Youth, Mobility, and the Emotional Burdens of youxue (Travel and Study): A Case Study of Chinese Students in Italy

Abstract

Based on fieldwork in China and Italy, this article examines the affective dimension of middle-class Chinese students’ youxue (travel and study) practices in Italy. With the liberalization of state policy in China’s self-funded study abroad market and the proliferation of educational intermediaries, youxue has become a special type of educational consumption that caters to the middle-class Chinese family’s desire for transnational mobility and cosmopolitan life styles. The blurring of the line between travel and study points to the open-ended and multi-linear nature of transnational student mobility. However, due to the limitations and pitfalls in international education policies in both the sending and the receiving countries, Chinese students’ youxue experiences in Italy are marked by notable contradictions between mobility and immobility, hopes and frustrations, self-appreciation and self-reproach.