2.1 Introduction: Who Are They?

Today more than ever before, we are witnessing complex trajectories of global elite migrations as illuminated by a rapidly increasing stream of elite niched professionals trying to develop their elitist careers abroad. Building their second home at destination, global elite migrants sustain the transnational and highly visible nature of their politically eminent work through their global employment. Their list consists of migrating business executives, athletes, fashion models, actors and artists including ballet dancers and opera singers. Through their migration, transnational employment and integration, they continuously make a global impact by shaping public tastes and values and enriching the world economics.

Unfortunately, there is limited knowledge about how this social group of foreign labour should be understood. Moreover, scholars who write about ‘elite migrants’ remain confused by ambivalent concepts. This theoretical chapter systematises the under-developed and fragmented scholarship on global elite migrations and offers the first working definition of this phenomenon, also articulating its differences from other categories of transnationally skilled labour such as transnational elite and high-skill migrants. Borrowing theoretical resources from the competing schools of cosmopolitanism and transnationalism, I illuminate the uniqueness of global elite migrants in the light of their such distinct features as mobility, permanence, migrant agency and networking.

2.2 Global Elite Migrations: Basic Concepts and Definitions

One of the many exciting things about Italy is its rich infrastructure of cozy cafes. Caffé Scala in Milan near its famous La Scala Theater is one such place where you can enjoy a nice cup of Italian espresso and a rich assortment of Italian-style snacks while waiting for a matinee. It is also a musicians’ hub, where Italian opera singers, their agents and pianists frequently meet to enjoy the Italian siesta while talking about business. That is why it is not by chance that Glasha (an aspiring opera singer from Russia) chose that place for our interview. She and her colleagues had domesticated this spot of Italian culture, having turned it into a hub of their own. ‘I come here almost every day to meet with someone’, she says, ‘And we talk about a libretto or a scenic movement. We almost live here – it feels as if we were living here. Earlier today, I was seeing my pianist coach here, and after we finish the interview, I will be meeting here with my agent to discuss my future and possible roles’. In sociological terms, she loves this place not without a reason: as she herself explains, this place offers her an environment supportive of her decision-making, network building and, consequently, growing professionalism and elite status.

At the moment of the interview, Glasha was graduating from the conservatory, actively looking for operatic jobs on the global scale. She was very proud of holding two elite conservatory degrees from Russia and Italy and speaking five languages: Russian, Italian, German, French and English. A fluent speaker of Russian and Italian and a low intermediate user of the other three languages, she felt confident about finding operatic work in Europe and kept investing in her social media and self-representation as a Russian singer who belongs to the global world. Her career aspirations did not eventually fail her: five years later I found her globally rotating between three good opera houses on secondary and even lead roles, while having built her second home in Italy and having married an Italian man.

Also in her late twenties, Glasha’s co-national Milena seemingly shares this luxurious transnational lifestyle, speaking three languages and holding employment contracts in three different countries. The only difference is that she perceives her home as solely based in her country of origin, where she always returns in-between her international jobs. Like Glasha, another Russian musician Polina also dreamed about becoming a global opera star ten years ago, invested heavily in foreign language education and vocal lessons but ended up teaching Music Theory in a small vocal academy in the South of Italy while sometimes singing in the local church and the local theater choir.

Having similar elitist education and professional training from world best conservatories and vocal academies and tightly bound to Italy as a central place of their professional growth, these three women, nevertheless, belong to entirely different categories of skilled transnational workforce. These differences are grounded in the principles of mobility and permanence that underpin their transnational lives and networking strategies.

Glasha is a global elite migrant, embodying the social group that many scholars may not be familiar with. As defined by Paul Brass (1991) and Vladimir Shlapentokh (2016 [1990]), societal elites are exclusive social groups that occupy most prestigious professional niches. Highly influential in their own nation-states and connected to structures of power (Brass, 1991; Shlapentokh, 2016 [1990]), the representatives of this social group were largely ‘invisible’ in social sciences before the New Millennium (Caletrío, 2012). There was very limited knowledge about their domestic activities, notwithstanding the transnational scope of their work (Brass, 1991; Williams, 2017). Savage and Williams (2008) note that elite professionals were, for a long time, discouraged by their governments to give interviews to journalists or researchers, while scholars themselves remained more interested in other, statistically more representative, social groups such as disadvantaged migrants or ordinary skilled migrants.

Above that, the global elite migration phenomenon appeared totally incompatible with the notion of ‘elite’, whose professional ethos was traditionally associated with ‘stable top positions’ such as lawyers and diplomats (Kuus, 2021, p. 2). Although personally connected to political elites (including the dictators such as Hitler, Stalin or Pinochet and the Castro dynasty) the elitist professional groups such as ballet or opera were, to a certain extent kept in the shadow from the public eye, often remaining misunderstood by mass populations (Frolova-Walker, 2006, 2016; Kotnik, 2010, 2016; Neumann, 1957, 1976; Mosse, 1961, 1964; Schwall, 2021; Shlapentokh, 2016 [1990]; Tomé, 2021). They were not only above the general public but also above the public understanding and, therefore, outside the realm of mass imaginaries (Mosse, 1964; Shlapentokh, 2016 [1990]).

For example, the Soviet journalist Vladimir Posner has come into the Soviet history as an ambassador of Soviet cultural globalization. The US-born child of Soviet diplomats and the dual nationality holder, he could always easily travel throughout the world for both work and pleasure while employed in the most prestigious mass media outlets in the Soviet Union (Koppel, 2004). However, his name and professional activities were in the shadow in the Soviet Union before the mid 1980s, while he had been frequently invited as a guest speaker and a co-showman to the United States to educate Americans about Soviet lifestyle and values (ibid). He was one of the first global mass media celebrities to publicly disrupt the iron curtain—first in the USA and ten years later in the stagnating Soviet Union. This unevenness of time-and-space compression happened because of the different temporal parameters of globalization, which started much later in the Soviet Union than in the USA. For me personally, the ‘space bridge’ debates between Russia and America, which were co-hosted by Vladimir Posner and his US colleague Phil Donahue, became the first virtual hubs where I could learn about the globalizing world and also about the elite career of a transnational journalist. For my generation, the previously hidden elite journalist Posner became a harbinger of globalization and a mesmerizing pubic figure about whose life we knew very little but wanted to know more. Following all his telecasts throughout the mid and late 1980s, we—the last generation of Soviet teenagers—were opening ourselves the doors not only to the mysterious world of globalization but also to the enigmatic space of elite transnational career, of which Posner was the symbol. Journalists like him had suddenly become visible and their elite work had suddenly become transparent for the general public.

He was an iconic example of the transnational elite but never a global elite migrant. He was a privileged national with the US passport, a Soviet ‘light’ traveller, who could move freely around the world and feel at home everywhere whereas the rest of the Soviet Union was kept far behind the Iron Curtain. He nevertheless, became an archetype of transnational elitism in the milieu of the late Soviet globalization, which was happening in the Soviet Union in the mid and late 1980s. Without the third wave of globalization,Footnote 1 he would have remained the invisible national elite, unknown to the world, which he actually was in the 1970s.

Challenging the traditional approach to both public imaginaries and social sciences, globalisation has thus shown that various social groups can become visible and transnationally mobile (Caletrío, 2012). This has made professional elites an interesting case for further academic research (Di Giovanni, 2016; Hannerz, 1996; Kauppi & Madsen, 2014; Kuus, 2021; Savage, 2015; Savage & Williams, 2008; Wedel, 2017). It is in this milieu of the post-1980 globalisation and de-nationalisation that both established and emerging elite groups have started to initiate or to intensify their transnational employment, shaping as more publicly visible professionals and global elite migrants (Savage, 2015; Wedel, 2017).

As a research direction, the emerging global elite migration scholarship is, however, marked by no uniform definition of ‘global elite migrants’: this term is often used interchangeably with many others, for example, in reference to tourism or luxurious lifestyle. Thus my informants confess hearing all the time from their hometown friends and relatives, ‘When on earth will you come back to the common senses and stop living like a tourist, changing places? When will you stop having fun and start thinking about more serious work?’ The public imaginaries are still held back by traditional stereotypes and a traditional confusion about migrating elite professionals. When people, including scholars hear the word ‘global elite migrant’, they often revive the images of retired migrants, tourists, skilled professionals, and lifestyle transnationals, who are de facto imagined as current or former holders of privileged occupational positions and solid financial means that allow them to move around the world in relatively unrestricted ways (Weinar & Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020). This is bolstered by additional nationality benefits that some of them might have (ibid).

Still scholars argue that the accent on income and nationality is not enough for understanding the nature of global elite migrations and their distinction compared with other migrant types (Kerr, 2010). Is this chapter, I seek to reconceptualise global elite migrations within the framework of elite studies and studies of transnationalism. To achieve this, I borrow the concepts of ‘professional elitism’ and ‘transnational mobility’ from the sociology of elites and from the scholarship of transnationalism.

‘Professional elitism’ relates to specific human capital, associated with professional skills that allow people to shape global tastes and values, to participate in the global financial exchange and thus to be recognized as a societal symbol of success (Besnier et al., 2017, 2018; Cygankvao, 2016; Entwistle & Mears, 2012; Hartley, 2021; Saxenian, 2006). Moreover, these skills are transferrable transnationally: for migrants, they are exempt from accreditation at destination (Shepard, 2010; Harrington, 2020; Li et al., 2020; Papastergiadis & Trimboli, 2021). This can be illuminated by the above-mentioned cases of Polina, Glasha and Milena, whose Russian musical degrees were always recognized in other countries, steering their employment mobility. Forty out of my sixty informants have received initial operatic education in conservatories in their countries of origin—the BA-level degrees that have allowed them either to seek employment in Europe or to build up further intellectual capital on it and thus to facilitate their competitiveness. All their degrees at origin have been recognized by international theaters and employment agencies without any problems. From this angle, professional elitism is directly linked to transnational mobility.

The principle of ‘transnational mobility’ means moving regularly between more than two countries for the purposes of lifestyle or professional development (Bartolini et al., 2015; Gropas et al., 2014), with the latter motivation equivalent to the former for highly skilled professionals (Triandafyllidou & Isaakyan, 2015). A specific type of transnational mobility is transnational employment (Isaakyan, 2022).

Scholars across disciplines acknowledge that, in coupe with networking, mobility in general (or ability to easily move between job sites and/or projects within your area of elite expertise) is a key element in the work of both domestic and transnational elites. In this connection, Alfarone and Merlone (2024) note the following scenarios for career development of elite professionals such as musicians. In the optimal case, their ability to hold multiple job contracts and, consequently, liaison with various network members matches their professionalism with the needs of the market (ibid). This is what scholars call ‘portfolio career’, believing in the job-market potential of this skill arsenal: even the most volatile markets of elite employment invariably demand portfolio-packed skills (Bennett, 2009). The most crucial factor of elite professionalism is, however, networking capacity, related to personal knowledge about how, why and with whom to make important social ties and build the network. This is where the accumulated portfolio of social skills leads to the ‘boundaryless’ career, providing ambitious elite professionals with endless opportunities (Defillippi & Arthur, 1994; Zwaan et al., 2010).

Studies further recognize that a constant life in the conditions of mobility/temporariness and network-building often results in the professional’s precarity. In some cases, s/he may invest excessively in his/her elite career, forcing oneself to move in-between multiple projects and trying hard to satisfy severe requirements of his/her network, but eventually break like a chronic substance abuser, torn apart by the controversial phases of professional euphoria and mental collapse, suffering from the network yet being unable to break bonds with it.Footnote 2 On the contrary, a more pragmatic professional may, at a certain point, decide to stop investing in the elite career and open up to entirely new and less elitist job opportunities.Footnote 3 However, this would mean the end of his/her ‘elite professional’ status.

Thinking about the above-mentioned three women migrants (Glasha, Polina and Milena) and other globally employed elite professionals, we develop a definition of global elite migrations that distinguishes them from the more general stream of high-skill migration and also from transnational elitism—the definition that throws light on the dynamics behind global elite migrations in the twenty-first century.

Based on the literatures of globalisation, transnationalism and professional elites, global elite migrants can be defined as elite professionals who work across highly skilled niched occupations and either preserve their elite professional and social status in the course of their global migrations or achieve it through their global migrations. In their reference, scholars often use the term ‘transnational elite’ (Lasch, 1996; Robinson, 2011; Sassen, 2006, 2010), the meaning of which is, however, not precisely the same as that of global elite migrants.

2.3 At the Crossroads of Transnationalism and Cosmopolitanism

In the light of their increasing visibility and pivotal role in globalization, we can further ask how society should think about global elite migrants. Theoretical perspectives on these mobile people remain immature and, consequently, quite diverse, pointing to the epistemological conflict between cosmopolitanism and transnationalism. The cosmopolitan view on global elite migrants emphasises their ‘privileged mobility’ and ‘rootlessness’, while scholars of transnationalism stress the role of metropolitan cultures and robust transnational networks that govern elite migrant streams on the global scale. In their conceptualisation of ‘elite migrations’, these two schools are not incompatible, nevertheless. They share such concepts as ‘urban culture’ and ‘transnational network’. What makes these two approaches distinct is their approach to the role of national tradition in the preparation of elite professionals who become migrants in the age of globalisation.

2.3.1 Mobility as a Privilege

The cosmopolitan perspective on global elite migrants as privileged ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ has been shown in the works of Castells (2000) and Lasch (1996). Lasch (ibid.) defines them as non-patriotic and nationally detached ‘irresponsible citizens’ who form ‘the new meritocratic class through upward social mobility and increasingly come to be defined by rootlessness, cosmopolitanism, a thin sense of obligation and diminishing reservoirs of patriotism’. He attributes their imagined civic selfishness to society’s de-nationalisation and the rise of globalisation. In his opinion, they are ‘world citizens without any polity affiliation’, who selfishly invest their money in their private elite neighbourhoods including private schooling and exquisite residential conditions while ‘withdrawing from public life’.

Castells (2000, p. 446) further notes their social and cultural homogeneity (or robustness of their cosmopolitanism) and stresses their complete detachment not only from their own country of origin but also from their new local communities at destination, thus finalising their ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ verdict.

Within this pattern, more recent studies add such an essential feature of the insofar shaping transnational managerial elite as the temporariness of their elite employment and stay at destination (Iredale, 2008; Peixoto, 2008). Beaverstock (2005, p. 246) concludes that elite migrants shape as elite ‘nomadic workers’, who have replaced the ‘traditional [attached and nostalgic] expatriate’. In this reference, it seems reasonable to ask how Netrebko’s support of Donetsk and Tuteberidze’s devotion to the Russian figure skating school should be explained within this paradigm. Advocates of the cosmopolitan school of thought seemingly ignore this question and evade the answer. Neither can they explain the majority of home remittances and acts of patriotism among other global elite migrants. The epistemological position cosmopolitanism obviously causes the over-simplification of global elite migration as a phenomenon by neglecting a multitude of migrants’ spaces and practices of belonging.

Moreover, the epistemological position leads to another dogma, such as the ‘unproblematic mobility’ and, consequently, to the misconception about the ‘Global North migrants’ and intra-EU migrants as synonymous to ‘elite migrants’ (Brimm, 2010; Ho, 2011). The insofar emerging accent on unrestricted mobility as a result of the expanding EU—and transatlantic—polity space often leads to the false over-conceptualisation of elite migrations as related to ‘premium citizenship’ (Favell, 2018; Harpaz, 2015). The ‘unproblematic mobility’ argument actually disrupts the logic of professional elitism as an important criterion on the basis of which elite professionals should be determined. There are, in fact, many highly mobile elite professionals with privileged country-specific passports, financial means and rich networking resources among western artists, writers or business executives who make overseas short-term visits for work or pleasure but should not be viewed as global elite migrants.

In many cases, elite migrants are thus frequently de facto fused with ‘privileged migrants’ or ‘open-border migrants’ from North America and the EU. As a result, ‘elite migration’ is often referred to interchangeably with ‘high-skill migration’ within the ambivalent framework of cosmopolitanism (Weinar & Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020).

2.3.2 Urban Cultures and Elite Networks

Some theorists of cosmopolitanism further explain that global elite migrants do not need integration because they are fully accommodated by the hosting global city. Hannerz (2004) and Beaverstock (2005) illuminate their ‘urban cosmopolitanism’ argument with the case of transnational managerial elites who become ‘the dominant class in the world city and the central actors in world city production’ (ibid, p. 248). Their ‘key function is to support the world city’s corporate economy’, which pays off by offering them the space of global cities between which such migrants move ‘with little dislocation, adapting easily to their new urban habitat’ (ibid.). In this reference, scholars of transnationalism observe that such inter-city ‘hyper-mobility’ tends to supplant other angles to look at global elite migrants (Yeoh & Willis, 2005: 270), while working and residential destinations of ‘elite labour’ are not always confined within the urban space of a big city and thus may be related to local community and integration (Weinar & Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020).

In this reference, Castells (2000) and Sassen (2010) attempt to restructure the ‘urban cosmopolitanism’ argument in its application to global elites. The attention is shifted to the ‘information- and networking- society’ (Castells, 2000; Sassen, 2006, 2010). In this epistemological move toward transnationalism, global elite migrants are seen as unique participants in the circulation of transnational knowledge and as members of exquisite transnational networks (ibid; Hannerz, 2004). Within this school of thought, the accent is placed on elite migrants’ transnational networks through which products of their global elite labour are disseminated and which bind elite migrants to a variety of actors and stakeholders. The epistemological shift is thus made toward a new transnational culture around such migrants.

Elaborating the role of transnational networks in elite migration, some transnationalism scholars view global elite migrations as a wholesome migration industry that encompasses specific networks, institutions, and individual migrants themselves (Cranston et al., 2018; Faist, 2014; Li et al., 2020). Scholars recognise the transnational mobility of elitist networks as a more complex model of mobility privilege (Walton-Roberts, 2021), as seen in the geographic mobility of global elite migrants and a variety of stakeholders who accompany them (Faist, 2014; Kohe et al., 2021; Li et al., 2020). This is specifically illuminated by the mobility of athletes and musicians joined in their migratory routes by various sporting and artistic professionals (such as coaches and pianists) who enable the functioning of elite migration industries (Kohe et al., 2021; Isaakyan, 2022; Li et al., 2020).

2.3.3 Transnationalism and Creative Elites

Another approach to global elite migrants is that of the ‘global culture industry’. It is grounded in transnationalism studies because it specifically recognises the role of global remittances generated through global elite migration in arts and sports. As Lash and Lury (2007: 3) argue, ‘globalisation has given the culture industry a fundamentally different mode of operation’, having transferred it from the modern ‘culture industry’ to the current ‘global culture industry’. They clarify that previously cultural activities such as movie-making, music production, or sport were mostly nation-state-sponsored and bound and rather ‘simple’ in terms of having a very limited number of state-controlled cultural products in circulation: cultural artefacts such as songs, movies, or theatrical plays were restricted in their forms and zones of public consumption. In the global culture industry such as global cinema or global opera, ‘products no more circulate as identical objects that are already fixed and static: now they spin out of control of their makers in their circulation, they move and change through transposition and translation’ (ibid).

Moreover, creative works produced by global elite migrants are ‘a key driver of the digital economy’ (Hartley, 2021: 12). With their ‘revenues of $2.250 trillion, cultural and creative industries account for 3% of the world GDP and employ 29.5 million people’ (ibid), thus making the economic impact on the global scale. Alongside economic remittances, global cultural industries such as sport generate agglomerate socio-cultural remittances through their elite migrations (Besnier et al., 2018). As example of such remittances is the ‘production of global images of male success’ through professional soccer (ibid: 851).

2.3.4 A Re-turn to the Local and the National

While speaking about the global expansion of global elite migrants’ remittances, scholars of transnationalism note the ‘translocality’ of global elite migration in its connection to local community. For example, in the global financial district, elite migrants’ translocal practices are intensely reproduced ‘through the agency of both local nationals and international migrants as they participate in regular cross-border transnational corporate, social and cultural networks with colleagues, clients, friends and local people’, thus seeking to integrate into their host societies (Beaverstock, 2005: 249).

At the same time, global elite migrants do not turn away from their countries of origin either. Even scholars reluctant to acknowledge the role of the nation-state, give credit to its cultural heritage in global elite migration. For example, Yeoh and Willis (2005: 279) admit that global elite migrant streams can be divided into ‘culturalist’, ‘colonialist’, or ‘imperialist’, depending on their cultural practices arising from the country of origin. Each such stream has its own professional, cultural, and geographical specificities that are shown in their migratory, cultural, and historical corridors of mobility. This can be illuminated by the British business executives in India and Singapore (ibid).

The pivotal role of education and professional training in the preparation of global elite migration is attributed to the nation-state: the national training of global elite migrants is still considered important in the globalising world. This is seen in the (re)training of migrating fashion models and athletes. While receiving the on-site professional training, more and more athletes and models seek to complete their university degrees and arrive at even higher levels of education. It is important to note that athletes and musicians can be understood as the most iconic cases of global elite migration (Besnier et al., 2018; Isaakyan, 2022). In fact, they represent its two extra-polar segments. Migrating musicians such as opera singers are highly educated and multi-lingual (Harrington, 2020; Shepard, 2010; Walter, 2016). They graduate from world-renowned conservatories where they studied at least three foreign languages in order to perform a diverse operatic repertoire (Harrington, 2020; Isaakyan, 2022; Shepard, 2010; Cygankvao, 2016). Athletes may not be tertiary-educated because the nature of their athletic work requires mainly on-site professional training in physical skills (Besnier et al., 2017, 2018; Darby et al., 2022).

There is, however, a global accent on education and, consequently, more employment security to protect precarious elites such as sportsmen and models from physical risks of their work and make their earlier retirement smoother. In this connection, Aquilina and Henry (2010: 25) show that the delivery of education to elite migrant athletes is mostly accommodated through their nation-states. This is illuminated by concrete ‘state-centric provisions backed by legislation’; ‘state-facilitated agreements between educational and sporting bodies’; and a ‘laisser faire’ approach, in which the state encourages universities to make individual curriculum accommodations to migrant athletes (ibid.).

While impacting upon elite migrations, nationalism, however, invariably interweaves with global forces in a myriad of not yet known configurations, implicating new possible compromises and alliances between the theoretical schools of cosmopolitanism and transnationalism. And as a ‘young’ strand of academic knowledge, global elite migration research is, therefore, in need of both novel empirical cases and more sophisticated theories. This can be achieved through an increased attention to formative social forces that are supranational by nature, including such important factors as networks, job sites, employment contracts and generated remittances. In this respect, Sassen (2010) suggests that we need to think about the dynamics of the ‘elitist political practice’ in terms of its ‘operational spaces rather than national territories or international borders’. As Kuus (2021) observes, operational spaces of global elite migrants may require national institutions to function, without necessarily being constrained by national or international laws (ibid). Such migrants may, in fact, show a very complex relationship between their transnational work and the influence of their countries of origin (ibid.). On the one hand, they may seemingly exercise professional autonomy and the cosmopolitan style of thinking. At the same time, their creative products may, to some extent, remain sponsored by their nation-states (Li et al., 2020). This implicates a need for a thorough study of the nexus between transnational elite and nation-state, with keen attention to the national characteristics of global elite migrants and the national heritage they may convey through their global networking.

2.4 Global Elite Migrants Versus Their Definitional ‘Significant Others’

Thinking about global elite migrants, we should, therefore, distinguish this group from high-skill migration and also transnational elites, as summarised in Table 2.1 below.

Table 2.1 Comparing GEM and other types of migrant mobility
Full size table

Given these differences, the stories of Glasha, Milena and Polina have very much in common. However, these are the different stories with different endings because these skilled migrant-women belong to different migration categories based on where they are positioned now and also because of their different experiences and strategies of networking.

2.4.1 More Than High-Skill Migrants

Existing definitions of high-skill migration (with whose mainstream global elite migration is often falsely associated) portray high-skill migrants as no less than tertiary-educated professionals who work in state-regulated occupations and seek to build home at destination (Sandoz, 2019; Triandafyllidou & Isaakyan, 2014; Weinar & Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020). Their most important feature is the ability to sustain ‘highly qualified’ employment (Triandafyllidou & Isaakyan, 2015). This nevertheless may allow some small space for downward mobility in such cases as a medical doctor employed as a nurse, or a university instructor working as a schoolteacher (Federico & Baglioni, 2021), or my informant Polina—a former opera singer who is now music teacher and chorist. 1/3 of my informants—twenty people—have eventually turned from global elite—to ordinary highly skilled- migrants, teaching music and the Italian language or working as music entrepreneurs.

On the same note, global elite migrants are also highly skilled professionals who seek to build home in their new societies (Isaakyan, 2022). Like high-skill migrants, they are often tertiary-educated. However, educational background becomes a more flexible factor in their conceptualisation. This group includes professionals such as athletes, who may not be tertiary educated but developing their professionalism on-site (Besnier et al., 2017). Unlike their high-skill migrant counterparts, global elite migrants represent mainly unregulated occupations that do not require professional accreditation for overseas employment, while high-skill migrants are normally subjected to rigid procedures of accreditation that vary from state to state (Isaakyan & Triandafyllidou, 2021). However, global elite migrant employment patterns are much less flexible, and even a short career break (e.g., from opera singer or ballet dancer to a music or dance -teacher) can alter their ‘global elite’ status and reassign them to the high-skill migrant category, as in Polina’s case (Isaakyan, 2022).

The most rigid borderline between global elite and high-skill migrants is drawn by the transnational remittances they generate through their work (Hartley, 2021; Sassen, 2006, 2010; Papastergiadis & Trimboli, 2021). Global elite migrant professionals are clearly recognised by their global socio-cultural impact, whether it comes in monetary or non-monetary forms (ibid; Anderson, 2020). Their daily work should either impact public opinion, tastes and behaviours on the globally massive level or affect the global economy. This is illuminated by the production of mass cultural images of success by migrating musicians, actors, and athletes (Besnier et al., 2018; Hartley, 2021). Another example of such global impact is the generation of large volumes of financial capital by transnational business executives and managerial elites (Beaverstock, 2005; Favell, 2008).

With the advent and proliferation of digital technologies, the global financial remittances are also more and more generated now by opera singers and athletes through their international performances because the digital age enables large assemblies of spectators all over the world and a constant arrival of new powerful sponsors (Li et al., 2020). This increased visibility and income foster global elite migrants to make powerful donations to various localities around the world. For example, in 2014 the internationally proclaimed opera diva Anna Netrebko donated $20,000 to the Donetsk Opera House (Eastern Ukraine) for its restoration (BBC, 2014).

Such voluminous monetary remittances can be also generated by transnational elites (including sports elite), which is illuminated by the case of the South Korean figure skater, Olympic Champion and UNICEF good-will ambassador Yuna Kim: she donated $83,000 to support Haiti earthquake victims in 2010 and $100,000 to support covid-19 vaccines in developing countries in 2012, with the cumulative charity donation of five billion US dollars over the years of her global elite career (Pandya, 2021).

The value of the professional routine of global elite migrants and professionals from transnational elite is thus much more transparent to the public eye and much more tangible for the global consumers than that of, for example, doctors or engineers. Global elite migrants are more visible on the global arena (Li et al., 2020; Papastergiadis & Trimboli, 2021; Robinson, 2011). They originally come from politically eminent professional niches such as art, sport, or finance. Through their migration, they carry the professional elitism of their niched occupations toward a more global level (ibid; Williams, 2017).

At the same time, global elite migrants are always, to a certain, geopolitically involved, which is seen especially clearly during moments of geopolitical risk. This feature provides for their similarity with transnational elites but alienates them from high-skill migrants, who may not be always active in disseminating political messages of national or international significance. Consequently, as strong geopolitical actors, global elite migrants—as well as transnational elites—cannot be cosmopolitan per se: in fact they develop quite strong national and cultural roots and homeland attachments, which are invariably played out in geopolitics.

In terms of preferred locales of dwelling, only transnational elites solely reside in large urban areas because they must be based within close proximity to the sedentary ruling political elite, with whom they build their networks. In contrast, high-skill migrants and global elite migrants tend to settle within ‘talent clusters’ or communities of colleagues and kindred spirits, by whom their access to networking is enabled (Scellato et al., 2015; Dyachenko, 2016; Wang, 2019). These spaces are not necessarily represented by big cities but by established cultural and educational institutions and professional groups (ibid). Although global elite migrants prefer cities much more frequently than high-skill migrants, which moves them closer to transnational elites on the continuum of skilled labour migration.

2.4.2 Mobile with Anchorage—Settled Transnational Elite

Amidst all their intersection points, professional elitism and voluminous remittances of various kinds are the two key common features of global elite migration and transnational elite. Both groups are comprised of elitist niched professionals who can make a financial and, especially, a social impact on the global level of mass consumption, whereas the social impact of high-skill migration is much more modest in their dimension. This feature is directly linked to the unregulated nature of elite occupations that both global elite migrants and transnational elites represent. Their ‘commercialised’ products are immediately recognised and accepted as given across borders and cultures (Hartley, 2021; Li et al., 2020; Papastergiadis & Trimboli, 2021).

On top of their transnationally convertible knowledge and skills, the educational portfolio of both global elite migrants and transnational elites is amplified by their multilingualism: their representatives must speak at least three languages, whereas this is not a definitional pre-requisite for high-skill migrants. As Favell (2008) and Yeoh and Willis (2005) show, the work of transnational business executives is based on their multilingual capacity. So is the work of foreign news correspondents (Di Giovanni, 2016; Hannerz, 1996, 2004) and diplomats (Kuus, 2021), who make quite distinct segments of transnational elite. While all world leading conservatories and vocal academies build their curricula around, at least, three foreign languages that aspiring opera singers should master (Hartley, 2021).

However, ‘global elite migrant’ is not synonymous to transnational elite, and the distinction lies in the idea of naturalization and building new home at destination. The mundane transnational mobility of transnational elites is often cosmopolitan, like in the case of Vladimir Posner: it may well go without settlement outside the country of origin (Castells, 2000; Sassen, 2010). For example Vladimir Posner did not settle in the US: he was already a US national from birth. There was never an act of immigration in his professional activities.

It is also important to remember that transnational elites are not always the migrants who seek to be integrated into the host society and make it their new home. Integration was never a goal for Vladimir Posner because the United State was already his second home by birth right. In many cases, people like him are just mobile elite-workers who rotate around the globe as part of their professional activities. This can be illuminated by foreign news correspondents or diplomats as the iconic representation of transnational elite without integration (Di Giovanni, 2016; Hannerz, 2004). Many transnational artists, athletes, and businessmen also engage in this cosmopolitan lifestyle without building their second home abroad (Besnier et al., 2017; Favell, 2008; Kohe et al., 2021; Cygankvao, 2016). An illuminative case is the Russian figure-skaters who frequently participate in international competitions and ice shows or pay temporary visits to overseas coaches for additional support, while not choosing a more permanent relocation overseas.

On the contrary, global elite migrant professionals are ‘immigrants’, who aim to make a new destination their home. They are those who aim at socio-cultural integration and naturalisation at destination. They make up a specific—settled—segment of transnational elites. This group includes such examples as the Russian opera diva Anna Netrebko, who has become an Austrian national living between Vienna and various other places (Cygankvao, 2016); or the US-born figure skaters Zhu Yi and Allison Reed, who have taken the citizenship of China and the Republic of Georgia, in order to complete for and live in these countries (Abreu, 2022; Global Citizenship, 2022).Their still-mundane transnational mobility is not ‘rootless’ but anchored at destination. Global elite migrants can be thus viewed as ‘mobile but settled’, or ‘mobile with anchorage’. This mode of mobility puts global elite migrants in contrast with the other segment of transnational elite, whose mode of living is eternal mobility.

The ‘settlement-’ (or ‘integration-’) borderline between these two types of transnational elite is, of course, very unstable because both categories are very dynamic, often changing into each other. For example, when living and studying in Italy for a long time, Milena used to be a global elite migrant like Glasha before she repatriated to Russia and turned into a transnational elite professional without the second home overseas. We can observe the same pattern of boundary transgression among more famous people such as the former Soviet figure-skaters Irina Rodnina, Ekaterina Gordeeva and Eteri Tutberidze. The many time World and Olympic champions Rodnina and Gordeeva became the global elite migrants immediately before the Soviet collapse: since the late 1980s, they were employed in most prestigious ice shows worldwide after having built their second home in the USA. Then they both became coaches and eventually turned into the ordinary transnational elite after Rodnina had repatriated to Russia and Gordeeva had remarried a Canadian national and settled in Alberta, later moving to Los Angeles. The world-renowned figure-skating coach Eteri Tutberidge also used to be a global elite migrant: married to a US national and living in the United States throughout the 1990s, she participated in professional ice shows and coaching workshops on the global scale before she repatriated to Russia to work exclusively as the lead coach in a prestigious Moscow sports club. While still globally mobile in her professional activities, she is now much more professionally bound to Russia as to American home.

Yet even despite this fluidity of group boundaries, the distinction between global elite migrants and the unintegrated segment of transnational elite is still quite evident, and a few iconic cases of famous people can illuminate it. For example, Vladimir Posner always belonged to the transnational elite unintegrated anywhere outside the Soviet Union or the United States, which were the countries of his citizenship and upbringing and, consequently, his two homelands at origin. So is the famous Russian opera singer Hibla Gerzmava, who resides and works as a tenured conservatory professor in Russia while rotating overseas on guest-contracts. On the contrary, the Russian opera divas Anna Netrebko and Veronica Jioeva and the Georgian diva Nino Machaidze are global elite migrants, who circulate all over the world in their artistic employment but have the second home in New York, Prague and Milan respectively.

2.4.3 Iconic Global Elite Migrants

The rapidly expanding global elite migration mainstream includes the two main migrant groups: ‘transnational business’ elites migrants and ‘creative class’ elite migrants. The transnational business global elite migrant is represented by businessmen and financial experts who work in transnational corporations and generate large volumes of global finances as remittances (Favell, 2008; Weinar & Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020). The creative class global elite migrant is a wider category, encompassing such distinct streams as high arts professionals including composers, conductors, opera singers and ballet dancers (Neff et al., 2005; Shepard, 2010; Cygankvao, 2016; Harrington, 2020; Hartley, 2021; Tomé, 2021); moviemakers and actors (Li et al., 2020); fashion models (Entwistle & Mears, 2012); athletes (Besnier et al., 2017, 2018; Kohe et al., 2021); and physicists working in elite research laboratories, some of which are closed-access (Schinke, 2013; Dyachenko, 2016).

Globalisation has dramatically intensified their circulation and incidence on the worldwide level. For example, there are currently one million globally employed opera singers who are officially registered in the global opera database, compared with only 500,000 international singers from the 2015 registration (Operabase, 2022). As for transnational athletes, foreign-born players now make 23% of the rosters in the National Basketball Association, 30% in Major League Baseball, and 72% in the National Hockey League in the United States (Anderson, 2020: 1). Similar dynamics are currently observed in Canada, where, according to 2020 data, 60% of National Hockey League players are foreign-born, compared with 98% of Canadian-origin players in 1970 (ibid.).

The most iconic type of the ‘creative class’ global elite migrant is opera singers from the former Soviet bloc. There are a few distinct features that make their positioning within this foreign workforce very unique and absolutely irreplaceable, while their absence would significantly distort the configurations of the global elite migration continuum. Like writers and composers, they engage in the intellectual work of giving life to subtle images that appear to people’s senses of beauty with the difference that they are visible to and known by the public because they also have an opportunity to perform for their audiences. On analogy with other visible but ‘silent’ sub-categories of elite performer (athletes and ballet dancers), opera singers use their often athletic and perfectioned bodies on stage in addition to their voice work. Further, like in sport, the operatic productions are often full of nationalistic messages, which opera singers deliver through their singing (Frolova-Walker, 2006; Wilson, 2010). Compared with other ‘voiced’ elite performers (such as dramatic actors), opera singers also master the art of dramatic play but use their voices for beautiful singing too. On top of that, they speak, at least three European languages: at the conservatory, they study Italian as the operatic lingua franca, at least, to the low intermediate level and also French, German and/or English, at least, to the basic level of survival (Isaakyan, 2022).

As physically sensual as athletes, as intellectually engaging as writers and filmmakers, as dramatically arousing as actors—but unique in their ability to sing historically valuable pieces of a never fading art genre and to speak several European languages…opera singers are most unique multisensorial performers who use the voice-and-body language and actively engage in the world and regional geopolitics and in the global dissemination of both the historical heritage and the mass culture of sexuality. Holding this empowering capital package, they are expected to integrate more easily than other migrant groups.

My sociological interest in this group is added by the fact that their country/region of origin is associated with one of the greatest opera schools and traditions (Frolova-Walker, 2006), with most exquisite repertoire that has no substitutes in the global music industry because the repertoire of the Russian opera school can be performed with the most sublime quality only by native speakers of Russian (Isaakyan, 2022). And unlike the artistic outputs created by foreign filmmakers, the post-Soviet opera singers’ art is never ‘diasporic’ or ‘foreign’: in fact, the repertoire they sing (including the Russian music) is not limited to diasporic audiences but universally appreciated by all opera lovers.Footnote 4

Given this, we may ask to what extent their unique professional positionality can protect them from challenges of migration and transnational networking and can enable their migrant agency.

2.5 Global Elite Networks and Migrant Agency

2.5.1 Agentic Navigation

Positioned above the nation-state but also in a complex relationship with it, global elite migrants are thus strongly affected by both the global forces and the gravitational forces of their countries of origin, having porous borders as a social group. This means that professionals like Glasha may easily lose their elitist status any time and turn into ordinary skilled migrants like Polina, if they fail to sustain their elitist network. Polina herself admits that the main reason she has dropped from the centre of the global operatic career to its periphery is her inability to deal with certain challenges and obligations of the system: I was not able to connect with right people and to figure out in a timely manner where not to go and when to retreat. As a result, I got sucked somewhere and lost important chances and interpersonal relations’. She admits being a weak agent for an elite operatic career on the global scale. The ability to find the right network and to build your way into it is indeed a pre-requisite for being a global elite migrant. The agency-network nexus become a central issue in global elite migrations.

Generally speaking, scholars define ‘migrant network’ as a coordinated system of complex and dynamic social relations that connect migrants to various intellectual, symbolic, social, political and/or economic resources to assist their migration and its main goals including relocation, integration, finding the first job or sustaining elite employment (Wedemeier, 2009; Keskiner et al., 2022; Portes, 1995; Sandoz, 2019). Grounded in such globally scattered socio-political institutions and their infrastructures as workplace, family, friendship, private organizations and sponsors, international intermediaries and nation-states; migrant network is, however, not a composite of these institutions (Krissman, 2005). It is their unique constellation for each specific migrant (ibid). Migrant network is a changing and highly individualized configuration of diverse social relations and contacts that, if properly maintained, may enable the migrant’s access to desired places at destination.

In reference to elite labor migration (or global elite migrations), migrant network encompasses all social connections that can enable the migrant’s elite career overseas (Lee, 2021; Saxenian, 2006). However, it would be simplistic to say that migrants make such connections from scratch. They normally reach out to and utilize existing networking relations that had been already in place before their migratory project started (Giddens, 2000; Krissman, 2005; Portes, 1995). Established interconnected infrastructures of elite workplace, professional association, high rank university and broker agency are, in fact, rich in social ties, which are benefited and modified by migrants (Barkey & Godart, 2013; Kerr, 2010; Sandoz, 2019). A ‘network-building migrant’ is actually the one who tries to find access to these infrastructures and to explore (‘navigate’) and possibly make use of their social relations while sometimes modifying them (Triandafyllidou, 2018). A navigation scheme of locating and joining a network—a ‘cognitive map of networking’—is highly individualized for each migrant, in terms of his/her using support from and being patronized by specific people, benefiting from membership in specific institutions and easily entering as well as leaving some relations while being lost or even trapped in others (Kilduff & Tsai, 2003: 5).

By navigating the deep waters of transnational employment, migrants, in general, and labor migrants, in particular, must activate their imaginaries, plan their prospective journeys in advance, make decisions on their own migratory trajectories and later modify them in relation to new circumstances of migration (Ellis & Triandafyllidou, 2022; Van Meeteren & Pereira, 2018; Squire, 2017; Triandafyllidou, 2018). Through their networking, they become the agents of their own migration; and acting like agents who can make independent decisions and actively modify existing social relations, migrants eventually enable a better networking (ibid). Looking into migration through the ‘agency-network’ nexus, we can clearly see that migrant agency and migrant network are deeply interconnected as affecting and shaping each other: they are both the precondition and the outcome of each other (Isaakyan et al., 2022; Triandafyllidou et al., 2022). Migrants with a stronger agency (or a stronger capacity for independent decision-making) are usually better networked, making the full use of existing social relations (ibid). In return, a better networked migrant is more capable of reaching an independent and well-thought decision that would benefit his/her wellbeing and career in the new country (Kilduff & Tsai, 2003).

Basically speaking, migrating elite professionals such as top athletes, actors and opera singers look for places that would improve their professionalism and raise it up to the global elite level (Hartley, 2021; Kohe et al., 2021; Li et al., 2020). They thus search for places that may have resources sufficient enough for turning them into stars (Hartley, 2021). However, this ‘social stratification’ argument can be now dismantled as, with the global expansion of digital society and digital communication, elite migrant groups such as writers and artists often prefer to reside in smaller urban or even rural areas, forming powerful elite professional networks even there. This is illuminated by the international musicians’ communities and rich artistic traditions in such small Italian places as Cremona (the hometown of the legendary violinist Niccolo Paganini), Pesaro (the hometown of the no less famous composer Gioachino Rossini) and Lucca (the home of Giacomo Puccini). And while searching for such stellar nurseries, global elite professionals want to reach them as soon as possible and in the least damaging way, that is, without feeling trapped in an unwanted long-term bond or in a difficult network obligation. In this reference, scholars who study agency and networking across disciplines signal the existence of such traps that can make career progression rather difficult for a skilled migrant (Besnier et al., 2017; Giddens, 2000; Sandoz, 2019; Saxenian, 2006).

Global elite migrants seek places where they could receive appropriate elite-level education and training, establish themselves as high-rank professionals and then leave whenever they decide to move on with their career (Bale & Maguire, 1994; Hartley, 2021; Book et al., 2020; Smismans et al., 2021). And elite migrants know that such transnational zones of professional freedom are extremely difficult to enter and also to find, while more visible and accessible networks can catch them into a relational loop. They also know that investing in elite places is time-consuming and unpredictable (Gaudin et al., 2016; Petersen, 2017). That is why, the dream of every global elite migrant such as international artist or athlete is to find a shortcut to an elite democratic place—the professional dream that lies at the core of their network-building (Agergaad et al., 2014; Stambulova & Ryba, 2020). And from this angle, their migrant agency resembles a spaceship making a journey amidst various galaxies to find the right space for professional growth and maturity.

2.5.2 Networks and Their Relations

Scholars of migration studies and social networks note that any migrant network has a center of gravity—the relational nucleus that monitors or coordinates all network activities (Granovetter, 1973; Keskiner et al., 2022; Portes, 1995). A network is also comprised of varied segments, which differ in resources and social relations (ibid; Massey & Spinosa, 1997; Massey & Durand, 2004). This segmentation applies to membership requirements and obligations, concentration of influential network actors (nodes), network hubs (spaces for socialization) and iconic network members (Barkey & Godart, 2013; Bilecen & Lubbers, 2021; Granovetter, 1973; Portes, 1995) such as elite professionals who become stars, or inspiring models for others (Li et al., 2020; Petersen, 2017). One and the same network can thus offer different opportunities to different migrants, depending on which segment they try to enter: entering the same theater, vocal academy or bohemian hub, some elite migrants may end up extremely disappointed while others may turn into stars (ibid; Shepard, 2010).

Existing global opera houses, elite conservatories, vocal academies and operatic agencies are often interconnected through the same influential people and shared resources for elite career (Agid & Tarondeau, 2007, 2010; Hartley, 2021; Shepard, 2010). The network also has most severe obligations in a payback for its membership—the lifetime dependence on the network from which there is no way out and about which scholars of migration frequently write (Di Maggio & Garip, 2012; Massey & Spinosa, 1997; Massey & Durand, 2004; Portes, 1995).

Scholars of Arts, Sports and Migration Studies often acknowledge the closed nature of influential elite networks: transnational elite professionals indeed find it extremely difficult to enter the most prestigious networks in their field—extremely closed relational systems to which outsiders are not welcome, with each members running a very high risk of being excluded any time (Besnier et al., 2018; Di Maggio & Garip, 2012; Petersen, 2017; Portes, 1995; Stambulova & Ryba, 2020). It is a system of strict relations and rules, which remains closed to outsiders—or, at least, not offering them an easy access.

However, elite artists and athletes are eager to take the risk—whether consciously or unknowingly—because they know that their global elite networks are places of the most elite education and professional training, providing the ‘hedonistic treadmill of career opportunities’ on the globally transnational level: highest level athletic elite clubs and schools, best vocal and theatrical academies, best shows. An explosion of new elite training traditions and new streams of artistic or athletic talent may resonate with many examples of geopolitical turmoil such as the beginning of Cold War or the demolition of the Soviet bloc and new waves of globalization. These contexts are marked by to a massive explosion of various—often extra-polar—social forces, leading to the formation of new highly prestigious training sites and workplaces within the national or global creative industry. This is illuminated by the creation of the National Cuban Ballet by Alicia Alonso and Fidel Castro during the Cold War (Schwall, 2021; Tomé, 2021); the Soviet collapse in 1991 and the advent of the post-Soviet world-famous conductor Valery Gergiev, one of the most famous operatic star-makers (Ross, 2013; Telegraph, 2007); or the New Millennium foundation of the Astana Opera House in Kazakhstan as a special socio-political project of its president Nazarbaev in response to the Islamic wave of globalization (ICF, 2021). These cases provide examples of how national high arts can be revived toward the global level in a massive resurgence of both globalization and nationalism.

2.5.3 The Group Cameo of Global Elite Migrants

Born at the crossroads of globalization and nationalism and meant to be international role models, global elite migrants, therefore, desperately search all over the world for new professional networks to improve and polish their professionalism. They make a distinct social group with the following main features. Due to the nature of their very specific education, they have an elitist professional status and elitist skills on the global level, including multilingualism. Socio-politically visible, they shape public tastes also on the global scale. With the rise of digital society, the faces of artists and athletes always appear in press and in the majority of social media, becoming familiar to millions of people at home and abroad. It is also for this reason that they often embody both nationalism and universal cultural values, acting as agents of both globalization and nationalism (Isaakyan, 2020). As noted by Beaverstock (2005: 264), their niche employment is based on continuous transnational practices, during which they join ‘global corporate networks that connect the local and the global’. And maintaining an active transnational career and elitist networks on the global scale, they still manage to build a new home at destination and, consequently, shape as ‘mobile with anchorage’, which is the lifestyle practice that distinguishes them from other segments of the transnational elite.

The existential dualism of their mobility-with-anchorage will be illuminated more in-depth in the next chapters of this book, where I will bring together and develop further the ideas of ‘elite network’ and ‘transnational work’. I will show in detail how migrating opera singers from the former Soviet Union navigate the space of global opera in search of its egalitarian elitist professional segments, while also seeking to integrate in Italy as a country that represents one of the most powerful operatic networks and industries.