Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona / Freie Universität Berlin
e-mail: asromera@protonmail.com
The lifestyle mobility of the Chinese middle class in Spain: from old certainties to new configurations
Since the second stage of reforms launched in the 1990s, lifestyle mobility has become a strategy developed by the Chinese middle class for capital conversion and gain legitimate access to the West. The paper presented here focuses on how social practices related to consumption, rather than production, have been playing an increasingly important part in shaping lifestyle mobility within China’s middle class in Spain. Based on literature review, Spanish digital media, official documents, and ethnography analysis of semi-structured interviews with Beijing’s middle incomers between 2017 and 2018, this study examines the construction of social identities through practices of lifestyle mobility such as international student mobility and cultural consumption, ranging from leisure to housing. In this context, Chinese students are among the largest groups of foreign students at Spanish universities. In addition, Spain is one of the EU countries that has granted the most Golden Visas, with an investment of almost 1 billion per year in territory. Meanwhile, China continues to be the country that requests the most Golden Visas to move to Spain. The findings of the case study undertaken in Beijing indicate that lifestyle mobility among the Chinese middle class is a phenomenon of class distinction and class reproduction. This mobility phenomenon refers to suzhi narratives and a way to fashion oneself as a middle-class, urban, “civilized” and modern subject in China today. Given the truly colossal challenges related to the pandemic COVID-19, climate emergences and international tensions, class in the PRC can be understood as an ongoing process of reconfiguration of material, cultural, social, and symbolic rewards. As a result, the lifestyle mobility of the Chinese middle class in Spain is becoming an accurate manifestation of the institutionalization, legitimatization, and reproduction of social inequality in contemporary urban China.
Bio: Alfonso Sánchez-Romera is a researcher at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (InterAsia Research Group) and postdoctoral fellow at Freie Universität Berlin. He graduated in Humanities and East Asian Studies and holds a PhD in Intercultural Studies. His research interests include class, Chinese society, and discourse analysis.