Downward Mobility and the Good Life: “Expats” Pursuing Self-Worth in Southeast Asia

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 5. Decision to Migrate

Abstract

This paper examines migration from high-income to low-income countries, often termed “expatriation.” While global scholarship has focused on migrants from the Global South seeking opportunity in wealthier nations, far less attention has been given to Western migrants who relocate to places such as Southeast Asia after perceiving inadequate opportunities at home. Drawing on 55 interviews with “expats” and their partners, content analysis of Philippine expat social media groups (2024–2025), and approximately 300 hours of ethnographic observation, this study analyzes how privilege, status, and self-worth are reconfigured through such movements.

I argue that expatriation reshapes social position by demonstrating that privilege is neither fixed nor uniformly transferable. Instead, it travels as a bundle of resources—including citizenship, income streams, credentials, and mobility rights—that retain value under certain conditions. Citizenship, particularly the right of return, emerges as the most durable form of portable privilege, providing structural security even amid experiences of downward mobility abroad. Privilege is accentuated through global income differentials, institutional pay hierarchies, and kinship dynamics (such as marriage into Filipino families), while it may diminish over time through detachment from home-country labor markets, aging, and intergenerational concerns.

The paper also explores expats’ moral reasoning as they navigate inequalities embedded in their lives abroad. Many frame migration as a moral project oriented toward the “good life,” using rationalizations, interpersonal respect, selective solidarity, and resignation to reconcile structural privilege with self-worth. I introduce the concept of moral performances to describe how expats enact deservingness through consumption practices, aesthetics, and narratives of hardship. Ultimately, the study shows that privileged migration is characterized by dynamic tensions between belonging and inequality, revealing how global hierarchies of citizenship and capital shape both opportunity and moral identity in transnational contexts.

Author

• Wesley S Hedden, University of Notre Dame