From Privileged “Trailing Spouses” to Top Copenhagen Bloggers: Self-Integration, Identity-Remaking and Livelihood in and through the City

This talk examines a particular segment of privileged migrants, namely the so-called “trailing spouses”, whose migration and settlement experiences tend to differ significantly from those of their spouses (Büchele 2018; Cangià and Zittoun 2018). Experiencing profound disruptions of their career trajectories as well as of occupational and other identities (Slobodin 2019; Collins and Bertone 2017; Cangià 2018), many turn to self-employment or small enterpreneurial ventures that often ease the psychological impacts of such disruptions (McNulty and Moeller 2018; Kerulis et al 2020). I focus on two such spouses who have in wake of a cross-border relocation to Copenhagen reinvented themselves professionally as not only full-time, but also some of the most influential bloggers purposefully translating Copenhagen to other newcomers in the digital world (Fogelman & Christensen 2022). Drawing on the analysis of the visual and text-based content from their blogs and Instagram accounts and semi-structured interviews I examine the somewhat serendipitous pathways of their reinvention as well as the role of the specific urban context of Copenhagen in this ongoing process. I highlight the complex ways in which blogging works for them as a project of at once self-integration, identity-remaking and livelihood-making in the city. Finally, I pay particular attention to how these migrants, self-defining as “expats” (cf Kunz 2016; Cranston 2017; Young 2016), negotiate their multi-layered identities common to "expat" migrants, including the trailing spouses, namely those of nationals, cosmopolitans, and ‘wannabe’ locals (van Bochove and Engbersen 2013).