Lifestyle mobility in China: context, perspective and prospects

A transition in theoretical orientation from migration to mobility in the study of geographical and social movement in contemporary China highlights and resonates with significant political, social and cultural transformations in the past 40 years. Changes in mobility patterns also reveal a shift from production-led peasant worker migration, which has dominated international academic studies on China in the past few decades with a focus on working individuals driven by market forces, to a more individualized and diverse consumption-led mobility. Although the mobilities paradigm has not been an important lens for theoretical investigations of China to date, it provides insights into contemporary social changes that may otherwise be missed. In this paper, we use a focus on lifestyle mobility to investigate changes in mobility systems and new inequalities and dynamics. The analysis shows that the emergence of a new middle class, the arrival of a consumerist society, and traditional Confucian culture have substantially influenced a ‘mobility shift’ in China. However, misalignment still exists between the rapidly growing numbers of lifestyle migrants and the immobile social infrastructures that are not designed to accommodate such lifestyle mobility. A static social and political infrastructure continues to challenge traditional relationships between being at home and away, between individuals, families and communities, and between individuals’ aspirations for life elsewhere and obligations to be fulfilled in their home areas. The examination of middle-class lifestyles can also help in understanding those traditional relationships at a time when consumption-led mobility is becoming increasingly prominent in Chinese society.