Migration aspirations and polymorphic identifications of the homeland: (im)mobility trajectories amongst Chinese international students amidst COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Drawing on longitudinal research with 33 Chinese international students in 10 European countries, this article examines their polymorphic identifications towards homeland and asks how these changing perceptions constitute the underlying logic of their particular migration aspirations during the COVID-19. Specifically, the article explores how homeland identifications function as a driving force to facilitate ‘voluntary immobility’ in the study destination while being used as a tackling strategy to adapt to their ‘involuntary immobility’ overseas. It also examines how these identifications articulate with the students’ mixing and shifting migration aspirations formulated during the pandemic. In doing so, the article demonstrates that polymorphic perceptions closely relate to the generation, exercise and reproduction of their migration aspirations that are temporally distributed.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration aspirations
• homeland identifications
• (im)mobility
• COVID-19
• Chinese
• international students

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the generous help offered by all the research participants. We also appreciate the constructive comments from the editors and the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

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

Funding

The work was supported by National Social Science Fundation of China [grant number 21CSH008]; and Shanghai Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science [grant number 2020ESH002].

Notes

1. The first author has received the approval from the ethics committee of her department and the approval number is 20,220,516,006. All the informants were well-informed about the objectives and procedures of the research before their agreement of the participation.

2. One package includes masks, hand soaps, the Lianhua Qingwen capsules (a Chinese medicine recommended for treating COVID-19), and a letter from the embassy.

3. ‘26’ indicates the age of research participant. Barcelona and Spain are the names of city and country where the student conducts study.

4. ‘Little Pinks’, an internet term initiated in 2016, are generally understood as young Chinese netizens who are devoted to defending the national interests and the current Chinese political system.