Li, Jin L; (2025) Parenting and (Im)mobility in Uncertainty: Exploring Transnational Migrant Parents’ Practices in Guangzhou, China. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The current global landscape of uncertainty and globalisation shapes the interpretation and practice of parenting and transnational mobility among international migrant families. Based on a study of migrant families from economically-developed countries residing in Guangzhou, China, I argue that transnational migration to China is a negotiable child-rearing choice, reflecting the parents’ perceptions and responses to uncertainty. This exploration offers insights into the diverse and complex nature of global migration flows. Over a 16-month ethnographic study, I collected data from 42 transmigrants from 30 families, involving individuals from ten countries. Through in-depth sit-down interviews, go-along interviews, home visits, and observations, I explored the families’ transnational mobility, everyday life, embeddedness in the city where they reside and children’s schooling options. This thesis advances the scholarship on middling transnationalism by focusing on the social reproduction of transnational families. It proposes that these families gained implicit economic, cultural, and educational benefits through transnational mobility to China. I identify the transmigrant families as Capital Adequate, distinguishing the transmigrant parents into three subtypes: remaining explorers, mobile elites, and welfare-package planners, and examining their process of becoming transnational parents. The findings reveal these families’ management and navigation of uncertainty regarding child-rearing and transnational mobility, arguing the importance of place attachments and ‘emotional memberships’ in coping with future uncertainty. Moreover, I explore the families’ daily parenting practices, particularly in the transnational space of food and dining. This reveals how parents’ everyday practices around food influence the formation of children’s social and cultural identities, preparing them for a globalised world. This thesis expands empirical research on China as a destination for international migration and contributes to theoretical debates on transnationalism and individualisation, social class reproduction, mobility capital, and the emotional dimensions of transnational migration.

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