Migration in Capital Theory: Proposition for a Multi-Level Spatio-Temporal Framework

This paper explores how migrants utilise and access different forms of capital. Using a Bourdieusian approach to capital, we focus on how migrants’ temporal and spatial journeys, are shaped by and in turn shape their opportunities to mobilise resources and convert them into varied kinds of capitals. These processes depend on migrants’ social positioning, including their gender, class, ethnic and national positioning, as well as citizenship status, and how this is articulated in relation to different fields in different spatial and temporal contexts. Drawing upon our combined corpus of data on migration to the UK, and a lesser extent Germany, with Third Country Nationals and EU citizens, as well as new data collected since the Brexit referendum, the paper examines these issues through biographical approaches to migrant women’s life stories. In so doing, we build theory on capital accumulation as dynamic, multi-level and spatio-temporally contingent processes thus challenging any simplistic view of linearity over time.