Blog post by Simone Haarbosch, Radboud University, Netherlands and Claire Wallace, University of Aberdeen, UK

Increased mobility within the European Union means that many people have learned to live in new places. However, improved communications meant they no longer had to choose one place or another – they can live in both places simultaneously using what we have analysed as ‘hybrid habitus’ (drawing on Bourdieu’s ideas). Brexit added a further complication by forcing them to adapt to a new situation whereby the UK was no longer part of the facilitated EU migration policy, thus adding new levels of uncertainty to the situation. However, for professional people, the choice is not so much an economic one (can I afford this?) as an existential one leading them to reconsider: Who am I?  Where do I belong?

Our Identities article, ‘Renegotiating female transnational identities after Brexit: the importance of hybrid habitus’, looked at the experiences of 58 middle class women, who were either Dutch people living long term in the UK (Scotland in this case) or British people living in the Netherlands. We looked at how they established a new sense of ‘home’ in another country on the one hand, and how they retained links with their motherlands on the other, as aspects of this hybrid habitus.  

Blog post by Saime Özçürümez, Baskent University, Türkiye and Pınar Sönmez, Bilkent University, Türkiye
 
Scholars working on highly skilled migrants (HSMs) portray them as privileged cosmopolitans who can move effortlessly across borders due to high competition for attracting talent. However, little is known about how HSMs narrate their everyday experiences while reflecting on their sense of belonging. How do the HSMs reconcile national attachments with a global outlook? How do they navigate the complex socio-political landscapes of their host countries?
 
Our Identities article, ‘Patriotic cosmopolitans in Budapest: narratives of belonging among highly skilled migrants’, challenges the dominant framing and research on HSMs as essentially economic actors. We focus on their experience of international mobility and examine how they think through their identity and sense of belonging in complex socio-political settings. Drawing on Kwame Anthony Appiah’s assertion that one can identify as both a cosmopolitan and remain loyal to country of origin, we conceptualize cosmopolitanism and patriotism as intertwined spatial and emotional attachments constituting the foundations of HSMs’ sense of belonging.