| Description |
The migrant is often thought of as a non-westerner in search for a better future in Europe or the United States. From a multi-sited ethnography with Swedish migrant women in the US, Singapore and Spain, this project explores the intersections of racial and class privilege and gender vulnerabilities in contemporary feminized migration from or within the West. Through an analysis of white migration, I develop theoretical tools to understand the dynamics that shape the women?s lives as wealthy housewives, expatriate wives and lifestyle migrants. Using the concept of white capital, I approach whiteness as an embodied form of cultural capital that is interlinked with and upheld by (transnational) institutions, citizenships, a white (Western) habitus and other resources that are transferrable (but mediated differently) cross-nationally, yet complicated by gendered and heterosexual norms, and its dependencies and regulations. By shifting the gaze towards privileged migrants, I illustrate how race and whiteness shape contemporary transnational migration and how white privilege is reproduced globally.
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