This article focuses on cosmopolitanism as an object of sociological analysis, through an empirical study of Canadian development workers who were posted in Pakistan for extended periods of time and have subsequently resumed their lives in Canada. These global migrants developed various attachments to Pakistani culture and people through their transnational experiences. Employing a continuum of cosmopolitanism, the article describes these attachments, which, it argues, form the basis of a tentative and ambivalent culture of cosmopolitanism as it is lived by these development workers on their return to Canada. The study’s aim is to clarify the concept of cosmopolitanism by documenting the emergence of a new sociality characterized by global connectivities that engender justice-oriented alliances and solidarities.
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