Considering that changes in people’s life chances are increasingly shaped by cross-border movements and transnational connections, this book proposes a transnational conception of social mobility. Emphasising the manifold ways in which contexts of migration and transnationality affect perceptions and evaluations of betterment, the book argues for linking the study of social and spatial mobility to better capture how people navigate social structures of inequality in a globalised world.

Based on the experiences of people who moved to Germany to improve their lives in some way, this book links empirical findings with theoretical considerations from transnational and intersectional scholarship to propose an alternative concept of social mobility that emphasises people’s subjective interpretations of success and failure in their search of betterment.

Drawing on the concepts of social spaces, capitals, and reference group theory, a model of the cogwheel of social mobility is proposed to account for the varying ways in which cross-border migration and transnational connections initiate changes in people’s social position within and across country borders.

This book will therefore be of interest to scholars of sociology, geography and politics with interests in migration, transnationalism and mobility.