Paradise redefined
Subtitle: transnational Chinese students and the quest for flexible citizenship in the developed world
By: Vanessa L. Fong
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Stanford, California
Language: eng
Number of pages: 267
ISBN-13: 9780804772662; 9780804772679
Copyright date: 2011
Subjects: Emigration and immigration; Transnationalism; Foreign study; Chinese students
Description: The author continues to track the experiences of many of the initial cohort of Chinese only-children (now college-age) that were part of her 2004 groundbreaking ethnographic exploration of the social, economic, and psychological development of children born since China's one-child policy was introduced in 1979. Here she tracks their experiences as they study abroad in Australia, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, North America, and Singapore. While earning a prestigious college education in China is the main path to elite status, study abroad provides an alternative channel by offering a particularly flexible "developed world" citizenship. This flexible citizenship promises the potential for greater happiness and freedom afforded by transnational mobility, but also brings with it unexpected suffering, ambivalence, and disappointment. Paradise Redefined offers insights into China's globalization by examining the expectations and experiences that affect how various Chinese students make decisions about studying abroad, staying abroad, immigration, and returning home.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Is the moon rounder abroad? : how Chinese citizens see the world; title: Choosing the road less traveled : how and why Chinese citizens decide to study abroad; title: The floating life : dilemmas of education, work, and marriage abroad; title: When migrants from the same hometown meet, tears fill their eyes : freedoms won and lost through transnational migration; title: The road home : decisions about returning to China or staying abroad.