Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities Residential trajectories of high-skilled transnational migrants in a global city: Exploring the housing choices of Russian and Italian professionals in London ☆ Sabina Maslova a, ⁎ , Russell King b a Department of the Social Sciences, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Viale F. Crispi, 7, 67100 L'Aquila, Italy b Department of Geography, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Transnational migration Housing choices High-skilled migrants Qualitative study London Brexit ABSTRACT This paper explores the residential trajectories of highly skilled transnational migrants in London. It analyses this under-researched topic by drawing on interview data with 32 mostly Italian and Russian migrants. The paper unveils the motivations of migrant housing preferences and residential behaviour across three interlinked stages: (i) housing expectations and initial housing choices, (ii) residential mobility over the migration period, (iii) future residential and migration plans. Two exogenous factors are brought into the analysis: the high prices in the London housing market, and the potential impact of Brexit on future residential plans. Findings suggest that Italians build multi-stage housing careers with many moves during their stay, yet geared to an upward housing trajectory, whilst the Russians demand high-quality housing from the start, are less inclined to multi-occupancy, and move less often. Part of the explanation for the diference lies in diferent ‘housing cultures’ brought from the country of origin. 1. Introduction The dwelling of mobile professionals in global cities is embedded in broader transformations of society, including evolving socio-spatial inequalities and power relations, as well as refecting individual pre- ferences, career trajectories and personal relationships. With increased global mobility and internationalising labour markets, high-skilled and professional migration expands its boundaries from an exclusive elite of transnational high-fyers (Beaverstock, 2002; Forrest et al., 2017) to the new transnational middle classes – ‘middling transnationals’ (Conradson & Latham, 2005) – with a greater range of professional occupations and varying interactions with local urban environments. Existing literature on this broadening phenomenon of professional mi- gration tends to focus on the migrants' socio-economic status, career profles, lifestyles and spatial integration (or segregation) within des- tination cities (Beaverstock, 2005; Glick Schiller & Salazar, 2013; Ryan & Mulholland, 2014; Tseng, 2011; White, 1998). Relatively little at- tention is given to their housing preferences and residential trajectories, except for a few rather specialised case-studies (Glebe, 1986; Pow, 2011; White & Hurdley, 2003). We address this gap by investigating the housing and neighbourhood preferences of two strategically chosen high-skilled migrant groups in London. A particular focus of our study is to bring out the socio-cultural dimension of migrants' backgrounds and housing choices. This allows us to recognise that their residential pathways are infuenced by a number of factors refecting the relations between the constraints of housing price and availability on the one hand, and individual preferences and material resources on the other. Furthermore, housing expectations are related to age, class, ethno- cultural background, and previous experience in the housing market (Clark & Onaka, 1983). In this study, we consider the residential and housing perspectives of two groups of skilled professionals in London hailing from contrasting socio-cultural and political origins: Italians and Russians, and then collate them with the housing behaviour of profes- sional migrants of other national origins. The paper's explicit com- parative research design resonates with recent calls for a ‘comparative manifesto’ in studies of migration, which too often focus on the ex- perience of a single national or ethnic group (Bloemraad, 2013; FitzGerald, 2012). The study's aims are threefold. First, we focus on the residential trajectories of high-skilled migrants in London, exploring their housing expectations and choices on arrival, during the time of their stay, and their future plans. Second, we investigate how migrants' housing https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102421 Received 8 December 2018; Received in revised form 22 July 2019; Accepted 27 July 2019 ☆ We declare that this work has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: sabina.maslova@gssi.it (S. Maslova), R.King@sussex.ac.uk (R. King). Cities 96 (2020) 102421 0264-2751/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T