Privileged Mobilities ─ Professional Migration, Geo-Social Media, and a New Global Middle Class

As corporations ramp up «workforce globalization» and young professionals increasingly pursue opportunities to work abroad, social entrepreneurs use online digital platforms to create offline social events where foreigners can meet face-to-face. Through ethnographic study of such groups in Paris, Singapore, and Bangalore, Erika Polson illustrates how, as a new generation of expatriates uses location technologies to create mobile «places,» a new global middle class is emerging.
While there are many differences in the specifics between the expat groups, they share certain characteristics that indicate a larger logic to the way that the increasing mobility of professional career paths is connected to new subjectivities and changing forms of community among a diverse and growing demographic.
This book opens up a new field of study, one which pays more attention to middle class mobility while questioning the privileging of mobility more generally.

Erika Polson (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Film & Journalism Studies at the University of Denver. Her work has appeared in publications including Media, Culture & Society; Communication, Culture & Critique; New Media & Society, and the International Communication Gazette.