Thinking Migrant Capitals Intersectionally: Using a Biographical Approach

Abstract

Researchers often view migrant women as producing cultural and social capital for their families and communities, treating them as repositories of capital (e.g. Nee and Sanders, 2001). However, not enough attention has been paid to how migrant women mobilise capital for their own projects, nor how single women and those who might transgress heteronormativity create and use social and cultural capital. Migration-specific cultural and social capitals are created with reference to multiple fields, both within the place of origin and the place of settlement (Erel, 2010).