Global Elite Migrations : Agency and Networks of Migrant-Artists from the Former Soviet Bloc

Abstract

This open access book explores the lives and careers of migrating artists with the purpose to understand how they make use of their migrant-networks and how this process interacts with decisions they make about immigration and career development. Situated at the crossroads of Migration Studies and Elite Studies, this interdisciplinary research is based on sixty interpretive biographic interviews with opera singers from the former Soviet bloc who work in various places across Europe and beyond. The book raises the question to what extent they exercise agency as migrants and professionals and to what extent they preserve their professional elitism on the transnational level. The case of these migrant-artists serves to illuminate the dynamics of a wider phenomenon - global elite migrations - which is compared with an intergalactic journey. Through this sociological metaphor, the book offers a new analytical framework to think about the “agency-network” nexus.