Confronted with restrictive visa policies, deteriorating US–China relations and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese international students in the United States face unprecedented uncertainty in their immigration prospects. Their unique intersectional identities as temporary immigrants, prospective permanent immigrants and emerging adults modulate their migration aspirations and desires within this exceptional social context. We interviewed and surveyed a group of Chinese international students in a major American university at various stages of their stay in the United States. Using the migration aspiration and desire framework, we explore how they cope with the challenges and plan for immigration upon graduation. Our findings suggest that under the unique temporal junction of the geopolitical tension and a global public health crisis unprecedented in their lifetime, the becoming process associated with their particular identity as in-between migrants and the assemblage of various actors throughout the process help recalibrate their initial aspirations at personal and collective levels and reshape their migration desires. Although it has frustrated their migration motivations and plans, it has also endowed them with perspectives and the capacity to develop effective coping mechanisms and remain resilient.
Left‐behind children who live away from their migrant parents in rural China have received widespread media attention, especially around their vulnerability and delinquency. To examine the media construction of this population and responsibility attribution for the incidents occurring to them, we used the phronetic iterative approach to analyse 348 news reports published by The Paper, one of China's leading digital media outlets. Our findings revealed that the media constructed a stereotypical portrayal of these children and their families. Moreover, structural inequalities existing in social policies were shifted into personal responsibility in media discourses. This study offers empirical support for the role of news media in shaping public perceptions through their construction and framing processes. We highlight the need to identify structural factors that affect media portrayals of rural families and call for more social support for left‐behind children.
Is education fever in China, embodied in parents’ high expectations of and heavy investments in children’s education, a source of strain for the offspring? Using a nationally representative sample of children from 6th to 12th grade, we examine the effects of education fever on adolescent deviance in China, controlling for a range of individual and family characteristics. The regression results revealed that parental investment increased adolescents’ deviant behavior even when children’s academic performance and family socioeconomic status were controlled, whereas parental expectation did not affect adolescents’ deviant behavior. These findings demonstrated that education fever, particularly in the form of heavy parental investment, constitutes a salient source of strain for Chinese adolescents and its deviance-promoting influence should not be ignored.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.