'Moving privilege' : middling transnational couples and the relational dimensions of privilege

In this chapter, we draw on the experiences of two differently positioned ‘middling’ migrant couples; one from the Global North (Germany and Australia) and one from the Global South (India), who have engaged in multi-and-ongoing forms of mobility. Their stories were gathered through two separate projects exploring the spatio-temporal complexity of middling migration pathways through Australia. We describe and contrast the migration narratives of these two couples and the unfolding of their lives over transnational space to show how privilege both moves with middling migrants and transforms over time and across different locations. ‘Moving privilege’, we argue, is shaped in varying ways by migration policy and migrants’ dynamic social locations (produced through locally constructed intersections of race, class and gender). We consider what these couples bring with them in terms of their understanding of their positionality and how this frames the ways they think about their own privilege throughout their migration experiences. We further argue for the methodological value of examining privilege through contrasting experiences of gender, race and also migration directionality (North-North versus South-North).