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This chapter describes the epistemological stance, theoretical perspective and methodological choices that have guided the study. The qualitative research design is described: semi-structured, narrative and spatial interviews, as well as group interviews, were carried out with a total of 37 respondents. Selected respondents were met more than once, up to four times, during 2 years of fieldwork. A theoretical introduction clarifies how the study contributes to a recent strand of literature aiming to transnationalise theories of social inequalities. This scholarship points to the need to analyse migrants’ multiple social statuses in transnational social fields, and to take stock of the significant resources that are circulated in those fields and re-valorised through cross-border circulation. It also points to the theoretical advantages of bringing ideas from mobilities studies into migration studies. Finally, the chapter introduces the study’s respondents: first-generation migrant men and women of Somali origin who arrived in Europe at least 10 years ago, mostly as refugees, and were living in Britain or Switzerland at the time of the interviews. These two countries constitute very different contexts regarding the history and characteristics of Somali migration as well as national and local legislation.

This chapter presents a novel and comprehensive typology of the post-migration mobility practices that European Somalis may undertake after having settled in a place that has since become their country of residence. The six ideal types are described: star-shaped mobility; pendular mobility; secondary migration; temporary visits to the country of origin; definitive return; and immobility. Each is illustrated by one or two short respondents’ biographies. Post-migration mobility practices are defined as cross-border geographic movements performed by migrants from the country in which they have settled, and that are significant enough to create some kind of change in their lives. As most of these movements have been discussed individually by other scholars, the chapter opens with a review of the relevant literature, highlighting the advantages of discussing them within a single analytical framework. This chapter also describes the types of activities that mobile respondents are in a position to carry out thanks to their (often regular) border crossings and discusses the different places – place of residence, place of origin, but also places in other countries – that they link together through their mobility.

Grounded in the literature theorising cross-border mobility as an unequally distributed resource, this chapter develops the following argument: mobility is more than a practice or a strategy that people “do”; it is also, under certain conditions, a form of capital that one may possess and mobilise to pursue advantages. While “mobility practices” refers to concrete physical movements, “mobility capital” refers, on the one hand, to the accumulated past experiences of mobility, and, on the other, to potential future movements that could be undertaken if and when beneficial. By considering mobility a potential type of capital, it is possible to investigate the ways in which social actors may be in a position to articulate and benefit simultaneously from local anchorage and mobility practices. The argument builds on the fundamental characteristic of capitals: their convertibility into other types of capital. The chapter empirically demonstrates how mobile respondents transform different forms of (transnationally acquired) capital into mobility capital. It focuses on Bourdieu’s classic forms of capital (economic, cultural and social capital) but also offers an account of “legal capital”: for Somali migrants, acquiring a passport from their country of residence is necessary for their ability to cross borders legally and eventually develop mobility capital.

This chapter offers an in-depth exploration of the mechanisms through which some migrants concretely activate their mobility capital, using the detailed life stories of two women and one man. Migrants’ strategic circulation of assets builds on differences in their social position in different contexts and on differentials in the valuation of their assets. Capital is context-dependent, and resources do not hold the same value in all places, or across all social fields and hierarchies. Mobility practices allow social actors to find themselves in a position to (partially) choose the environment best suited to the resources they already possess, or to develop specific resources that they know they will mobilise in other parts of the world and/or within other hierarchies. In this light, the transnationalisation of capital appears as a strategic way for migrants with little negotiating power to “play” with those inconsistencies to their advantage. The chapter describes how these processes take place through a geographical shift (respondents invest resources in places other than those in which they acquired them), but also through a shift in the frame of reference, because most resources are reinvested in fields that are Somali-based or homeland oriented, i.e. where ethnicity is highly relevant.

This chapter restates the book’s main arguments and contextualises them within wider contemporary theoretical and empirical debates in migration, transnational and mobility studies. It also discusses the generalisation potential of the study’s results. The migrants in the study are representative neither of all migrants, nor of all Somali migrants. But the study points to practices (cross-border mobility) that migrants of different origins may undertake, systematically or otherwise, and that are either unacknowledged in sedentarist migration studies or taken for granted as an implicit and unquestioned element of transnational practices. Mobilities studies provides transnational scholars with useful theoretical tools to take seriously the meanings and effects of cross-border mobility practices in post-migration life. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the gap between these migrants’ creative transnational strategies and European countries’ logic of exclusive loyalty and integration within the borders of the nation-state. While cross-border mobility is greatly valued for highly qualified elites, it is regarded with suspicion when it comes to less privileged migrants. The study, however, demonstrates how, under certain conditions, less privileged migrants are also able to circulate in a globalised world, benefiting from being embedded in transnational social fields and from mobility practices over which they have gained some control.