Between Worlds: Transnational Navigation of Mental Well-being Among Chinese International Students

This thesis examines how Chinese international students navigate mental well-being across transnational contexts, focusing on their experiences at higher education institutions in the United States. Drawing on in-depth interviews with ten Chinese international students, the research applies theoretical frameworks of transnational social fields and translocality to understand how students support psychological well-being while moving between different cultural, social, and national contexts. The study finds that, diverging from dominant narratives that attribute the underutilization of professional mental health services primarily to cultural stigma, Chinese international students demonstrate nuanced conceptualizations of mental well-being and sophisticated decision-making in accessing support resources. They strategically engage with both formal and informal support channels, develop hybrid conceptualizations of mental well-being that absorb elements from multiple cultural frameworks, and construct complex identities that transcend binary cultural categories. Students actively create and maintain transnational social fields through cultural practices, physical movement between places, emotional support across borders, and digital communication. Their experiences reveal remarkable agency and resilience in constructing meaningful approaches to mental well-being that draw selectively from multiple cultural resources. This study challenges conventional approaches to international student mental health that focus exclusively on adaptation to host country contexts, instead revealing how psychological well-being emerges through simultaneous engagement with multiple social fields that span national boundaries.