Hoping for success, becoming a spiritual subject

Converted returnees in China

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8251202
AutoresMiguel Pérez‐milan (0000-0001-6421-5180, University College London, autor correspondente), Guo Xiaoyan
Ano2020
Volume2
Fascículo2
Páginas197-226
Data de publicação2020-12-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLanguage Culture and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2543-3156 • E-ISSN: 2543-3164
EditoraJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/lcs.20001.per
OpenAlexW3048519397
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas12
Referências citadas55

This article focuses on the entanglement of trajectories of transnational education/work and religious conversion among Chinese overseas students who move to the UK before returning to China. In contrast to the existing literature on returnees where the gaze is only turned on highly prestigious schemes/trajectories of return, we look at those who become involved with Christian evangelical congregations and bible reading groups in response to a general state of disillusion with social beliefs of global competition and success. By drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in London and Beijing, we engage with literature on lived religion, migration and the care of the self through a sociolinguistic lens. We take pressures for successful return as a technology of hope that shaped our participants’ experiences of Christian conversion, and examine religious practices as support-based subject-transformation projects whereby our participants regulate their and others’ practices and feelings through daily semiotic activities as they operate within global spaces of higher education and the labour market. In so doing, we detail a complex interplay of self-transformation experiences, collective practices of refusal, and capitalist logics of market expansion

Beijing · China · Ethnography · Feeling · Political science · Social change · Social transformation · Sociology · State (computer science · Subject (documents · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Psychology · Social Psychology