Will they still be dancing? (1982)

strategies of integration within the intermediary "zone of the local public".
This integration comprises a variety of social strategies or practices used by
different ethnic groups. Integration processes should therefore be analysed
within the context of a "total social field" of "migrancy".
Wallachians and Macedonians, having had different patterns of migrancy,
also have different strategies of integration in Scandinavia. However, each
group-urban-oriented Macedonians as well as village-oriented
Wallachians-has quite differential patterns of integration. Neither sociocultural
background nor the general differences between two immigrant countries
could alone explain intra-ethnic differences in patterns of integration.
Each of the four different local contexts has produced new types of ethnic
transformation, creating further distinctions within each original ethnic group.
A number of cultural and structural factors intersect under the impact of
specific conditions of local Scandinavian communities, resulting in the accumulation
of varying experience and the development of distinct social
strategies. Some immigrants started to "amalgamate" with other ethnic
minority groups, while others chose to further demarcate their ethnic group
integrity.
This book seeks to elucidate the "black box" of "ethnic transformation" as
the expression of group-specific forms of social practice. Wallachians, for
example have emigrated from the same villages and have evolved into two
diverging ethnic profiles in Denmark and Sweden. The pattern of integration
among Wallachians in Sweden reflects immigrant experiences different Jrom
those ofWallachians in Denmark. We seek to explain such specific experiences
and their underlying causes through the analysis of various types of social
practice. Here we use the notion of "the social field" as an analytical medium
for organizing the strategic dimensions of everyday migrant behaviour.
We define a field as the social space for a definite type ofpractice in society
(family life, sport, education, philosophy, politics, work, etc.)." The specific
practices defining a social field cannot be understood by relating them directly
to general economic and social conditions in society or to the character of
general social cleavages and struggles (the class structure and class struggle).
Nor can an individual's position in a certain social field be reduced to his (class)
position in theoverall social structure. Onceestablished, a social field develops
its own relatively autonomous history, which although influenced and shaped
by important events in the general economic and social history of society, has
its own dynamics, its own laws of development and its own crises. The very
existence of a field thus implies that one cannot understand its attached
practices and culturally defined values without knowing the specific history
which has produced it. 30
The notion of "field" thus presupposes the existence of a common practice
for its social actors. The members of a field are able to conduct themselves
strategically and reach common definitions of cultural values and social practices
on account of their shared backgrounds. This presupposes the "incor-
28