Are professional migrants elite? A case of japanese expatriate and host national employees in Jakarta

This ethnographic study investigates both everyday experiences and perspectives of professional migrants and that of another group of professional migrants, namely, host national employees who are also undergoing spatial transnational movements by commuting from host societies to transnational offi ces. Experiences and perspectives of both geographical and spatial professional migrants reveal the complexity of locating them in social categories, such as ‘elites,’ in the globalizing world in which each society with social, economic and cultural differences are being interconnected. This study concludes by arguing that it is necessary to reconsider a single unifi ed image of the global elites and to take into account the wider sociocultural perspectives surrounding all geo-spatially moving professional migrants.