Since the early 2000s, Chinese metropolises have been emerging as hubs for the national and global economy. They attract increasing numbers of foreigners with diverse socio‐economic and educational backgrounds who tend to immigrate independently of the Chinese initiatives focused on “foreign talents”. Our analysis contributes to the understanding of these migrants’ integration into the labour market. Through a Bourdieusian capital lens, this article unpacks the access to the labour market and occupational positions of Swiss and Swedish migrant professionals in mainland China. Differentiated by how they can capitalize upon their educational, occupational, social and cultural resources in this specific context, the article distinguishes between three categories: corporarate expatriates, local hires and entrepreneurs and concludes with policy recommendations to stabilize their residence conditions.

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Drawing on ethnographic research, this article explores the multifaceted, situational and shifting social boundaries in the translocational positionalities of middle-class Swiss migrants in China. The analysis unpacks the central role of whiteness and Western ethnicity under the ‘Chinese gaze’, intersected by nationality. However, while they are marked by continuities of white privilege, the resulting racialised positionalities of the foreign white ‘others’ are characterised by a simultaneous elevation and subjugation, equally shaped by a ‘Chinese ascendancy’. European migrants’ self-positionings meander between this ambiguous ‘outsiderness’ and a propensity for integration as they navigate the multifaceted middle positions they occupy. Contextualising the findings in research on white migration movements from the West, the conclusion suggests that the class-based notion of middling migration should be refined by including economic, social and cultural ways of being ‘of the middle’.