Young Chinese Migrants: Compressed Individual and Global Condition

Disruption in Study Abroad during the Pandemic: Chinese Students in France

“…Then, when life returned to normal, and the economic conditions improved in France, they tried to return to France, only to find that the virus was still actively circulating. The remarks of our respondents show that they are attracted by a decent salary in France as much as they are repelled by the "compressed modernity" in the Chinese context (Chang, 2010;Roulleau-Berger, 2021):3 this includes a high ratio between real estate prices and salary levels in big cities, an authoritarian labor regime, fierce interpersonal competition that depresses the average salary, and what the respondents call "involution" (nei juan). Originally used by anthropologists to describe self-perpetuating processes that keep agrarian societies from progressing, involution has become "the kind of competition that does not allow failure or exit" (Wang & Ge, 2020).…”

Young Chinese and Compressed Socialization

“…This special issue of Youth and Globalization is dedicated to the analysis of the entry into adulthood of young Chinese people, which has been deeply revolutionized in the context of compressed modernity (Chang, 2017) at the end of the twentieth century, moving from an almost instantaneous pre-reform mode to one involving plural, paradoxical and contracted socializations (Roulleau-Berger, 2021;Roulleau-Berger and Su, 2022). Today the entry into adulthood of young Chinese people means a process of compressed socialization, characterized by six intertwined and dynamic trends: a. a double movement of rural-urban migration and the re-migration to medium-small cities or rural areas; b. the integration of youth in digital economy and the production of digital inequalities; c. economic insecurity, structural dequalification for Chinese youth and the production of collective anxiety; d. the simultaneity of the hyper-individuation of social experience and strategies of disalienation;…”

“…Consequently, a new map can be drawn, a map of new transversal anchor points for both economy and identity, points which are linked by more or less visible lines along which the more or less qualified young people circulate in the Chinese and international cities. The new young Chinese "elites" and traders within the international space in different cities actively contribute to local and global cosmopolitanisms (Roulleau-Berger, 2021).…”

Sociology of Migration and Post-Western Knowledge

“…As Abdelmalek Sayad put it, understanding the migratory challenge entails apprehending the tension between illusions and sufferings, although it is presented in slightly different terms. Both Chinese and French sociologists emphasize humiliation, depression, despair, loneliness but they also agree on insecurity, anxiety, disillusionment, and loss of individual and collective aspirations (Li Chunling 2019;Roulleau-Berger 2021).…”

“…Precarious migrant populations are subjected to dominations, symbolic and identity-threatening violence, and discrimination, even racism, in their respective labor markets. Symbolic violence is constructed in professional relationships by means of phenomena of horizontal and vertical social disqualification, alienation of identities, contempt and humiliation in dirty jobs, low-income levels, no upward professional mobility, and low social protection in China; it is worth noting that Chinese and European sociologists converge in their analyses of disqualified or subaltern work (Pun Ngai 2016;Li Zhen 2021;Su Liang 2019;Roulleau-Berger 2021). Discrimination is a constraint on mobility in geographic, social, educational, and occupational domains.…”