This open access book explores the transnational mobility of privileged migrants. The notion of ‘privilege’ has the merit of bringing to light various less-studied forms of migration, such as retirement, lifestyle, investment, amenity, elite, highly skilled and international residential mobilities. This book investigates the concept of privilege and examines its analytical reach in capturing and describing migration processes of middle- and high-income people. It advances the notion that privilege entails a critical assessment of power differentials, and that privileged migration is inherently relational, thus requiring to be contrasted to less privileged experiences of migration marked by precarity, vulnerability and a lesser choice. Throughout its 12 chapters, the volume broadens the geography of lifestyle and privileged migration, from being overly focused on North-South migration to including privileged forms of mobility emerging among the middle and elite classes from new areasof accumulation in the Global South.

Hila Zaban is an urban sociologist and anthropologist. Since 2019, she is a Senior Lecturer at the Tourism and Hotel Management Department at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Israel. Before joining Kinneret, Hila held postdoctoral positions in the UK (the Israel Institute postdoctoral fellowship at SOAS, University of London, and the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Warwick). Her work focuses on privileged mobility and urban transformations, studying the privileged mobility of diaspora Jews and their effects on Israeli cities, and, more recently, Israeli emigration. Her work also examines issues of urban citizenship, migrant integration, built heritage, and spatial memory.

Franz Buhr writes about the intersections between migration and cities. He holds a PhD in human geography from the University of Lisbon, where he has worked since 2013. In 2019, Franz co-founded the IMISCOE research initiative PriMob (Privileged mobilities: local impacts, belonging, and citizenship). He has worked on how migrants learn to navigate a new city and on their urban mobilities. He is a fan of maps and mapping and has used mental maps and other participatory methodologies in his research projects. More recently, he has been working on the relationship between migration and gentrification, looking more closely at how digital nomadism and other forms of privileged migration land and transform urban spaces.