Migration and the Transnational Habitus: Evidence from Canada and the Philippines

Abstract

Immigrants have been extensively studied, but the ways in which immigrants themselves make sense of their lifeworlds has not always been at the top of the agenda. Researchers are frequently interested in understanding the experiences of`the immigrant', as an objective analytical category, rather than the experiences of`an immigrant'. With this paper we do not claim to change that situation, but we do believe there are analytical tools available that would allow greater sensitivity to the lifeworlds of`an immigrant'. In particular, we need ways of understanding immigrant experiences when these deviate from statistical norms and when they fail to adhere to categories or theoretical expectations. The literature on transnationalism has helped enormously in this respect. Individual immigrant stories are now frequently used to highlight experiences which confound expectationsöregarding, for example, the nature of cultural assimilation and economic integration into host societies (for example, Mountz and Wright, 1996; for a review, see McHugh, 2000). It is now understood that immigrants do not simply start new lives as`the immigrant': instead, they frequently maintain strong linkages with their place of origin. These linkages are varied öeconomic, social, cultural, political, institutional, emotional öbut out of this complexity, research often tends to pick one or two of these strands without fully acknowledging that they merge seamlessly in lived experiences.In understanding the integration of these forms of transnationalism, we suggest that Pierre Boudieu's notion of habitus, as a framework for understanding the value assigned to economic, social, and cultural forms of capital, may prove useful. Although couched in economic terminologies of capital, exchange, accumulation, etc, Bourdieu's conceptual vocabulary is explicit in its attempt to go beyond economism and`rational choice' in order to understand the connections (and to transcend the arbitrary analytical distinctions) between economic, cultural, and social processes. At a still higher level of abstraction, Bourdieu's purpose is to transcend the divide between structure and agency by exploring a theory of`practice' in which actions are both constrained by,

International return mobility, learning and knowledge transfer: A case study of Slovak doctors

“…Kelly and Lusis (2006) have demonstrated the value of Bourdieu's notions of capital and habitus for understanding migrants' experiences. In particular, the valuation of individuals' economic capital, social capital (networks and connections that can be mobilised), and cultural capital (symbolic assets) is determined by habitus (the framework or social rules which determine worth).…”

Leveraging symbolic capital: the use of blat networks across transnational spaces

“…Rather than blindly seeing bonding social networks 'largely as an unmitigated good' (Edwards 2004), scholarly work has recognized the importance of dynamism across space and time within migrants' social networks (Ryan 2007) and of how social capital can have positive and negative impacts on migration processes and experiences (Edwards 2004;Ryan 2011) in the host society. Kelly and Lusis (2006) draw attention to the potential dangers new migrants face if they interact solely with co-ethnics who lack contacts in the wider host society. Such closed social networks align with the existence of negative social capital and the emergence of ethnic enclaves detached from the wider host society (Crowley and Hickman 2008).…”

Exploring Identifications in the Transnational Social Sphere: The Potential of Social Fields

“…Kelly and Lusis, 2006). Habitus referring to transnational social fields implies a different meaning to that originally asserted as it is more defined by movement between places, which allows more reflexive considerations of an individual's action within structured positions.…”