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ABSTRACT
As China continues to open its economy to the world, more and more expats migrate to Chinese cities for employment and business investment. Little research exists on their practices of everyday life and translocal connections. Echoing the emphasis on the intersection between expatriation and everydayness, this article focuses on Western expats and explores their daily experience of homemaking in Guangzhou, the third largest city in China. We develop the concept of ‘temporary home’ to examine how the global constellation of expatriation happens in a specific place and forges a delicate balance between dwelling and travelling. We argue that the making of temporary home exemplifies the ways in which Western expats undertake and experience a privileged mode of mobility. Temporary home reflects both fitting-in for familiarity between these expats and the host city of Guangzhou, and opting-out in order to navigate the global race for skilled professionals and to accumulate transnational experiences. They engage in the making of temporary home – a form of material and symbolic landscape that represents a privileged lifestyle of dwelling-in-travelling.
Acknowledgement
We feel grateful to Junxi Qian and Hong Zhu whose comments have substantially improved this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Even the State Council Information Office acknowledges that the process of Chinese green card application is ‘extremely complex’ and getting it is considered an extremely difficult task, mainly due to a lack of administrative transparency, high requirements, and language barrier (http://english.scio.gov.cn/in-depth/2018-10/22/content_67500706_2.htm).