The Emotional Economy of Migration Driving Mainland Chinese Transnational Sojourning across Migration Regimes

Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho
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Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho: Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260

Environment and Planning A, 2014, vol. 46, issue 9, 2212-2227

Abstract: In focusing on the way emotional ideologies underpin migration regimes, this paper underlines how migrants manage their emotions in a quest towards wider economic and social integration. It compares the experiences of Mainland Chinese immigrants who are in Canada with those that returned to China temporarily but plan to remigrate to Canada eventually, thus sustaining transnational journeys. The paper suggests that the intersection of emotional and migration regimes imposes norms and sanctions that direct migrants towards what are considered appropriate emotions and emotional subjectivities. The economic logics shaping the circulation of emotions within and across geographical space during transnational sojourning is referred to here as the emotional economy of migration. The paper argues that certain emotions appreciate or depreciate in value as they are mobilised geographically during such transnational sojourning. The analysis contributes to migration scholarship by drawing out the emotional logics, circulations, and calculations that structure and prop up the political economy of migration regimes.

Keywords: emotions; emotional economy; immigration; return migration; transnationalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:9:p:2212-2227

DOI: 10.1068/a130238p

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