Overseas Study as Zone of Suspension: Chinese Students Re-negotiating Youth, Gender, and Intimacy

This article draws on longitudinal ethnographic research with a group of Chinese women students in Australia to consider how time studying abroad functions as a temporal and geographic ‘zone of suspension’ for these mobile youth, through which they reconfigure the meanings of both youth and feminine gender. Vis-à-vis life course, on one hand this generation of young women is subject to the fairly rigid normative life-stage model of the elder generations, which is more compressed for women than for men and leaves women little leeway for deviation between stages; while on the other hand they are drawn toward a more open understanding of life course, incorporating an extended period of ‘emerging adulthood,’ pre-marital sexual exploration, and a greater diversity of possible life pathways. Since the normative life-stage model’s opportunity-cost is greater for women than for men, there is more pressure on women – especially academically, professionally and personally ambitious ones – to elaborate alternatives. Based on formal, recorded interviews as well as participant-observation over a number of years, this article explores how for some, educational mobility seems like a step toward this goal; however, in practice the contradictions of both femininity and life course are reconfigured, rather than resolved, in overseas study’s ‘zone of suspension.’