This open access book explores the lives and careers of migrating artists with the purpose to understand how they make use of their migrant-networks and how this process interacts with decisions they make about immigration and career development.

1. Introduction: The New Strange World of Global Elite Migrants.- 2. Global Elite Migrations: Mobility, Agency and Networks.- 3. “The Splendor and Miseries”: The Voice of a Real Person.- 4. Astrogation and Milestones.- 5. At the Crossroads of Temporariness and Mobility.- 6. Homeland Gravity: The Local, the National and the Global.- 7. Falling Through the Black Hole.- 8. The Cosmic Iceberg of Integration.- 9. To the Memory of a Star.

This open access book explores the lives and careers of migrating artists with the purpose to understand how they make use of their migrant-networks and how this process interacts with decisions they make about immigration and career development. Situated at the crossroads of Migration Studies and Elite Studies, this interdisciplinary research is based on sixty interpretive biographic interviews with opera singers from the former Soviet bloc who work in various places across Europe and beyond. The book raises the question to what extent they exercise agency as migrants and professionals and to what extent they preserve their professional elitism on the transnational level. The case of these migrant-artists serves to illuminate the dynamics of a wider phenomenon - global elite migrations - which is compared with an intergalactic journey. Through this sociological metaphor, the book offers a new analytical framework to think about the “agency-network” nexus.  

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access Illuminates the increasingly salient topic of functioning of migrant networks Throws light on migrant agency, a central issue in migration scholarship Looks into an under-researched migrant population that contributes to the dissemination of global culture

Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.