Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the subjectivities of Bulgarian self-proclaimed middle-class migrants in the UK as structured around hegemonic narratives of Western cultural superiority. The migration process reinforces symbolic class divisions and conceals their structural economic basis.

Paper long abstract:

The postosocialist transitional mythological narrative of 'catching up' with Europe, centered around a western modernizing discourse, served to justify the implementation of market reforms with devastating social effects (Lavergne, 2010). One of the main aspects of successful social transformation was said to be the adoption of a new mode of personhood in which the collective, socialist mentality of the backwards masses had to be replaced by an 'entrepreneurial', western-oriented individualism (Dunn, 2004). This paper explores how the adaptation of this hegemonic discourse informs the emergence and reproduction of middle-class self-identification among Bulgarian migrants to the UK. The analysis of informants' narratives will demonstrate how the main marker of their middle-class distinction revolves around a perceived degree of 'Westernness', expressed in their western lifestyle, mentality and defense of liberal democracy and capitalism. The 'Bulgarian Westerners', as I refer to them, constructed themselves as an exclusive group that represented the cultural and moral elite of the nation and in opposition to the majority of 'typical Bulgarians' and their Balkan mentality. This self-proclaimed liberal elite understood their migrations to the UK as a journey 'back home' where their transformed subjecthoods would receive deserved recognition and bring the desired upward social mobility. However once in the UK 'Bulgarian Westerners' were often subjected to similar degrees of institutional discrimination and public stigmatization as the 'typical Bulgarians', a subordination they often compensate by further stressing their own cultural superiority. Class identities, in the process of migration, are thus reinforced and reproduced as merely cultural and normative - not socio-economic - distinctions.