Embodied by state borders: citizenship negotiations of children in Chinese–foreign families in the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

The citizenship of Chinese–foreign children who have been brought up in China is an area of increasing political relevance because of their growing numbers and public visibility, as well as the high status accorded to children in the political agenda of the Communist Party, and wider debates on Chinese citizenship, identity and belonging. In this article we examine how decisions about children’s citizenship are made across national and generational divides in different family contexts in China, namely in Chinese–Vietnamese, Chinese–Russian, Chinese-Ukrainian, and Chinese–Cameroonian families. We tease out contestations between foreign and Chinese parents and grandparents and discuss how gender, socioeconomic, and racial dimensions affect children's citizenship negotiations in these multigenerational households. We argue that the bodies of the Chinese-foreign children occupy a prominent place in the territorialising practices of Chinese citizenship that are shaped by gendered, racial, and socioeconomic inequalities.