Patriotic cosmopolitans in Budapest: narratives of belonging among highly skilled migrants

This study examines self-identification and belonging of EU and non-EU highly skilled migrants and the role of patriotism and cosmopolitanism in their identity construction based on the discourse analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews conducted in Budapest in Fall 2022. The study finds that highly skilled migrants invent hybrid identities by weaving particularistic and universal attachments into an ensemble of cultural and moral cosmopolitanism embedded in constructive patriotism, which this study calls patriotic cosmopolitanism. The analysis advances thinking on the inception and manifestations of cosmopolitanism from below within everyday diversity of transnational urban spaces in complex anti-immigrant contexts.