Rethinking Privilege and Social Mobility in Middle-class Migration: Migrants In-between PDF
Preview Rethinking Privilege and Social Mobility in Middle-class Migration: Migrants In-between
Studies in Migration and Diaspora RETHINKING PRIVILEGE AND SOCIAL MOBILITY IN MIDDLE-CLASS MIGRATION MIGRANTS ‘IN-BETWEEN’ Edited by Shanthi Robertson and Rosie Roberts Rethinking Privilege and Social Mobility in Middle-Class Migration 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 strategising 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. Shanthi Robertson is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and Research Fellow in the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, Australia. She is the author of Transnational Student-Migrants and the State: The Education-Migration Nexus and Temporality in Mobile Lives: Contemporary Asia-Australia Migration and Lived Time Rosie Roberts is a Senior Lecturer within UniSA Creative and a researcher at the Creative People, Products and Places Research Centre (CP3) at the University of South Australia. She is the author of Ongoing Mobility Trajectories: Lived Experiences of Global Migration. Studies in Migration and Diaspora Series Editor: Anne J. Kershen Queen Mary University of London, UK Studies in Migration and Diaspora is a series designed to showcase the inter- disciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of research in this important field. Volumes in the series cover local, national and global issues and engage with both historical and contemporary events. The books will appeal to scholars, students and all those engaged in the study of migration and diaspora. Amongst the topics covered are minority ethnic relations, transnational movements and the cultural, social and political implications of moving from ‘over there’, to ‘over here’. Higher Education and Social Mobility in France Challenges and Possibilities among Descendants of North African Immigrants Shirin Shahrokni Migrant Mothers in the Digital Age Emotion and Belonging in Migrant Maternal Online Communities Leah Williams Veazey Political Dissent and Democratic Remittances The Activities of Russian Migrants in Europe Joanna Fomina Rethinking Privilege and Social Mobility in Middle-Class Migration Migrants ‘In-Between’ Edited by Shanthi Robertson and Rosie Roberts Refugees and Knowledge Production Europe’s Past and Present Magdalena Kmak and Heta Björklund For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/sociology/series/ASHSER1049 Rethinking Privilege and Social Mobility in Middle- Class Migration Migrants ‘In-Between’ Edited by Shanthi Robertson and Rosie Roberts First published 2022 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Shanthi Robertson and Rosie Roberts; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Shanthi Robertson and Rosie Roberts to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-53500-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-54082-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-08758-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003087588 Typeset in Times New Roman by MPS Limited, Dehradun Contents Contributors vii Acknowledgements x Series Editor’s Preface xi 1 Migrants ‘in-between’: Rethinking privilege and social mobility in middle-class migration 1 SHANTHI ROBERTSON AND ROSIE ROBERTS PART I Relocating class: Reconfigurations of class through migration 27 2 The classed frustrations of middling migrants from China in Australia: Suzhi discourse meets the neo- liberal logics of selective migration policies 2299 CATRIONA STEVENS 3 Shifting privileges: An ethnographic study of White and upper-class Colombian migrant women living in Melbourne, Australia 48 VIKTORIA ADLER 4 Mobile lives in search of place: Homelessness and frustrated mobility among young Romanians in Madrid 67 SILVIA MARCU vi Contents PART II Place, taste and aspiration: Local geographies and middleclass imaginaries 87 5 Suburban strivers and the South Bombay elite: How localised micro-categories of class shape international education in Mumbai 89 NONIE TUXEN 6 Migrant entrepreneurs and urban cultural economy in Sydney, the ‘City of Villages’: Haymarket’s ‘Chinatown’ and Leichhardt’s ‘Little Italy’ 113 ANDREA DEL BONO 7 The view of lifestyle migration: A brief exploration of the ethics of seeking a better way of life 130 NICK OSBALDISTON 8 Navigating everyday life in a middle-class neighbour- hood: The ongoing negotiations of Japanese women migrants in southeast London 148 KAORU TAKAHASHI PART III Relational dynamics: Middleclass migrant families and couples 167 9 ‘Moving privilege’: Middling transnational couples and the relational dimensions of privilege 169 ROSIE ROBERTS AND SHANTHI ROBERTSON 10 Mothers in the middle: Rethinking middling migration as relational 191 LEAH WILLIAMS VEAZEY 11 Mainland Chinese grandparenting migration as mid- dling transnationalism: Family, life stage and lifecourse 213 ELAINE LYNN-EE HO AND TUEN YI CHIU Index 232 Contributors Viktoria Adler is an Anthropologist. In her work she focuses on intersectional approaches to identities, privilege and disadvantage in diverse societies. Viktoria is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Social Innovation Research Institute at Swinburne University of Technology. She is currently also a Researcher and Project Manager at SYNYO GmbH in Vienna where she at present is working on an H2020 project investigating the impact of governmental Covid-19 responses on vulnerable population across Europe. Andrea Del Bono obtained his PhD in 2016 from Western Sydney University – Institute for Culture and Society – with a thesis titled “Chinese and Italian Place Brands in Contemporary Sydney: Assembling Ethnicity and/in the City”. His work focuses on migration, community building, urban development and place-making processes filtered through the lens of branding. He is co-author of Chinatown Unbound: Trans-Asian Urbanism in the Age of China, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2019. Tuen Yi Chiu is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She is a sociologist specialising in migration and transnationalism, gender, marriage and family, and ageing. Her current research focuses on transnational ageing, cross-border marriage migration, intimate partner violence and intergenerational relations. Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography and Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. Her current research focuses on transnational ageing and care in the Asia-Pacific, and second, im/ mobilities and diaspora aid at the China-Myanmar border. Silvia Marcu is a tenured scientist at Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Spain. For the last two decades, she conducted qualitative research into mobility, identity and cross-border mobility, with special emphasis on Eastern Europe. Her recent publications include articles in prestigious indexed journals as Transactions of the Institute of British viii Contributors Geographers, Environment and Planning A, Populations, Space and Place, Geoforum, Race, Ethnicity and Education, Children’s Geographies, Sustainability, Geopolitics, Mobilities among others. Nick Osbaldiston is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. He has published widely in the area of lifestyle migration including two books Seeking Authenticity in Place, Culture and Self (Palgrave, 2012) and Understanding Lifestyle Migration (with Michaela Benson, 2014). He is currently researching in the area of counter-urban trends following the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. Rosie Roberts is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of South Australia. Her previous work has focused on middling forms of transnational migration into and out of Australia and the lived experiences of migrants over time and space. She has recently published a book (Springer 2019) examining the ways temporary migrants enact agency and negotiate risk under the spatial and temporal conditions of ongoing migration trajectories. Her current research examines issues of diversity and equity in the creative and cultural industries as well as arts- based approaches for working with new arrivals to support resettlement and belonging. Shanthi Robertson is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and an Institute Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. She is currently Chief Investigator on three Australia Research Council (ARC) projects on: transnational youth mobility; autonomous technology in the lives of migrants living with disability; and civic practices in Sydney’s ‘new Chinese’ settlement suburbs. Her second book, Temporality in Mobile Lives: Contemporary Asia-Australia Migration and Everyday Time, was published by Bristol University Press in January 2021. Catriona Stevens is a Forrest Prospect Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia. She recently completed her PhD in Anthropology and Sociology at UWA, an ethnography of recent trade-skilled migration to Perth titled Unlikely settlers in exceptional times that explores how social class shapes opportunities, choices and trajectories through the migration process. Findings from this project have been published in Current Sociology, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy and Transitions. She is now Manager, Research Engagement at the UWA SAGE Lab (Social Care and Ageing Living Lab) where her research addresses ageing and migration and the aged care migrant workforce. Kaoru Takahashi is a visiting research fellow in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research focuses on the gendered life trajectories and everyday experiences of Japanese women Contributors ix in London by using ethnographic approach with particular interests in their community making and ongoing identity negotiation. Nonie Tuxen completed her PhD at the Australian National University in 2019. Her doctoral research explored the interplay between how international education is imagined and experienced by young people in Mumbai, and how class status is (re)produced via and relates to international education. Leah Williams Veazey is a postdoctoral researcher in the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies and the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include migration, care, digital cultures, and health. She is the author of Migrant Mothers in the Digital Age: Emotion and Belonging in Migrant Maternal Online Communities published by Routledge (2021).
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