Institutional policies and individual decision-making in artistic migrations: the case of Spanish artists and art mediators in the European Union

Long-established hierarchies of power between territories persist in the so- called global art world. Spanish participants in the art world take advantage of the European free movement regime to internationalise their profiles and improve their chances of global success by migrating to global art hubs like Berlin, Paris or London. Institutional programmes fostering international mobility of European citizens serve a double function. Firstly, they provide a migration channel and advantages to individuals seeking to acquire international experience. Secondly, because of their selective nature, they can function as quality signals for individuals involved in the art world. Thus, institutional mobility programmes can be seen as tools that help manage the uncertainties of both the artistic career and the migration project. Taking Spanish art world participants currently living in European capitals as a case study, this paper presents three empirical types that represent individual profiles emerging from the examined population. These profiles are defined by repeated, lack of or occasional resorting to institutional mobility programmes, as well as to their career orientation and their visions of art and migration. Social characteristics such as gender, social class background and age appear as important factors shaping strategies of career development through migration.

Mobility is an essential activity in the lives of artists, curators and other people professionally involved in the contemporary art world. Participants in the art world travel to attend exhibitions, fairs and biennials and participate in residencies, but also for educational purposes, work and tourism. The emergence of specific instances of the international art world such as biennials, prizes and transnational networks constitutes an indicator of the formation of supranational spaces of consecration (Sapiro 2013). Even if such organisations still depend to a certain extent on national institutions, their existence and the circulation of actors foster the emergence of a unified labour market for contemporary art that is eminently global (Bydler 2004; Sapiro 2013).

Artistic migration has been identified as a practice linked to career development since the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (DaCosta Kaufmann et al. 2015), movements most often starting in peripheral regions towards artistic centres.

These have been defined as places with great density of artists, artworks and clients, provided with institutions dedicated to education, care and promotion of artists and the dissemination of their work, usually being at the same time centres of political and economic domination (Castelnuovo and Ginzburg 1981). The presence in artistic centres is important for individuals aspiring to a career in the arts due to the possibility of face- to-face contacts with peers and gatekeepers in intense interaction rituals (Fuller and Ren 2019; While 2003), and the exposure to spill-overs of information and ideas (Oberlin and Gieryn 2015).

Although it has been stated that globalisation has opened the art world to artists, artworks and mediators from more regions, thus allegedly becoming more equal and decentred, several studies show that centre-periphery dynamics persist (Buchholz 2018). The international art world continues to be marked by long-established hierarchies shaped by territorial factors, as illustrates the overrepresentation of artists from a selective group of countries in biennials and international events (van Hest 2012) and rankings (Behnke et al. 2015; Quemin 2006, 2013, 2015). Moreover, the city of principal residence seems to impact the reputation of artists and art world gatekeepers, regardless of nationality (van Hest 2012; Quemin 2013, 2015). Especially artists and art professionals coming from peripheral and semi-peripheral regions improve their chances of an international career by moving to countries and cities considered more central in the global art world (Duester 2015; Rodríguez Morató 1996).

The Spanish case provides a very relevant perspective to understand key aspects of current mobilities in a globalised art world. With a sales volume that has been estimated to represent 1% of the global art market (McAndrew 2017) and very few artists making it to the top positions in rankings of visibility and sales (Buchholz 2018; Quemin 2006), Spain holds a semi-peripheral position in such an organisation and can therefore be considered a migration sending country. Even if there is a longstanding tradition of Spanish artists and skilled professionals emigrating, flows have intensified since the country joined the European Union in 1986. The absence of administrative barriers to immigration in member countries, the proximity to the place of origin and the relatively low cost of travel facilitate their movements (Favell 2008). Additionally, the existence of different programmes supporting cultural activities and international mobility of young people and cultural producers among member countries contribute to the emergence of a unified cultural space in the European Union (Farinha 2012; Sassatelli 2009) and foster internal social cohesion in the form of a ‘bottom-up Europeanisation’ (Berezin and Schain 2004; Raffini 2014; Recchi 2008). Given that persistent centre-periphery dynamics hinder the access of participants from peripheral regions to global consecration, the Spanish case offers an answer to the question of how specific internationalisation policies affect the careers of individuals participating in highly globalised spheres of activity, such as contemporary art. In this context, migration to the global centres of consecration located in Europe can then function as an individual strategy of career development.

Artistic work and careers are defined by uncertainty (Menger 1989). The prestigious image associated to them is due to a low degree of routine of work, their vocational nature and the unpredictability of success, more than to employment stability or revenue level. The careers of artists, institutions and art world gatekeepers are determined by reputation and artistic prestige (de Nooy 2002), which are built through interplay of museums, market and government policy (Moulin 1992). Since there is not a clear correspondence between vocational investment and the possibility of transforming artistic activity into paid labour, individuals aspiring to a successful career in the arts need to resort to other mechanisms of uncertainty management (Menger 1989), such as professionalisation and diversification of revenue sources (Menger 2002). In the context of globalisation, with specific institutional programmes and funding allocated to it, international mobility has become a key feature of the uncertainty management strategies of participants in the art world.

This paper aims to contribute to a sparse literature on cross-border flows and dynamics in the arts (Kiwan and Meinhof 2011; Martiniello et al. 2009) that has only recently begun to address career development issues faced by migrant art world participants (Ferro and Raposo 2016), often linked to inequalities based on ethnicity and gender (Kowalczyk 2021). While differences in individuals’ social background and how they influence career strategies have been studied at the country-level (Friedman et al. 2016), their role in the strategies of uncertainty management of artists and mediators living outside their countries of origin has enjoyed much less attention. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by focusing on individual decision-making processes linked to both artistic career and migration. Conceptualising programmes encouraging international mobility as devices for uncertainty management, the findings presented show the relationship between institutional policies and individual decisions. The analysis of artists’ and art mediators’ resorting to such devices (or not) to foster the internationalisation of their careers allows us to study how differences of social background, gender, and age influence career trajectories and meaning given to decisions by individuals. The first section of the paper sets the theoretical framework, followed by a presentation of the data and methodology. The main section presents three distinct profiles that arise from the analysis of the data according to the use of institutional mobility programmes as part of a strategy of career development through migration.

With an apparently open access to artistic professions that is not regulated by academic titles or certifications (Freidson 1986), new entrants need to accumulate quality signals to establish a position in the art world (Dubois 2012; Mauger 2008). Accumulated experience, affiliation to institutions and groups, diplomas from certain schools and competitive evaluations like awards, prizes and grants serve as such signals and contribute to reputation and to uncertainty management (Lincoln 2007; Pénet and Lee 2014). Artistic careers can be seen as a series of tests that have to be successfully completed (Haller 2019), as a ‘march’ through the institutions of the art world (de Nooy 2002), that regulate access to international consecration (van Hest 2012; Quemin 2013). Like prizes, grants for artistic production are awarded by councils consisting of peers and gatekeepers of the art world and are not only sources of income and production budget but also symbolically valuable (Abbing 2002; Karttunen 2019). Participation in competitions is, for individuals, a way to test their chances and consequently adjust their career strategy over time (Menger 1989). Strong inequalities between the stars at the top of the success pyramid and those at its base are not only tolerated but celebrated, a mechanism of cumulative advantages ensuring that those at the top thrive exponentially (Menger 2009; Quemin 2013).

Artistic consecration mobilises the participation of different categories of occupations along a cooperation chain that allows artworks and artistic projects to be produced, curated, distributed, commented on, and evaluated (Becker 1982). Social relations are established along the chain, both cooperative and competitive, that are interdependent and essential for the functioning of the art world (Bourdieu 1982; Menger 1989). This paper takes into consideration different categories of occupations within the art world, since the need to maintain professional and artistic networks alive can explain the gravitation of individuals involved in the production and dissemination of art towards cultural production centres where these networks are denser and spread useful information to generate a support economy at a collective level (Menger 1993; Oberlin and Gieryn 2015; While 2003).

Artists and mediators may strategically move to a central city of the ‘global art field’ (Buchholz 2018) to acquire visibility beyond their countries of origin (Duester 2015). Since migration to an artistic centre can function as a quality signal in the artistic scene of origin (Rodríguez Morató 1996), it may serve a strategy of uncertainty management for actors of the art world from semi-peripheral regions like Spain. International mobility grants, exchange programmes and participation in artist residencies often result in longer-term installations in host countries (Findlay et al. 2017; Glauser 2009; King and Ruiz-Gelices 2003). Some artists and mediators may become ‘accidental migrants’ (Klekowski von Koppenfels 2014) after spending time abroad, while others may resort to different programmes that support international mobility to reduce the risks of individually launching a migration project and use them as starters. Institutional mobility schemes may be seen as organisational ties that provide channels for migration (Favell 2008: 66; Findlay and Li 1998).

For young people and cultural professionals, institutional mobility grants, student exchange programmes and artist residencies constitute different forms of encouragement of international mobility. Although selective, they can help manage the risks and uncertainties of both the artistic career and the launching of a migration project. By providing an occasion of participating in a competitive selection, done by peers and art world gatekeepers in the case of art-specific programmes (Abbing 2002; Karttunen 2019), as well as economic resources in the form of income or production budget, and eventually a working space, they can function as quality signals for the artistic career (Gemser et al. 2008). Regarding immigration, international mobility grants, internships and residencies provide a setting for social and professional integration in the new city and its local artistic scene (Glauser 2009).

However, different kinds of awards produce different outcomes and more or less valuable artistic quality signals (Gemser et al. 2008). The type of selection, the composition of the jury and the general objective of the grant, the mobility programme or the receiving institution are crucial to determine the quality of the signal. Less specialised mobility grants such as Erasmus+ can help start a migration project but may have less of an impact, or none, in professional integration in the local artistic scene of arrival and in enhancing artistic reputation. Individuals that can rely on other resources (a local social network, family wealth or other sources of income) may not need to resort to institutions to support their migration project. Even so, path dependency amplifies small differences regarding social inequalities and migration strategy over time, resulting in considerable career divergences (Erel and Ryan 2019; Menger 1999). Attention to individual social characteristics is therefore crucial for a better understanding of strategies regarding artistic careers and migration projects.

The results presented in this paper arise from an exploratory design based on qualitative methods including content analysis. Aiming at exploring this topic in a wide-ranging way in search for specific questions, but also striving to open doors for future research, this methodological choice allows to overcome the lack of precise quantitative datasets on both art professionals and intra-European population movements. The findings discussed in the following section are based on 104 semi-directive interviews conducted with Spanish artists and art mediators living in Berlin, London and Paris as part of a multi- sited ethnography (Marcus 1995) that took place between February 2017 and May 2019. Interviewees were selected from an initial database containing information about 350 Spanish actors of the national artistic scene that live abroad and have left Spain since 1986, elaborated through consultation of public online sources (artists’ and gallery websites, lists of winners of mobility grants) and snowball sampling. Fieldwork was conducted in the most popular cities of destination and, with the aim of reflecting the diversity of the population in the initial database, the selection criteria for interviewees were gender, occupation, year of emigration, age, artistic reputation (both in Spain and in the city/country of residence) and level of professional integration in the art world. Respondents were contacted by email or through virtual social networks and interviews took place in cafés, at their studios, and at their homes (43 in Berlin, 28 in London, 20 in Paris, 11 in other places and exceptionally 2 by video call). The objective of the interviews was to gather biographical information and data on career steps and expectations, motivations to migrate and reasons to choose a particular city in which to establish principal residence.

The profiles presented in the following section arise from distribution patterns identified in the data collected through the 104 interviews. Biographical data of the interviewed individuals (educational attainment, number of participations in mobility programmes, use of an institutional programme to initiate migration, social characteristics) was quantified in tables for contingency analysis and then combined with the content analysis of the interviews. Reflections on art, career expectations, migration, institutional grants and mobility programmes, and the cities of destination were coded in three categories (‘academic’, ‘bohemian’, ‘entrepreneurial’) according to recurrent representations of art world participants mentioned by the interviewees themselves and by their peers met during participant observation. Since the paper deals with a purposive sample and not a random one, the validity of the findings ‘is not based on an elaborate statistical analysis but on an accumulation of many findings, based on groups of varying size and expressed in terms of … ordinal correlation coefficients which in the aggregate provide a consistent interpretation’ (Crane 1987: 148) of the studied phenomenon.

Interviewed individuals were born between 1965 and 1993 and started leaving Spain in 1988. Emigration increased from 2004 on, with a noticeable peak between 2008 and 2015, years of the economic crisis. 70 out of the 104 interviewees have benefited from at least one mobility grant throughout their trajectories. Individuals’ social origin was calculated based on their parents’ occupational status and coded according to Requena's (2011) table of class distribution in Spain. This table adapts the European Socio-economic Classification (ESeC) (Rose and Harrison 2007) to social stratification in Spain by including classes I, II, III and VI in a group named ‘new middle class’, classes IV and V in the ‘old middle class’, VII and X as the ‘new proletariat’, and VIII and IX forming the ‘old working class’ (Requena 2011).

This section presents three profiles emerging from the data as empirical types. These combine the relationship of individuals with institutional mobility grants, visions of art as an occupation and migration as a career development strategy, and social characteristics such as gender, social origin, and age at the start of the migration.

The first profile is formed by individuals (n = 38) whose artistic and migration careers are closely linked to education and to repeated participation in institutional programmes promoting both artistic activities and international mobility. Their international career usually starts with a participation in Erasmus+ and continues through other similarly functioning schemes, for further education or professional training. They often sojourn in different countries before settling permanently in their current place of residence, generally as a result of their social integration after a relatively long stay as students or trainees. This occurs at 26.5 years old in average, which is around three years younger than individuals matching other profiles. We find this profile settling most often in Berlin (n = 19), although curators and mediators prefer London (n = 9) and Paris (n = 6).

The group consists of more women than men (n = 30 and n = 8) and includes a slightly lower number of artists (n = 18) than other occupations within the art world. The average educational attainment of members of this group is higher than in other profiles, 35 individuals having earned at least a master's degree. Individuals in this group come mostly from middle and lower-middle class families. Most common parental occupations are teaching at school level, running small family businesses, and skilled manual or lower-grade administration work.

Individuals matching the academic profile gained access to the art world and to international mobility through education, which partly explains their relative youth at the moment of emigration. Institutional programmes supporting art and mobility represent opportunities for career building and internationalisation members of this group wouldn't otherwise have had access to.

Their motivations to participate in international student exchanges relate to specific funding schemes, but also to curiosity and to an interest in ‘seeing the world’ and change their everyday routines. Subsequent mobilities are most often related to this first experience: Within this profile, institutional programmes are seen as tools for professional career development. This strategy of uncertainty management is based on recurrently applying to grants and residencies and submitting projects to open calls which provide opportunities to produce artistic work that are very often linked to mobility. Raquel (artist, born in 1984) participated in the Erasmus exchange and in the Leonardo internship programme, she later took part in cultural projects supported by the European Union that involve mobility and intercultural exchange. She currently has a part-time job in a design agency but keeps engaging in artistic residencies abroad during her holidays: The ‘multi-recidivism’ (Ballatore 2020) presented here is typically female and can be understood as a strategy to counter gender discrimination in the art world. Female artists are less often invited to show their work in museums and artistic institutions (Danner and Galodé 2008; Provansal 2016), are less frequently represented by commercial galleries and sell their work at lower prices than men (Quemin 2013: 364–366). Resorting to competitions and merit-based programmes of this type can be a way for them to be integrated in the contemporary art world. Olga (artist, born in 1977) is an example of how professional career and mobility can blend into a strategy of uncertainty management: The individuals matching the academic profile show willingness to adapt themselves to the requirements of these programmes, for example creating specific projects to present to open calls and being hypermobile. Therefore, some artists within this population have over time specialised in site-specific art projects. Others have turned to art in the public space and to projects linking art and social inclusion when seeking to stabilise themselves in one location. Applications for open calls require writing descriptive texts about the project and other skills such as planning, budget management or language and technical knowledge. Individuals in the academic profile have the skills and the dispositions, acquired through school, to fit into this logic and to be able to benefit from this kind of opportunities. This academic strategy favours their consideration as legitimate participants in the art world when other forms of professional recognition are lacking. Not being able to rely on inherited cultural, social and economic capitals to make their ways into the global artistic scene, they look for opportunities in meritocratic competitions that are open to everyone.

The second profile refers to individuals (n = 26) who have never or very rarely participated in institutional programmes promoting mobility. They describe their dedication to art as a way to achieve personal realisation. Likewise, their migration to a European artistic centre links to an idealised tradition of artistic discovery through travel. This group consists of mostly male artists (n = 19) that migrated to an artistic centre in Europe around their thirties, generally long after finishing undergraduate studies. Individuals in this group come most often from lower-middle- and working-class families, their parents rarely having attended higher education and doing service and manual work at a higher proportion than in the other profiles.

Artists in this group often talk about art as a ‘passion’ that sometimes requires taking risks and making ‘sacrifices’. Their discourse on artistic vocation tends to be stereotypical and matches the bohemian ideal and Bourdieu's description of the field of cultural production as ‘the economic world reversed’ (Bourdieu 1983). They say they are happy just by being able to make art and to discuss it with their peers, even if the lack of economic rewards requires them to have a second job that is not necessarily related to culture (Bajard and Perrenoud 2013; Sinigaglia 2013), generally part-time and manual, but that leaves them with enough free time to work in their studios.

Their romantic vision of art and of the artistic lifestyle extends to their motivations to migrate. Having started their artistic careers in Spain, rather unsuccessfully or not finding their place in the artistic scene of origin, they move to a more central city of the global art world seeking new sources of inspiration and personal realisation. Not resorting to institutional mobility programmes can be partly explained by their age when deciding to migrate, it either making them not eligible for such grants or not adjusted to their plans and aspirations. Some individuals in this group explicitly reject the rules and the procedures of institutional mobility programmes: Besides the specific conditions of artistic residencies that Miguel refers to, individuals in this group find the rules for portfolio presentation and the selection process too demanding and too distant from their actual way of working. They refuse to make the compromises required by some programmes encouraging career development and internationalisation and prefer to rely on other resources such as personal contacts to find a place to stay, a studio and job opportunities upon arrival at their city of destination. The most popular destinations of individuals matching this profile are Berlin (n = 12) and Paris (n = 6), cities that are now or have been in the past associated with a Bohemian lifestyle. Most of the members of this group that migrated to Paris did so before the year 2000 and talk often about the artistic past of the city, embodied by the artist communities of the early twentieth century. Berlin became only popular for migration among Spanish art world participants after 2005 and attracted those who were looking for a relatively cheap place to live and work. For individuals representing the bohemian profile, moving to a European artistic capital constitutes itself a career move that is not necessarily linked to specific opportunities (exhibitions, residencies, jobs, mobility grants) but to lifestyle and career possibilities offered by these cities as opposed to the places of origin. However, their vision of artistic work can seem outdated and their mistrust of institutional mobility programmes ill- informed of their utility for career development. In addition to that, their probably inherited inclination to vocational, manual work and their expressed disinterest in formal markers of artistic recognition tend to hinder their integration in the highly competitive global artistic scene.

The third profile represents individuals (n = 40) who seek to access the global artistic elite. The group's main characteristic is their absolute prioritisation of the career in the arts over considerations of artistic autonomy. They talk about their work as a business that must be profitable, and about their migration to an artistic centre as a career development project. They are well adjusted to the developments of the art world in the last decades (Bataille et al. 2020; Borja and Sofio 2009), with the rising power of the art market and artistic practices that involve big productions and the newest technologies. These individuals form a group that is balanced from a gender perspective, but the distribution of its members in occupations is not. There are more male than female artists, while most of the mediators and curators are women. As for the social origin of its members, the group is more diverse than the two previously presented, but individuals in it come from more privileged family backgrounds. A lot of their parents are liberal professionals and managers, and most of them have higher education degrees.

The relationship of the entrepreneurs with institutional programmes is ambivalent. They have benefitted from grants and prizes, either for art or for mobility, but only occasionally, provided that those are prestigious, cover a relatively long period of time and are well endowed. Often awarded by banks, private foundations, and institutions such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, those are grants that allow them to pursue postgraduate education or to gain professional experience abroad through residencies and traineeships. In some cases, migration is a rather distant possibility that only crystallises if a grant application is successful. Lucas (curator, born in 1985) had already completed a master's degree in Spain and was an intern in a museum when he applied to a grant for continuing education in a foreign country awarded by a bank:

His internship supervisor at the museum advised him to apply for the grant and helped him with the application and selection process. Such grants usually require recommendation letters and well-prepared application materials, it is therefore very common that candidates get advice from older and more experienced professionals in their domain. It was Aitor's (artist, born in 1981) gallerist who insisted on him applying to an artist's residency in the Netherlands: Such economic factors can help choose between different possible destinations when the contours of the migration project are only roughly defined. Older and more experienced individuals rely on their accumulated professional expertise to make their move, for example by applying for jobs abroad. In some cases, ongoing projects that don't require a continuous physical presence in Spain secure a part of income that allows the launching of the migration project and that provides a safety-net during installation and while looking for new opportunities in the destination. However, they might have participated in institutional mobility programmes as students or through artistic residencies before deciding to settle abroad more permanently. For that, Berlin and London are the preferred destinations of this group, but we see a divide within its members along their age of emigration being under or above 28 years old: younger members move more often to London to pursue further education, and older members go to Berlin to be able to focus exclusively on artistic work. The case of Paula who, prior to moving to the German capital had studied in Paris and lived in two Spanish cities, is illustrative of this divide along age: The choice of destination of individuals matching the entrepreneurial profile shows that moving to a European artistic centre is an investment in their careers through the possibility of working internationally by being in touch with foreign professionals in a global art hub. Institutional support through grants enabling mobility determine the migration of younger artists and art mediators to a greater extent, contributing to the choice of destination and of integration strategy in the new local scene (through education at prestigious schools, for example). Older individuals can rely on previously established connections to make their ways upon arrival to the chosen destination, that choice being closely linked to economic factors.

Despite the emergence of artistic events and institutions all over the world in recent years, long-established hierarchies of power between territories persist in the so-called global art world. Participants in the art world coming from peripheral regions improve their chances of global success by migrating to more central spaces that act as artistic hubs. Spanish artists and mediators take advantage of the European free movement regime and of the many institutional funding possibilities to internationalise their profiles by moving to capital cities like Berlin, Paris or London. Institutional programmes fostering international mobility of European citizens serve, thus, a double function. First, they encourage intra-European mobility by providing an institutional setting and an allowance that make mobility easy and desirable. Second, individuals may rely on them to reduce the risks and uncertainties of both the artistic career and the migration project. It is common that individuals having benefited from mobility grants settle permanently in a foreign country or re-emigrate later in life.

In this paper, we have presented three profiles of Spanish participants in the art world currently living abroad that arise from the data. These are three ideal types that associate individuals’ relationship with institutional mobility programmes, their general orientation of career choices, and specific combinations of social characteristics. Fit in the first profile, labelled as ‘academic’, individuals that have repeatedly resorted to mobility grants. They are most typically middle and lower-middle class women whose artistic career and migration project are linked to education and to meritocratic institutional competitions. Match the second, ‘bohemian’, profile individuals that have rarely benefited from international mobility programmes. These are mostly male artists coming from lower-middle- and working-class families who seek personal realisation through art and migration to a European artistic capital, without necessarily having high career expectations. The third, ‘entrepreneurial’, profile is defined by a general orientation towards career development, with occasional participation in institutional mobility programmes, if these serve professional purposes. The resulting group is socially more diverse and gender balanced, with most individuals coming from upper-middle- and middle-class families.

Migrating to a European artistic centre occupies a different place in the professional expectations of individuals in each of the three profiles described: as a result of recurrent participation in institutional programmes for the academic profile, as a stabiliser of romantic and idealised engagement for the bohemian one, and as a source of opportunities of international career development for the entrepreneurial one. The comparison of the three profiles shows how social characteristics shape individual decision-making processes in situations of uncertainty such as pursuing a career in the art world and migration. Gender appears as an important factor accounting for the distribution in occupations across profiles, as well as individuals’ strategies of artistic career and migration. Occupation and age when emigrating contribute to explain the choice of destination, in combination with career advancement and economic factors. Furthermore, the academic, vocational, and professional orientation of each profile is closely linked to the social origin of individuals in each group, their career expectations being influenced by parental occupations and by individuals’ own educational paths.

The findings discussed in this paper present some limitations linked to the exploratory nature of our study. Future research could use the three profiles described here as hypothesis to be tested in analysis based on quantitative data. Such a project could serve to portray the artistic population of a country and provide an element of comparison at a European and/or international level, as well as to analyse its evolution over time. While it is beyond of the scope of this paper to analyse in detail the spatial situatedness of the three profiles, a deeper examination of the destination choices in each case could help better understand the influence of individuals’ social characteristics in artistic migrations. Despite such limitations, the findings presented in this paper contribute to the growing body of literature dealing with artistic mobility and to the broader domain of intra- European migrations in two ways. First, the paper highlights the role of institutional programmes in encouraging mobility and in the emergence of a unified European space for contemporary art. More precisely, by conceptualising institutional mobility programmes as devices for uncertainty management, the paper presents a model of analysis that links institutional policies and individual choices. Second, it offers new evidence of how social inequalities shape processes of individual decision-making linked to artistic careers and to migration. The proposed theoretical framework allows an analysis that makes more visible the intersection of gender, socio-economic background and age and its influence in the planning of career steps in an increasingly globalised art world.

The author thanks Alain Quemin, Arturo Rodríguez Morató, Ariadna Peralta Lladó, Anna Clot Garrell, Alexandre Daneau, Pere Guirao Soro, Quentin Fondu, and Julia Balcells Roca, the participants of the European Sociological Association's PhD Summer School 2020, and the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Gloria Guirao Soro is a postdoctoral researcher at the Sociology department of the University of Barcelona.