Migration and Social Class in Africa: Class-Making Projects in Translocal Social Fields

Increasing interest in the middle class in Africa and the Global South has prompted new discussions of social class since 2010; however, this literature does not adequately theorize migration, despite the role that global flows play in cultivating class aspirations. Migration complicates the concept of social class as a stable identity, in that migrants usually have multiple class statuses across their lifetime and in different social fields and geographic locations. Furthermore, class remains undertheorized within the literature on African migration and migration in general, despite the fact that class-making projects are central to migrants within, into, and out of Africa. The introduction to this special issue contends that migration and social class should be considered together.