to go? How far can people successfully draw their kin after them? How administratively precarious is their stay? (iii) What level of skill can the immigrants offer? How useful are they? How much investment is required to train them? |