Tentative Title

Emotions, Mobilities and Cosmopolitan Sociability: Post-1987 Chinese Migrants in New Zealand

Abstract

You move, you feel. You feel, you move. When migrants “move”, a set of sensory and affective feelings emerge—then they continue moving in different ways and to different degrees while they are experiencing different emotional dynamics. Migrant mobilities generate a need to build relationships with objects, people and places. Accordingly, various kinds of sociabilities are inevitably being practiced and developed. These sociabilities take many forms—some of them emerge as cosmopolitan in a cross-cultural context others may be more inward looking. The process of migrants moving and conducting cosmopolitan sociability is emotional. If we want to unravel the interacting dynamics between migrant mobilities and cosmopolitanism, it is necessary to include a focus on emotions. Using post-1987 Chinese migrants in New Zealand as a case study, this paper aims to address the question of how emotional processes shape the interacting relations between migrant mobility and cosmopolitan sociability. Drawing on extant literature, the paper first looks at why emotions serve as a significant research perspective within migration studies. Utilizing 30 in-depth qualitative interviews, this paper then explores how Chinese migrants are emotionally experiencing people and places in their mobilities, analysing how their emotional reactions are interconnected with memories and imaginations. At the same time, the paper discusses how Chinese migrants interact emotionally with different social-cultural groups in the receiving country and in different social settings, exploring how these emotional encounters influence the way they move both at a transnational level and on a daily basis. Most importantly, the paper will ask whether and how various kinds of (un) cosmopolitan sociabilities are emerging as part of the sensory and affective feelings generated in the migratory moving process.

Key Words

Emotions; Migration; Migrant Mobilities; Cosmopolitan Sociability