Boris Nieswand, Theorising Transnational Migration. The Status Paradox of Migration. London: Routledge, 2011

The review discusses a multi-sited study of transnational migrants between Ghana and Germany. By relying on transnational and simultaneous inclusion in two nation states, these migrants exploit economic differences between contexts, but depend at same time on the conversion of economic capital into social status in the country of origin. They improve their status in Ghana by loosing it in Germany. Their experiences provide an empirical example of the usefulness of a transnational perspective towards migration and free the analysis of social inequalities from methodological nationalism. The book deals with global inequality analysed with the right distance between celebratory readings of transnational migration and the portraits of migrants as victims caught in the double suffering of the global regime of power.