Career
Since 1993, she has been Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Frankfurt. Her research fields are cultural analysis, biographical research, migration, ethnicity and gender. She earned a doctorate at the University of Frankfurt in 1977, with the dissertation Gesellschaftstheorie und Ästhetik bei Georg Lukács bis 1933.
In 1990, she earned the Habilitation from the University of Bremen with a thesis entitled Migration und Biographie which examined the education of young Italian migrants in the Rhine-Main region of Germany, and which affected migration studies in Germany.
Among her findings was that greater numbers of immigrants in a school led to greater acceptance, providing there was also mixing of social classes. In 2007 she was elected to the Executive Committee of the European Sociological Association.
She has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1992-1993), Florence (1994), Rome (1998), Bologna (1999), London (Open University and Tavistock Center, 2000), Brisbane (2002) and National Center for Scientific Research, Paris (2003). She coordinated an European Union research project, Self-employment activities concerning women and minorities, 1997–2001.
