Unequal Youth Migrations: Exploring the Synchrony between Social Ageing and Social Mobility among Post-Crisis European Migrants. (December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Varriale, Simone
• Is Part Of: Sociology. Volume 53:Number 6(2019)
• Page Start: 1160
• Page End: 1176
• Publication Date: 2019-12
• Subjects: adulthood -- Bourdieu -- class -- economic crisis -- intra-European migration -- Italy -- migration -- social mobility -- symbolic boundaries -- youth; Sociology -- Periodicals; Sociology -- Periodicals; Sociologie -- Périodiques; Sociologie; Electronic journals; 301.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0038038519858044
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0038-0385

Abstract

This article explores how symbolic boundaries between youth and adulthood shape experiences of upward and downward social mobility among EU migrants. Drawing on 56 biographical interviews with Italians who moved to England after the 2008 economic crisis, and focusing on three individual case studies, the article reveals that normative understandings of adulthood emerge as a central concern from participants' biographical accounts, and that they mobilise unequal forms of cultural, economic and social capital to maintain a feeling of 'synch' between social ageing and social mobility. Drawing on Bourdieu and the sociology of adulthood, the article proposes the notion of synchrony to explore how tensions in the relationship between social ageing and social mobility shape experiences of migration. This allows for an innovative theoretical bridge between cultural class analysis, adulthood studies and migration studies, and for a better understanding of how intersections of class and age shape intra-European migrations.