Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ableoneinSpain.Thissenseofdownwardclassmobilityshowshowwhitenessasasite
of privilege intersects with other forms of disadvantage (Frankenberg 1993).
The participants were mainly lifestyle migrants who moved to Spain after retirement
for part of the year, or who sought a different lifestyle from the one they had in Sweden.
BothSpainandSwedenarepartoftheEuropeanUnion,sowithEUcitizenshipitispos-
sible to work or retire in member countries other than one's own. This study details how
thewomenwereintegrated intotheseexclusive communities throughtheidentifications
of whiteness among diverse Northwest European communities of lifestyle migrants.
Through an analysis of intra-European migrations, the idea of a common, culturally
homogeneousEuropeanidentityisdissected.WhatappearsisaSouth-Northdividebuilt
upon a deep Swedish postcolonial identification with Anglo-Saxon countries and cul-
tures and parallel disidentification with the former colonial powers in Southern Europe.
As the chapter will show, the Swedish women interviewed mainly socialized with other
North(west) European migrants from similar social segments who shared the embod-
iment of white “structured invisibility,” thus separating them from non-European mi-
grants, but also from the native Spanish.
White Migrations: An Outline
The concept of white migration could be read as an oxymoron, since a migrant is not
expectedtobewhiteandawhitepersonisnotseenasamigrantbutratherasatouristor
anexpatriate.Conceptually,theterm
migrant
tendstobeusedasamarkerforpeopleex-
cluded from the “white” social category and non-Western-ness, indirectly linked to ex-
periences of discrimination. Subsequently, racialized bodies not qualified for whiteness,
areoftenconflatedwithbeingmigrants,despitetheircitizenship(Lundström2007).Mi-
grants seen as white tend, on the contrary, to be excluded from the category of migrants
and fall into the category of “expatriates,” “tourists,” or simply Europeans.
Itisarguedherethatdifferentexamplesofmigrationconstitutenewformsofmobility
that we need to understand as part of the contemporary world in order to not reserve
the concept of migration for the idea of underprivileged migrants moving from South
to North, since these images only show parts of these global processes. This raises the
social and conceptual relationship of white affluent migrants who migrate between their
home and host countries as new aspects of transnational migration. Some of these mi-
grants retain a home in more than one place, others seek a different way of life from the
one they have at home, while still others work or study for a limited period in a given
country but may not intend to return “home” but rather migrate to a third country, or
some may choose to retire in a different country. These forms of white migrations illus-
trate current trends as well as historical patterns and conditions that may be on a con-
