ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to problematize the privileged world of mobile elite groups in light of contemporary mediatization. More specifically, the chapter looks into the social significance of media within the liquid lives of Scandinavian business people and expatriates working for the United Nations. Regular long distance travel is seen as a precondition for successful careers within these fields, and thus crucial to class identity. Media in general, and new forms of connective media in particular, have become increasingly important for managing professional as well at private relations. At the same time, they create various forms of socio-technological entanglements and pressures on being available, a form of implicit dependence. The chapter is framed by a Bourdieusian understanding of social class as a relational construct where the competition for power and status is governed by the logics of social fields. The empirical examples contribute to a theoretical discussion on how growing media reliance plays into the tension between privilege and precariousness in fields that are characterized by different forms of mobility.
