Mag.a Daniela Gruber completed her diploma study at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Her diploma thesis focused on transnational religious networks of Roma and Sinti in France and Austria. Her research topics are migration, minorities and transnationalism, using qualitative research methods. During her studies in Vienna, she worked for editorial efforts at the human rights organization “Bedrohte Völker” in Vienna.
The dissertation deals with integration processes in the autonomous region of South Tyrol in North Italy. Following Bourdieu, integration processes are worked out by a theory of practice, focusing particularly on social network building in the social space. The work contains a qualitative study that includes biographical interviews with female and male migrants from Pakistan and Germany as striking examples, considering their migration experience by entering into new social fields and their everyday life. The argumentation line goes along the focus on social network building as crucial in integration processes and its interconnections with other aspects of accumulating and transforming economic and cultural capital. The work aims to examine the mechanisms, which are going on in the society by a theory of practice, including immigrant’s habitus dispositions as an engine for strategies of social networking and their positioning in the society. The argumentation is linked to concrete practice of network building over a long-term period related to gender issues, in contrast to an essentialist cultural view on integration, forced by public discourse, political debates and research studies, which emphasize cultural differences in referring to women from Muslim origin countries and where Pakistani women are regarded as the “upholders of the culture” in playing their major rule in transmission and appreciation of the cultural values of their origin country.
Kontakt
E-Mail: daniela.gruber@gmx.com