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.

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