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Abstract'The migrant' tends to be imagined as a non-privileged, non-white, non-western subject in search of a better future in Europe or the United States and as such is a pre-constituted subject shaped by notions of marginalization and poverty. What kinds of stories are obscured by this recurrent image of 'the migrant' and how do such categorizations hamper the analysis of privilege, belonging and white normativity within studies of migration? Why are some individuals not regarded as migrants despite their migrant status? Why are other individuals seen as migrants and thus denied their national belonging in spite of their formal status as national citizens? The article develops analytical tools on migration, belonging and citizenship, with particular attention to (a) autochthony and belonging, (b) race and citizenship and (c) white capital.

This article examines Swedish migrant women to the United States. It asks how racially privileged European migrants adapt to US racial and gender hierarchies that require them to relinquish their economic security and gender autonomy in a neoliberal state? Drawing upon interviews and focus group discussions with 33 Swedish women and three of their spouses, and participant observation between 2006 and 2008 in a network for Swedish speaking women living in the US, the article discusses how a group of 'white' migrant women who arrive in the US with an ideology of gender egalitarianism negotiate a more socially conservative and economically vulnerable lifestyle, as the wives (and potential ex-wives) of upper-middle-class men. The article argues that while Swedish women benefit from their racial and social privileges in the US they lose their sense of economic security, acquiring new anxieties that make them reluctant to renounce their Swedish citizenship which they conceive of as a 'flexible' resource.