Between National and Transnational
Mainland Chinese Students' Semi‐National Experience in Hong Kong
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24229950 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Wing-hung Mok (0009-0003-7782-5019, Department of Sociology and Anthropology National University of Singapore Singapore) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-09 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Nations and Nationalism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1345-5078 • E-ISSN: 1469-8129 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/nana.70128 |
| OpenAlex | W7221311318 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 53 |
This study examines how Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong reproduce, adjust and unsettle nationhood in everyday life. Drawing on discourse analysis of Xiaohongshu posts and interactions, it argues that nationhood can become unsettled even when individuals remain within formal national territory. This condition is conceptualised as semi‐national experience. The findings show that identity labels mark symbolic boundaries between Mainlanders and Hong Kongers; language choices and friendship circles reproduce familiar social worlds; digital platforms and foodways make Mainland routines materially available; and national holidays expose mismatches between national temporality and Hong Kong's institutional rhythms. The concept challenges the assumed correspondence between national territory and the everyday infrastructures of nationhood. It also refines debates on transnationalism and liminality and provides an analytical framework beyond the conventional domestic/international binary in studies of student mobility.
Everyday life · Foodways · friendship networks · Hong Kong · identity labels · language choice · Liminality · mainland Chinese students · national holidays · nationhood · Social media · Student mobility · Transnationalism · Xiaohongshu · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · International Student and Expatriate Challenges
Doing Affect Around National Days
Food, National Identity and Nationalism
The Handbook of Discourse Analysis
Governing Educational Desire
National Belonging and Everyday Life
‘It’s more foreign than a foreign country’
Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong
The impact of geopolitics on international student mobility
Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on international higher education and student mobility
Cantonese learning, investments, and identities
The Rhetoric of Nationalism
Making Sense of Everyday Nationhood
Political Development in Hong Kong
Paradise Redefined
Transnationalism
Analysing Discourse
Creating a Home away from Home”
When the Hong Kong Dream Meets the Anti-Mainlandisation Discourse
Infrastructuring arrival and homemaking in Covid‐19 times
The Lingering Banners of Hong Kong ‘National Day’
Selling and consuming the nation
Diaspora at home’
The motherland’s suffocating embrace
Living a diasporic space online
I am not qualified to be a Honkongese because of my accented Cantonese’
The edges of the nation
Dreams of Flight
Everyday nationhood
Home virtuality and the platformized life of Chinese international students in the United Kingdom
Psychological and academic adaptation of mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong universities
Hardening National Boundaries in a Globally-Connected World
Regimes of Mobility Across the Globe
Echoes of silence
Postcolonial Hong Kong identity
Space and personal contacts
Reconsidering National Temporalities
Consuming the nation
Racialization of xinyimin and their double lives
| Highly cited | No |
|---|