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Pursuing Progress

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Becoming Middle Class

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Abstract

This chapter distinguishes migration between urban centres within Ethiopia from international migration and examines how the former was a means for the protagonists of this book to change their lives. My interlocutors’ migration to bigger cities provided them with new opportunities as well as knowledge of ways of living that transformed them into ‘city people.’ These individual changes constituted progress to them. International migration also afforded people economic opportunities and other forms of cosmopolitanism, but those who went to the Middle East were known to undertake ‘bad’ or demeaning work, while returnees from Europe or North America were often perceived to have become less sociable. In contrast, urban-to-urban migrants were able to transform without risking their reputation to the same extent as international migrants, while still gaining access to higher education and employment opportunities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Interlocutors ages refer to their age at the time of the research.

  2. 2.

    The Amharic word lemat can be translated as ‘development,’ but this word is primarily used by the government and in official contexts and documents, as exemplified by the term lemat arbegna, meaning ‘development patriot’ (Gebresenbet 2014).

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  1. Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

    Markus Roos Breines

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  1. Markus Roos Breines
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Correspondence to Markus Roos Breines .

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Breines, M.R. (2021). Pursuing Progress. In: Becoming Middle Class. Globalization, Urbanization and Development in Africa . Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3537-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3537-3_2

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