Habitus in the context of transnationalization: From ‘transnational habitus’ to a configuration of dispositions and fields

Abstract

Ongoing transnationalization processes have deeply affected contemporary societies. One important aspect of this transformation is that people’s skills and dispositions change, thus the ways they think about, perceive and evaluate the world are altered. In order to capture these changes conceptually, the notion of transnational habitus has emerged, especially within migration and inequality studies. Reviewing this research literature, however, we argue that this notion only partly captures the different ways in which transnationalization impacts individuals. We therefore refer to the criticism of Bourdieu’s habitus concept by Lahire and conceive of habitus as a configuration of dispositions, which may be more or less transnationalized. Combining this conceptual discussion with a biographical case study from a research project on highly-skilled migrants, allows us to theorize how specific dispositions are activated or toned down over time in relation to specific field settings. As a result, we can highlight how different kinds of dispositions may be dissimilarly affected by transnationalization processes and how related habitual transformations may be seen as a gradual development. Rather than generally referring to the more static notion of transnational habitus, conceiving of habitus as a configuration of dispositions and contexts thus facilitates a more detailed and processual understanding of the interplay between dispositions and specific field settings in relation to transnationalization.