Classed education trajectories and intimate partnering of international students: a case of Chinese international undergraduate students in the United States

ABSTRACT

The scholarship of international student migration has focused on the difficulties students experience in host countries and often positions them as disadvantaged or marginalised. However, another strand of scholarship has argued that class privilege critically shapes student migration. This discrepancy underlines the need to investigate the reproduction of social hierarchies as coexisting with students’ everyday experiences of desire, identity, and inequalities. Analysing the varied manifestations of social class, I argue that international students engage in intimate partnering by strategically utilising their social, economic, and cultural resources and knowledge. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 Chinese international undergraduate students in non-elite and elite colleges in the United States, I demonstrate how classed migration trajectories shape different situations and agencies regarding their partnership options. Even though both groups of students showed co-national homophily, elite schoolers confirmed their class position in opposition to locals while exploring socio-erotic scenes in the host country. Non-elite schoolers remained disadvantaged without attempting status elevation through intimate partnering. More scholarly attention is required to capture the new social hierarchies emerging from transnational student migration.

KEYWORDS:

• Social class
• international students
• intimate partnering
• sexualities

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Mariano Sana, Richard Lloyd, Laura Carpenter, David Hess, Hae Yeon Choo, Seth King, the two anonymousreviewers, and the editor for providing feedback. The Human Subjects Committee of the Institutional Review Board of Vanderbilt University approved the study design, interview guide, and consent form.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the Sociology Department at Vanderbilt University.