Zusammenfassung
A good part of self-description does not happen by means of outright identification or self-characterisation, but through comparison against other groups. Social groups and entities are only identifiable insofar as they can be cognitively and linguistically separated, and differentiated from, other entities. Two types of differentiations are made by the Zimbabwean migrants I encountered in the interviews vis-à-vis themselves and other groups.
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Notes
- 1.
While one’s home country often is idealized by migrants, it also happens that both countries, the country of origin and of destination, become the subject of idealization (Sayad, 2018).
- 2.
Some theorists of stereotyping make the point that stereotypes contain at least a “kernel of truth” (Perkins, 1979). T. E. Perkins (1979) emphasizes that taking stereotypes as simply erroneous, would mean to ignore their ideological content, which has analytical value in itself. The classical differentiations between type and stereotype by Walter Lippman (1956) or social type and stereotype by Orrin E. Klapp (1962), essentially should be regarded as a matter of degree (Dyer, 2009).
- 3.
I commented that often no clear differentiations can be drawn between references to the nation state and its people (e.g. Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans). To be precise, the formulation “people in South Africa” or “there are killers in South Africa” leaves it open which nationality those groups belong to. It, however, can be doubted that such differences are made in people’s colloquial speech.
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Kögel, J. (2024). The others: Comparisons to (Other) Collectives. In: Navigating Nationality. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43850-0_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43850-0_7
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