ONLINE – Christine Barwick : Exit or attachment? City and neighborhood use of the transnational middle classes. Carnet de terrain

Exit or attachment? City and neighborhood use of the transnational middle classes Abstract In this paper I will examine whether transnational middle classes develop attachment to their new place of residence and how they symbolically and practically use the city and neighborhood. Questions around rootedness and exit have so far been primarily studied for mobile middle classes in their home country, but not the place they moved to. In fact, city and neighborhood incorporation of EU skilled migrants were largely disregarded, partly due to claims that they are free floating and not in need to develop roots in a new place. Based on the example of skilled British nationals living in Berlin, I show that there is strong attachment to the city, based primarily on its image as a free and tolerant city. The neighborhood is evaluated in more practical terms, referring to consumption and lifestyle. Contrary to what might be expected for middle class migrants, we do not find many exit strategies. Parents send their children to the local schools, and the respondents tried to establish a network to local Germans instead of ‘exiting’ to the British community. In essence, the British nationals belong to a transnational middle class, but to a fragment whose professional trajectory and status is rather precarious at times, but who find in Berlin a lifestyle that paints them as part of a creative and mobile European population – an image that is particularly important in light of Brexit.