Lifestyle Migration and Colonial Traces in Malaysia and Panama - Paperback

by Michaela Benson (Author), Karen O'Reilly (Author)

Leading scholars in the sociology of migration, Michaela Benson and Karen O'Reilly, re-theorise lifestyle migration through a sustained focus on postcolonialism at its intersections with neoliberalism. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the interplay of colonial traces and neoliberal presents, the relationship between residential tourism and economic development, and the governance and regulation of lifestyle migration. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by the authors among lifestyle migrants in Malaysia and Panama, they reveal the structural and material conditions that support migration and how these are embodied by migrant subjects, while also highlighting their agency within this process. This rigorous work marks an important contribution to emerging debates surrounding privileged migration and mobility. It will appeal to sociologists, social theorists, human and cultural geographers, economists, social psychologists, demographers, social anthropologists, tourism and migration studies specialists.

Back Jacket

Leading scholars in the sociology of migration, Michaela Benson and Karen O'Reilly, re-theorise lifestyle migration through a sustained focus on postcolonialism at its intersections with neoliberalism. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the interplay of colonial traces and neoliberal presents, the relationship between residential tourism and economic development, and the governance and regulation of lifestyle migration. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by the authors among lifestyle migrants in Malaysia and Panama, they reveal the structural and material conditions that support migration and how these are embodied by migrant subjects, while also highlighting their agency within this process. This rigorous work marks an important contribution to emerging debates surrounding privileged migration and mobility. It will appeal to sociologists, social theorists, human and cultural geographers, economists, social psychologists, demographers, social anthropologists, tourism and migration studies specialists.

Author Biography

Michaela Benson is Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. She is renowned for her work on lifestyle migration, and has been conducting research and writing on this topic since the early 2000s. She is the author of The British in Rural France (2011), which was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association's Philip Abrams Memorial Prize (2012), co-author of The Middle Classes and the City (2015), co-editor of Lifestyle Migration (2009) and Understanding Lifestyle Migration (2015).
Karen O'Reilly is Professor Emerita at Loughborough University, UK. Through her research on British migrants living in Spain in the 1990s, she set the agenda for the sociological study of British migration. She is the author of The British on the Costa del Sol (2000), Ethnographic Methods (2011), Key Concepts in Ethnography (2008) and International Migration and Social Theory (2012) which won the CHOICE outstanding academic title award.