Agency as Phased Negotiation: Pakistani Women PhD Students Navigating Patriarchy Through Mobility to China

This study investigates how Pakistani women PhD students utilize educational mobility to China to navigate patriarchal constraints, an under-researched dimension of South-South migration and feminist scholarship. Grounded in theoretical perspectives on agency, performativity, and patriarchal bargaining, the research employs qualitative methodology and thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with ten participants. The findings show how these women engage in complex gendered performances, maintaining surface compliance while covertly subverting norms to achieve educational mobility and academic progression. The study identifies China's accelerated PhD programs as a pivotal temporal bargaining mechanism, enabling participants to bypass domestic restrictions and reshape life trajectories. Analysis reveals three interlinked processes: agency as struggle manifests through tactical compliance, including adoption of roles like ‘dutiful daughter’ to secure family approval; pragmatic agency emerges through strategic use of China's institutional resources to compensate for structural limitations in Pakistan; and agency for becoming unfolds as participants leverage doctoral credentials to transform post-graduation identities. These findings complicate binary narratives of empowerment, portraying agency as a dynamic, iterative negotiation across mobility phases. By centering South-South educational flows, the study advances feminist theorizations of gendered agency and provides policy recommendations to enhance equity in transnational higher education.