Privilege in Migration: Mobilities, Inequalities, and the Urban Context

It advances the notion that privilege entails a critical assessment of power differentials, and that privileged migration is inherently relational, thus requiring to be contrasted to less privileged experiences of migration marked by precarity, vulnerability and a lesser choice. This open access book explores the transnational mobility of privileged migrants. The notion of ‘privilege’ has the merit of bringing to light various less-studied forms of migration, such as retirement, lifestyle, investment, amenity, elite, highly skilled and international residential mobilities. This book investigates the concept of privilege and examines its analytical reach in capturing and describing migration processes of middle- and high-income people. It advances the notion that privilege entails a critical assessment of power differentials, and that privileged migration is inherently relational, thus requiring to be contrasted to less privileged experiences of migration marked by precarity, vulnerability and a lesser choice. Throughout its 12 chapters, the volume broadens the geography of lifestyle and privileged migration, from being overly focused on North-South migration to including privileged forms of mobility emerging among the middle and elite classes from new areasof accumulation in the Global South.