ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the second status passage in salsa dance professionals’ transnational careers, particularly for dancers of Latin American nationality: the access to the European salsa circuit. It combines perspectives from the field of mobility studies with the already developed theoretical framework of transnational careers. Drawing on the concept of “mobility capital”, it sheds light on an important aspect of salsa dance professionals’ working conditions and careers that is completely absent from public tales of salsa as inclusive for “everybody” and from literature on salsa. In this literature, salsa dancers’ mobility across national borders is implicitly taken for granted. The same holds for much of the literature on other “mobile professionals”. This chapter looks at three consecutive phases of the process of accessing the salsa circuit. The first phase is of “imaginative travels” to account for the importance of imaginaries in salsa dance professionals’ careers. The second phase is how Cuban dancers first gained access to the European salsa circuit and the strategies they mobilised during the process. The third phase is the way in which Latin American dancers consolidate legal status once in Europe to continue their transnational career in the salsa circuit.
