Rethinking Privilege and Social Mobility in Middle-class Migration: Migrants In-between

✍ Scribed by Robertson, Shanthi (editor), Roberts, Rosie (editor)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 253
• Series: Studies in Migration and Diaspora
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

<p>This volume explores the experiences of a wide variety of middle-class migrant groups across the globe, including ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ building new businesses in cosmopolitan neighbourhoods in Sydney; Chinese grandparents shuttling between Australia, China and Singapore to support their extended families; well-off young Indians in Mumbai strategizing their future education pathways overseas; and Japanese mothers finding ways to belong in a London middle-class neighbourhood. This book asks how relatively privileged migrant groups negotiate their life trajectories, relationships and aspirations while ‘on the move’ and how they transform the communities and societies that they move between across time and space. The book’s chapters consider motives for migration, as well as experiences of risk, uncertainty and insecurity in diverse local contexts. A fresh look at the migration of those who possess skills and resources that can bring about significant economic, social and cultural change, this book engages critically with the notions of ‘middling’ migration, social mobility and mobile privilege in the global context of hardening borders and immigration complexity. It will appeal to scholars with interests in contemporary forms of migration and mobility and their local and transnational consequences.</p>

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Series Editor's Preface
Note
1. Migrants 'in-between': Rethinking privilege and social mobility in middle-class migration
Introduction
Rethinking middling migration through a lens of privilege
Attuning to multiple mobilities and shifting articulations of race
Centring biographical temporalities: Life stage and life course
Conclusion
References
Part I: Relocating Class: Reconfigurations of Class Through Migration
2. The classed frustrations of middling migrants from China in Australia: Suzhi discourse meets the neoliberal logics of selective migration policies
Introduction
Australian selective migration policies and intra-ethnic class positions during a Western Australian resources boom
"Quality" and mobility in PRC national class frames
Classed frustrations and inter-ethnic class contestations in Perth
Conclusion
Notes
References
3. Shifting privileges: An ethnographic study of White and upper-class Colombian migrant women living in Melbourne, Australia
Introduction
A conceptual approach: Intersectionality, privilege and transnational migration
Methodology
Context
Colombian migrants in Australia
Transnational social positions across Colombia and Australia
Narratives of relatively privileged ethnic migrant women
Teresa
Gabriela
Discussion
Notes
References
4. Mobile lives in search of place: Homelessness and frustrated mobility among young Romanians in Madrid
Introduction
To be of the middle and on the move: Young homeless in the city
Middling forms of frustrated mobility in homeless studies
Middle-class young homeless Romanians in Madrid
Methodology
Young homeless frustration: Between acceptance and defiance
Frustration as loss of and search for place
Helping young homeless Romanians to combat their frustration
Conclusion
References
Part II: Place, Taste and Aspiration: Local Geographies and Middleclass Imaginaries
5. Suburban strivers and the South Bombay elite: How localised micro-categories of class shape international education in Mumbai
Introduction
Cosmopolitan cultural capital and international education
Research methods
Situating Mumbai's 'localised micro-categories of class'
Classed aspirations to 'gain exposure'
Classed experiences of return
Conclusion
Notes
References
6. Migrant entrepreneurs and urban cultural economy in Sydney, the 'City of Villages': Haymarket's 'Chinatown' and Leichhardt's 'Little Italy'
Introduction
Framing the small business entrepreneur
Zooming into Sydney's cultures
Doing business in Leichhardt
Doing business in Haymarket/Chinatown
Conclusion
Notes
References
7. The view of lifestyle migration: A brief exploration of the ethics of seeking a better way of life
Introduction
Setting the scene
Simmel's relational sociological approach
Understanding that life is not what it 'ought' to be
The unfolding of lifestyle migration - shifting perspectives of the 'Ought' through actuality
Conclusion
Note
References
8. Navigating everyday life in a middle-class neighbourhood: The ongoing negotiations of Japanese women migrants in southeast London
Introduction
Understanding 'middling' migration experiences
Japanese mothers in a middle-class neighbourhood
Middle-class identity and elective local belonging
Belonging through Japanese cooking
Community participation through Japanese cooking
Local knowledge as cultural capital
Performativity of place, ethnicity and gender
Conclusion
Acknowledgement
Notes
References
Part III: Relational Dynamics: Middleclass Migrant Families and Couples
9. 'Moving privilege': Middling transnational couples and the relational dimensions of privilege
Introduction
An intersectional approach to conceptualising privilege through forms of middling migration
Research contexts and methods
Responsive relocations: "I changed track to meet the market there"
Disrupted trajectories: "If I had a time machine I'd have gone back and corrected that mistake"
Reflecting on relational privilege
Conclusion
References
10. Mothers in the middle: Rethinking middling migration as relational
Introduction
Background: Mothers' invisibility in middling migration approaches
Motherhood and migration: A relational approach
Mothers in the middle: A study
Mothers in middle: Lisa's story
Mothers in the middle: Simran's story
A relational approach to middling migration: Motivation, housework, knowledge
Middling migrant motivations in relation
Shifting positions in networks of care: Domestic and reproductive labour
Transnational and glocalised knowledge networks
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index