‘The migrant’ tends to be imagined as a non-privileged, non-white, non-Westernsubject in search for a better future in Europe or the US, and as such a preconstitutedsubject shaped by notions of marginalization and poverty. What kind ofstories are obscured by this recurrent image of ‘the migrant’, and how does suchcategorization hamper the thinking of privilege, belonging and white normativity?Why are some migrants not regarded as migrants despite their migrant status andwhy are other individuals seen as migrants and thus denied their national belongingin spite of their formal status as national citizens? The presentation aims to developexisting theoretical perspectives on migration and citizenship by combining findingsin current migration studies with critical race and whiteness studies with particularattention to a) autochthony and belonging, b) race and citizenship, and c) whitecapital.