Leaving Europe, Aspiring Access

Racial Capital and Its Spatial Discontents among the Euro-Maghrebi Minority

Bibliographic Data

ID7882135
AuthorsJaafar Alloul (0000-0003-3781-4182, KU Leuven, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume18
Issue3
Pages313-325
Publication date2020-07-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1556-2948 • E-ISSN: 1556-2956
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/15562948.2020.1761504
OpenAlexW3024870656
LanguageEN
Citations received27
References cited29

This article explores the emigration of tertiary-educated EU citizens with North African heritage to Dubai. Longitudinal ethnographic data suggests that leaving Europe was a mobility strategy for dealing with a sense of ‘racial stuckedness’ at home, a status concern undergirding their stagnant socio-economic position. By ‘transnationalizing’ Bourdieu’s seminal conceptual tool kit of the ‘forms of capital’, it contrasts the conversion yields of timely achieved educational credentials, marked by racial friction at home but significantly higher returns after transgressing into more favorable status zones overseas. This differently structured outcome suggests the analytical productivity of an altogether distinct value form, ‘racial capital.’

Cultural capital · Demographic economics · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Emigration · Ethnography · Geography · Human capital · Political science · Productivity · Social science · Sociology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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