Dwelling in different localities: Identity performances of a white transnational professional elite in the City of London and the Central Business District of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Besides being mobile, migrant professionals dwell at specific localities. It is in this article that identity performances of one social group with equal identity dimensions, white, male German financial manager, are compared in two different local contexts of their dwelling: in the City of London and in the Central Business District of Singapore. This article demonstrates that by comparing similar social groups in different localities, the effects of locality become clearly visible. As the managers are temporal migrants, their dwelling practices are to arrange themselves with locality for the time of their delegation. Everyday practices and the specific symbolic labelling of localities are expressions and producers of identity. The mobile managers encounter the two localities with unique images rooted in the colonial period; as a centre and an outpost, respectively. As these images have an impact on their identity performances today, this article demonstrates that the mangers perform whiteness and being transnational elite with different emphasis regarding locality.

KEYWORDS:

• Comparative research
• identity
• locality
• migrant professionals
• transnational elite
• whiteness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lars Meier, Dr phil, sociologist and geographer. He is a senior researcher in EU FP7 project RESCuE at the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg. Meier held positions as researcher or lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the Technische Universität Berlin, the University of Bremen, the University of Munich and the Technical University Darmstadt and was visiting academic at the University of Oxford. He was a senior researcher at the IAB and led the local team for the EU FP 7 project SPHERE. His work focuses on social inequality and diversity, cultural studies, work, migration, urban studies and qualitative methods. Recent publications include an edited book on Migrant Professionals in the City. Local Encounters, Identities, and Inequalities (Routledge 2015) and a special issue on Absence. Materiality, Embodiment, Resistance (Cultural Geographies, 2013).

Notes

1. For this article data that have been published in parts within a German monograph (Meier 2009) are employed to develop a new article.