Expatriate Nairobi: Migration categories and the making of urban privilege

Join the Urban Riches team for this lecture from Dr Sarah Kunz, Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex.

This talk discusses how migration categories are implicated in urban inequality and the production of spatialised enclaves of privilege. It takes the example of the category ‘expatriate’ and explores how this social category (re)produces colonial and postcolonial forms of socio-economic and racialised inequality in Nairobi, Kenya. By shaping the urban movements of privileged newcomers, long-term residents and citizens, the category aids the city’s uneven integration into transnational geographies of power and privilege and shapes everyday urban geography and experience. The talk further suggests that (migration) categories are a powerful methodological and analytical gateway to explore dynamics of urban wealth inequality.