Several authors in contemporary cultural consumption research have argued that the traditional axis of distinction between highbrow culture and popular culture is in the process of being replaced by a new axis of distinction between an open cosmopolitan cultural capital and a more local less open, cultural capital. We take up this issue and study cosmopolitan cultural consumption, which is defined by its openness for and engagement with cultural products and services from foreign cultures. We have exploratively developed new measures of cosmopolitan cultural consumption, which focus on the geographic breadth of consumption beyond western countries and on knowledge, tastes and modes of consumption, thus taking the esthetic disposition in consumption into account. Furthermore, the data enable us to study the relationship between consumption and other measures of transnational experiences and identification. Our results indicate that cosmopolitan consumption is not rampant in the population. Furthermore, it is part of a broader pattern of cosmopolitanism that is characterized by supranational identifications, transnational relations, and experiences. They show furthermore that cosmopolitan cultural consumption is strongly determined by different forms of cultural capital, thus being a form of class-based practice.

In this paper we make use of data from the official statistics to analyze transnational marriage among immigrants in Germany. Pooling all currently available Scientific Use Files of the German Microcensus between 1976 and 2004, we are able to contribute empirical findings that are unique in their scope and their degree of differentiation. We look at the five most common groups of former labour migrants and study group-specific trends over generations and time. Our empirical analysis is guided by four basic expectations, which are anchored in a more general theoretical framework of immigrants’ marriage behaviour. We find, as expected, large group differences in the propensity to select a spouse from one’s own country of origin. Assumed effects of the opportunity structure, however, can only be confirmed for women. Central derivations from a general assimilationist view are also only partly supported: A general increase in transnational marriages among ex-Yugoslav and Turkish women over marriage cohorts, and the absence of any effects of structural assimilation on the propensity toward transnational marriages are the most puzzling results. Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag verwenden wir Daten der amtlichen Statistik, um transnationale Ehen bei Immigranten in Deutschland zu analysieren. Die Zusammenführung aller verfügbaren Scientific Use Files des deutschen Mikrozenus zwischen 1976 und 2004 liefert empirische Befunde, die in ihrer Breite und in der Tiefe ihrer Differenzierung bislang einzigartig sind. Wir betrachten die fünf am weitesten verbreiteten Gruppen ehemaliger Arbeitsmigranten und untersuchen gruppenspezifische Trends über die Generationen und über die Zeit. Unsere empirische Analyse wird von vier Grundannahmen geleitet, die in einem allgemeineren theoretischen Rahmen des Heiratsverhaltens von Migranten verankert sind. Wie erwartet finden wir hinsichtlich der Neigung, eine(n) Partner(in) aus dem jeweils eigenen Herkunftsland zu wählen, große Unterschiede zwischen den Gruppen. Die vermuteten Effekte der Opportunitätsstruktur werden jedoch nur für die Frauen bestätigt. Zentrale Schlussfolgerungen aus einer allgemein assimilationistischen Sichtweise zeigen sich ebenfalls nur teilweise: Zu den erstaunlichsten Ergebnissen unserer Studie gehören die allgemeine Zunahme transnationaler Ehen von Frauen aus dem ehemaligen Jugoslawien und der Türkei sowie die Abwesenheit von Effekten der strukturellen Assimilation auf die Neigung zur transnationalen Ehe.

We study the formation of bi-national marital unions among partners from Switzerland and the European Union (EU) 15 countries as one indicator of the Europeanisation of Swiss Society. The result of our empirical analysis shows that there is in fact no clear increase of such bi-national marriages over time. However, there are two structural conditions fostering EU15 marriages. One is that Swiss living close to the country's border have a higher propensity to marry a person from across that border compared with other Swiss. The other is that the greater the size of the foreign population in a Swiss canton, including a larger number of EU15 nationals, the more likely is a Swiss to have a spouse from an EU15 country. These results suggest the conclusion that a rise in EU15 marriages is still to come as the number of foreigners from these countries is increasing and also border regions become more important because of a continuing rise of commuters from neighbouring countries.

In this article we examine how partner choice and strategies of social reproduction among the Wampar of northeastern Papua New Guinea are implicated in currently pressing questions about the future of Wampar as a socio-cultural unit. We use long-term qualitative and quantitative data based on fieldwork and census surveys conducted between 1954 and 2013 from the village of Gabsongkeg to analyse temporal and spatial patterns of partner choice. We are especially interested in interethnic marriages and their effects on group boundaries and group identities, given a pre-existing pattern of ethnic endogamy. Our results show that intermarriages between Wampar and non-Wampar have constantly been rising; in younger marriage cohorts some 60% of Wampar individuals are intermarried with partners of other ethnic identities. The data reveal that local and historical particularities inflect partner choices in ways that impact on settlement patterns, modes of engagement with the economic institutions of the modern state and, ultimately, the taken-for-granted nature of the identity inhering in the name "Wampar"; these impacts, in turn, increase the likelihood of interethnic marriage and precipitate questions about the rights attaching to local corporate identities under conditions where land is increasingly related to its commodity values.

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ZusammenfassungIm vorliegenden Beitrag wird ethnische Segregation in Westdeutschland auf kleinräumiger Ebene mit Daten des Mikrozensus gemessen. Für die größten Migrantengruppen der ehemaligen Anwerbeländer werden die zeitlichen Entwicklungen nachgezeichnet. Gemessen am mittleren Anteil der ausländischen Bevölkerung der nächsten Nachbarschaften hat die räumliche Segregation Zugewanderter von 1976 bis 1982 zugenommen, während in den Jahren von 1996 bis 2004 ein abnehmender Trend zu beobachten ist. Dabei zeigen sich kaum Unterschiede zwischen den Migrantengenerationen. Erst unter Kontrolle weiterer Einflussfaktoren variieren die erste und die zweite Generation. Zur Erklärung, ob eine Person in einer ethnisch hoch segregierten Nachbarschaft wohnt, tragen u. a. Bildungsniveau und Einkommenssituation als Indikatoren der sozialstrukturellen Integration bei. Sowohl für Migranten als auch für Deutsche gibt es einen Zusammenhang zwischen geringer Bildung sowie relativer Einkommensarmut und Wohngebieten mit einer hohen Ausländerquote. Allerdings bleiben auch unter Berücksichtigung dieser Faktoren deutliche Unterschiede zwischen Deutschen und Migranten sowie zwischen den ausländischen Nationalitäten bestehen.

We analyze the impact of intermarriage, and transnational social relations and experiences on the emergence of European identity. According to the structuralist theory of identification, European social relations, with European intermarriage as an especially important relation, and experiences should explain European identifications. Our analysis is based on a survey in Zurich, Switzerland, providing a broad array of data that allow testing the impact of a European partner on European identification for Swiss and how transnational social relations and experiences contribute to both Swiss and non-Swiss feeling European. Overall, we find that a partner from another European country (for Swiss natives) and transnational social relations and experiences have an important role in explaining European identification. The most important differences are between Swiss and EU citizens living in Switzerland where, for the latter, the meaning of Europe is differently constructed. Specifically, EU citizens see less conflict between national and European identification.

This paper focuses on intra-European partnership formation in three European countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Intra-European mobility has been actively promoted and stimulated by the European Commission (e.g., free movement of persons, the Erasmus student exchange program). One of the reasons for this promotion is that exchanges and relationships between Europeans of different descent are seen as a core indicator of the success of the European project. In this paper, we address the question to what extent intra-European mobility fosters partnerships between Europeans of different descent. Intra-European mobility can create opportunities both to meet partners from other European countries and to accumulate the necessary capital (economic, cultural, linguistic, mobility) to engage in a relationship with a foreign European. We use original data on European (binational) couples, collected in 2012 in the three countries (EUMARR survey), to study the choice of native men and women to engage in a relationship with either a foreign-born European partner or a partner from the own native country. We apply a broader life course perspective that captures migration and mobility experiences prior to the relationship as causal antecedents leading to an intra-European partnership. Results based on logistic regression models suggest that there is an individual effect of long stays abroad and short mobility experiences in (early) adulthood on having an intra-European partner (in comparison with a native partner). Previous research has provided insights into the reasons why individuals in intra-European partnerships move abroad (Gaspar 2008(Gaspar , 2012; however, very little is known about the impact mobility has on the formation of these unions. Our paper helps to fill this gap by studying if and how previous individual mobility experiences influence one's choice for a foreign-born European partner rather than a native partner. For our analyses we make use of recently gathered original data on European couples from the 1 It is noteworthy that in discussions on free movement of EU citizens, the positively connoted term 'mobility' is often preferred over 'migration', with the first also referring to a wider range of relocations including non-permanent types of migration such as seasonal work and cross-border commuting for employment (e.g. Favell 2008;Santacreu et al. 2009). 2EUMARR project (2012). As the sample does not include single Europeans or non-European couples, we will not pronounce ourselves on the effect of mobility on other possible partnership outcomes.Our paper contributes to the understanding of these issues with regard to three European countries. In addition to two founding members of the EU, Belgium and the Netherlands, we have included Switzerland, which, while not an EU state, is nevertheless a part of the Schengen area. We believe that the described processes apply not only to EU but to European countries generally, especially if they are closely interwoven with the EU, as is the ...