The Paradox of Ethnic Equality

What is it about?

This essay deals with the findings of an ethnographic study carried out in two urban neighborhoods in Germany. Although the German residents felt bound by the norms of ethnic equality, they used negative classifications to stigmatize upwardly mobile members of the Turkish community. In doing so, they undermined these equality norms without explicitly calling them into question. This paradox can be explained by a latently active, primordial be-lief in kinship, which is ultimately rooted in a symbolic order of ethnic inequality.

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