Young Chinese Migrants: Compressed Individual and Global Condition - Paperback

by Matthew Glasgow (Translator), Laurence Roulleau-Berger (Author)

In China, strong economic growth over the past four decades, accelerated urbanisation and multiple inequalities between urban and rural worlds have driven the escalation of internal and international migrations. The internal migration of workers represents a unique phenomenon since the reform and opening of China. Less-qualified young migrants are living in subaltern conditions and young migrant graduates have strongly internalised the idea of being the "heroes" of the new Chinese society in a context of emotional capitalism. But internal and international migrations intersect and intertwine, young internal and international migrants from China produce economic cosmopolitanisms in Chinese society and through top-down, bottom-up and intermediary globalisation. The young Chinese migrant incarnates the Global Individual, what we labeled here as the Compressed Individual.

Author Biography

Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Ph.D. and Habilitation in Sociology, is Research Director at CNRS (France), ENS Lyon, Triangle. She has published numerous articles and more than twenty books, including Post-Western Revolution in Sociology (Brill, 2016), Travail et migration. Jeunesses chinoises à Shanghai et Paris, with Yan Jun (L'Aube, 2017), Post-Western Sociology. From China to Europe, co-edited wiht Li Peilin, (Routledge, 2018)