Social class in transnational perspective: Emotional responses to the status paradox among ghanaian migrants

Migrants often experience a low-class status in the countries to which they migrate and a high one in their home country, because of their remittances. This paper takes that analysis further by examining the emotional reasons for return migration and retirement. Ghanaian migrants’ social-class debasement in the United States through their work in home healthcare leads to strong emotions about their class status. They mitigate their humiliation through transnationalism, in which they direct their energy toward an alternative social field through house construction in Ghana. Their houses indicate both how the social fields in which they operate are delinked, resulting in differing opportunities for social class mobility, and how social class positioning crosses different social fields.