Constellations of privilege: the racialised and classed formation of Britons living in rural France

This chapter revisits my research conducted with Britons resident in rural France to propose a conceptual innovation in how we conceive of privilege among lifestyle migrant populations. As I argue, the relative privilege that facilitates the lifestyle migration of the British to Europe, shaping and influencing settlement, extends beyond the socio-economic characteristics of these populations and should be considered instead as inherently and inextricably classed and racialised formation. The ethnography presented therefore shifts the focus of my earlier analyses that highlighted how migration to and settlement in rural France was part of a wider process of middle-class reproduction (Benson 2011, 2013), to make visible the social production of white Britishness. In this way, it draws attention to the multi-layered historical and material conditions that promote lifestyle migration, proposing constellations of privilege as a revision to the conceptual framework that drives lifestyle migration research.