Becoming Middle Class: Young People?s Migration Between Urban Centres in Ethiopia (Globalization, Urbanization and Development in Africa)

This book is an ethnography of urban-to-urban migration and its role in middle-class formation in Ethiopia. Through an examination of the intersections and tensions between physical movement and social mobility, it considers how young Tigrayan people’s migration between urban centres made them distinct from both international migrants and non-migrants. Based on fieldwork in Adigrat and Addis Ababa, it focuses on these young people’s notions of progress, experiences of higher education and ethnic tensions to demonstrate how their movements enabled them to enhance their economic, social and symbolic capital while their cultural capital remained largely unchanged. The book provides new insights into the opportunities and constraints for upward social mobility and argues that the emergence of shared characteristics among urban-to-urban migrants led to the formation of a group that can be described as a middle class in Ethiopia.

Markus Roos Breines is Assistant Professor in Social Science at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is currently based in Ethiopia. He authors articles on migration, mobilities, distance education, ethnicity and social media and has previously worked at the University of Edinburgh and the Open University, UK.