‘Making space’ in Cairo: Expatriate movements and spatial practices

Abstract

What does it mean to be an 'expatriate'; what sort of migration does the term describe; and which migrants can and want to inhabit it? Despite the inconsistencies and controversial nature of the category 'expatriate', its use is extensive (Fechter 2007). Whether embraced or rejected, 'expatriate' remains vital to many migrants' self-identifications as well as wider discourses on migration and performs important work in narrating what sort of migrant one is or wants to be. Especially given the continuing politicisation of international migration and its centrality in processes of globalisation, the term's social and political functions and effects demand attention. This paper examines what it means to be an 'expatriate' in contemporary Cairo through the lens of movements and space-making. As such, it contributes to a growing literature on 'expatriate' migration and engages scholarship thinking space and movement in relational and socio-historical terms, as embedded in wider power relations and co-constitutive with the formation of 'social kinds'. The paper finds that rather than denoting an easily definable and distinguishable group of migrants, 'expatriate' in Cairo emerged as a contingent, unstable and ambiguous category of practice that privileged migrants related to in complex ways, both rejecting and embracing it. As such, 'expatriate' stands in a productive relationship with movement and socio-spatial processes; movement and space underlie and express how 'expatriate' as a social category is inhabited but also challenged by privileged migrants, as they negotiate their 'being in place' in Egypt, their relationship to 'home', to each other and to other migrants. If migrants in contemporary Cairo use the label 'expatriate' to narrate a particular arrangement of (im)mobilities, sociospatial relationships and imaginations, these are crucially linked to 'migratory' privileges rooted in wider hierarchies of citizenship, class, and 'race'. In other words, as subjectivity and practice, the 'expat' implied participation in a set of movements, spatial practices, relations and imaginations that relied on migrants' relatively privileged positions within systems of social difference. Categories of social differentiation moreover intersected to create gradations of privilege, reflected in differentiated 'expatriate' mobilities and spatial experiences. The paper will first introduce literature on expatriates and privileged migration, before discussing scholarship on relational space and the politics of movement. A

Simulated home: an effective cross-cultural adjustment model for Chinese expatriates

“…Most of the researches only regard the “expatriate bubble” as a phenomenon of cross-cultural adjustment, or even a metaphor (Mayberry, 2017), without an in-depth analysis of its internal correlation and communication outside the “expatriate bubble.” The concept of “bubble” evokes the image of isolation and separation and expresses a sense of community that relies on space and isolation from the host society (Kunz, 2018). In the literature involving immigrants and expatriates, there is a reference to the “expatriate bubble.” The expatriate bubble is a special kind of social network support.…”

Lifestyle Migration

“…Though often narrated as an individualised project, lifestyle migration is situated in wider migration systems (Croucher, 2012;Kunz, 2018) and the historical contexts that structure them. The negotiation of privilege in lifestyle migration is predicated on more than individual status and relates to migrants' citizenship and belonging to powerful nation-states within the international system (Knowles & Harper, 2009;Croucher, 2012;Glick Schiller & Salazar, 2013;Janoschka & Haas, 2013).…”

Geographies of global lifestyle migration: Towards an anticolonial approach

“…Benson (2013) shows that many North American migrants become increasingly aware of their relative wealth and privilege vis-á-vis local Panamanians after arriving in Boquete. This sense of inequality is overtly racialized, as interpersonal encounters with locals cause lifestyle migrants in Boquete to become increasingly aware of their Whiteness and its association with economic and cultural capital (Benson, 2015; see also Green, 2017;Hayes, 2015c;Kunz, 2018). Many lifestyle migrants express discomfort with this growing sense of inequality and attempt to rationalize their exercise of privilege in the destination by participating in charitable work and viewing themselves as contributors to local development (Benson, 2013; see also Benson, 2015;Kordel and Pohle, 2018;Rojas et al, 2014).…”

“…Yet most of the work in this theme treats socio-spatial segregation as the result of individual choice rather than seeing it as a problem of racialized exclusion rooted in colonial power systems. Scholars should identify and call out the ways in which inequality in Global South destinations is reproduced through colonial civilizing discourses that position White lifestyle migrants as bearers of an educational and cultural status that will slowly help local residents 'develop' (see Kunz, 2018). Attention to socio-spatial segregation is a positive move in the literature but should be clearly linked to enduring colonial relations of power.…”

“…From early work that viewed lifestyle migrants largely as rational choice agents (see Croucher, 2009a;Dixon et al, 2006;Howard, 2008;Sunil et al, 2007), a number of scholars began to treat lifestyle migrants in more complex ways and to situate this migration within broader political economic dynamics (see for example Benson and O'Reilly, 2018;Green, 2014;Hayes, 2014Hayes, , 2015b. Moreover, many researchers have moved away from assuming the arrival of lifestyle migrants is inherently beneficial for local communities (see for example Spalding 2013aSpalding , 2013bVan Noorloos 2011aVan Laar et al 2014;Wortman et al, 2016), and some have situated these processes in relation to questions of race, privilege and the colonial present (see Benson, 2013Benson, , 2015Escher and Petermann, 2014;Green, 2017;Hayes, 2015c;Karkabi, 2013;Knowles, 2005;Korpela, 2010;Kunz, 2018). We argue that gestures toward a more critical and anticolonial approach to lifestyle migration in this last set of scholarship should be pushed further.…”