‘A little bit freer’ : middle-class Chinese migrants on the periphery and new openings for political engagement

Abstract

This paper draws attention to peripheral destinations of middle-class migration that are gaining prominence as traditional centres lose appeal. Focusing on middle-class Chinese migrants settling in what we call the global periphery, we examine off-centre migration systems that challenge established sending-receiving country configurations. Drawing on fieldwork in Hungary, existing research in Southern Europe and Southeast Asia, and an analysis of emerging online networks, we identify a shared vernacular migration narrative revolving around the pursuit of freedom. We suggest that freedom remains a central driver of migration - a notion largely sidelined in studies of voluntary mobility and rarely explored in the Chinese context. We understand freedom not as a political ideal but as an embodied, everyday experience: freedom from the pressures of work, family expectations, and social surveillance, and freedom to slow down, to make time for oneself and live with a sense of ease. Mobility here represents a situational disengagement that opens space for loosely networked transnational engagements. Amid growing global political uncertainty, shifting aspirations around work and education, and rapid demographic change, the periphery emerges as safer, more affordable, and more relaxed - a site where quiet experimentation with autonomy, expression, and belonging can unfold.