Migration-Facilitating Capital: A Bourdieusian Theory of International Migration

Abstract

Despite the centrality of the notion of “capital,” scholarship on international migration has yet to fully explore the generative potential of Bourdieu’s theory. This article “thinks with” Bourdieu to theorize how states, aspiring migrants, and migration brokers interact over the valorization, conversion, and legitimization of various types of capital for migration purposes. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theorization on the state, I identify the variegated ways in which state policies and their enactment by frontline gatekeepers constitute migration-facilitating capital. I show how migration brokers help migrants acquire adequate capital—or the semblance of possession of such capital—to contest the state’s monopolistic claim over the governance of identity, qualification, and mobility. Drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptualization of field, habitus, illusio, and symbolic violence, I analyze how migrants partake in “organized striving” for migration-facilitating capital, the uneven distribution of which produces material and symbolic stratification.

Social Class, Migration Policy and Migrant Strategies: An Introduction

“…Bringing in class inequality to understand the dynamics of international migration makes it possible to uncover the plurality of resources that migrants may mobilize in response to these selective migration policies (Bourdieu, ). In addition to income or economic assets, cultural and social capital can also function as “migration‐facilitating capital” (Kim, ). The multidimensionality of class has two major implications.…”

“…Deservingness frames embedded in migration policy construct a moral opportunity structure which leaves some leeway for migrants to perform deservingness in appropriately classed ways, emphasizing cultural capital, signs of middle‐classness or economic reliability for example (Chauvin and Garcés‐Mascareñas, ; Nicholls, ; Menjívar and Lakhani ). In her theoretical article on “migration‐facilitating capital”, Kim () thus finds that “aspiring migrants, and migration brokers interact over the valorization, conversion, and legitimization of various types of capital for migration purposes”. She observes that an “ensemble of migration brokers help migrants acquire the adequate profile of capital – or the semblance of the possession of such capital – contesting the state's monopolistic claim over the governance of identity, qualifications, and mobility”.…”

The Migrant Other: Exclusion without Nationalism?

“…Several scholars have shown that informal networks and brokers tend to illicit greater trust than state-facilitated programs (Åkesson and Alpes 2019;Bylander 2019;Deshingkar et al 2019) because norms of reciprocity and social and cultural embeddedness mark the intermediary sphere (Deshingkar 2019). Intermediaries can offer increased social mobility and status (Alpes 2013;Wee, Goh, and Yeoh 2019;Tuckett 2018), and help migrants appear desirable to employers and receiving states (Kim 2018;Deshingkar 2019).…”

“…Critical approaches show how migrants often seek secure passage and improved life conditions more than "legality" (Åkesson and Alpes 2019;Deshingkar et al 2019) and that engagement with intermediaries may in the end increase the agency of migrants (Deshingkar 2019). Recasting the services brokers offer, including document procurement, travel arrangements, translation, skills trainings, and insider knowledge, as market purchases or investments by migrants (Kim 2018) and focusing on the bottom-up knowledge production arising from migrant experience (Baird and Van Liempt 2015) can therefore help to reenfranchise the victim-migrant Other.…”

Conspicuous Mobility: The Status Dimensions of the Global Passport Hierarchy

“…Given the rapid growth in international travel in recent decades, crossing borders has become an increasingly common human experience and a key context in which people come face to face with global inequality. The wish for greater travel freedom drives demand for immigration and dual citizenship (Kim 2018;Harpaz 2019;Knott 2019;Altan-Olcay and Balta 2021;Surak 2021); and questions of visa-free access play a significant role in international relations, for example, between Turkey and the European Union (EU) (Schengen Visa Info 2021). There is, therefore, a growing need to understand international travel freedom as it manifests in individuals' subjective experience.…”