Privileged Migrants Research Articles

Everyday migration hierarchies: negotiating the EU’s visa regime

Critical security studies have shed invaluable light on the diffuse governmental technologies and pernicious effects of the EU’s bordering practices. While scholars have focused upon the experience of precarious migrant groups, this article suggests that extending our critical gaze to include seemingly privileged migrants can further understanding of just how far the insecurity produced by the EU’s migration regime reaches. Focusing on the migration process of international students in Norway, this article inquires into how these migrants experience, theorize and negotiate the EU’s visa regime and its governmental technologies. We show how their subjective understandings of ‘broad’ and ‘narrow’ hierarchies of the visa regime play out in their bureaucratic encounters, influencing their everyday lives. Ultimately, the article shows how the regime’s disciplinary effects extend further than prior critical research has appreciated.

Socio‐spatial negotiations in Lisbon: Reflections of working‐aged lifestyle migrants on place and privilege

AbstractIn the context of inequalities inherent in regimes of mobility and the rapid transformation of Lisbon by increased tourism and transnational mobility, this paper seeks to foreground under‐the‐radar narratives of young working‐aged middle‐class migrants on their socio‐spatial positioning in the city. Situated at the nexus of youth mobilities and lifestyle migration, our objective is to examine the stratifications and diversities present within lifestyle migration to the city by focusing on migration motivations and migrants' own reflections on their place‐making strategies and privilege in the city. Based on 10 narrative interviews and participant observation in transnational hangouts, our results reveal how the creation of “alternative” lifestyles is hinged on both mobility practices and local moorings as young movers reinvent themselves professionally in the place of arrival. Our results show that they negotiate their place and social position through (i) balancing place‐consumption practices between what is construed as the transnational and the local and (ii) by situating themselves outside of the subjective residential geography of privileged migrants. This is part of a moral code to appease their political conscience and justify their presence in a city that has been rapidly transformed by tourism and other transient populations.

Power, Belonging, and Respectability

Power, Belonging, and Respectability

Ethnic boundary making among Swedish migrants in Helsinki

ABSTRACT This is a study of ethnic boundary-making strategies promoted by Swedish migrants in Finland. The results are based on interviews with a sample of migrants in Helsinki without previous personal connection to Finland. The interviewees can be considered privileged migrants, and the study provides new information on the strategies of ethnic boundary making promoted by members of privileged ethnic groups. In Helsinki, the migrants from Sweden navigate a social field with local ethnic boundaries, including an autochthonous Swedish-speaking minority. Despite social integration in Finnish society, the migrants choose the strategy of boundary blurring, whereby the interviewees wished to question the importance of ethnic and national belonging. This choice of strategy can be explained by the ambivalence they experience in navigating the local ethnic categories and language policies. Thus, the results describe how societal structures shape individual strategies of ethnic boundary making.

Provincializing “immigrant integration”: privileged migration to Nairobi and the problem of integration

ABSTRACT Immigrant integration is a key concern in migration research. Yet, recent critiques argue that “immigrant integration” amounts to a neo-colonial form of governance and that scholarship needs to study the discourse of integration, rather than operationalize integration as analytical tool. Drawing on ethnographic research in Nairobi, this article engages and develops these critiques in two ways. It discusses how the notion “integration” is used as a “category of practice” in relation to privileged migrants, so-called expats, in ways that reflect personal anxieties and aspirations, uneven power relations and structural inequalities. Further, the article suggests “provincializing” integration as a way forward: (re)visiting “integration discourse” from its constitutive objects, others, and silences. This requires placing more centrally the voices of those assumedly in need of integration and examining how integration is formulated, practized and contested also in relation to privileged migration and in the Global South.

“Isn't it ironic…!?!” Mobility researchers go sedentary: A group auto‐ethnography on collective coping and care in pandemic times

AbstractWe moved places and places moved us, until force majeure detained us on the spot. Signed‐up to be hyper‐mobile Ph.D.‐candidates, we became hyper‐reflective pandemic intimates. We moved together into a space that felt safe, OUR safe space. Suspended. Did the pandemic open this door, or had this space always existed, even back in the old days? Probably the latter, although we were not sensitive enough to perceive it, too busy to push the door, too lonesome to CARE. Not attentive to its possibilities, not imaginative of its POWER, too confident to be capable of succeeding alone. Even if we might have secretly wished for this space to exist. The present piece of work, and JOY, might be described by others as a “side‐step,” a “hobby project,” a “shadow activity.” For us, it is a recollection of shocks and wonders, a sentience of precious, ephemeral instances that last. We are a group of eight early career researchers who study global mobility and labor migration from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. With prior international mobility experience, we left our previous countries of residence in 2018 to join an EU‐funded research project, whilst being located in different European cities. One could classify us, for example, as highly qualified, privileged migrants. The present paper is the outcome of a collaborative, auto‐ethnographic study, conducted in 2020, in the midst of the Covid‐19 pandemic, when we suddenly were forced not to travel anymore. We got together online every week to “refaire le monde,” and we conducted virtual, dialogical self‐interrogations and group reflections. Based on an emic approach, in line with Chang et al. (2013), we applied an iterative process of data collection and analysis. Our weekly conversations naturally emerged as a safe space for exchange and understanding, as we were facing similar situations, despite staying at different places. Suddenly, as the privilege of “always being on the move,” “always socializing and networking” disappeared due to closed borders and pandemic threats, we experienced anxieties and isolation and had to re‐evaluate our perceptions on life, work, and international mobility. The very purpose and meaning of our broader research endeavors and employment perspectives suddenly faded away. We realized more than ever before, what it means to us to be allowed to move, to travel freely across continents.

Privileged migrants and their sense of belonging: Insider or outsider?

Abstract Asia is gaining prominence as a destination for millions of migrants, totaling to about one-third of total international migrants. The privileged migrants (highly skilled and affluent) make up a large part of this group. They remain a fertile ground for scholarly examination owing to the fact that extremely scarce research attention has been paid to this group. Within this context, this paper focuses on the sense of belonging of this migrant group in the host countries. We argue that professional hierarchy; socioeconomic and sociocultural factors contribute to the privileged migrants’ positionality as an insider or outsider in the host country. In this research, four Southeast Asian countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Thailand) are selected. Via multiplex communication (WhatsApp, email, and phone calls), a total of 27 interviews were conducted. Findings suggest that most of the privileged migrants position themselves as an outsider for multifaceted factors.

Questioning Cosmopolitanism through the Biographical Trajectories of French Residents of Abu Dhabi and Dubai

Owing to their diverse populations and particular social configurations, the United Arab Emirates offer a unique urban context in which to question the notion of cosmopolitanism and its daily manifestations, since the main cities of the Emirates maximize occasions for intercultural interaction while maintaining major economic divisions and social hierarchies in most parts of daily life. While national and ethnic categories in the Emirates are often presented in the literature as being rigid, this paper argues that a biographical approach allows for a finer analysis of cosmopolitan situations. The French residents of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, relatively privileged migrants, position themselves along a wide spectrum of places and activities, raising different social and urban issues. Based on 26 months of participant observation in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and 12 in-depth interviews with French residents of the UAE, this paper shows that their forms of sociability, social practices, and international mobility work together to shape diverse and sometimes paradoxical forms of openness to national, ethnic, or social “others”.

Exporting consumption: Lifestyle migration and energy use

This paper examines how international population movements from highly developed to less developed countries spread environmentally-impactful consumption habits around the world. Lifestyle migration, a phenomenon whereby relatively privileged migrants move in search of a more fulfilling life, is increasingly common around the world and serves as an optimal example for studying the spread of unsustainable consumption. We wonder whether lifestyle migrants take high consumption lifestyles typical in their countries of origin to their destination places and whether their presence in destination communities increases consumption among natives as well. This study investigates these relationships based on the case of Costa Rica, a well-established recipient country for lifestyle migration. We analyze 100% sample microdata from the Costa Rican Census 2011 to test relationships between lifestyle migration and consumption of energy-intensive goods using multilevel models that nest consumption at the household level within communities. Our findings suggest that lifestyle migrants not only consume more energy-intensive goods than native Costa Ricans, but that their presence elevates consumption among native neighbors as well. Thus, lifestyle migration may increasingly serve as a mechanism through which unsustainable consumption patterns are transferred from the Global North to the Global South.

Nordic Ties and British Lives? Migrant Capital and the Case of Nordic Migrants Living in London

As a hub of finance, art, design and science, the city of London has long attracted migrants interested in study and career opportunities or simply excited about living in an open, global city. Over the last few decades, it has also been a key migration destination for Europeans originating from the Nordic countries. Based on survey data gathered through an online questionnaire, this article focuses on Nordic migrants currently living in London. Since the June 2016 referendum, the Brexit process has forced these voluntary and rather privileged migrants to question their inclusion in British society. This article discusses the role of migrant capital, i.e., the skills and resources created as a result of migration, at a time of uncertainty brought on by Brexit. It examines how these migrants see their position within the social hierarchy of the city and its job market, as well as within the local and transnational networks they maintain to their countries of origin. Their Nordic background is valuable thanks to the cultural capital embodied in their habitus as well as the social capital available via the Nordic networks in UK and transnationally.

The Global North Goes to the Global North Minus? Intersections of the Integration of Highly Skilled, Non‐Jewish Female Partner and Spousal Migrants from the Global North in Israel

AbstractUsing Global Northern, non‐Jewish, female, highly skilled partners and spouses of Israeli Jewish citizens in Israel as a case study, and depicting their interactions with bureaucracy, integration into the labour market, gendered aspects of integration and clashes between self‐perception and ascription this paper teases out that, despite its specificity, the case of Israel allows forming conclusions about the precariousness of a class of presumed privileged migrants. The central finding is that Global Northerners experience a status deprivation, which includes deskilling and social marginalization. This nexus was experienced as limiting personal agency, which allows for questioning their presumed status of privileged migrants; it concurrently underscores the importance of the analytically difficult and diffuse nexus of personality and agency. The ethnographic data demonstrates that individuals coped with the challenges differently, suggesting that specific personalities and intra‐ and interpersonal resourcefulness underpin individual resilience thresholds.

Bursting the Bubble: Spatialising Safety for Privileged Migrant Women in Singapore

AbstractThis paper develops geographical work that is attentive to, and critical of, how safety is lived and narrated. In contrast to previous work on safety that focuses on fear, the paper looks at safety as something more than aspiration for women. To do so, the paper utilises the metaphor of the “expatriate bubble” to explore how safety is constructed and experienced by privileged migrants in Singapore. Utilising research from two projects, we argue that we need to think about how gender and Othering intersect to construct safety. In doing so, we explore how we can use conceptualisations of privileged migrants to research how safety can be understood and therefore practised more widely.

(Un)settling home during the Brexit process

AbstractBuilding upon extensive literature on the concept of home, this article uses narrative interviews to argue that home can be (un)settled. The process of (un)settling home can occur in relation to various circumstances such as widowhood, ill health, or geopolitical changes. This article presents (un)settling home as a process constituted by three intertwined dimensions; practical and material, emotional, and temporal. This article explores how the Brexit process is (un)settling home for older British migrants, a population of lifestyle migrants, living in Spain. This geopolitical event has an ongoing destabilising and unsettling effect upon individual's sense of home and belonging. Brexit is a process experienced simultaneously by older British migrants living across the European Union. Consequently, this article provides useful insights into how these relatively privileged migrants negotiate an unprecedented shift in their status, their uncertain future as lifestyle migrants, and their understandings of home in this shifting geopolitical context.

Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan by Miloš Debnár

Reviewed by: Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan by Miloš Debnár Rotem Kowner Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan. By Miloš Debnár. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 235 pages. Hardcover, $99.99/€85.59. European migration to Japan began in earnest only some 160 years ago. One might argue that it started with the few hundreds of Jesuits who lived in Japan during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, or with the small handful of employees residing in the Dutch factory in Dejima during the subsequent two centuries. But in essence, both of those groups were short-term sojourners; they came for religious or trade purposes rather than for the sake of migration as such. The true age of migration began only with the forced opening of Japanese ports in the 1850s, which was followed by the country’s rapid modernization. Despite periodic swelling and shrinking in numbers, the flow of Europeans to Japan has continued ever since. Admittedly, the influx has always been small; despite the recent growth in the population of Europeans in Japan to around 60,000 (as of 2014), this number represents a mere 0.05 percent of Japan’s total population, less than 0.01 percent of Europe’s population, and as little as 2.7 percent of the foreigners living in the country. Given these minuscule percentages, it is natural to ask why this group deserves exhaustive study in the form of an academic book such as the one under review, written by Doshisha University sociologist Miloš Debnár. The answer to this question lies in this group’s importance, both real and symbolic, and in what it reveals about the host country. Europe and Europeans have undoubtedly played an important role in Japanese modernization and are still ascribed significance and respect out of proportion to the relative size of their representation in Japan or to Europe’s current impact on Japan’s economy and politics. Debnár’s specific reasons for focusing on this group are described in the book’s introduction, where he states that he is interested in the migration of “individuals from the Global North, West, or of people of white race” and “aims to contribute to . . . recent attempts [at] deconstructing the image of highly privileged migrants” (pp. 2–3). Deconstructing assumptions pertaining to countries of origin, type of migration, white privilege, and cosmopolitanism, he argues, “shows the complex character of social relations that migrants create and sustain in receiving societies” (p. 3). Japan was chosen as a representative of highly developed, non-Western countries, with the goal [End Page 164] of providing new insights into the increasing diversity exhibited in present-day migration and the outcomes of this trend. Despite its seemingly explicit sociological objectives, Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism is more than just a case study on global migration in the twenty-first century. The book’s seven chapters offer an up-to-date look at fascinating aspects of Japanese society as well as the country’s intercultural relations and its unending love-hate relationship with the West. Following an informative introduction, chapter 2 provides an overview of the modern history of European migration to Japan and its current demographic structure. The next chapter focuses on three major types of migration: that involving high-skilled laborers or professionals, that related to international marriage, and that involving students. Debnár then takes up the “white privilege” enjoyed by Europeans living in Japan and the manner in which they transform this into various forms of capital. This is followed by one chapter investigating the limits and meanings of whiteness in the migrants’ everyday experience and another exploring the issue of cosmopolitanism as associated with Europeans. Chapter 7 ends the book by summing up its main findings and discussing their larger implications. Methodologically speaking, the book draws primarily on interviews with fifty-seven Europeans conducted between 2008 and 2012. Representing twenty-two countries as well as various ages and occupations, most of Debnár’s interviewees had resided in Japan for five to ten years. Although the book could have been enriched by the further use of primary sources, some of the interviews provide thought-provoking insights into...

Lifestyle migration and settler colonialism: The imaginative geographies of British migrants to Aotearoa New Zealand

AbstractThis paper explores the imaginative geographies of relatively privileged migrants living in settler societies for their colonial continuities. It responds to a recent call to historicise the cultural significance attached to migration and destinations in lifestyle migration research through an exploration of some of the potential synergies between the newly emergent field of settler colonial studies and lifestyle migration. The analysis draws on 12 months of qualitative research with British migrants living in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. First, it examines the ambivalent affective associations of “islandness” and distance, as both insulating and isolating. Second, the paper explores the twinned appreciation of spectacular, empty natural surroundings, and a perception of a “lack” of culture and history. It is argued, first, that the geographical and historical interpellation of the country as “at the end of the world” and as “young” recentres distant Euro‐colonial cultures and decentres Māori cultures. And, second, that the intersections of contemporary lifestyle migration and settler colonialism are an important avenue for future research.

Being Privileged Overseas: Taiwanese People in Jakarta (海外優勢移民：雅加達的台灣人)

During the 1980s, many Taiwanese firms moved to the prc or Southeast Asia due to rising production costs in Taiwan. This trend of firm relocation caused many Taiwanese people to move to the prc or Southeast Asia as entrepreneurs, firm managers, or accompanying family members. While many studies have explored the experiences of Taiwanese immigrants in the prc, studies on the lives of Taiwanese people in Southeast Asia are still limited. This pilot study is based on my fieldwork in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2015. Through conducting 24 interviews and participant observation of Taiwanese people affiliated with the Jakarta Taipei School (hereinafter jts), I argue that a certain number of Taiwanese people live their lives as ‘privileged migrants’ in Jakarta as most respondents lead a life that is of significantly higher quality than most locals. Those who marry rich Sino-Indonesians are accorded a status higher than what was available to them in Taiwan. Their life experiences show the intertwining relationship between international migration and social mobility. While some studies have suggested the importance of ethnic affinity in the process of integration, respondents’ complicated perception on the native Indonesians and Sino-Indonesians predicts that more studies on the issue of ethnicity in the field of privileged migration and overseas Chinese are necessary. 由於生產成本上升，台灣很多勞力密集產業自1980年代起便遷往中國大陸或東南亞地區。這樣的產業遷移吸引不少台灣人以企業經營者、高階管理人，或隨行家屬的身分前往相關國家。當不少研究關注移居中國大陸的台灣人時，關於台灣人在東南亞生活現狀的討論卻是非常有限。這份研究是以筆者2015年在雅加達針台北學校進行田野調查的資料為基礎，經過初步分析之後完成。藉由對24位受訪者進行訪談及參與觀察，筆者認為不少台灣人在當地享有相當優渥的生活。與當地華人通婚的受訪者，更擁有在台灣無法獲得的生活條件與發展機會。這些受訪者的遷移經驗顯示，社會階層的向上流動是有可能與地理邊界的跨國流動發生連結。此外，受訪者對印尼華人與印尼原住民的不同反應，更顯示族群因素依然是優勢移民及海外華人研究的重要議題。 (This article is in English.)

Transnational highly skilled Finnish migrants in Europe: Choosing one's identity

When transnational migration begins to resemble internal mobility, as is the case in the European Union, is there any need for integration into the country of destination, or do intra-European migrants adopt a European identity? This article is based on data collected about highly skilled Finns who have moved within the EU. Most of them continued to form their identity around their country of origin. Nearly 60% of the migrants of the study also identified with Europe, while only one-third identified with their country of residence. The article argues that, for such privileged migrants, the possibility of choice is central to identity formation. Neither the national identity of the new home country nor a European identity per se can substitute the former, more important identity received through socialization. However, moving abroad does have an impact on the ways these migrants ‘do identity’. Adding a dimension of Europeanness to their existing national identity is a way of belonging to a greater collective when the localized identification with the country of residence is not required.

Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality

By 2050, the world’s population of international migrants is estimated to top 400 million. A small but growing number of those migrants are leaving well-developed, affluent countries best known for receiving immigrants to settle in less well-developed countries better known for sending migrants. These migrants of relative privilege, many of them retirees, are motivated primarily by a desire to enhance their quality of life. Although this migratory flow receives much less attention than more familiar, and reverse, movements of laborers or refugees, its implications for the destination sites, sites of origin, and study of international migration generally are significant. This article will examine the contemporary border crossing of privileged migrants, the economic, political and cultural stakes for the countries and individuals involved, and the implications of incorporating privileged mobility into the study of global migration and transnationalism.

Emotion and Migration: British Transnationals in Dubai

This paper examines some of the emotions highlighted by interactions between British migrants and Gulf nationals in the emerging global city of Dubai. Tracing the emotions that emerge in ‘expatriate’ handbooks, field notes, and interview narratives, I contribute to an emerging body of work that focuses on the embodied migrant and troubles the notion of privileged migrants as being detached from place. I demonstrate that attention to the emotions framing such interactions, in both geographical and temporal terms, can help us to better understand migrant encounters.

Imigranci w polskiej przestrzeni wielkomiejskiej. Przypadek Poznania

Immigrants make up only 2% of the total population in Poland. Over 80% of such immigrants reside in cities. Poland is only a transit point in their migration to the West or a temporary place of work or education. The paper focuses on the structure of the several-thousand, heterogeneous immigrant population in Poznań and the institutions within which they function and pursue their particular adaptation and integration strategies. Foreigners in Poznań live to some extent “next to” the receiving society and are hardly visible in the city space. Their migration is circular and often seasonal. A significant percentage is made up of the so called privileged migrants (students obliged to pay tuition fees at public and private universities and business professionals). Poznań, which is not a multicultural city, is not an important centre in the transnational network and can be defined as a typical “national” city based on local forms of socio-cultural relations.