Encountering infrastructural interruptions and maintaining transnational lives amongst foreigners in China

ABSTRACT

Drawing on in-depth biographical interviews with foreign scholars in China (hereafter ‘FSC’), this paper examines the impact of various infrastructural interruptions on the transnational lives of mobile individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores how the labour of maintenance and resourceful quick-fixes employed by FSC constitute infrastructuring strategies in times of isolation and uncertainty. Specifically, the paper first asks how specific COVID-19-induced infrastructural barriers, such as tightened visa policies, mandatory PCR testing for border crossing, and suspended flights, intersect with the (im)mobility experiences and trajectories of FSC. Second, the paper investigates how these individuals navigate and cope with infrastructural glitches by fashioning a set of infrastructuring strategies to maintain transnational lives within the pandemic context. In doing so, this paper develops a deeper understanding of not only the generative but also destructive capacities of infrastructural processes in terms of their transformative effects on migrant identities, aspirations and lived experiences, further revealing the fragility, incompleteness and situationality embedded in migration infrastructures. More critically, this paper theorises how infrastructural interruptions constitute the necessary social-temporal conditions in which individuals’ infrastructuring strategies emerge through acts of waiting, adaptation and maintenance.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration infrastructure
• infrastructural interruptions
• maintenance
• foreign scholars in China
• COVID-19 pandemic

1. Introduction

Similar to other types of natural disasters and public health crises, COVID-19 led to a series of unprecedented infrastructural interruptions and reconfigurations, such as national lockdowns and stringent bio-political governing measures, which significant impacted people’s bodies, movements and lives (Adey et al. 2021). This is particularly the case when it comes to a transnational context (Soltani, Thorpe, and Brice 2023). In this regard, this paper draws on in-depth biographical interviews with foreign scholars in China (hereafter ‘FSC’) to investigate how infrastructural interruptions produce different (im)mobility experiences during pandemic times when overwhelming and forceful infrastructural operations brought global movements to a halt both within and across national borders. It asks how the macro-level and micro-level migration infrastructural interruptions affect the transnational lives of mobile individuals who grapple with sudden upheavals involving split families, uncertain career prospects and more precarious living conditions while abroad.

Over the past two decades, scholarly discussions have witnessed an ‘infrastructural turn’, marked by debates on the affective, aesthetic, ethical and ontological dimensions of infrastructure (Bosworth 2021; Larkin 2013; Prouse 2021). Infrastructure often carries implicit assumptions on the underlying physical and organisational systems that support economic, political and social lives. The most familiar ideas associated with infrastructure include transportation, energy and utility networks, communication and surveillance systems, and a broad spectrum of technological frameworks facilitating fundamental activities for business and work with multiscalar implications on social life, education and care (Tuitjer and Müller 2021).

Existing research concerning migration infrastructure is largely concerned with macro-level or meso-level institutional structures and commercial organisations that shape and morph migration (Lin et al. 2017). These studies focus on how migrants are moved by infrastructural apparatus, with relatively less attention given to the agential capacities of migrants themselves at various points of encountering the larger infrastructural systems (Thieme 2017). Moreover, these studies often concentrate on heavily regulated migration groups, such as low-skilled labour migrants (Xiang and Lindquist 2014), refugees and involuntary migrants (Schapendonk 2018), dependent and marriage migrants (Yeoh, Chee, and Baey 2017). Notably, Meeus, Arnaut, and Heur’s research (2018) on ‘arrival infrastructure’ has contributed to a growing body of literature exploring migration infrastructures from a receiving-end perspective, highlighting the more regular and privileged forms of migration groups, such as Thieme’s study (2017) on international student mobility, and Liu and Lin’s writing (2017) on academic migration.

The usefulness of infrastructure as a concept often positions it as a convenient analytic device on its own right, which can be taken for granted in scholarly explorations of social structures, connections and interruptions (Latham and Jack 2022). Our paper situates the analytical understanding of this concept within the burgeoning field of ‘bottom up’ migration infrastructure (Jung and Buhr 2022), challenging assumptions about the organising and ordering capacities of infrastructure by specifically analysing the transforming capacities of migration infrastructure at the moment of its failure. When infrastructural disruptions and breakdowns happen, transnational lives can indeed be disturbed and suspended, resulting in exacerbated conditions of precarity and despair for many (Dutta and Rahman 2023; Sunam 2023; Thorpe et al. 2023). Nevertheless, our paper argues that such interruptions can generate conditions ‘from which new infrastructures emerge through the labour of maintenance and repair’ (Anand 2020, 53), where patchwork solutions (De Coss-Corzo 2021) and incremental adaptation bridge over the gaps and crevices in situated ways. It is thus important to explore how migrants’ thoughts, actions and aspirations under exceptional circumstances shape the experiences of infrastructural encounters and the handling of infrastructural interruptions across different stages and phases of their migratory journeys. Against this backdrop, this paper offers a more critically engaged perspective on infrastructural interruptions in the process of migration, particularly at crucial arrival points.

Specifically focusing on the experiences of FSC, the paper asks how certain COVID-19-led infrastructural interruptions (e.g. tightened visa policies, PCR tests¹ for border crossing and suspended flights) intersect with their (im)mobility experiences and trajectories across borders. FSC’s encounters with these interruptions play a crucial role in how they maintain homes and careers at a transnational scale, as they negotiate with restrictions and possibilities in personal and professional domains. Moreover, the paper explores the ways in which FSC migitage these infrastructural interruptions by mobilising their infrastructural surroundings and engaging in ‘self-infrastructuring’ as an adaptive strategy to seek out both formal and informal infrastructural resources, to cope with ‘infrastructural glitches’, and pursue other enabling infrastructural encounters in both physical and digital worlds. As such, this paper aims to not only deepen our understanding of the generative and disruptive capacities of migration infrastructures as experienced by migrants simultaneously, but also to unveil the fragility, incompleteness and precarious situationality embedded within such infrastructural encounters. More critically, this paper theorises how interruptions constitute the necessary social-temporal conditions for the emergence of new infrastructural arrangements and bottom-up infrastructuring strategies through migrant acts of maintenance, waiting and adaptation.

2. Infrastructural interruptions and labour of maintenance as migrant agency during the pandemic

2.1. Mapping migration infrastructures

Drawing on existing research, this paper identifies and examines three types of migration infrastructures that emerged from our data: first, institutional infrastructures encompassing visa regimes and border control policies; second, material and technological infrastructures including transportation facilities and digital applications utilised by migrants; and third, social infrastructures involving diverse social networks spanning both physical and digital spaces. We present three crucial points that are key to further understanding migration infrastructure. First, we shift the focus beyond top-down migration infrastructures that operate ‘from above’, which move or prevent migrants from moving between one point and another such as migration policies or visa-related documentation systems. In doing so, we highlight the significance of understanding migration infrastructure ‘from below’, including different kinds of digital technologies and social networks that shape migrant lives after they move. Although seemingly ordinary, these infrastructural elements can significantly transform individuals’ socialising habitus, daily routines and sense of belongings. Accordingly, this paper considers how different kinds of migration infrastructures intimately affect FSC’s lived experiences on a daily basis.

Second, we argue that migration infrastructures do not necessarily have to be exclusively designed for migrants. For example, specific types of material and technological infrastructures in the destination country (such as WeChat² or other types of digital applications used in China) can instigate ‘tension points’ that either facilitate or hinder the process of migrant settlement in China. Notably, the ubiquitous utilisaiton of the mega-app WeChat may be commonplace and convenient for Chinese citizens, newcomers to the country will need to undergo significant adjustment and familiarisation. Such established infrastructures may not be ‘migrant-only’ or ‘migrant-friendly’, they need to be recognised as a form of migration infrastructure as they produce distinct social and cultural conditions with which migrants must engage and produce their own adaptive strategies, such as gaining and sharing knowledge, navigating different interfaces and so on. Admittedly, a set of technological infrastructures including different kinds of social media platforms become instrumental for migrants to obtain emotional support and strengthen transnational connections during the pandemic (Soltani, Thorpe, and Brice 2023).

Third, the process of accessing and utilising migration infrastructures is far from being straightforward but demanding constant agency and effort from individuals. Through efforts of maintenance, migrant individuals can reconfigure and enhance their infrastructural surroundings, contingent upon a certain level of structural support. Existing research on the ‘infrastructural turn’ in migration primarily examines the infrastructural aspects and how migrants are moved, including explorations of the role played by migration brokerage and intermediary systems (Lindquist 2017), transnational training and recruitment processes (McCollum and Findlay 2018), and how physical infrastructures such as airports (Hirish 2017) shape individual’s mobilities. This paper builds on the strength of this literature and underscores the extension of migrant agency by exploring how individuals mobilise their infrastructural resources to maintain transnational lives, particularly in a pandemic context where infrastructural interruptions occur. This ‘bottom up’ approach shifts our analytical attention away from larger structures and meso-level intermediaries towards individuals in their lived realities where both formal and informal infrastructuralising efforts are mobilised to sustain transnational lives and emotional connections.

2.2. Infrastructural interruptions and labour of maintenance

Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the way people live and work globally. Governments around the world swiftly implemented a number of new border control measures and travel restrictions, such as tightening visa application procedures, partially or completely closing borders, suspending flights and national lockdowns, to control the spread of coronavirus (Adey et al. 2021). Scholars have noted that the pandemic has not only led to emerging patterns of cross-border mobility (Skovgaard-Smith 2021) but also fundamentally changed the management and direction of existing mobilities (Xiang et al. 2022). Xiang and fellow migration researchers refer to this phenomenon as ‘shock mobilities’, indicating how migratory routines are ‘radically and abruptly reconfigured in response to acute disruption’ caused by Covid-19 ‘in both scale and intensity’ (Xiang et al. 2022, 2).

When transnational migrants experience such radical and abrupt reconfigurations in their migratory routines, their personal and professional lives, social relations and even emotional connections established across time and space are no longer the same (Soltani, Thorpe, and Brice 2023). Skovgaard-Smith (2021), for example, shows how prolonged family separation over long physical distances takes a heavy emotional toll, leaving migrants feel ‘“trapped”, “stuck” or “stranded” in a state of transnational limbo’ (1). Before the pandemic, families and friends might be just ‘a flight away’ for many, and overseas careers may seem manageable when the convenience of travel and communication make transnational lives sustainable. Under exceptional circumstances when familiar infrastructural operations, such as transport, communication, and networks, suddenly come to a halt, migrants are confronted with suspension and prolonged uncertainties as well as a shrinking transnational social space. If transnational life in pre-pandemic times was defined as ‘living simultaneously within and beyond the boundaries of a nation-state’ (Levitt and Schiller 2004, 1006), the smooth straddling and shuttling of lives across international borders in a regular and familiar pattern during the pandemic was no longer guaranteed. The ‘shocked reactions’ from nation-states unsettled and reshaped their taken-for-granted sense of freedom, belonging and aspiration (Müller 2022). The life worlds of transnational migrants were thus made fragile.

Infrastructural interruptions indeed challenge the assumed ‘hidden smoothness’ and the ‘invisible lineaments of everyday life with all of its predicatibilities and routines’ (Johnson 2018, 72). They make visible the ‘temporal fragility of infrastrucuture’ (Ramakrishnan, O’Reilly, and Budds 2021) where uncertainties and precariousness are not exception but an understated aspect of infrastructural configurations that assemble material and social relations at various scales. However, we argue that interruptions can be just as generative as they are disruptive. At the pressure points where infrastructures fail to deliver, new needs and motivations emerge for repair, improvisation, and improvement to take precedence (Silver 2016). Interruptions can be generative in the sense where new social and material connections are formulated to address deficiencies and barriers. This, in turn, alters migrants’ outlooks and practices. The COVID-19 pandemic presented large-scale interruptions and ‘infrastructural failures’ in both everyday and transnational living, which prompts scholars to focus more on issues regarding infrastructural equality, reliability and accessibility (De Groot and Lemanski 2021). More importantly, these pandemic-led interruptions also open up a space for thinking about contingent responses and different forms of maintenance work undertaken by individuals and families living through prolonged emotional and/or economic uncertainties.

This paper examines how interlinked infrastructural interruptions disrupt migrant lifeworlds and generate feelings and experiences of dislocation. Writing specifically in the context of FSC’s experiences with Chinese pandemic control apparatus at various points of infrastructural encounter, these interruptions include additional institutional barriers such as tightened visa policies and unpredictable border control policies, different kinds of material or technological infrastructural glitches such as abruptly canceled or extremely expensive flights, as well as travel ban or restrictions within China. While these interruptions were not uncommon to most migrants who find themselves unable to travel or communicate in the same familiar ways as compared to pre-pandemic times (Skovgaard-Smith 2021), the situation in China between 2020 and 2022 presented unique circumstances with further restrictions and uncertainties due largely to its dinstict approach in Covid management (Hu, Xu, and Tu 2022).

Much has been said on the ways in which transnational lives rely on well-established migration infrastructure, such as institutional support, transportation, social networks, financial, communicational and technological connections. However, little is known about how migrants cope with infrastructural break down, with disrupted routines and relations across time and space. As this paper will show, when lockdowns and travel suspensions curtailed or withdrew other communication or service alternatives with prolonged uncertainty, FSC had very little choice but to engage with China’s Covid-fortified institutional, material-technological and social infrastructures. It is also important to note that while these infrastructures may seem all-encompassing and overbearing, they are far from fixed or rigid. Unconventional and unexpected coping mechanisms may afford new opportunities for FSC to better utilise existing infrastructures or utilise additional resources to maintain their transnational lives. Instead of being passive to the impacts generated by infrastructural disruptions, some participants demonstrate that they can actively circumvent certain interruptions and anticipate changes during COVID-19.

Along this line, this paper uses ‘maintenance’ as a keyword to describe migrant actions when faced with infrastructural interruptions. In migration studies, the term maintenance has been used to describe how family arrangements, social and financial connections, and transnational ties are maintained across distance and different social worlds (Buffel 2015). Maintenance has also been a useful term in scholarly writing on infrastructural breakdown and disruptions. Indeed, the ‘fragility of infrastructure’ has been well noted across contexts, when serial interruptions, endemic failures and the constant work required to keep infrastructure working (Ramakrishnan, O’Reilly, and Budds 2021). Maintenance in this sense ‘ensures infrastructural continuity’ as it assembles a range of materials and techniques to produce an effect of ‘order’ (Doherty 2019, 26–27). In De Coss-Corzo’s article (2021) on patchwork labour in Mexico City’s hydraulic infrastructure, he differentiates maintenance from repair as linked processes with distinct logic and practice. Maintenance carries a preventative logic that seeks to act before actual breakdown takes place, whereas repairs are needed at the moment of rupture. We use maintenance in a slightly different way from the majority of the literature on infrastructural maintenance and repair which focuses largely on the maintenance on the infrastructural system itself (De Coss-Corzo 2021; Doherty 2019). Here, we examine not only the maintenance of infrastructures, but also the maintenance of overall migrant transnational lives when systematic interruptions cause breakdowns, hardships, and a prolonged sense of enduring with both frustrating and hopeful moments.

In the context of a global health crisis, maintaining transnational lives requires a different approach, one that involves patchwork solutions, quick-fixes and patient waiting while one navigates changing social systems. Critically, the infrastructural agency is not limited to responding to infrastructural constraints but also encompasses broader strategies for utilising available resources. This paper considers how FSC’s daily rhythms and life course progression are reshaped by an altered infrastructural regime under the COVID-19 context, examining how their overall transnational lives are disrupted, transformed and then maintained through the intersecting infrastructural interruptions and individual agency.

3. FSC and the COVID-19 context

The traditional academic mobility pattern that moves from the Global South to the North has become challenged and destabilised. This is due to both the rising trend of temporary migration regimes in the West and the growing prominence of the Global South in the international knowledge system (Wang and Chen 2021). Under this context, a reverse trend, i.e. the North–South academic migration, has started to occur in the global academic mobility landscape. In the China context, the government has progressively initiated extensive policies and schemes, with the aim of attracting overseas talents and counterbalancing the negative effects of its long-lasting brain drain. As such, there have been significant flows of overseas scholars entering into China’s expanding higher education industry. At the end of 2018, the ‘thousand talents plan’ had introduced about 8000 overseas high-level talents in 14 batches to China (Xu 2023).

Highly-skilled international migrants in China, especially those transnational elites such as multinational corporation executives or finance professionals residing in Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong, have been often seen as transnational capitalist class (Sklair 2001). The FSC this paper specifically focuses on rather fall into the more ‘middling’ category of transnationals who sit in-between marginalised wage labourers and truly elite global citizens (Wang 2022). While leading a rather privileged lifestyle in general, these FSC could also be exposed to senses of temporariness, exclusion and discourse of Othering (Liu and Dervin 2022). These feelings could be heightened when it comes to a pandemic context. Therefore, by explicitly focusing on the pandemic context, this research further exposes the lesser-known consequences involved in the transnational lives of mobile academics.

During the COVID-19, China implemented a wide range of border control and visa restriction policies, to limit and regulate the cross-border movements of people. Specifically, on the 28th March 2020, the Chinese government temporarily suspended entrance into China of foreign nationals holding valid visas or residence permits, preventing the vast majority of international migrants from entering China. On the 28th September 2020, the Chinese government slightly relaxed its visa policy and re-allowed the entry of foreigners who hold valid Chinese residence permits for work, personal matters and reunion. Yet in order to effectively prevent the virus from circulating back into the country, the government had been regularly revising its entry policies, especially towards people from countries/regions with high infection rates. Despite the gradual relaxation of China’s policies on visa applications, the process of travelling to and from China still remained risky and tricky for a long time before China reopened its border on 8 January 2023. The case of FSC in this paper will show how migrants deal with infrastructural interruptions through persistent acts of maintenance with patience and a sense of agency.

4. Notes on methods

This article is informed by research data from 45 qualitative in-depth semi-structured biographical interviews³ with FSC. The first data collection period occurred between March 2020 and December 2020, followed by a second round between March 2021 and May 2021, and a third round between July 2022 and August 2022. The intensive periods of interview data collection coincided with various phases of regulatory lockdowns in China when mandatory mobility restrictions were imposed at the city level. Generally, most intra- and intercity transportation/mobilities were suspended, and civilian movements within one’s residential community were also restricted. These internal mobility restrictions affected FSC more heavily due to their language barriers and lack of social support, which further amplifies their sense of frustration brought by transnational immobilities.

A snowball method was used to recruit interviewees, with advertisements posted on the first author’s personal webpage and other social media platforms. Eligible participants included those born overseas, held non-Chinese citizenships, and had received their PhD degrees at the time of the interview (see Table 1 for more details). They were employed by research institutes or universities located in China mainland, and had worked in China for more than one year. These FSC are generally identified as high-level talents urgently needed for China’s economic and social development (Category A and B foreigners in China⁴). Most of them are White and from the Global North countries/regions, and 13 of them are from Asia and Africa. They generally reside in those megacities and metropolis of China. Despite employing a maximum variation sampling method, there were eventually 40 male and 5 female interviewees. According to the ‘Annual Report on Chinese International Migration’ (Wang, Miao, and Wu 2021), the made-female ratio of immigrants from major sending countries (including Vietnam, the United States, the UK, Canada, Japan and Australia) is more than 2:1. During the process of recruiting participants, the researcher collected the profiles of those foreign scholars that met the criteria of the project, and the male-female ratio of these scholars was approximately 7:1. This explains why the sample is predominantly male.

Table 1. Socio-demographic details of interviewees.

Average Age	41
Gender	Male	40
	Female	5
Position	Permanent/long-term	18
	Temporary/short-term	27
Discipline	STEM^a	24
	HSS^b	21
Home countries	Europe	21
	Asia	10
	North America	8
	Africa	4
	Oceania	2

^a Science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

^b Humanities and social sciences.

The interviews were conducted by the first author in English. They were audio-recorded and each of them lasted from one to two hours. Interview questions covered three main themes. First, interviewee’s basic socio-demographic attributes, educational background, professional and migration history. Second, daily work and life routines, opportunities and challenges they encounter while living in China. Third, their moving trajectories and strategies during the COVID-19, how their personal and professional lives have been influenced by pandemic-led changes. Regarding data analysis, this study adopts a hybrid method combining both the data-driven inductive approach and the deductive a priori template of codes approach. Pseudonyms have been used for all interviewees cited in the paper to ensure anonymity.

To the interviewees, the first author is a fellow academic who shared overseas living experiences and also encountered mobility restrictions in China during the pandemic. While conducting interviews, the first author was regarded as an ‘honorary insider’ who could empathise with their emotional ups and downs as well as (im)mobility experiences in China. However, as a Chinese national, the first author was able to better navigate the country and COVID-19-related policies than the interviewees. As migrant researchers, both authors of this paper continuously engaged in a critically reflective process and transcended the stereotypical insider–outsider divide in the field (Carling, Erdal, and Ezzati 2014).

5. Feeling infrastructural interruptions: split families, uncertain career prospects and precarious living

The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a multitude of policy changes, including visa restrictions and entry requirements, which generated various forms of infrastructural interruptions. These interruptions brought expected and unexpected constraints, frustrations and challenges into FSC’s overall moving process. The following narratives of Mike (M; 40s; Asia; STEM; Postdoc)⁵ and Lance (M; 40s; Europe; STEM; Lecturer) illustrate how their family lives and career progressions were severely impacted by the border control policies and visa restrictions of China:

My wife is a student studying in Brazil and she wanted to visit me. But she has not been able to visit me for more than 2 years … As far as working in China is concerned, it is really a good opportunity. But we are humans, we are not robots, we need personal life as well … Because of the visa policy my family is not here. I don't have anyone in China. I hope there will be some ways in 2022. Otherwise, I will have to seriously consider what I have to do and where I should stay in those next years. (Mike)

Now we are in an exceptional situation, even though my visa is valid, my entry to the country is suspended because of the coronavirus … I would like to be in China to do as much work as possible. So nowadays the only thing I can do is working with my students online … My doctoral scientist is in my same situation, foreign scientists were actually stranded abroad, cannot return to China … (Lance)

Similar to Mike and Lance, most interviewees who are of STEM background, claim that they struggle to continue lab work and thus encounter career uncertainties. Consequently, because of career standstill and family separations, many interviewees expressed a sense of anxiety on a daily basis and thwarted aspirations for long-term settlement in China. Hence as we can see, even for academic migrants who are often perceived as privileged mobile individuals, they could still be thrown into (im)mobility predicament and precarious living situations during the pandemic when certain infrastructures were severely interrupted and transformed. While the Chinese government had relaxed border control policies since March 2021, there were still a significant number of entry regulations, such as PCR testing and quarantine requirements during and after crossing the border. As a result, many interviewees in this research had to readjust their (im)mobility trajectories or wait indefinitely before things became more certain. In other words, these pandemic-led infrastructural interruptions had inevitably brought unpredictability and delays into FSC’s transnational lives.

In addition to existing infrastructural barriers, some interviewees’ moving process became inhibited while imagining and evaluating the potential risks associated with leaving or entering China. The following narratives of Lawrence (M; 40s; Europe; STEM; Associate Professor)， Philip (M; 30s; North America; HSS; Associate Research Fellow)，Charles (40s; North America; HSS; Research Fellow) and Justine (F; 40s; Europe; HSS; Research Fellow) are cases in point:

I have not been able to see my little boy for 2 years now. I do not have the courage to leave, even if I could possibly be allowed to come back, but what if they change the policies, then what I do? I could lose my job, or have my career jeopardised. It is indeed great pain, in this difficult time period, that I am forced to be away from my children … I heard that my colleague from Germany left to see his family, but the whole journey sounds like hell, I don't wanna go through that … (Lawrence)

I left China for Christmas in 2019 and I only managed to come back to China around November 2020 … I mean legally we are allowed to travel overseas, but in reality, it is just almost impossible, the flights are extremely pricy and I would for sure catch the covid on the road … It is like the policy of China right now is creating a professional developing gap for me. I feel my career is kind of stalling a little bit because I cannot be meeting people to form collaborations in the way I could have before the pandemic. … I have actually started applying for jobs outside China as I don’t know when the Covid-19 policy of China will be like … (Philip)

Leaving China to travel is the biggest issue. I can’t travel back to visit my parents, this makes me feel sad. I don’t know what the future looks like, but if things don’t change, I would have to leave. Even if one day the restrrions were lifted, I would hesitate to stay here long term.（Charles）

Us being stuck in China actually makes our son miss out on many important momnets, such as celebrating birthdays for his grandparents, traveling with his peers … But I am worried to travel internationally, as I dread the situation where I would be asked to quranteen separately with my child.（Justine）

As much as Lawrence and Charles missed their family, they did not plan to leave China. Similar to them, Philip also expressed his concern regarding whether he would be allowed to re-enter China considering the constantly changing border control policies. Although most of FSC were able to return to China since September 2020, they needed to go through a complicated and extremely complicated process in which they had to prepare in advance regarding visa renewal/applications, flight tickets purchase, and multiple PCR tests. During this waiting and suspended period, some FSC still had to confront other types of unexpected changes or risks caused by a series of newly-emerged infrastructural controls including the ‘QR Health Code’⁶ requirements and quarantine policies. Notably, this QR Health Code system, as an important techonological infrastructure, was largely inconsistent at local levels and also raised issues regarding state-citizen relations, privacy and security, which posed as infrastructural barriers for foreigners living in China during the pandemic (Liang 2020). Due to the fear of catching the virus and then the following consequences and complications of re-entering China, many interviewees believed travelling overseas from China at that moment was not feasible or affordable.

The pandemic not only affected the way FSC encountered infrastructural interruptions, but also altered the way they imagined them. Sometimes, FSC would restrict their own movements to avoid encountering infrastructural barriers based on stories they heard or the difficulties they had imagined. Although these imagined scenarios might not be accurate, they could still cause an exaggerated sense of worry. The fear of having to deal with infrastructural barriers could be strong enough to transform migrant lives as many chose to avoid those perceived or predictable trouble by only conducting absolutely ‘essential’ mobilities.

Two years into the pandemic, the Chinese embassies in various countries had finally begun to change their visa policies since June and July 2022, and gradually loosened visa restrictions for work, business, family reunion and family visits. However, applications for study visa, tourist visa, visa for medical treatment or other personal reasons were still largely suspended. According to the ‘The Prevention and Control of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (9th Edition)’ issued by the Chinese government on 27 June 2022, inbound travellers only needed to spend 7 days in a quarantine facility and then monitor their health at home for a further 3 days. Moreover, with the implementation of the ‘Five One’ policy⁷ in China since 2020, the number of international flights in and out of China had decreased rapidly and there was also a risk of frequent flight cancellations. Hence, before the reopening of Chinese border in January 2023, FSC in this research were still exposed to a range of institutional and material infrastructural interruptions, requiring them to continuously identify and assess the possible risks involved in transnational mobilities.

Some participants also reported feeling prejudiced and stereotyped as foreigners in China during COVID-19. The Chinese government implemented several measures to prevent the importation of the virus from abroad, resulting in relatively stringent regulations and additional requirements for people entering China from overseas. For example, Dan (M; 40s; Europe; STEM; Professor) and Philip (M; 30s; North America; HSS; Associate Research Fellow) shared their experiences of discrimination:

There are some stereotypes for me and other foreigners in China. People may think that I’m the foreigner, I don't follow rules. So I think foreigners have to be more careful because we don’t wanna be the foreigner who get the covid and bring it to our university … And the second thing for foreigners is quite hard, is that when I travel to another city, I just go to some specific hotel because most of hotels do not accept foreigners. That is just the policy … It's really troublesome, especially when you travel to different cities and when your health code doesn’t work. (Dan)

Me and other foreign colleagues always get special treatment when we wanna go inside the canteen on campus. Other Chinese colleagues or students could just go, sometimes they don't need to show health code. But we sometimes get stopped. They would try to ask us questions, I think it is not fair, but you know, we are foreigners.(Philip)

In times of natural disasters or public crises, risk might be further racialised or stratified, i.e. people determined the potential risk of a particular individual by their social attributes such as skin colour, citizenship and social status (Heller 2021). Admittedly, during Covid-19, there is a danger that migrants’ bodies can be perceived as inherently diseased and as a threat to the health of the wider public (Pacciardi 2023). As Ma and Zhan (2020) point out in their study, certain people in the West cope with their fear, anxiety and ignorance in regard to contagious disease by accusing, blaming and ostracising the ‘other’ such as Chinese international students. Similarly, the above narratives indicate that during the pandemic, foreigners might face a higher level of scrutiny in Chinese society than local people, and could possibly suffer from xenophobia and a sense of ‘embodied racism’. This sentiment was more common amongst interviewees who are White and from Africa than those from Asia. At the same time, certain newly-emerged infrastructures such as the Health Code system and frequent PCR testing were not yet standardised across different venues and regions, and technical errors were common, which means foreigners (especially those with visibly non-Chinese appearances) might encounter extra infrastructural frustrations. Essentially, those pandemic-led infrastructural reconfigurations led the public to be more cautious of foreigners, and accordingly, to a certain degree, shifted the social meaning of the foreign body in China.

6. Maintenance of transnational lives: self-infrastructuring, overcoming ‘infrastructural glitches’ and pursuing enabling infrastructural encounters

In light of the constraining effects of infrastructural interruptions, many FSC in this research show that they were not simply passive recipients, but agentive subjects who could mobilise infrastructural resources with the aim of optimising their (im)mobility experiences and the overall quality of life as transnational individuals. For example, Henry (M; 30s; Asia; HSS; Assistant Professor) stated how he gathered and utilised relevant and the latest information regarding border visa policy changes:

To apply for working visa in China currently, an applicant needs to get an invitation letter called PU letter⁸ from either provincial or the central government. So as for visa, I needed support from the university … Yeah, so throughout 2020 I periodically check the website of the Chinese embassy, and visa application centre and so on. I collected lots of information and tried to be more familiar with certain policies that I don’t know … I also asked some secretaries at my university about whether and how I could get that letter. Finally it took me around 2 weeks to receive that letter. So at the end of the year. I got the working in less than a week.

To resume his work in China, Henry made regular visits to the Chinese Embassy’s official website, actively contacted his university to apply for a PU letter, and eventually succeeded in coming to China with the support of a series of institutional infrastructures. Henry’s pursuit of support in accessing these infrastructures is essentially a process of ‘self-infrastructuring’, whereby migrant individuals actively seek out particular infrastructural resources to reconstruct and enhance their infrastructural environment. Similarly, other participants also demonstrated their efforts in navigating available but less transparent or visible infrastructures to become legible travellers and materialise their mobilities in safe and smooth ways.

Apart from actively seeking out infrastructural resources, many interviewees were able to overcome those barriers caused by the emerging infrastructures during COVID-19, making their return to China smoother. For example, Philip (M; 30s; North America; HSS; Associate Research Fellow) shared how he dealt with various challenges in his process of returning to China:

The process of returning to China is beyond words haha … I paid for an agency to buy tickets for me as it is quite hard to find one … I remember my plane was on Monday so I managed to find a testing lab open on weekends. I also paid extra 200 dollars to get the test result earlier. In order to apply for a health code from the Chinese embassy, you need to submit test results of nuclear acid and antibody within 48 hours. I also used the embassy in Washington other than in New York, as I found out the former one reply faster … 

Natural disasters tend to jeopardise certain existing infrastructures and those urgently established new ones may have internal defects (Sheller 2012). In the case of the COVID-19 crisis, a set of infrastructures including cross-border policies, air traffic systems, PCR tests and Health Code came to the scene, regulating and shaping the (im)mobility process of migrants. According to Philip’s narrative, these newly established institutional or technological infrastructures might not operate smoothly or as planned, such as the 48-hour validity periods for PCR test result, applying for Health Codes from embassies in advance and so on. That is to say, FSC need to go through an extremely lengthy, fractured and uncertain entry process that is filled with various kinds of ‘infrastructural glitches’. Therefore, similar to Philip, some FSC did everything they could to overcome these infrastructural glitches across the process of returning to China, in order to continue their work and life in China as soon as possible.

Many FSC made every effort to enter China, but there were also some of them who managed to maintain their work and life balance while being stuck outside the country. They choose not to directly engage with new infrastructural barriers and act to bypass these barriers by negotiating with their Chinese employers. For example, Mia (F; 40s; New Zealand; HSS; Assistant Professor) stated how she had been able to lead a rather satisfying life in New Zealand for the past 2.5 years:

Ever since I came back to New Zealand in early 2020 for holiday, I have been teaching online for the university in Beijing, for 2.5 years. The department set up this online teaching system for us, which has been pretty amazing. I somehow negotiated with the department to make this work for such a long time … So the beauty is I manage to restablish a life here while maintaining the job I have in Beijing … I just planted two avocado trees in my backyard, renovate the house the way I want it to be, reconnecting with friends here while keeping in touch with my colleagues in China. So New Zealand is my back-up option I can come back to if I need, I mean if somehow I cannot get back to China or something happens … 

It is worth noting that participants who are of HSS background encounter less challenges in terms of working remotely as their research involve less onsite lab work. As such, some interviewees including Mia, claimed that they can utilise the advancements in digital technologies to manage disrupted mobilities, maintain ties and build a life in a transnational context without needing to be physically mobile (Cabalquinto 2023). These FSC demonstrated high adaptability of mobilising online learning, an institutional and technological infrastructure, to refine their immobile status and transform it into something productive and confirming, such as taking the chance to build a life and connect with family and friends in New Zealand and secure more life options.

Similarly, for those FSC who managed to enter China during the pandemic, exercing agency was a necessity to maintain the quality and stability of their transnational lives. Some participants agentively utilised multiple technological infrastructures such as online shopping websites, takeaway apps, WeChat mini programmes, to obtain more comfortable and secure living experiences in China during the COVID-19. The following narrative of John (M; 30s; North America; HSS; Associate Research Fellow) provides an excellent example:

It was the pandemic that made it more necessary to do that. I started learning how to use Chinese apps more, especially during lockdowns … These apps really made life much easier and more fun. I recommended them to many of my expat friends in China already haha

Like many other FSC staying put in China, John started to actively utilise China’s specific technological infrastructures, changing his previous habitus in terms of eating and transportation to minimise mobilities and increase his sense of safety in China. Notably, QR ‘Health Codes’ became an increasingly popular form of technology in China during COVID-19, serving as almost an essential technological infrastructural support for FSC’s daily life in China. By agentively applying for and obtaining a ‘Health Code’, FSC were able to enjoy smoother mobilities within China and thus had more comfortable living experiences while staying safe and healthy. Put another way, these interviewees managed to obtain more enabling infrastructural experiences while encountering pandemic-induced new ‘material assemblages and temporal patterns’ (Adey et al. 2021, 1).

In addition to flexibly engaging with institutional and technological infrastructures, some interviewees also proactively identify and utilise certain material and social infrastructures in China to optimise their overall living experiences. For example, Lars (M; 30s; Europe; STEM; Professor) and Steve (M; 40s; Europe; STEM; Associate Professor) shared the following:

I always find my way and excuses to go to IKEA. I got most of my furniture and kitchenware there. Everything there made me feel familiar, the languages on the products, the colours of the building, the food served there as well … IKEA is like my safty base in China. I am just very grateful that there are IKEAs existing in the city where I live.

I always go to this pub in my neighbourhood, it is run by an Irish guy. It is small, but have been seen as a hub for foreigners in this city. You get to meet people, make friends and connections, and the drinks, food and everything there make you feel you are at home.（Steve）

Seeking infrastructural environments that are imbued with the physical and socio-cultural features of home country constitutes a common practice of transnational migrants (Spangler 2022). This is especially important when it comes to the COVID-19 context in which people cannot undertake transnational mobilities easily. The process of Lars and Steve maintaining their lives in a transnational context was essentially about seeking out and mobilising infrastructural resources to create a sense of familiarity out of chaotic living realities during the pandemic.

It is important to acknowledge that although those above-mentioned agentive practices of FSC are rooted in individual aspirations and subjectivities, they are inevitably facilitated or constrained by structural factors and related surrounding infrastructures. Mobile individuals with different socio-demographic characteristics in terms of ethnicity, nationality, immigration status or socioeconomic class, were most likely to have uneven access to certain infrastructural resources. This unevenness could be amplified during the pandemic context. Scholars have noted how temporary migrants (e.g. international students, migrant workers) can become easy targets for blame and exclusion in times of restricted mobility (Triandafyllidou and Yeoh 2023). International students, for instance, find themselves grappling with uncertainties related to visa regulations, remote learning challenges, and diminished opportunities for part-time employment (Hu, Xu, and Tu 2022). This Covid-induced mobility unevenness often extends beyond the practical challenges to encompass social and emotional dimensions, as temporary migrants continue to experience heightened isolation, cultural disconnection and a sense of being scapegoated for the health crisis in host countries.

7. Conclusion

Adopting an infrastructural perspective towards the struggles, aspirations and agencies of FSC, this paper has illustrated how infrastructural interruptions and changes concerning visa applications, border control and air traffic distributions had caused significant delays, discontinuities and challenges in the journeys of FSC (re)entering or leaving China. These alterations inevitably affected and disrupted the transnational lives of FSC, including their career progressions, family life stabilities and social sense of belonging. At the same time, this paper has also explored how certain FSC employ infrastructuring strategies to leverage infrastructural resources and mitigate the negative impacts of these ‘infrastructural glitches’ to maintain their transnational lives overall.

In this regard, this paper makes the following contributions. Firstly, it shifts the empirical focus of research conducted with an infrastructural perspective away from low-skilled migrant groups to highly skilled academic migrants in a unique context exemplified by China, a migrant-receiving country that exercised more restrictive border management measures and extended longer periods of pandemic control. By examining the infrastructural interruptions encountered by FSC, the paper unveils the less glamorous side of the moving process of high-skilled migrant groups. Moreover, this paper demonstrates how some FSC aptly utilise existing infrastructure to achieve their (im)mobility aspirations in a transnational setting during an unusual time period. Secondly, the paper unpacks the fragility, incompleteness and situationality inherent in migration infrastructures, highlighting their constant state of transformation and evolution (Mosselson 2021, 1725). Through exploring how infrastructural changes and interruptions reshape and readjust the family, professional, and social lives of FSC, it has also shedded light on the generative and destructive capacities of infrastructural processes in transforming migrant identities, aspirations and lived experiences, Critically, the paper has shown that while infrastructural breakdowns and interruptions undoubtedly impact the transnational life patterns of migrant individuals, they also create the necessary spatio-temporal conditions in which both new infrastructures and infrastructural strategies being nurtured and encouraged. Admittedly, the materialisation of these strategies relies on continuous labour of maintenance by both individuals and institutions, revealing uneven capacities to engage in this labour amongst individuals of diverse social-demographics statuses and unequal access to infrastructural resources.

Meanwhile, this paper offers several implications for (future) migration studies. Firstly, the concept of infrastructure is not only instrumental in explaining people's mobilities but also in elaborating different experiences of immobility, especially when it comes to events like pandemics that are beyond people’s individual control. Infrastructural interruptions or failures should not be perceived as isolated events but rather as intentional efforts by the state to (dis)encourage, regulate and control certain people’s (im)mobilities. Future research could thus delve deeper into understanding how individuals, particularly those who identify as raced and gendered minorities, domestic workers, and refugees, navigate and grapple with the impact of their involuntary (im)mobilities. Secondly, to further the first point, further research can be conducted to address issues regarding (im)mobility inequalities, injustices and moralisations, such as who gets to decide who are and who are not subjects that conduct essential mobilities to enter a national border, why certain lives are confirmed as more valuable and worthy than others, why mass surveillance and registration measures implemented responding to COVID-19 are far away from being class, race, ethnicity and gender neutral. For example, scholars argue that (im)mobility inequality was reflected in who were allowed to work remotely during the COVID-19, as women, ethnic minorities, and migrant workers often employed in positions that were categorised as ‘essential work’ during the pandemic (Ho and Maddrell 2021; Maras and O’ Brien 2023). It is thus meaningful to ask what obligations states should have towards those vulnerable yet often essential temporary migrants (e.g. migrant workers), and what kinds of infrastructural setups should be established to build resilient and sustainable migration governance systems that do not treat temporary migrants as ‘disposable’ labour (Triandafyllidou and Yeoh 2023). These above questions remain empirically and conceptually important as other pandemics are likely to unfold in the next decades.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The National Social Science Fund of China [grant number 22ASH005].

Notes

1 International travellers need to take nucleic acid rt-PCR tests and antibody tests within particular time period at a facility accepted by the Chinese Embassy to apply for a health code before checking in for their flight.

2 It is a Chinese app covering a wide range of functions, including text and voice messaging, digital payment and social networking.

3 All interviewees received ‘Participant Information Sheet’ and gave their informed consent to participate. Ethics approval was granted by the internal ethics committee of the first author’s university.

4 Foreigners working in China are classified into ‘Category A’ as high-end foreign talents, ‘Category B’ as foreign professional talents and ‘Category C’ as other foreigners.

5 ‘Mike’ is the pseudonym; ‘M’ represents ‘male’; ‘40s’ is his age range at the interview; ‘Asia’ is where he is from; ‘STEM’ means his discipline belongs to ‘Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics’ category; ‘Postdoc’ is his position at the interview. This schema applies to all the interviewees cited in this paper.

6 In February 2020, Chinese government launched a country-wide system of QR-based ‘health code’ apps. According to Liang (2020), this colour-based code tracks individuals’ travel history, duration of time spent in risky areas, and relationships to potential carriers, in order to identify people who are potentially exposed to COVID-19. All users receive a QR code on their smartphones. A green code suggests that the person is health and can move freely; a yellow or red code indicates that the person has medium or high exposure risk to the virus and needs to be quarantined (Liang 2020).

7 See more at http://www.caac.gov.cn/en/XWZX/202003/t20200326_201748.html.

8 For part of the period of COVID-19, foreigners coming to China need to apply for an invitation letter (e.g. PU letter) from the foreign affairs office of the province via their employer, to apply for a working visa to China.