A little bit freer’
Middle-class Chinese migrants on the periphery and new openings for political engagement
Datos Bibliográficos
| ID | 8133457 |
|---|---|
| Autores | Pal Nyiri, Juan Zhang (0000-0003-3613-6332), Fanni Beck (0000-0003-4765-9569) |
| Año | 2026 |
| Páginas | 1-21 |
| Fecha de publicación | 2026-02-12 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sí |
| Open Access | Sí |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Revista | New Community (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores de la revista | ISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451 |
| Editorial | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369183x.2026.2619652 |
| OpenAlex | W7128740160 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Referencias citadas | 42 |
This paper draws attention to peripheral destinations of middle-class migration that are gaining prominence as traditional centres lose appeal. Focusing on middle-class Chinese migrants settling in what we call the global periphery, we examine off-centre migration systems that challenge established sending-receiving country configurations. Drawing on fieldwork in Hungary, existing research in Southern Europe and Southeast Asia, and an analysis of emerging online networks, we identify a shared vernacular migration narrative revolving around the pursuit of freedom. We suggest that freedom remains a central driver of migration - a notion largely sidelined in studies of voluntary mobility and rarely explored in the Chinese context. We understand freedom not as a political ideal but as an embodied, everyday experience: freedom from the pressures of work, family expectations, and social surveillance, and freedom to slow down, to make time for oneself and live with a sense of ease. Mobility here represents a situational disengagement that opens space for loosely networked transnational engagements. Amid growing global political uncertainty, shifting aspirations around work and education, and rapid demographic change, the periphery emerges as safer, more affordable, and more relaxed - a site where quiet experimentation with autonomy, expression, and belonging can unfold
Destinations · Disengagement theory · Ideal (ethics · Narrative · Negotiation · Politics · Situational ethics · Vernacular · Work (physics · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
Understanding Lifestyle Migration
The Wuhan Lockdown
Global China as Method
‘What would they think of us?’ The impact of the China threat narrative in Australian media on PRC migrants and social cohesion
The Modernity Bluff
Paradise Redefined
Global Diasporas
Social Acceleration
Handbook of Chinese Migration to Europe
Chinese in France amid the Covid-19 Pandemic
Health packages and affective infrastructures
The Anthropology of Chinese Transnational Educational Migration
Post-2020 mainland Chinese student mobility to Malaysia
The shifting landscape of Chinese student mobility to Thailand
The Yellow Man's Burden
China's Cosmopolitan Nationalists
When Diaspora Politics Meet Global Ambitions
Digitized diaspora governance during the Covid‐19 pandemic
Taking it slower
From Multicultural Experiment to Performing “China's Story
Why do conflict-generated diasporas pursue sovereignty-based claims through state-based or transnational channels? Armenian, Albanian and Palestinian diasporas in the UK compared
Childhood, Migration and the Pursuit of Happiness in MIDDLE-CLASS East Asia
Europe's New Bildungsbürger? Chinese Migrants in Search of a Pure Land
We Gained a Lot Over What We Would Have Had
Desire as a theory for migration studies
Migration in the age of involuntary immobility
Revisiting aspiration and ability in international migration
Aspiration, desire and drivers of migration
Global Multiple Migration
Anthropology, China, and the Chinese Century
Opting out of the city
Introduction
Stepwise International Migration
Diasporas and secessionist conflicts
| Velocidad de citación | historical |
|---|---|
| Altamente citado | No |