In this book, we draw from in-depth ethnographic research conducted in Malaysia and Panama, and build theoretically on our conceptual works to date, to illustrate how lifestyle migration as a story of practice reveals the ongoing articulation of postcolonialism and neoliberalism in the ways that privilege is structured and experienced by lifestyle migrants in their everyday lives. This consolidates and extends a wider field of research concerned to understand the intersections between migration and privilege, adding the dimension of everyday practice.
Practice Stories
The goal of this book is to understand migration processes as stories of practice (O’Reilly 2012). Here, qualitative and narrative accounts describe how cultures, behaviours, attitudes, institutions, and other sociological phenomena develop over time as norms, rules, organisational arrangements, and other social structures are acted on and adapted by individuals through the performance of their daily lives, in the context of their communities, groups, networks, and families. Practice stories therefore understand the making of the social world as ongoing processes, both shaped by and shaping of general patterns, arrangements, and other social structures.
Our understanding of migration as a story of practice is one that responds to the wider practice turn in the social sciences. Simply put, theorists are increasingly employing conceptualisations of social life that understand it as ‘the social processes involved in the ongoing constitution of social life’ (Cohen 1989: 12). Cohen refers to these processes as practices that are
synonymous with the constitution of social life, i.e. the manner in which all aspects, elements and dimensions of social life, from instances of conduct in themselves to the most complicated and extensive types of collectivities, are generated in and through the performance of social conduct, the consequences which ensue, and the social relations which are thereby established and maintained. (Cohen 1989: 12)
Very briefly, the practice turn recognises that the tendency to perceive the agency of individual human actors as distinct and separate from social structures is an untenable residual feature of the historical development of social theory (Stones 2005). The emphasis by early sociologists on the sui generis nature of social structures, while remaining influential, was seen to be limited especially in relation to the understanding of human agency. As Giddens (1976, 1979, 1984) explained, while social structures shape people’s actions, they do not fully determine them. Gradually, this perspective was replaced by recognition of the dynamic and creative nature of social action. The result, as Bourdieu (1977) so eloquently recognised, is that, in the work of many theorists, determinism was either replaced by or set in direct opposition to subjectivism. Decades of argument and debate ensued, but social science now appears to have reached (an implicit) consensus that social life is in fact processual, and the dynamic outcome of the interaction of structure and agency, over time. The goal for most practice theory approaches is to seek ways to conceptualise, understand, and describe those processes involved in what Pierre Bourdieu (1977) calls the practice of social life (O’Reilly 2012; O’Reilly et al. 2014).
Our approach here owes a special debt to the work of Stones (2005), who developed a stronger version of structuration theory that builds on and develops the work of Giddens, responding to some of his critics, and to O’Reilly (2012), who has specifically developed the approach for the study of migration. Employing practice stories (O’Reilly 2012) to explain a phenomenon involves drawing attention to the following heuristically discrete elements, while retaining the notion that structures and agency are always in a dialectic relationship to each other in the actual practice of social living (Giddens 1984):
- Wider global and historical structural shifts that shape actions (O’Reilly 2012: 23–25)—For the purposes of this book, we wish especially to draw attention to postcolonialism and neoliberalism. A postcolonial relationship implies continuing exploitation, structured relations of inequality, economic ties based on prior appropriation, and cultural links informed by previously unequal relationships. Neoliberalism here takes the shape not only of economic doctrine, as ideology, but also as a technology of governance (Ong 2006). These will be addressed in detail in Chaps. 2 and 3.
- The more proximate or immediately relevant structures that may be somewhat malleable by agents (O’Reilly 2012: 23–25, and cf. Morawska 2009)—Here, we specifically think about the access to visas and other arrangements that enable this migration, but also the ways in which these can be manipulated. The use and manipulations of social policy is also relevant to how migrants and nation-states practice migration. This will be examined further in Chap. 4.
- Habitus (cf. Bourdieu 1984) and Internal Structures (O’Reilly 2012: 26–28), the typical ways of thinking and being of the various agents involved—Colonialism leaves hardened traces in the form of social structures of inequality and power but also in taken-for-granted ways of thinking and acting (the habitus of both the former coloniser and colonised). Here, we draw attention to ways of carrying oneself, ways of dealing with and viewing the ‘other’, and lifestyle migrants’ expectations and experiences of being able to travel and move around the world. We also include the various forms of capital agents hold and can mobilise and transform. As discussed below, we develop an understanding of these lifestyle migrants as neoliberal subjects, individualistic and self-enterprising. These will be covered in more detail in Chaps. 5, 6, 7, and 8.
- Conjuncturally specific internal structures (O’Reilly 2012: 26–28, and cf. Stones 2005), or the ways in which people learn to go on and adapt their habitus in daily life, within their relevant communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991)—Migrants and agents of state alter their expectations regularly in light of experiences and expectations of those around them, adapting to and changing the norms and patterns of behaviour of the groups within which they form communities. We learn about these throughout the book, but especially in Chaps. 4 and 6, where we learn about the responses of individuals to ongoing contingencies.
- Practices and outcomes (O’Reilly 2012: 28–32)—It is important to recall that social life is lived and practised on a daily basis in the context of social structures and shaped by taken-for-granted ways of doing and being. Individuals have the ability to imagine other ways of living life (Emirbayer and Mische 1998). The actions of agents thus shape and reshape social structures. Social life is dynamic and creative. Overall, we draw attention to the practices of agents and to the ways in which attitudes are changing and social structures are being reshaped, or what O’Reilly (2017) has called sedimentation. The outcomes of migration will be noted in all the chapters.
For an in-depth discussion of the role of practice stories in migration research, see O’Reilly (2012), which illustrates the approach in relation to lifestyle migration, labour migration, domestic labour migration, and forced migration.
About the Research
The empirical research reported in this book was undertaken by Michaela and Karen separately. However, in the chapters that follow, we draw up practice stories that incorporate this research.
Building Practice Stories
Practice stories require an understanding of external structures, in the form of relevant, wider, historical, and social trends. Building up a picture of this structural terrain faced by migrants requires understanding the historical, social, political, and economic (and, to a lesser extent, the geographical) situation in each country, especially, in this case, in relation to migration and the West. To develop the argument presented in this book, we consulted empirical and theoretical studies on colonialism and postcolonialism, neoliberalism and globalisation. We studied other types of migration including corporate expatriates and lifestyle migration in other parts of the world. Our central goal was to begin to understand how these practices and configurations shape behaviours and attitudes today, perhaps externally through policies and legal arrangements, and perhaps internally via norms, habits, expectations, and attitudes.
It was also necessary to understand the more proximate structures—the various laws, policies, and economic constraints that a specific migrant moving to Malaysia and Panama faces, such as the availability of visas, housing, and pensions. To this end, we read documents and learnt from interviews with migrants and social media analysis of online forums. Karen’s research in Malaysia also included interviews with experts, such as consular and embassy officials, property developers, and ‘expat’ magazine publishers.
We complemented this analysis of the wider, upper level and more proximate external structures framing and shaping lifestyle migration, with understandings of habitus and dispositions of the migrants themselves, that is the internalised structures that shape how they behave and that, in turn, are shaped by their experiences having migrated. It was also important to understand the new communities of practice within which migrants acted, made decisions, and which constantly shaped their actions and desires. This turned our focus as much to the outcomes of migration as to its antecedents.
Building practice stories of lifestyle migration to Malaysia and Panama relies not only on the empirical research on the ground but also on archival, documentary and desktop research. The analysis that we present in the pages of the book relies as much on foregrounding the structural and systemic conditions that support lifestyle migration as it does on highlighting the everyday lives and lived experiences of the migrants themselves. In this respect, the methodology involves writing migration as practice, in weaving together the biographies of those who took part in the research with our interpretations. It is through this project of writing that this overt analysis of migration as practice emerges through the text.
Research with Lifestyle Migrants in Malaysia and Panama
The empirical research that we report in the book derives from two research projects. Karen’s research was part of a larger project on lifestyle migration in East Asia. That project, funded by the Economic and Social Researc...