Dominated Cosmopolitanism: Consumer Habitus Dynamics among Low-Resource Migrants.

This article examines how cosmopolitanism—a cultural orientation often associated with socially privileged, resource-rich consumers—can emerge among female migrants occupying intersectional subordinate positions of power and possessing low levels of resources. Using a nine-year longitudinal extended case study of two Romanian immigrant women in Italy, the authors apply a Bourdieusian framework to show that mobility-induced mismatches between ingrained dispositions (habitus) and new social contexts (fields) trigger a process called hysteresis, leading to the gradual development of a cosmopolitan habitus. This emergent cosmopolitanism, termed "dominated cosmopolitanism," reflects both a sense of emancipation and ongoing subordination within intersecting systems of power, shaped by enabling and hindering social capital as well as institutional support such as education. The study contributes to consumer research by highlighting how cosmopolitan dispositions can develop contextually among marginalized consumers through dynamic adjustments in capital resources and social networks, challenging prior assumptions that cosmopolitanism is exclusive to privileged groups.