ABSTRACT
Relatively privileged migrants are not often thought of as women from the Global South. Nonetheless, increasingly upper- and middle-class women from countries such as Colombia decide to move to countries of the Global North for education, a change of scenery, self-actualisation or simply just an adventure. This chapter draws on an ethnographic study that uses life story interviews and participant observation with upper- or middle-class and White Colombian-born women living in Melbourne, Australia to explore their experiences of privilege as transnational migrants. I employ an intersectional and translocational lens to analyse how these women carry their privileges with them transnationally and how these privileges also transform through the women's mobility. I do this by examining how the Colombian women perceive and negotiate encounters of ethnic difference, otherness and discrimination. For this reason, I present fragments of two of their life stories in which the women reflect on above mentioned experiences. I argue that the women interpret and act out of a position of privilege when confronted with their ethnic or national difference. However, having to speak up against discrimination and navigating ‘being ethnic’ reflects how the women's privileges shifted while in Australia. This illustrates the women's translocational positionality and how privileged positions intersect with subordinated ones transnationally. I further argue that the narratives in this chapter show how the women navigate contradictions in their everyday lives that arise out of the multiplicities of different positions that they occupy transnationally. The women's experiences of privilege are complex as their privilege of being the upper class and White in Colombian society intersects with their social position as migrant women from the Global South in Australia. Nonetheless, amongst other things, the women continue to profit from the upper-class and White positionality they were born and socialised into in Colombia even when living in Australia.
