by Heinz Bude
10. Heinz Bude (2017), Society of Fear, Cambridge, p. 70.
11. Bertram and Deuflhard, Überforderte Generation.
12. Wilfred R. Bion (1991), Experience in Groups and Other Papers, London.
13. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (2014), The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, New York.
14. Karl Mannheim (1952), ‘Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon’, in idem, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, New York, p. 224.
The Established and the Outsiders
So far, talk has been of agitated public spheres, upwardly mobile groups and intergenerational relations, as if we were dealing with ethnically neutral or uniform collectives. Of course, in societies like ours, this is something we can no longer assume. We have long ago outgrown the ethnically homogenous milieu famously described by Joseph Schumpeter.1 With the exception of the distinctly xenophobic Japan, all the economically developed societies of the OECD are immigration societies in one way or another. There is no doubt that a classical immigration society like the United States has a different foundation to Great Britain, which still sees itself as the core nation of the Commonwealth, or to republican France, where French citizenship replaces all other affiliations, or to Germany, the ‘delayed nation’ that long resisted seeing itself as a country of immigration. There is no country that has not been affected by the great exodus in global society.
In each case, however, the key factor in determining social mood is how locals and immigrants – whether new or settled – get along. With migrants and refugees, a distinction is immediately made between country of origin and country of destination, between natives and newcomers, between locals and foreigners – and between ‘the established’ and ‘the outsiders’. Why some people feel entitled to tell others what to do, while others find themselves being told, and what this form of interdependency means for the national mood, is not so easy to understand as one might think.
Norbert Elias, the great theorist of the civilizing process, addressed this question in a seminal study on processes of power formation in an urban settlement, published in 1965 as The Established and the Outsiders. In 1960, together with John L. Scotson, who had worked as a teacher in the town, he had looked closely at social life in a typical English working-class community.2 Their research revealed a deep divide between a group of older residents and a group of newcomers, each of which lived in clearly distinct districts: the established residents here, the outsiders there. Elias and Scotson were interested in how a power balance emerged in which one side could feel powerful and the other side powerless. Contact with ‘them over there’ was avoided; scare stories were told about broken families, bad-mannered children and irresponsible parents, while people belonging to the anti-social group were denied entry to social circles like the church, clubs and the local council. In general, members of the established group saw themselves as pillars of the community, the cohesion of which was threatened by a lack of communal spirit on the part of the outsiders. Everyday gossip about the thriftlessness, promiscuity and hostility of the people on the other side of town played a central role in preserving the asymmetry between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ members of the local community. Bad behaviour on one’s own part was passed off as an exception; however, when the others behaved similarly, this was seen as typical of them. The sociologists observed that the newcomers adopted an attitude of bemused resignation and appeared to accept that here they counted as belonging to an inferior, less respectable and not particularly robust group. Even when commenting ironically about how mad the locals were, the subordinate group were clearly extremely vulnerable to attack.
How did the established come to act as if they were better, socially superior and more responsible, and to brand the outsiders as vulgar, spiteful and dissolute? In this case, the usual explanations for power imbalances – class, nationality, ethnic origin, religion and education – were of little use. Both groups belonged to the English working class and some even worked at the same company in similar positions. All that distinguished them was how long they had lived there. In other words: the established based their sense of power, entitlement and rank solely on the knowledge that they had got there first, and that they therefore had the right to demand that the others, the newcomers, fall into line. First come, first served. Whoever arrives later joins the back of the queue and waits their turn.
The law of social time is what, in the minds of the established, entitles them to treat the newcomers like outsiders, to condemn them as irresponsible, anti-social and uncivilized. Outsiders may be given the right to develop, however only according to the standards dictated by the established.
The established thereby indirectly admit that the outsiders can gradually reclaim the power of agency and collectively turn the tables on otherness. The accusation of civilizational deficiency begins to be countered by the accusation of narrow-minded arrogance, so that a stalemate in the power balance comes to seem possible. However, as long as the power gap between the two groups exists, the inferior group’s vilification of its counterpart, be it darkly satirical or deadly serious, remains essentially harmless. When it does start hitting its mark, then this is a sign that power is shifting from the rigidified establishment to the flexible outsiders.
At the beginning, however, is the simple claim to have been the first to arrive on a particular territory and thus to be superior to those who arrived later. While this claim can be backed by economic, military or political power, the power of the established is primarily and predominantly based on their will not to let their control over a space be contested by the presence of intruders.
The established therefore often observe the outsiders with a mood of supercilious apprehension, resentful intentness and stubborn inflexibility. There is no humour, no tolerance, no generosity. And what is the mood of the outsiders? The migrants avoid the locals, try to avoid talking about sensitive issues and, when they meet their compatriots in the square outside the station or in the café with the satellite TV, they dream of returning home. As long as the culture of the insiders holds no appeal, abandoning this hope would be too painful. Their hard labour in the foreign country is only tolerable with a suitcase under the bed. At best, locals and migrants live next door to one another: ‘How’s it going?’ asks the friendly student. ‘Could be worse,’ replies the migrant worker with a smile of resignation and reserve.
Günter Wallraff’s Lowest of the Low, published in 1985, changed things. Describing the life of temporary worker Ali, it forced the established public to admit that its mood of more or less friendly indifference was no longer tenable. Having placed an advertisement reading ‘Foreigner, strong, seeks work of any kind, including heavy and dirty jobs, even for little money’,3 Wallraff had entered the hell of agency work disguised as a Turk named Ali. Taking undercover journalism to its extreme, the book opened up a new perspective on the ‘established–outsider figuration’. Business reacted (working conditions for industrial cleaners markedly improved), politics reacted (the minister for employment made reforms a personal priority) and the unions, after initial hesitation, also reacted to what remains the bestselling work of non-fiction in post-war Germany.4 Its iconic cover shows the author complete with black moustache and a hard hat bearing the Thyssen logo; in the background is an industrial waste ground and, on the horizon, rooftops and trees. After that, migrants were treated as members of society and not just as a workforce.
In 1974, a decade before Wallraff’s book, the singer Udo Jürgens released the song ‘Greek Wine’, together with an album of the same name. The lyrics signalled a shift from indifference to empathy:
It was dark as I walked through the suburban streets. / Light from a bar was shining onto the pavement. / I had time and was cold, so I stepped inside. / Sitting there were men with brown eyes and black hair / And out of the jukebox came music that was strange and southern. / When they saw me, one stood up and offered me a drink. / Greek wine is like the blood o
f the earth. / Come, have a glass, / and when I get sad, / it’s because I’m always dreaming of home; / please forgive me.’
The guest detaches himself from the group of guests, buys the lonely host a drink, and explains why he, the guest, is so awfully sad.
A year after the publication of Wallraff’s bestseller, the author Aysel Özakin, who today writes only in English but who then wrote in German and Turkish too, criticized Wallraff’s use of the objectivizing and instrumentalizing term ‘Turk’. ‘Are we all repressed and naive?’ she asked. The postulated ‘we’ of the established was now opposed to the postulated ‘we’ of the outsiders.
Özakin based her argument on what today would be called ‘identity politics’. ‘I’m on the verge of losing my confidence and self-respect here in West Germany,’ she wrote. ‘Partly to blame is a well-meaning, humanist German progressive who wants to protect me (i.e. Ali) as a member of a minority and turn me (i.e. Ali) into an object of sympathy.’5 The mood of inclusion on the part of the established elicits a mood of resistance on the part of the outsider.
This shows how the power balance between locals and migrants shifts across generations, according to what extent the children and grandchildren of migrants claim their entitlement to respect and consideration in the recipient society. The articulation of rights now happens through the marking of difference. My individual particularity is connected to my conceptual otherness – and it is as such a complex person that I want to be honoured and respected.
That is why the headscarf can raise the question of individual identity. Muslim women claim a collective identity in order to emphasize their individuality. For outsiders, as with Aysel Özakin, confidence and self-respect can only be gained through the public declaration of group belonging. The ‘I’ attaches itself to a ‘we’ in order to become an ‘I’. For migrants, denying their own migration history is not an option; on the contrary, the question for them is how to capitalize on it.
Characterizing the history of the relationship between the established and the outsiders is from now on the search for a narrative for the new power balance: what do the established concede to outsiders and vice versa?
As long as the established treat the outsiders exclusively pedagogically, helping and supporting them to learn and catch up, nothing changes; equally, nothing changes as long as the outsiders annoy the established by demanding more and more while expecting less and less. All that happens is that a mood of mutual apathy and misunderstanding takes over.
A classic and highly instructive narrative for the new constellation is that of the lions and the foxes. The lions dominate the field, upholding the rules and guarding the entrances; the foxes move around inside the field, bending the rules and trying to get their foot in the door. The foxes have the ‘combative residues’, the lions take care of the ‘group persistence’.6 If necessary, the lions maintain law and order by force, while the cunning foxes are always in motion and causing a disturbance.
Members of the established group who regard themselves as lions understand that, without movement, deathly silence descends and, for that reason, they respect the foxes; outsiders who act like foxes respect the lions since, without orderly parameters, there can be no opportunities to exploit. The two don’t necessarily get on, but if they are honest they will admit that they depend on each other.
In this sense, the tense relationship between migrants and locals always entails competition between energetic status-seekers and defensive status-preservers.7 This seems less problematic during periods of collective upward mobility, when the escalator is on the way up, than in periods when some are getting more and more while others are getting less and less. Increasing income divergence and the emergence over the last twenty years of detached milieus locked into low social status8 harms the mood between migrants and locals in two ways. Among the locals, there are groups who feel threatened by the migrant foxes, who they see are doing well in business, catching up in education and competing sexually. For migrants, the distinction between the winners and losers of migration becomes increasingly apparent. Hoping that education and a cosmopolitan milieu will improve their children’s chance of social advancement and bring them higher status, the migrant middle classes are fleeing urban areas full of aimless youths and religious fundamentalist rebels. Across Europe, the civilized migrant lions are distancing themselves from the feral migrant foxes. The former want to go their own way, peaceably and cordially, while the others dream of ostentatious lifestyles and glorify the ‘community of descent’.
The question of who arrived first, so crucial in the distinction between the established and the outsiders, also plays a major role between migrant generations. Particularly between new and older migrants, it is immediately established who is at the top of migrant society and who occupies the second row. This underlies the ‘ethno-racism’ among migrant groups. In the playground, it can turn into violence between youngsters of different ethnic backgrounds; however, it is above all relevant when it comes to the regulation of publicfunded programmes and the granting of entitlements, where different migrant interest groups compete for the same ‘pots’ of money.
This was certainly the situation in Germany in the first half of the 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union, along with refugees from the civil wars in Yugoslavia, came streaming into the country. ‘Russian Germans’, ‘Turkish Germans’, ‘Vietnamese Germans’ and asylum-seeking refugees entered into mundane negotiations over who among the successive waves of migration was entitled to what benefits, pension payments and degrees of public attention. In this new playing field, who are the locals and who the newcomers?
Today, the question poses itself in connection with the refugees that have come to Germany in apparently incalculable numbers and who, when the borders were opened in late summer 2015 during the first idealistic phase of reception, were greeted with open arms by ‘biological Germans’ in Munich, Hamburg and Stuttgart. What did this gesture of hospitality towards migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Albania and Ethiopia mean for the Turkish, Greek and Italian migrants who had been living in Germany for generations? Had the conventional hierarchies of place been suspended, or was this just a brief episode of euphoria within a longer and more difficult process of reconciliation?
Above all, how do eastern Germans in eastern Germany feel about the events? Compared to established western Germans, easterners still see themselves as outsiders. Although they may have joined the Federal Republic formally, for them reunification has not meant being placed on an equal footing with the rest of Germany. The fact that the current German chancellor is from the east seems not to alter this impression. For many in eastern Germany, Angela Merkel has stopped being a representative and has become the agent of a foreign power. One swallow does not a summer make.9 It was the others, the inhabitants of mid-sized towns across West Germany, who got there first and who are still the ones responsible for the success of Germany’s high-productivity export economy. It is only when western Germans go to eastern Germany as professors, managers and theatre directors that they are seen as outsiders. Then it is they who, if they ruffle feathers, run up against the rules of the insiders. The first will never be last. If we try to understand the migration process in terms of the ‘established–outsider figuration’, then we inevitably encounter feelings of shame, envy, revenge and fear. All of this feeds into the mood of the moment.
Notes
1. Joseph Schumpeter (1951), Imperialism and Social Classes, New York (German original: ‘Die sozialen Klassen im ethnisch homogenen Milieu’ (1953 [1927]), in idem, Aufsätze zur Soziologie, Tübingen, pp. 147–213.
2. Norbert Elias and John L. Scotson (1965), The Established and the Outsiders, London.
3. Günter Wallraff (1988), The Lowest of the Low, London, p. 1.
4. Well over four million copies have been sold in Germany; the book has been translated into more than thirty languages.
5. Aysel Özakin (1986), ‘Ali hinter
den Spiegeln’, Literatur konkret 11: 6–9, here 6.
6. See the famous distinction made by Vilfredo Pareto (1963), A Treatise on General Sociology, New York, pp. 2057 and 2221. Pareto was himself referring to Machiavelli, whose use went back to the classical period.
7. Heinz Bude (2010), ‘Soziale Mobilität als zentrale Herausforderung moderner Gesellschaften’, in Vodafone Stiftung (ed.), Aufstieg, Gerechtigkeit, Zusammenhalt: Zu den Herausforderungen moderner Staatlichkeit, n.p.: pp. 56–65, 60.
8. Heinz Bude (2008), Die Ausgeschlossenen. Das Ende vom Traum einer gerechten Gesellschaft, Munich.
9. On the very limited advancement of East Germans into German leadership circles, see Steffen Mau (2012), Lebenschancen. Wohin driftet die Mittelschicht?, Berlin, p. 74ff.
The Feeling of the Sexes
When, in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Contempt, Brigitte Bardot tells Michel Piccoli to his face: ‘I hate you because you don’t move me’ – this comes after scenes in which the woman and the man take the game of seduction to its limit, where they talk endlessly about their love, where they come to blows in desperation, where they pledge their unconditional love – then this articulates a sense of the impossibility of an encounter between the sexes in ways that may say more about the historical moment of desire than birth rates, women’s employment rates or rates of divorce. In other words, in order to understand what was driving men and women, or people with other sexual identities, at any given moment, the biopolitical statistics need to be seen in the context of the mood between the sexes. What attracted them to one another, how did they relate, what did they expect from one another? The feeling of the world is always the feeling of the sexes.