Sociology of Chinese Youth - Paperback

by Liang Su (Author), Laurence Roulleau-Berger (Author)

In China, a process of compressed socialization of youth is characterized by multiple spatial, professional and social mobilities. Young skilled Chinese move and circulate to improve their qualification and education levels in order to develop upward social mobility's trajectories. Young low-skilled migrants' biographic pathways are structured around spatial discontinuities and horizontal social mobilities. In labor markets, the phenomenon of structural disqualification impacts young Chinese and the risk of downward social mobility has affected the young middle-class. Platforms appear as new spaces of commodification and subordination that produce a cybertariat. In Chinese mega-cities, social inequalities and urban boundaries do promote segregation and marginalization, while at the same time, young Chinese entrepreneurs are developing international networks and economic cosmopolitanism. Chinese youth are crossing transnational spaces wherein identities are redefined through a process of cultural creolization.

Author Biography

Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Ph.D. University Lyon 2 (1982) and Ph.D. Supervisor in Sociology (2001), is Research Director at French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon. She has published many books, articles and chapters, including Post-Western Revolution in Sociology. From China to Europe (2016), Young Chinese Migrants, Compressed Individual and Global Condition (2021) and Sociology of Migration and Post-Western Theory, co-edited with Liu Yuzhao (2022).

Su Liang, Ph.D. Shanghai University (2019) in Sociology, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Hangzhou Dianzi University. Her research interests include migration and mobility, education and economic sociology. She has published several articles and chapters in Chinese and English.