Re-made in Sweden: Success stories in a Swedish Migration context

Abstract

This article discusses how migrants from the Middle East are accounting for their successful career pathways as businessperson and academics in the Swedish society. It demonstrates how the stories of these individuals reveal strategies for mobilising the forms of capital that assumes to promote career advancement. It argues that the migrants accentuate a 'middle-class standpoint' with a priority on education; the capital mobilised in their country of origin is 'reinvested' in studies and the making of new contacts in the Swedish society. The article concludes that these stories are significantly shaped by the individuals' professional position and class background but indirectly also by their foreign background. The article also reveals that the conditions set for successful career achievement require individual strategies that pragmatically downplay differences in societies as well as ethnicity and disregard the influence of discrimination.