Passing Through Shanghai. Ethnographic Insights into the Mobile Lives of Expatriate Youths

340 Pages·2016·5.32 MB·English

by  Marie Sander

PASSING THROUGH SHANGHAI
Ethnographic Insights into the Mobile
Lives of Expatriate Youths
Marie Sander
HEIDELBERG
UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING
Passing Through Shanghai
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality – 1
Series Editors:
Reuven Amitai, Jerusalem; David Armitage, Harvard;
Christiane Brosius, Heidelberg; Beatrix Busse, Heidelberg;
Prasenjit Duara, Singapore; Christian Henriot, Lyon;
Madeleine Herren, Basel; Joachim Kurtz, Heidelberg;
Joseph Maran, Heidelberg; Axel Michaels, Heidelberg;
Barbara Mittler, Heidelberg; Sumathi Ramaswamy, Durham;
Roland Wenzlhuemer, Heidelberg
Passing Through Shanghai
Ethnographic Insights into the Mobile Lives
of Expatriate Youths
Marie Sander
HEIDELBERG
UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografe. Detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at
http://dnb.dnb.de.
This book is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence
(CC BY SA 4.0).
The electronic, open access version of this work is permanently available on Heidelberg University
Publishing’s website: http://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de
doi: 10.17885/heiup.48.42
Cover image by Keren Wang (2011), licensed under the Creative Commons License 3.0
(CC BY 3.0).
Text © Marie Sander 2016
ISSN 2365-7987 (Print)
ISSN 2365-7995 (eISSN)
ISBN 978-3-946054-03-0 (Softcover)
ISBN 978-3-946054-04-7 (Hardcover)
ISBN 978-3-946054-05-4 (PDF)
This book is dedicated
to all families on the move.
A NTONIA, sixteen years old: Die meisten Leute die hier herkommen
mögen es erstmal überhaupt nicht.
Und dann mögen sie es.
Und dann wollen sie nicht mehr weg.
Und dann müssen sie weg.
Most people who come here at
frst don’t like it at all.
And then they like it.
And then they don’t want to leave.
And then they have to leave.
Acknowledgements
There are many people I would like to thank for supporting my research on
expatriate youths and for helping me to write this book. I want to acknowl-
edge the academic and fnancial support of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia
and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows” at
Heidelberg University, Germany, which helped me transform a disserta-
tion idea into an academic endeavor. I am grateful for the debates I have
had with many of the Cluster’s members and the advice and critiques they
gave me throughout the years. I especially want to thank my two advisors,
Christiane Brosius and Barbara Mittler, for their guidance. I also want to
thank all those who encouraged me to rework my dissertation into this
book, the anonymous reviewer whose valuable comments helped to
sharpen my arguments, and particularly Andrea Hacker, who guided me
through the rewriting process. Thanks also go to Andrea’s team, especially
to Elizabeth Corrao, for her thorough language editing.
I could not have fnished this book without my family—especially my
wonderful parents, Traudel and Henning Sander, my partner Benjamin,
and my friends—“my girls”—Annika, Franziska, and Tanja. To my friend in
Shanghai, Yanni Shen, who never tired of explaining and translating, thank
you.
I am very grateful for the crucial support of school principals and teach-
ers who were interested in my research. The largest debt of all, however, is
owed to all the students in Shanghai who, along with their families, shared
their stories and time with me, and especially to those whose words, ideas,
and actions appear in this ethnography and made it what I wanted it to
be: a book that focuses on the voices and perspectives of the teenagers
themselves. Thank you for letting me into your lives despite my having an
agenda and for patiently waiting for the outcome of our joint endeavor.
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