Paper short abstract:

The present paper seeks to approach (re) produced patterns of privilege and cumulative advantage, aka Matthew Effect or the rich-get-richer principle, as exemplified by the Russian-speaking subcommunities in Vienna.

Paper long abstract:

In 1968 sociologist Robert Merton published an article titled ''The Matthew Effect in Science'' in which he applied the biblical passage after St. Matthew for addressing particular сonsistency in which “unknown scientists are unjustifiably victimized and famous ones, unjustifiably benefited”. Later on, this rich-get-richer principle, dubbed as Matthew Effekt, was instrumentalized for explaining power asymmetries, as well as the role played by structure in nurturing multivarious patterns of privilege coming out, i.a., in “right” citizenship, class, ethnicity, or occupation (Croucher 2009). In a similar vein, I argue that the principle of cumulative advantage would be productive to research on privileged mobility, expressed in “freedom and choice to relocate”, and respective lifestyle characteristics of its agents. Unlike other forms of migration, which pathologize, stigmatize, or marginalize the whole practice of relocation, privileged mobility is “marked by power” (Benson, and O’Reilly 2009a; Harper, and Knowles 2009) enabling such migrants to maintain de-territorialized supranational status by creating economic and cultural autonomy from the host society and structuring a convenient model of their integration. To illustrate how the Matthew effect operates at the level of (re) produced patterns of privilege, I will draw on my ethnographic fieldwork in Vienna (Austria) where I engage with Russian-speaking nest doll “subcommunities” (Kopnina 2016), each of which is distinguished through the inclusive “systems of disposition” (Bourdieu 1984) shared across lifestyle practices in the host context.