The Affective Possibilities of London: Antipodean Transnationals and the Overseas Experience

This paper contributes to research on the lived dimensions of transnational mobility through an engagement with recent work on affect. Drawing on interviews with New Zealand skilled migrants, we argue that the attractions and experience of relocation to London are significantly connected to the affective possibilities it offers. As a diverse and enlivening set of ecologies of place, London appears to facilitate a certain feeling of being in the heart of things, an embodied state that is both valued and closely linked to New Zealand's former status as a British colony. We argue that considering the affective possibilities of cities – and the diverse ways in which transnational migrants perceive and appropriate these possibilities – offers valuable insights into the dynamics of subjectivity in a mobile world.