Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACTEducational migration to Poland has recently served to reshape the local Chinese community, previously known largely for trade and small entrepreneurship. This marks a broader trend, with a number of European countries promoted in China as sites of elite learning and increasingly fetishized among the Chinese middle class. Drawing on research among families, students and intermediaries, I discuss the process through which Poland has been embraced as one of such 'imagined' destinations, meant to provide an alternative to the pressures of life in modern Chinese society. I also show how, despite the growing access, the actual pursuit of new aspirations remains complex, often leading to a conflicted experience abroad.

The Chinese in Poland are an understudied but rapidly growing migrant community, undergoing a transition from an established pattern of economic chain migration to one based on investment of wealth in pursuit of a better life environment. Educational immigration by middle-class families provides insight into a broader trend of popular resistance to China's established model of governmentality. Refusing to conform to prescribed patterns of achievement and social mobility, these families exemplify a younger generation's aspirations and challenges involved in transnational mobility, which go beyond the traditional capital accumulation strategies.