Reframing Social Mobility: Context and Strategies Among Turkish Migrants in Germany

Reframing social mobility through transformation: the case of Turkish guestworkers in Germany

Studies of social mobility have long oscillated between two analytical poles: structural analyses emphasising class positions, occupational stratification, and the reproduction of inequality; and agency-centred approaches highlighting individual traits such as educational attainment and social networks. While both offer valuable insights, they often neglect affective, collective, and contextual factors (Bertaux, 1997: 231; Folkes, 2021; Vaid, 2021). In practice, structures and individual actions are neither independent nor static; both are embedded in political, economic, and legal contexts that evolve over time.

In this article, social transformations are defined as historically contingent restructurings of opportunity configurations – changes in institutional, political, and economic arrangements that reshape resource access, redefine reward systems, and disrupt inherited life strategies. Following historical institutionalism, these are not merely gradual shifts but critical junctures (Collier and Collier, 1991; Mahoney, 2000; Thelen, 1999) that destabilise dominant pathways and generate new trajectories. Such transformations alter not only what is possible but also what is imaginable, compelling actors to revise their mobility strategies.

The case of Turkish immigrants to Germany in the 1960s and early 1970s provides a rich lens for analysing how shifts in both origin and destination contexts shape social mobility. Migration – closely tied to changes in social status – is often a strategy for navigating limited mobility at home (Fortunati and Taipale, 2017), while relocation itself reconfigures the parameters of mobility. Thus, mobility fluctuates alongside societal upheavals in both countries. Although spatial mobility entails geographic movement, it frequently becomes a precondition for social mobility by reshaping symbolic and material dimensions of status. In this study, migration is viewed as both a spatial and a social movement: a process that simultaneously relocates individuals and reconfigures the opportunity hierarchies available to them. Crucially, aspirations for upwards movement – economic security, supporting kin, or enabling children’s futures – also motivate migration. Therefore, spatial and social mobility are treated as mutually constitutive, not separate domains.

Beginning in the 1960s, individuals facing barriers to upwards mobility in Turkey or seeking new opportunities for their families migrated under the guestworker programme with short-term expectations yet often navigated long-term settlement across two transforming contexts. In Turkey, vocational training systems, regional labour recruitment, and uneven development further conditioned mobility strategies (Abadan-Unat, 1976; Martin, 1991). As Sewell (1992) notes, structures comprise material resources and cultural schemas; shifts in both altered institutional conditions and migrants’ perceptions of what was desirable, attainable, or legitimate. Mobility strategies thus emerged through evolving contexts and interpretations.

From structure to narrative: unpacking mobility beyond measurable categories

Classical literature on social mobility typically conceptualises movement as a measurable transition between occupational or class categories, as seen in structural analyses (Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992; Goldthorpe, 1980), status attainment models (Blau and Duncan, 1967; Sewell et al., 1969), and social capital theories (Favell and Recchi, 2011). While valuable, these quantitative models often background the subjective nature of decision-making and the impact of historical ruptures, which rarely align with arbitrary age cohorts (Miller, 1998: 157). As individuals allocate resources based on complex family and group affiliations (Folkes, 2021; Hoskins and Barker, 2018), statistical variables alone cannot capture the ‘shadow careers’ alternative trajectories rendered impossible by contextual shifts—that are integral to understanding a life course (Vincent, 1997).

Moving beyond these limitations requires qualitative methodologies that evaluate mobility not just by the path taken, but by the unfulfilled objectives and ‘shadows’ left behind (Bertaux, 1989; Vaid, 2020, 2021). This interplay between structural constraints and unrealized trajectories is particularly evident in the narratives of Turkish migrants in Germany. Their migration was initially structured by rigid institutional frameworks and bilateral agreements (Abadan-Unat, 2002; İçduygu, 2012; İçduygu and Aksel, 2013). However, their subsequent lives involved navigating evolving labour markets and legal landscapes through habitus, resulting in nonlinear paths marked by uncertainty rather than straightforward progression (Bourdieu, 1977 [1972]; Friedman, 2016).

Consequently, this study redefines mobility less by upwards or downwards shifts and more by the continual reassessment of goals and the accommodation to paths not taken (Carpentieri et al., 2023; Folkes, 2021; Venumuddala and Kamath, 2021). By integrating the concept of shadow careers into the analysis of Turkish migrants, the research highlights how trajectories are shaped as much by what is foregone as by what is achieved (Vincent, 1997), offering a more nuanced understanding of how individuals navigate social transformations over time.

How stories were collected: a biographical-narrative approach

As Miller (1998: 161) notes, ‘mobility’ implies an ongoing process rather than discrete events. This study does not aim for statistical representativeness but provides situated insights into how individuals interpret mobility within shifting institutional contexts (Bertaux, 1997). It follows the biographical narrative tradition, which interweaves personal lives with structural transformations and attends to both constraints and agency (Bertaux and Thompson, 1997; Carpentieri et al., 2023; Chamberlayne et al., 2000: 7–10).

Data were collected between November 2018 and November 2019, through thirty semi-structured interviews conducted in several German cities. Participants, aged from their early 60s to late 80s, were reached through purposive and chain-referral networks, largely via Turkish community associations. Thirteen interviewees had worked in routine non-manual professions, while seventeen in skilled or unskilled manual jobs. All interviews were conducted in Turkish, audio-recorded with consent, transcribed verbatim, anonymised and approved by a university ethics committee.

Interviews followed a life-history format, allowing participants to recount trajectories from childhood to the present, and to reflect how mobility was reinterpreted under shifting socio-historical conditions. Participant observation offered a crucial complement to formal interviewing. Invitations to family gatherings, association meetings, and informal social events generated place-based narratives of mobility and revealed latent meanings that might not surface in interviews alone (Folkes, 2021; Venumuddala and Kamath, 2021). These encounters made visible paths imagined, tested, or abandoned, resonating with Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) view of agency as temporally embedded.

In several settings, participants’ adult children were present and offered spontaneous reflections on their parents’ practices – for example, one son contrasted his father’s long work hours and limited involvement in schooling with his own active participation in parent–teacher meetings. Such unsolicited comments illuminated shifts in notions of responsibility, success, and appropriate educational engagement across generations. Participant observation also exposed tensions embedded in transnational family networks. In informal conversations, participants described pressure from relatives in Turkey who feared losing remittances if spouses or children were brought to Germany, making visible the moral economy and collective negotiations shaping mobility strategies.

Cultural expressions further conveyed these dynamics in indirect yet powerful ways. One participant sang a folk song implying that a single inherited plot of land could not sustain numerous siblings, using the lyrics to communicate scarcity and the necessity of migration rather than articulating this rationale explicitly. Another participant recalled encountering his former teacher in Turkey after deciding to migrate, who reproached him by saying that had he known the participant would ‘serve them’ (Germans), he would not have educated him – an episode revealing how migration decisions were morally evaluated and symbolically charged within local hierarchies of value. Together, such non-verbal and narrative expressions demonstrate how obligation, loss, and hope were communicated culturally and relationally, extending beyond explicit strategic reasoning.

These encounters also revealed unexpected mechanisms of migration decision-making. In one gathering, a participant recounted that his application to migrate had been submitted not by himself but by a close friend from military service, and he only learned of it once the approval letter arrived – an example of how mobility trajectories sometimes originated outside individual intention. The analysis followed Strauss’s (1987) three-phase coding process – open, axial, and selective. First, data were categorised; second, thematically clustered; and third, integrated into an interpretive framework. Codes emerged inductively from the data but were informed by the study’s conceptual focus on temporality, transformation, and narrative interpretation.

This study does not treat narratives as transparent accounts of experience, but as co-constructed texts shaped by interaction, affect, and unconscious associations. Accordingly, interviews were read holistically, attending to contextual cues rather than coding participants’ statements as isolated ‘data units’ (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000). This interpretive stance aligns with Rosenthal’s (1993) view that life-story analysis must move between subjective meaning-making and the socio-historical structures that enable or constrain it. Such an approach is particularly appropriate for long-term migration trajectories, where mobility decisions are embedded in evolving institutional landscapes and cannot be reduced to linear cause-and-effect explanations. While it is not possible to demonstrate this for every participant, vignettes were used to render visible not only the chronology of events but also their structural linkages (see Bithymitris, 2025).

Contextualising mobility through historical events and policy shifts

Findings indicate that social mobility is complex and unstable, lacking an organised and linear scheme despite common assumptions, and that strategies and experiences are shaped by the interaction of social and individual contexts. In this respect, the narratives resonate with Savage and Flemmen’s (2019) argument that linear models of social mobility no longer adequately capture lived experience. Rather than unfolding as predictable upwards or downwards trajectories, mobility in these accounts appears through interruptions, reversals, and turning points, repeatedly reshaped by historical ruptures and shifting opportunity structures. As Bertaux and Thompson (1997: 19) note, survey-based approaches often treat individuals and families as ‘black boxes’ with limited variables; by contrast, a narrative approach allows these processes to be unpacked within their specific contexts. With this in mind, the following sections review how contextual shifts interact with individual circumstances to shape mobility strategies.

At the crossroads: entering the labour market as guest workers

When Hasan arrived at the Stuttgart train station in 1969, the only thing he carried was a small suitcase and a letter stating which factory would employ him. He left behind a life of agricultural labour, an aging father depended on his remittances, siblings whose schooling he hoped to support. The recruitment officer explained the rules: long shifts, shared dormitories, and on tract renewal conditional on performance. Hasan recalled standing in the cold and thinking, ‘This is not my world, but I have no other way forward’. Learning unfamiliar machines and navigating ethnic hierarchies on the shop floor, his early decisions – whether to stay, remit earnings, or reunite with family – were experienced as personal choices shaped within externally imposed conditions. Arrival thus marked a crossroads where necessity, obligation, and historical circumstance converged.

This vignette illustrates how first-generation migrants entered Germany through a structurally defined recruitment regime. Bilateral labour agreements, employment offices, and contractual restrictions set the parameters of entry, while scarcity in Turkey and familial obligations shaped migrants’ responses within these constraints. Early mobility decisions were therefore neither free choices nor mechanical outcomes of structure, but strategic adjustments made within a limited field of possibilities.

Across the findings mobility dynamics are linked to specific historical events, supporting Elder’s (1974) insight that life trajectories are co-shaped by historical contexts and individual biographies. The analysis is organised around critical junctures (Collier and Collier, 1991; Mahoney, 2000) and institutional mechanisms that shaped mobility across generations. Entry into the German labour market under the guestworker regime and the subsequent misrecognition of skills are first traced. Macro-level ruptures – including reunification, the introduction of the Euro, and legal hierarchies – are then examined in terms of how they reconfigured security. This is followed by an analysis of how migrants themselves defined mobility and how families recalibrated aspirations across genders and generations. Finally, the ways in which political and economic crises in Turkey repeatedly reshaped the horizon of return are examined. This is a realistic examination of the alternative trajectories individuals take – or are prevented from taking – due to contextual changes, what historical institutionalists conceptualise as ‘critical junctures’, moments when dominant paths are destabilised and new directions become thinkable (Collier and Collier, 1991; Mahoney, 2000) rather than what they romantically aim for.

Between the 1960s and the end of recruitment in 1973, Turkish immigrants’ initial placements were determined largely by bilateral agreements and employment offices (Abadan-Unat, 2002: 42–43). Most aimed to accumulate economic capital for improvement in Turkey rather than pursue upwards mobility in Germany. The guestworker programme institutionalised temporary spatial mobility: contractual conditions discouraged settlement, and aspirations were oriented towards remittances. This economic habitus was later recalibrated as contexts changed (Bourdieu, 1977 [1972]).

Assignments were shaped as much by government negotiation as by individual ability. Interviewees, especially skilled manual workers, noted that Turkish authorities undervalued them and placed them in positions below their previous experience:

(the migration process) could have been a steppingstone for us. However, Turkey was overwhelmed by the labor migration agreement in 1962. Because, politicians and the other administrators of the process were completely immoral people. If Turkey could have shown its strength (Male, 70, Higher Technical Institute, Skilled Manual Worker).

Entry into the labour market was only the first barrier. Many faced credential misrecognition: their qualifications became illegible within German institutional schemas. This illustrates Sewell’s (1992) dual structure of institutions-material rules and cultural schemas that render competence recognisable or invisible.

Disqualified or misrecognized: skills lost in translation

When Murat began working in a mid-sized engineering firm near Düsseldorf in the early 1970s, he assumed that his technical diploma from Turkey would open the same doors abroad. Instead, he found himself assigned to repetitive manual tasks, supervised by foremen who doubted his competence because he spoke little German. ‘They thought a Turk couldn’t handle precision work’, he recalled. During his first weeks, he struggled not with machinery but with being seen. Instructions delivered too fast, evaluations made too quickly, and credentials understood too narrowly meant that his prior expertise was nearly invisible. Months later, after solving several production-line problems and training new workers, a supervisor admitted: ‘We didn’t know you had this much skill’. The belated recognition brought a salary raise, but not the sense of professional continuity Murat had expected. His story reflects a common disjuncture: skills that were solid at home dissolved into uncertainty upon arrival, only slowly reassembled through performance rather than status.

This vignette illustrates how migrants’ qualifications were not simply overlooked but actively misrecognized within institutional contexts structured by linguistic hierarchies, credential regimes, and cultural schemas (Sewell, 1992). Here, the structural dimension lies in the institutional rules and evaluative frameworks that define what counts as ‘skill’, while agency appears in migrants’ efforts to make competence visible through performance under constraint. Skills did not merely fail to ‘transfer’; they were re-coded according to host-country logics of worthiness, producing a structural gap between lived competence and formal recognition. This gap shaped not only first-generation trajectories but also how mobility strategies were recalibrated across generations.

Interview data show that both skilled and unskilled workers struggled to demonstrate competence under these conditions. The obstacles were not simply linguistic, they were embedded in institutional schemas that structured the recognition of skill and determined who was deemed ‘qualified’ beyond the possession of formal credentials (Sewell, 1992). Contrary to Contini’s (1997: 199) argument that skilled migrants anticipate status loss, many interviewees were unprepared for how rapidly migration could devalue their expertise. This account demonstrates that agency operated primarily through adaptation and endurance rather than through structural transformation. Recognition was possible, but only after prolonged exposure to institutional evaluation, and it remained contingent and reversible:

They even said this Turk cannot do our job, our job is very sensitive. Since he’s thinking I don’t know German, the foreman, the Meister, speaks a little quickly. The manager was saying, ‘If he doesn’t know, we’ll fire him out’. That easily . . . But six months later, the situation changed . . . They saw that I could overcome the job. I even got a salary increase in six months (Male, 73, Higher Technical Institute, Skilled Manual Worker).

Historically, migrant labour systems relied less on certified qualifications than on physical capacity and immediate labour demand. During Germany’s industrial expansion, unskilled workers could integrate rapidly without formal diplomas, provided they had good health and met physical requirements, integrating into the workforce within a month. Over time, however, bureaucratization and credential inflation transformed access conditions. For the children of migrants, entry into the labour market increasingly depended on formal education, workplace certification, and social networks – forms of capital central to navigating institutional fields (Bourdieu, 1977 [1972]).

. . . He (his son) started working in that profession, and that workplace became a requirement. They said, ‘You have to upgrade your diploma,’. Then he went to school for three years to rise to the next level as a salesman (Male, 62, Primary School, Unskilled Manual Worker).

While misrecognition shaped early occupational positioning, later political and economic ruptures in Germany – particularly reunification and monetary integration-introduced new instabilities. These critical junctures (Collier and Collier, 1991) disrupted established strategies, demonstrating that even trajectories slowly stabilised through effort remained vulnerable to macro-level transformations. Mobility here was neither linear nor cumulative, but contingent on shifting institutional logics that continually redefined what counted as skill, qualification, and advancement.

Wall comes down, wages fall: Berlin, Euro, and the collapse of security

In 1990, after twenty-six years in the same factory, Ahmet was called into the manager’s office and told that the company was relocating part of its operations to East Germany. The decision was presented as inevitable: ‘We’ve merged-your department will move’. His wife worked nearby, his daughter was in school, and commuting across the newly opened border was impossible. A week later he received a letter: accept relocation at a reduced wage or take the severance package. ‘My hourly rate was twenty-three marks’, he said. ‘In the new factory, it would be eight-twenty. They could hire three people with my salary’. For decades, his job had anchored his family’s stability. Overnight, it became precarious. What had once been a predictable path of gradual advancement suddenly dissolved, replaced by relocation, wage cuts, and an economy reorganizing around a reunited Germany.

This vignette captures how macro-level transformations – German reunification, sectoral restructuring, industrial realignment – penetrated everyday working lives, destabilising expectations built over decades. These shifts also constituted a critical juncture (Collier and Collier, 1991) in which established institutional paths lost traction and individuals were compelled to reassess their strategies. For many interviewees, neither seniority nor skill offered protection; structural change redefined what forms of mobility were possible or even thinkable. Agency at this point did not take the form of advancement, but of choosing between constrained options and limiting losses.

Participants linked these disruptions not only to reunification but also to monetary restructuring following the introduction of Euro, which they perceived as eroding purchasing power and intensifying competition. These changes not only cut opportunities but also redefined what was imaginable or attainable professionally, reflecting Mahoney’s (2000) view that structural shifts recalibrate institutional paths and actors’ strategic imagination.

Until the Euro came into circulation . . .. factories shrank or moved to other countries. Then even the young people here started to look for jobs in other countries (Male, 62, Secondary School, Unskilled Manual Worker).

At the same time, legal transformations associated with the Maastricht Treaty reconfigured access to employment. While EU citizenship expanded mobility rights within Europe, third-country nationals faced increasingly conditional access to work and welfare (Sales and Gregory, 1999: 97). Interviewees described how labour hierarchies were formalised through citizenship-based priority systems:

A law was enacted here . . . For a vacant position, German citizens had the first priority. If they did not accept, EU citizens ranked second, and if they refused, other foreigners came third. At that time, I was working as a foreman for a cleaning company. The director of company gave us a paper explaining this rule. We were responsible for hiring and firing workers (Male, 53, Primary School, Unskilled Manual Worker).

Contrary to assumptions that only unskilled workers were affected, professionals also experienced insecurity. Although fields such as medicine and engineering involve globally transferable expertise, their value remained contingent on immigration regimes and shifting labour demand. As Vincent (1997: 110) notes, credentials alone cannot secure stable trajectories when institutional conditions fluctuate:

I specialized in general surgery and anesthesia. In the meantime, I worked in hospitals for ten years. They hired me even though I came as a tourist. Because they needed physicians. Ten years later, this had to be reduced. They tried to send foreigners back. I did not want to go (Male, 79, Faculty of Medicine, General Surgeon and Anesthesiologist).

In response, professional strategies shifted from advancement to preservation. Rather than upwards mobility, many sought to retain their positions, recalibrate expectations, or explore alternatives. Here, agency operated defensively-through endurance, adaptation, and risk management-rather than ascent. These contractions reshaped individual careers and intergenerational aspirations, as parents adjusted educational advice and future planning to declining stability and intensified competition:

I told (the officer at the immigration office), I wouldn’t leave out of spite. He said if you don’t go, I won’t let you work here, and he didn’t. I found many jobs, they approved me but asked for work permission. Two days later, they said that we could not get permission. Why? It’s obvious because they blacklisted me. I thought, ‘Here, I can do many . . . I can try all the possibilities. I already have improved my German, I have some money, and I can go into business’ (Male, 79, Faculty of Medicine, General Surgeon and Anesthesiologist).

As these structural shifts eroded predictability, participants evaluated mobility less in terms of occupation or income, and more through dignity, recognition, obligations, and access to rights. Mobility, thus, became less about moving ‘up’ than sustaining a viable life under institutional uncertainty.

What mobility means: economic, familial, and symbolic dimensions

When Mustafa first heard stories from the early returnees in the late 1960s, mobility appeared almost mythical. ‘They described Germany as if people were flying in the air’ he recalled. Polished shoes, neat suits, and gifts handed out during summer visits convinced him that a single journey abroad could transform one’s fate. Yet stepping off the train in Germany brought a quiet disillusionment: ‘What they told me and what I saw were nothing alike. Had I known, maybe I would not have come. Still, his understanding of mobility gradually shifted from dreams of personal advancement to familial responsibility. “We raised five children here” he said. “We brought three sons-in-law from Turkey and helped them settle” Economic mobility was measured in dignity and obligation: We married off our children without debt . . . Thank God, we were never embarrassed in front of anyone’. Over time, mobility came to mean maintaining family honour, meeting transnational expectations, and keeping kin afloat across two countries. ‘Sometimes mobility is not about moving up’, he concluded quietly, ‘but about keeping your family standing without shame’.

Participants’ accounts reveal that social mobility was not a single process but set of meanings constructed within structural constraints. Economic mobility referred to securing stability – financing weddings, avoiding debt or supporting relatives in Turkey. Familial mobility involved fulfilling kin obligations, facilitating migration, and sustaining transnational networks. Symbolic mobility emerged through the status associated with being an Almancı in Turkey, while cultural and lifestyle mobility captured access to public services, cultural participation, and everyday autonomy unavailable in Turkey. Together, these dimensions indicate that mobility extended beyond occupational advancement to include responsibility, dignity, and lived experience.

Rather than individual achievement, participants framed mobility as a relational, household-based project (Sönmez, 1998) shaped by obligation. Economic success was often measured through care for others:

Looking after the family became increasingly fell on me. We were the ones earning money (Male, 70, Primary School, Unskilled Manual Worker).

We didn’t spend the money on ourselves. Every year we paid for one of my brothers-in-law’s weddings. Twenty thousand marks for just one wedding. My father-in-law would get them engaged in the winter, and in the summer we would marry them off. We bought everything for them, from top to bottom (Female, 68, Literate, Cleaning Worker).

Mobility also carried a powerful symbolic dimension. For some mobility was primarily about escape and security, especially during periods of political turbulence in Turkey:

I had a home in İstanbul, an apartment of my own. Our work was going very well. Our living conditions were stable. We had a car at a time when not everyone did. Our circumstances were not such that we needed to come here. But Turkey was going through very turbulent political times. The universities were in revolt – demonstrations, unrest. Turkey’s conditions were deteriorating; there was no choice but to escape (Female, 80, School of Nursing, Midwife–Nurse).

Still others framed mobility in terms of cultural participation, autonomy, and freedom of expression, highlighting a shift from material to experiential and civic forms of mobility:

Here in Germany, you don’t have to be rich to read books, go swimming, go to the theater . . . I used to read the newest books in our library. But in poorer countries, if you are not rich, you cannot do these things. If you live on the outskirts of the city you cannot go to the theatre in the evenings in Istanbul. Transportation is simply not developed enough. But in Berlin, you can. Going swimming here costs at most three euros. In Istanbul, you would have to go to a hotel or a member of a club; otherwise, it’s not possible. Here you can speak freely. You can say it directly to Merkel: ‘We’re not satisfied with you; you didn’t handle this policy well’. She wouldn’t feel insulted. Someone who served twice as a minister lives in my neighbourhood. I saw him in the park the other day (Female, 65, Institute of Education, Teacher).

Taken together, these accounts show mobility as a multidimensional process shaped by structural conditions and reinterpreted through everyday practice. For many, mobility meant building a dignified life, fulfilling familial duties, and accessing freedoms rather than climbing an occupational ladder.

Participants also described a generational shift what ‘counts’ as mobility. Based on their accounts of their children, younger cohorts were perceived to value autonomy, rights, and civic participation alongside material security. While first-generation migrants framed success through sacrifice and reliability, participants depicted their children and grandchildren as emphasising recognition, credentials, and confident public presence an orientation resonating with Sennett’s (2008, 2009) account of individualised meritocratic cultures. These intergenerational contrasts are not merely biographical accidents but reflect a more profound shift in how ‘success’ is understood. As stable career paths erode (Sennett, 2009: 8–9), individuals are compelled to ‘improvise their own story’ in the absence of stable institutional frameworks. As collective occupational identities decline, criteria of achievement increasingly shift from socially validated vocational roles towards personal performance and self-realisation (Sennett, 2008: 126–128, 2009: 10). In this sense, later generations’ orientations reflect not simply adaptation but a historically situated redefinition of mobility shaped by neoliberal cultures of agency and merit.

As one participant put it, ‘The younger ones don’t bow to Germans; they stand up to them’, signalling a shift from survival-oriented compliance to self-assured positionality. These meanings were negotiated within households and across generations, where gendered compromises, kin obligations, and recalibrated aspirations translated structural constraints into everyday strategies.

Mobility within the family: intergenerational and gendered dynamics

When Selma and her husband migrated in the late 1970s, she carried a law degree and the expectation that her professional status would travel with her. Instead, she discovered that public-sector positions were legally closed to foreigners – even after naturalisation. ‘I could have been a judge in Turkey’, she recalled, ‘but here the only door open led to office work’. Her downward mobility coincided with her husband’s upward trajectory, and the household adapted: his career became the strategic priority, hers the quiet compromise that kept the family afloat. Years later, when their daughter approached university age, Selma hesitated to recommend her own path. She encouraged her instead toward fields that were locally recognised, institutionally permeable, and less vulnerable to political shifts. Her life story captures how aspirations are not simply inherited but refracted through shifting structural constraints, recalibrated expectations, and the emotional labour of preparing children for futures shaped by borders and policies beyond their control.

This vignette illustrates how intergenerational aspirations are shaped by structural barriers, gendered negotiations, and recalibration rather than linear value transmission. Parents actively redefine what counts as ‘success’ under changing political and economic regimes. In Sewell’s (1992) terms, actors revise their schemas and strategies as contexts shift – what was attainable for the parent may be foreclosed or newly possible for the child. Hesitation, redirection, and recalibration thus emerge as key mechanisms in intergenerational mobility.

Although labour market fluctuations may appear temporary, they often have lasting effects on how migrants evaluate their children’s prospects. Even when parents and children ultimately occupy similar class positions, the mechanisms shaping their trajectories differ. Focusing on outcomes alone obscures the emotional labour behind decision-making, the uncertainties shaping strategy, and the recalculations triggered by shifting labour markets. Personal narratives instead reveal how parents redefine what constitutes a ‘secure’ or ‘realistic’ future under changing conditions.

One interviewee described how he redirected his daughter’s education as prospects for physicians declined:

Our profession lost its attractiveness . . . There was a surplus of physicians. After that, I discouraged my daughter from becoming a physician (Male, 79, General Surgeon & Anesthesiologist).

Intergenerational recalibration extended beyond education. Family obligations - supporting parents in Turkey, assisting siblings, or financing the migration of other family members – frequently redirected strategies. Earnings were embedded in a kinship economy rather than treated as individual resources:

My father always asked for money . . . If I didn’t send it, it would be a problem. If I sent it, it was also a problem (Male, 70, Primary School, Unskilled Manual Worker).

Age also mediated opportunity. Younger migrants were recruited more easily, while older siblings were excluded, generating new responsibilities and strategies for those who were able to migrate:

My two older brothers were too old to be hired. I said, let me go first so I can bring them. Later I wanted to return, but they said, ‘How can you leave us?’ I stayed for them (Male, 83, Technical Draftsman).

Together, these accounts show mobility decisions as relational negotiations rather than individualised calculations. Aspirations, obligations, and constraints were shared across kin networks, shaping who migrated, who stayed, and who sacrificed prospects.

These negotiations were deeply gendered. Several women described migration decisions controlled by extended family, especially parents-in-law, who framed women as indispensable agricultural and domestic labour. Women’s mobility was negotiated through moral discourses of care, and necessity rather than aspiration, with careers subordinated to household strategies prioritising husbands’ stability. As one woman recalled when expressing her desire to join her husband in Germany:

Two hundred sheep, five hundred chickens . . . Would my father-in-law ever let us go?(Female, 68, Literate, Cleaning Worker).

Gender also shaped children’s education. Even when opportunities arose, families prioritised proximity, supervision, and perceived safety over educational achievement. Importantly, these decisions were independent of financial constraints.

She had been accepted to Frankfurt University . . . but we asked, how would she go back and forth? If it had been nearby, maybe we would have said yes (Male, 62, Middle School, Unskilled Manual Worker).

Regional political differences further intersected strategies. As Contini (1997: 197–198) notes, opportunity structures varied across federal states, prompting relocation towards more accommodating regions:

This state was under the rule of Christian Democrats, who did not like foreigners that much. They did not give me a residence permit . . .. After moving to another state I was able to find a job (Male,79, Faculty of Engineering, Computer Engineer).

Migrants often clustered where kin networks already existed, using co-residence to reduce institutional risk and uncertainty. As one woman noted, because her husband’s relatives were already settled in the area, ‘they said, let us stay together’, a decision that ultimately anchored the family there. Overall, these narratives show mobility aspirations as dynamic rather than individualised, evolving through structural constraints, family obligations, gendered expectations, and age-specific opportunities. Mobility thus reflects not only what migrants pursued but what they learned to postpone, redirect, or relinquish under uncertainty. Political instability and economic crises in Turkey further re-entered decisions, rendering return migration a shifting horizon as education, institutional access, and labour markets reshaped family strategies.

When home becomes unreachable: how Turkey re-entered the picture

Ali and his family had packed their suitcases and bought return tickets after five years in Germany. ‘Two more days’, he told his wife, relieved that their temporary journey would soon end. But that Friday evening, the television showed chaotic images from Ankara – rumours of a coup, soldiers on the streets, and a country in turmoil. His German was limited, the news confusing. ‘Don’t come back’, friends urged by phone. ‘Wait until things settle’. They unpacked their luggage and sat in silence. One political rupture erased the future they thought they were returning to. For Ali, home had suddenly become unreachable – not because he no longer wanted it, but because the conditions that made return meaningful had collapsed overnight.

This episode illustrates how political transformations in the country of origin – coups, military mobilisation, economic crises – re-entered migrants’ mobility strategies. Return was rarely a stable endpoint; it was reshaped by cross-border volatility. As Wingens et al. (2011) argue, aspirations develop within context-specific opportunity structures; when these shift, imagined futures are recalibrated. Here ‘home’ emerges not as a fixed destination but as a contingent horizon repeatedly re-entering decision-making. Decisions to return, stay, or postpone were therefore not expressions of free choice but forms of agency under uncertainty – ways of repositioning among constrained options. They also functioned as narrative practices through which participants made sense of sacrifice, responsibility, and moral worth. Mobility thus emerged not only as movement between positions but as a means of narrating and legitimising life choices under uncertainty (Savage and Flemmen, 2019).

Political ruptures did not produce uniform outcomes. As Ali’s case shows, instability could suspend return indefinitely. Yet similar shocks sometimes produced the opposite effect. For some, forced them to remain in Turkey, severing positions in Germany. One skilled worker described how military mobilisation during the Cyprus conflict interrupted his trajectory:

They said, ‘You are a ready soldier; stay here’. I waited eleven months. I thought I would not be able to come to Germany anymore (Male, 68, Anatolian Technical High School, Skilled Manual Worker).

Beyond these contrasts, participants described decision-making as fragile and interrupted. Mobility unfolded not as linear progress but through repeated recalibration – cycles of leaving, returning, rebuilding, and abandoning plans. Economic aspirations, could collapse abruptly. One participant returned to Turkey to invest savings from years of work in Germany, hoping to secure stability by opening a workshop with his father-in-law. This plan collapsed when the 1999 İzmit earthquake destroyed both the business and his assets:

We opened a lathe workshop . . . Then the earthquake happened. We were destroyed (Male, 70, Primary school, Unskilled Manual Worker).

After this loss, he returned to Germany not as an investor but once again as a wage worker, showing how shocks reversed trajectories and pushed individuals back into positions they believed they had left.

Placed together, these narratives show that decisions as rarely simple responses to incentives. They were emotionally charged, morally negotiated, and contingent on unpredictable events – from military mobilisation to natural disasters. Movement between countries reflected not indecision but repeated efforts to limit losses as political, economic, and familial contexts redefined what was possible or necessary. Mobility trajectories thus appeared recursive, shaped by repeated interruptions and strategic reassessments. Other ruptures further altered strategies. Unexpected illness, caregiving responsibilities, or sudden financial strain transformed temporary plans into long-term settlements. One participant explained how his brother’s illness made return untenable:

My brother became seriously ill. I needed stable income. Returning to Turkey and starting again was impossible, so we stayed (38, Male, 73, Skilled Manual Worker).

Economic crises also reshaped mobility and investment strategies. The 1994 currency crisis in Turkey dramatically altered the value of savings accumulated in Germany. As the lira lost half its value (Özatay, 2000: 327), migrants reassessed cross-border investments:

I had forty thousand marks . . . After the devaluation, it doubled in Turkey. I bought property, and later exchanged it for a house here (Female, 65, Education Institute, Teacher).

Taken together, these accounts show mobility as rarely linear or final. Trajectories unfolded as recursive negotiations between structural shocks and constrained agency, where political ruptures, economic volatility, health crises and family obligations repeatedly reshaped what counted as security and success. In line with Vincent’s (1997), aspirations emerged from concrete constraints within specific contexts. From a life course perspective (Wingens et al., 2011), mobility strategies developed through shifting opportunity structures rather than predetermined paths.

What appeared as temporary fluctuation often generated multiple potential trajectories – reversal, postponement, renewed migration. As Strauss (2017: 31) notes, mobility involves repeated changes of direction rather than cumulative progress. Strategic adjustment thus became a resource, while ‘return’ remained symbolically meaningful yet practically elusive.

Conclusion: toward a contextual sociology of mobility

Favell and Recchi (2011: 51) argue that quantitative and qualitative methodologies capture different dimensions of social mobility. While one documents the beginning and end points of a trajectory, the other reconstructs the journey itself. They also note,

Sadly, preferences in the debate and the conclusions drawn are often tied dogmatically to the methodological option chosen, yet both observations may be truthful – like Schrodinger’s famous cat – if one approach is seen as a snapshot of an emergent process, and the other as a depiction of temporal stability. (Favell and Recchi, 2011: 53–54).

Similarly, Bertaux (1997: 251) cautions that studies based on historically consistent Western context often treat context as static, focusing on family of origin and individual achievements while assuming little change.

This qualitative study shows the need to examine social change, economic transformation, and social structure, not only for their effects on class or occupations but also for the alternative trajectories and strategies they generate through historical events. This is especially significant for immigrants. Migration research indicates that migration is a transnational phenomenon; migrants construct political, cultural, and religious affiliations beyond a single nation-state (Abadan-Unat, 2002; Portes, 1999). Although initial goals differ, the findings show that mobility strategies often transcend borders. While savings may initially be viewed as a resource for Turkey or Germany, educational, investment, and career plans are repeatedly adapted to shifting political and economic conditions. Like migration itself, the origin–destination journey in mobility is complex and requires continual reassessment.

Findings further indicate that mechanisms linking origins to destinations are not fixed. Even when children reach occupational or class positions similar to their parents, the processes through which these outcomes emerge differ. Multiple interrelated mechanisms, shaped by historical context, institutional constraints, and family strategies structured these trajectories. In this respect, the findings resonate with Savage and Flemmen’s (2019) claim that linear models of social mobility fail to capture lived experience. Rather than cumulative upwards or downwards paths, mobility trajectories appeared fragmented, marked by interruptions, reversals, and turning points. Structural conditions and social transformations do not merely form a backdrop; they actively enter decision making and reshape what forms of mobility are possible and desirable.

As Strauss (2017: 33) states in Context of Social Mobility, researchers often describe mobility research as ‘rather bloodless, rather statistical’ concerned with elegant demonstrations of the obvious, and rarely attentive to lived experience. Understanding upwards and downwards movement, therefore requires attention to context. Beyond personal biographies, this includes social, political, and economic changes examined here. While factors enabling mobility may not fundamentally transform social structure, empirical mobility research must account for both structure and process (Favell and Recchi, 2011: 51).

Overall, this study shows that structural conditions and individual strategies are dynamically co-constituted within specific temporal and institutional settings. Its key contribution lies in restoring history to sociological explanations of mobility – not only as context but as an active force in mobility. The study calls for sustained dialogue between statistical mapping and narrative interpretation, and between fixed models and lived complexity. Studying social mobility therefore requires integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches, to reveal both visible pathways and their hidden dimensions.