ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the reinstatement of class as a means of understanding how socio-economic and spatial mobility may combine to shape both diaspora formation and diaspora engagement. It suggests that the form of migration and its outcomes – diaspora formation and engagement – are shaped by the resources that would-be migrants can muster. The capacity to mobilize those resources is largely determined by socio-economic background or class, which, drawing on Bourdieu, can be conceived in terms of the disposal of different amounts and forms of capital – economic, social, political, cultural and symbolic. Holding combinations of such capital shapes the routes would-be migrants can take, the channels they can follow, the destinations they can reach, and their life chances afterwards. The chapter considers diaspora formation and engagement. The capacity for a migrant to navigate the international migration order will be largely shaped by his or her endowments of economic and social capital: in other words, their class.
