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This paper discusses the gendered mobility aspirations, decisions and experiences of fresh Chinese graduates of Dutch universities. Our analysis draws on semi-structured interviews and the "story completion" method with 25 Chinese graduates of Dutch universities, complemented with three interviews with the parents of such students in China. We use three vignettes to show the complexity of gendered mobility aspirations in the study-to-work transition, an interphase between student mobility and skilled migration that has been less studied. Our analysis reveals how gender intersects with other social factors (such as sexuality, age, and race) and processes at individual, interpersonal and institutional levels to shape these graduates' mobilities, careers and life aspirations. Our findings also highlight how multiple gender identities and roles across different life stages have an impact on students' post-graduation mobility trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reveals the complex diversity that underpins ostensibly similar transnational education programmes (TNE), through a comparison of UK TNE in Malaysia and Hong Kong. It draws on data from two different yet cognate studies on the role of UK universities in delivering higher education in Asia. Some fine-grained and informative differences between the ways in which 'value' in TNE is constructed in different host contexts is revealed. The paper brings to light the 'voices' of TNE students and graduates, which are very seldom heard. The arguments adapt and extend the concepts of education as a positional good, and as cultural capital. For various instrumental, intrinsic and personal reasons the authors discuss in detail, UK TNE is more highly valued in Malaysia than in Hong Kong. The paper makes a wider contribution to knowledge on the changing landscape of international higher education and the impact on social and personal (dis)advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographic mobility is increasingly perceived worldwide as a key to academic excellence, career advancement and upward social mobility. Drawing on long-term qualitative fieldwork data, this paper interrogates the impact of academic mobility in reconfiguring class and gender identities among students, early professionals and their families from Hong Kong and Indonesia who have studied or received further training in Germany, the Netherlands and the USA. This analysis problematises the crude ‘academic mobility → upward social mobility’ formula and considers international academic mobility as a contextual, dynamic and multi-directional process. Through this process social positions and identities of the moving individuals and families are negotiated in an on-going manner as migrants insert into, depart from and re-insert into the various social milieus where their mobility trajectories touch ground. Narratives of interviewees illustrate the complexity and contradictions in class and gender configurations as students move across borders. They show how these individuals are inserted in contrasting social positionings, and experience how a particular social class or gender position carries different connotations. The paper concludes with a few conceptual and methodological reflections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education work denotes a relational encounter among individuals positioned along axes of intersecting differences. Transnational education (TNE) offers a particularly intriguing context for conceptualising borders and power relation in knowledge production. Drawing upon empirical work conducted in the UK and Hong Kong, this paper interrogates the notion of border in TNE and analyses how ‘flying faculty’ involved in UK TNE programmes in Hong Kong perceive, manage and experience socio-cultural, institutional and other borders. We contextualise the personal experiences of these ‘educatorssans frontières’ in the broader power geometries in which they are embedded. Our findings reveal the presence and strength of diverse borders in the TNE field. These borders are contexts of control and capital accumulation, where existing power relation is being negotiated and contested on a daily basis. We also highlight the rapidly changing power geometries in the field marked by the rise of the new powers, like Hong Kong, in the international higher education system. The paper ends by calling for more appreciation and efforts in harnessing the generative and creative potential of borders. Exploring borders as contexts of exchanges and co-production would contribute to more equitable partnerships among diverse stakeholders in the expanding TNE sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges current perspectives on Hong Kong heritage that are based predominantly on a dichotomous juxtaposition of traditional Chineseness vis-a-vis post-colonial romanticism, and argues for a deeper appreciation of its industrial history and identity. Textured narratives are proposed that highlight the socio-economic relationships that were/are essential components of the industrial (hi)story. Specifically, the paper identifies the time/space dimension as unique, and hence it should be valorised using context-sensitive, carefully thought-through and executed approaches. The paper presents an 'other Hong Kong heritage story' that foregrounds the compressed time-space nature of the city's industrial history, the spatial organisation of manufacturing, and the dynamic spatial stretch that has been taken by the industrialisation process. Furthermore, a stretching of governance space for the identification, (re)presentation and conservation of heritage using a participatory approach is proposed. In the face of rapid deindustrialisation and pressure for urban renewal, prompt, well-conceptualised and time/space-sensitive efforts to valorise, preserve and manage this fast-disappearing heritage in Hong Kong are vital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon findings from in-depth interviews with 22 Chinese restauranteurs, supplemented with communication with key informants and ethnographic observations, this paper illustrates the policy context in which the Chinese restaurant trade in Germany is embedded. Based on the typology from Esping-Andersen, characteristics of the German welfare state regimes are identi-fied with special focus on their impact on immigration and migrants' employment options. This establishes the background for a closer examination of a selection of policies that govern, to di2erent levels of success: (1) the migration of Chinese migrants, (2) the right of work for asylum seekers, (3) the level of authenticity of speciality restaurants, and (4) migrants' access of finan-cial support and advice regarding self-employment. The paper shows how (migrant) entrepreneurs, facing changing levels of market challenges and policy controls, are active and creative agents in optimizing their performances. Strategies adopted include the modification of their business operations and range of products as well as tapping their resourceful ethnic social network for venture capital, necessary information and other forms of support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with Taiwanese entrepreneurs who operate mostly small- to medium-scale businesses in the computer sales sector in Hamburg (Germany), this paper brings out the diversity of `ethnic entrepreneurship', a notion which is conventionally used almost exclusively for labour-intensive light industries and service-sector activities run by family members or co-ethnics of migrant communities. In order to understand the complex operation strategies of these entrepreneurs, I use the concept of `mixed embeddedness', which emphasises the crucial interplay of the social cultural aspects on the one hand, and that of the local and broader economies on the other. This paper will highlight the importance of developments in production and marketing of the computer hardware industry, the economic conditions in Asia, and the socio-economic environment in Germany in shaping operation tactics, including location rationale, choice of business type and marketing strategies of these enterprises. In addition, the roles of local and transnational ethnic networks in facilitating both business and personal life of these overseas Chinese entrepreneurs in Germany will also be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]