Conclusion — Women’s Power in the Chinese Family

Abstract

Many sociocultural, political and economic factors can be identified that give the student migration flow its shape and make it specifically Chinese. Sons and daughters go in equal numbers and rely heavily on the support of their parents. The majority of them study subjects that can offer opportunities in the Chinese economy on its route from manufacture to innovation, as well as in the global market. The experience of the student migrants is shaped by orientations that I have termed ‘care’, ‘enterprising’ and ‘desire’, and the tensions that arise between them. These orientations are based on the Chinese cultural and structural context, which comes to the level of lived experience through the enactment of affect. The familial gender models are present in the way male students articulate their concerns in terms of the filial obligation to succeed, and in the way women dream about dating and marrying foreigners.