Overview
- Provides a unique ethnographic study of contemporary middle class formation that brings in migration as a key factor in the reproduction as well as contestation of privilege and inequality
- Uses the Ethiopian case to analyse patterns and social formations that are taking place across the Global South, providing a valuable new resource for a global audience of scholars
- Offers fresh scholarship moving away from a focus on poverty as a motivation for migration; instead examining middle class mobility in ways that should reshape perceptions of Ethiopia, and Africa more broadly
- Focuses on unique themes of higher education, ethnicity and notions of progress, which appeal to a wide international readership, including academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students, and other educated readers
Part of the book series: Globalization, Urbanization and Development in Africa (GUDA)
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About this book
This book is an ethnography of urban-to-urban migration and its role in middle-class formation in Ethiopia. Through an examination of the intersections and tensions between physical movement and social mobility, it considers how young Tigrayan people’s migration between urban centres made them distinct from both international migrants and non-migrants. Based on fieldwork in Adigrat and Addis Ababa, it focuses on these young people’s notions of progress, experiences of higher education and ethnic tensions to demonstrate how their movements enabled them to enhance their economic, social and symbolic capital while their cultural capital remained largely unchanged. The book provides new insights into the opportunities and constraints for upward social mobility and argues that the emergence of shared characteristics among urban-to-urban migrants led to the formation of a group that can be described as a middle class in Ethiopia.
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Reviews
“This is a fascinating case study of the physical geography related to social upward mobility. It explores urban to urban migration in two Ethiopian cities, shaping distinct features of a lifestyle, thereby tracing the unconscious formation of a specific identity and social group. An important contribution to the current debate on African middle classes.” (Professor Henning Melber, University of Pretoria, University of the Free State and Nordic Africa Institute)
“This is a richly informed, empirically grounded, sensitive and refreshingly innovative addition to our understanding of the nuanced complexities of being middle class in Africa, and of the importance of class in comprehending migration as a differential experience.” (Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
“This is a richly informed, empirically grounded, sensitive and refreshingly innovative addition to our understanding of the nuanced complexities of being middle class in Africa, and of the importance of class in comprehending migration as a differential experience.” (Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Markus Roos Breines is Assistant Professor in Social Science at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is currently based in Ethiopia. He authors articles on migration, mobilities, distance education, ethnicity and social media and has previously worked at the University of Edinburgh and the Open University, UK.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Becoming Middle Class
Book Subtitle: Young People’s Migration between Urban Centres in Ethiopia
Authors: Markus Roos Breines
Series Title: Globalization, Urbanization and Development in Africa
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3537-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-16-3536-6Published: 03 August 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-16-3539-7Published: 04 August 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-981-16-3537-3Published: 02 August 2021
Series ISSN: 2752-3276
Series E-ISSN: 2752-3284
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 213
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 17 illustrations in colour
Topics: Human Geography, Anthropology, Development Studies, Migration