The Social Morphology of Skilled Migration: The Case of the British Middle Class in Paris

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, international skill mobility has become a topic of academic enquiry, examined from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Economic theorisation has centred on the elite professional migrant moving within corporate spheres of influence concentrated on ‘world cities’ such as London, New York and Paris. Whilst accepting the value of this work—particularly in terms of its contribution to the broader re-theorisation of migration studies—this paper is critical of the focus on a privileged economic form of career-based mobility. I argue that skilled international migration, although still practised by a relatively small number of people, has nonetheless become a ‘normal’ middle-class activity rather than something exclusively confined to an economic elite. This implies complexity with regard to the skilled migrant communities that form within the contemporary world city, complexity that has hitherto been overlooked. This omission is addressed through a six-faceted lifestyle typology derived from 36 interviews with skilled British residents in Paris. The typology underpins the main argument of the paper: namely that skilled migration has developed an increasingly diverse ‘human face’ since studies of the phenomenon began in the late 1980s, and that traditional notions of the economic ‘expatriate’ need to be placed within a much broader contextual and conceptual framework. In the final part of the paper, reasons for the development of this complexity are briefly explored.

Keywords:

• Skilled Migration
• Middle Class
• Transnationalism
• Expatriate
• Mobility Capital

A previous, much less complete, version of this paper was subject to the expert scrutiny of Paul White, Duncan Scott and two anonymous JEMS referees. I am extremely grateful for this help.

Notes

1. Although this paper is concerned with permanent migration, it is important that the reader connects the debate here with other forms of new shorter-term middle-class mobility, as the boundary between permanent relocation and peripatetic movement has become increasingly blurred.

2. Broadly speaking, the European migratory system has three features: small member states have high European populations relative to their total populations; large member states have substantial European populations per se; and both large and small member states have growing ‘churn’ in terms of migratory inflows and outflows. In addition, there is the issue of accession. Although restrictions on migration have been imposed by the 15 established EU member-states, albeit to differing degrees, on eight of the ten ‘A8’ accession states (Cyprus and Malta are exempt) until at least mid-2006 (and potentially until 2011), East to West migration has become a significant feature in the Western European city.

3. The figure of 25,000 includes 18,984 British nationals (Étrangers) and 6,332 naturalised British (Français par acquisition). It is also growing, in line with migration trends more generally; the Étranger population grew from a base of 11,205 in 1975 to its 18,984 figure in 1999, whilst the Français par acquisition population grew from 4,080 to 6,332 over the same period (INSEE 1999). In terms of the study area, whilst the paper refers to Paris throughout, research was based in both Paris and the broader city-region of Île-de-France, made up of 8 départments. It has Paris at its centre, Seine St Denis, Val-de-Marne and Hauts-de-Seine make up the inner ring (petite couronne), and Seine et Marne, Essone, Yvelines and Val-d'Oise make up the outer ring (grande couronne).

4. In 1975 the opposite relationship was true; Île-de-France was a more significant destination for British citizens than it was for the naturalised British. A number of factors are likely to have been significant in accounting for this shift: the growing popularity of rural France for a new population of British émigrés (Buller and Hoggart 1994), significantly higher levels of naturalisation amongst British citizens in Île-de-France than across France as a whole, and the decline in historically rooted expatriate communities in Southern France (Nice, Biarritz, etc.).

5. A specialist expat magazine for British and other Anglophones living in France.

6. Another example of the link between the agency of place and the appropriation of particular types of mobility capital can be seen in the international retirement migration literature if one compares the retired British in Tuscany (King and Patterson 1998), for example, with those on the Costa del Sol (O'Reilly 2000).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sam Scott

Sam Scott is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield