ABSTRACT
Joining a religious sect, the sex industry or the art field can open transnational opportunities for women to participate actively in different social and cultural domains. This article is based on a qualitative study of migration, gender and identity among Latin American women in Berlin. Drawing from a transnational practices perspective, I refer to lifestyles that serve to develop cosmopolitan skills and competencies such women develop by relying on multiple identifications. These competencies facilitate their ability to find recognition as well as express a sense of belonging that extends beyond the ethnic categorizations deployed within hegemonic discourses. The women presented here identified themselves within lifestyles that helped them to develop cosmopolitan sociabilities as alternative representations of themselves. Looking at forms of cosmopolitan identification, this paper focuses on individual agency as these women contested, resisted or empowered themselves against racialized and ethnicized global hierarchies of power.
