My research combines qualitative empirical research with theorizing and methodological innovation. My books study the identity of critical journalists (1999), anti-racist groups (2001), the recognition of cultural capital among high skilled migrants in a country comparative perspective (2014) and the sociology of global inequalities (2017).

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Global inequalities continue to be a challenge for sociology. Economists compare income in a country-comparative perspective. Sociologists study multi-dimensional inequalities bounded by a strong national welfare state. This has been criticized as methodological nationalism, since not all states are strong nor do most humans live in one state alone. In my latest book I argue that persons are situated in a plurality of contexts and that socio-spatial autonomy is a structuring dimension of social layers in the world.

My empirical research follows the multi-dimensional status passages of skilled migrants. Migrants do not only cross nation state borders. They also move through educational institutions and into labor markets. Often they start families at the same time. My empirical publications build on around 200 narrative interviews in Germany, Turkey, South Africa and Canada. The interviews were conducted in several research, Ph.D. and teaching projects, in particular a DFG-Project „High skilled migrants. Transnationalization of Social Layers“ (2002-2005) and the international study group „Cultural Capital During Migration” (2004-2009). My interest is in the ways in which legal exclusion structures educational and migration trajectories. In the DFG-project "Travelling knowledge: the glocalization of medical professional knowledge and practice" an international and interdisciplinary team studies knowledge with a focus on the transnational recognition of cultural capital and the glocalization of professional knowledge.

In terms of methods, I mostly work with the documentary method of analysis and I am interested in research designs that do not take the nation-state for granted. For example, I wonder how we can sample migrants and stayers comprehensively instead of ignoring the selectivity of migration, return and continued migration.

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