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Becoming Middle Class

Young People’s Migration between Urban Centres in Ethiopia

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Markus Roos Breines

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

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  • 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

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Markus Roos Breines
    Pages 1-35

  3. Pursuing Progress

    • Markus Roos Breines
    Pages 37-66

  4. Higher Education and Economic Mobility

    • Markus Roos Breines
    Pages 67-95

  5. Being Educated

    • Markus Roos Breines
    Pages 97-123

  6. Managing Enhanced Capital

    • Markus Roos Breines
    Pages 125-147

  7. Ethnic Hierarchies

    • Markus Roos Breines
    Pages 149-176

  8. A Middle Class Rooted in Urban-to-Urban Migration

    • Markus Roos Breines
    Pages 177-193

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 195-213
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Keywords

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.

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)   

Authors and Affiliations

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

    Markus Roos Breines

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

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