Migrant Professionals in the City Local Encounters, Identities and Inequalities

The migration of professionals is widely seen as a paradigmatic representation and a driver of globalization. The global elite of highly qualified migrants—managers and scientists, for example—are partly defined by their lives’ mobility. But their everyday lives are based and take place in specific cities. The contributors of this book analyze the relevance of locality for a mobile group and provide a new perspective on migrant professionals by considering the relevance of social identities for local encounters in socially unequal cities. Contributors explore shifting identities, senses of belonging, and spatial and social inequalities and encounters between migrant professionals and ‘Others’ within the cities. These qualitative studies widen the understanding of the importance of local aspects for the social identities of those who are in many aspects more privileged than others.

1. Introduction: Local Lives, Work and Social Identities of Migrant Professionals in the City Lars Meier Part I: Considerations of the City 2. Further Stay or Return?: Insights from the Highly Educated Turkish Migrants in Amsterdam, Barcelona and London Zeynep Yanasmayan 3. Seeing "Difference" Differently: Life Trajectories of Professional Migrants’ Children in Melbourne, Australia and in Singapore Gabrielle Désilets 4. Learning the City by Experiences and Images: German Finance Managers’ Encounters in London and Singapore Lars Meier Part II: Local Incorporation and Work 5. Agents of Local Incorporation: Skilled Migrant Organizations in Oslo, Norway Micheline van Riemsdijk 6. Germany for the Ambitious: Everyday Life of Russian Professionals in a Research Centre in JülichVolha Vysotskaya 7. Socializing Spouses in Gabon: The Petroleum Wives’ Club of Port-Gentil Lisa Toccafondi Shutt Part III: Local Encounters and Identities 8. Are Professional Migrants Elite?: The Case of Japanese Expatriate and Host National Employees in Jakarta Yukimi Shimoda 9. "Londres Accueil": Mediations of Identity and Place Amongst the French Highly Skilled in London Jon Mulholland and Louise Ryan 10. Mining Minerals on the Moon and Other Fantasies of Extreme Expatriate Intervention in Kathmandu, Nepal Heather Hindman 11. Translocal Lives: Polish Migrant Entrepreneurs in the Cities of the West Midlands, UK Catherine Harris 12. Cosmopolitans or New Americans?: The Experiences and Social Identities of Colombian and Puerto Rican Software Engineers in Boston’s Route 128 Lina Rincón 13. British Transnational (Be)longing: Emplacement in the Life of Skilled Migrants in Dubai Katie Walsh

Lars Meier is Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the Technical University of Berlin.