Abstract : 

Since 2016 education has emerged as the main driver of Chinese migration to Europe. In Poland, educational migration helped to nearly double the local Chinese population, despite a lack of established migration networks or dedicated policy incentives. Instead, the case of Poland illustrates the role of inequality and of the related value system in shaping migration projects. Drawing on research among families, students and intermediaries, I discuss how Poland serves as a “peripheral destination” attracting students from China’s second and third-tier cities, who often emigrate to avoid being relegated to lower segments of domestic education and thus potentially losing their middle-class status. At the same time, Poland is one of many European countries promoted in China as sites of elite learning and of cultural citizenship, and increasingly fetishized among the Chinese middle class. I discuss the process through which Poland is embraced as one of such “imagined” destinations, meant to provide opportunity and an alternative to pressures of life in modern Chinese society. I also show how these aspirations are re-negotiated by students and families, when met with reality of their chosen destinations.

 

 

Bio

Krzysztof Kardaszewicz specialises in research of the Chinese diaspora, in particular in questions related to diaspora governance and educational migration between China and Central and Eastern Europe. He holds a MSc degree in Asian Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London (2010) and PhD in sociology from University of Warsaw (2021). He has significant work experience in China (journalism and the non-profit sector) and in 2017-2019 was a visiting research fellow at Peking University. His current research is focused on the impact of Covid pandemic and of changing educational governance on Chinese transnational education. He is also preparing a translation of 金翼a classic of Chinese anthropology (forthcoming, Scholar).

 

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Responsables scientifiques : Ya-Han Chuang (Sciences Po CERI), Juan Du (CY Université et Ifrae Inalco), Hélène Le Bail (CNRS Sciences Po CERI et Ifrae Inalco)