Migrants’ Social Positioning and Perceived Social Stratification Structures in the Countries of Origin and Destination

Scholars tend to examine migrants’ social positioning in terms of their strategies to access various forms of capital transnationally (e.g., Plüss, 2013; Stock, 2024). While such works are important to understand the process of potentially achieving social mobility as well as acquiring/maintaining class position and identities, it is also equally important to pay attention and examine whether migrants imagine the structure of social stratification in countries of origin and destination differently and where do they position themselves in such hierarchies. This points to a possibly fragmented and more situated (rather than a consistent and continuous) understanding of one’s positions and identities as migrants’ traverse different types of societies and hierarchies.

Drawing on the use of visual tool within qualitative interviews, this paper compares how and why Filipino migrants working in the care sectors of New York and London (as nurses, caregivers, and domestic workers) perceive the US/UK and the Philippines as different types of societies based on inequality pyramids. At the same time, the paper also examines where and why they position themselves in such hierarchies.

The paper thus explores how (lack of) occupational prestige, accumulated capitals, and future imaginaries intersect with perceived hierarchy and desirability of destinations in relation to meaning-making related to structures of inequalities and (contradictory) social mobility.