ABSTRACT
Chinese national class frames are deeply imbricated with spatial mobility. The ability to move, both domestically and across international borders, is invested with meaning as a key component of a person's social worth through discourses of individual ‘quality’ (suzhi). Class contestations between PRC-born migrants of different backgrounds in Perth, Western Australia, are framed through the combination of these Chinese discourses of suzhi as embodied cultural capital with selective Australian migration policies that valorise some species of capital over others.
Middle-class migrants from China, including those following educational and skilled migration pathways, often experience deskilling and barriers to permanent settlement, sometimes moving between temporary visas and insecure jobs over a period of several years. Failing to successfully navigate selective migration regimes engenders anxiety and frustration for those whose classed identity in both Australia and China is linked to their ability to perform the role of a globally mobile Chinese citizen. Intra-ethic class tensions emerge when these middling migrants encounter co-nationals whose presence in Australia they perceive as transgressive because of their ‘lower quality’ and working-class backgrounds. These tensions and anxieties are evident in the ways middle-class migrants engage the language of ‘quality’ and ‘civility’ established in China to discursively construct and maintain class boundaries in the Australian context.
