Political habitus in cross-border student migration : a longitudinal study of mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong and beyond.

Abstract

This paper contributes to the understanding of how shifting time, space and subject positions can impact on the political habitus of border-crossing students. Employing in-depth interview data from a longitudinal project involving 31 mainland Chinese students whose higher education journeys converged in Hong Kong, it argues that it is often unintended outcomes such as the development of a political habitus that can have lasting effects on students’ longer term life trajectories. This paper’s systematic exposition of these students’ political habitus formation redresses Bourdieu’s relative neglect of the shaping of the political habitus of ‘non-professional’ political agents, in contrast to his emphasis on that of the ‘professionals’, such as politicians. This paper also moves beyond existing literature’s focus on social agents’ experiences in static and unified political fields at specific times by foregrounding the experiences of these mainland Chinese students moving across conflictual political fields over time.