Abstracts
Abstract
Chinese residents have grown to be one of the most prosperous migrant groups in Italy since their mass migration from China in the 1980s. Alongside their rapid upward economic mobility, parents and children within the same families have shown generational differences in their understandings of the good life. While older generations believed that the good life means economic mobility, which is achieved through their labour and migration, younger generations’ definition of the good life, rooted in their negative experiences of racialization, is associated with social recognition. Such generational differences stem from the shifting tensions between the contested racial and national orders in association with Italy’s economic stagnation and China’s global ascendancy. Yet, both generations of these desiring subjects have manifested their own conceptions of cosmopolitan Chinese-ness to survive precarity and to aspire to a better life both economically and socially. Their family stories thus contribute to anthropological debates on how people envision their futures between hope and precarity, expectation and uncertainty, and privilege and disadvantages amid racialized class terrains, generational tensions, and geopolitical transformation of the world order.
Keywords:
- migration,
- racialization,
- hope,
- cosmopolitanism,
- Chinese diaspora,
- Italy
Résumé
Les résidents chinois sont devenus l’un des groupes de migrants les plus prospères d’Italie depuis leur migration massive de Chine dans les années 1980. Les parents et les enfants d’une même famille ont montré des différences générationnelles dans leur compréhension de ce qu’est une vie agréable, parallèlement à leur rapide ascension économique. Alors que les générations plus anciennes pensaient qu’une vie agréable était synonyme de mobilité économique, obtenue grâce à leur travail et à la migration, la définition d’une vie agréable chez les jeunes générations, enracinée dans leurs expériences négatives de racialisation, est associée à la reconnaissance sociale. Ces différences générationnelles résultent des tensions changeantes entre les différentes races et systèmes nationaux contestés, associées à la stagnation économique de l’Italie et à l’ascension mondiale de la Chine. Pourtant, les deux générations de ces sujets aspirants ont manifesté leurs propres conceptions du cosmopolitisme chinois pour survivre à la précarité et aspirer à une vie meilleure, tant sur le plan économique que social. Leurs histoires familiales contribuent ainsi aux débats anthropologiques consacrés à la manière dont les gens envisagent leur avenir entre espoir et précarité, attente et incertitude, et privilèges et désavantages dans un contexte de classes racialisées, de tensions générationnelles et de transformation géopolitique de l’ordre mondial.
Mots-clés :
- migration,
- racialisation,
- espoir,
- cosmopolitisme,
- diaspora chinoise,
- Italie
Appendices
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