Explores a diversity of circumstances and motives towards contemporary mobility, ranging from expatriates to peripatetic professionals to middle class migrants in search of extended educational and career opportunities to people seeking self-development through travel.

Chapter 1. Structures and Dispositions of Travel and Movement Vered Amit Chapter 2. Middle-Class Japanese Housewives and the Experience of Transnational Mobility Sawa Kurotani Chapter 3. Living in a Bubble: Expatriates’ Transnational Spaces Meike Fechter Chapter 4. Globalization through “Weak Ties”: A Study of Transnational Networks Among Mobile Professionals Vered Amit Chapter 5. Traveling Images, Lives on Location: Cinematographers in the Film Industry Cathy Greenhalgh Chapter 6. Privileged Travelers? Migration Narratives in Families of Middle-Class Caribbean Background Karen Fog Olwig Chapter 7. How Privileged Are They? Middle-Class Brazilian Immigrants in Lisbon Angela Torresan Chapter 8. Imagined Communitas: Older Migrants and Aspirational Mobility Caroline Oliver Chapter 9. Privileged Time: Volunteers’ Experiences at a Spiritual Retreat Center in Hawaii Margaret C. Rodman Notes on Contributors Index

“Drawing on a diverse set of ethnographic case studies, Going First Classteases out the scope and implications of the relatively privileged circumstances under which middle-class transnational mobilities are being undertaken..As such, the volume provides an in-depth anthropological answer to the proponents of the ‘mobility turn’ in the social sciences.” • Journal of Anthropological Research “The publication of this book… is timely… Interesting and accessibly written, Going First Class? offers not only ethnographically rich reflections on the subject of privileged travel, but… it provides valuable critical insights on the nature of places and the methodological issues surrounding their study.” • JRAI “…this collection of chapters deserves to be widely read and discussed – together, they demonstrate the imperative for ethnographic research in conversation, but not necessarily in cahoots, with reigning critical theories of modernity and the contemporary world.” • Social Anthropology