To live as a cityzen: class-based cosmopolitan cityzenship

Book section : Chapter

This chapter discusses how transnational student returnees understand and practice cityzenship as a class-based identity. “Megacities on the Move” section shows how returnees practised cityzenship as a privileged cosmopolitan identity in everyday consumption of international food, services and symbols in megacities. In this section, through the lens of distinction and capital [Bourdieu, Distinction a social critique of the judgement of taste. Routledge (2018a); The forms of capital. Routledge (2018b)], this section theorises cityzenship as a class-based cosmopolitan identity. “An Area-Rooted Cosmopolitan Identity” section analyses cityzenship as an area-rooted identity constructed in returnees’ everyday consumption practices. To participants, distinction was determined not only by what they consumed, for example, foreign food, but also by how they consumed it. This section elaborates how returnees’ habitus situates their everyday city life in particular gentrifying urban spaces, especially places that represent China’s modernisation and globalisation. Stressing the interdependence between the local and the global, “Locally Made Global Cities” section discusses how cityzenship was constructed as a localised global identity. In interviews, returnees emphasised the importance of local features in making megacities global. This section further demonstrates how returnees’ selection of the local features (re)produces gentrifying urban space.

Authors: Wang, Z

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Host title: Transnational Student Return Migration and Megacities in China
• Pages: 65-86
• Chapter number: 4
• Place of publication: Singapore
• Publication date: 2023-05-14
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1007/978-981-99-2083-9_4
• EISBN: 9789819920839
• ISBN: 9789819920822
• Language: English
• Keywords: cosmopolitan identity; localised global identity; consumption
• Subtype: Chapter