Abstract
AbstractThis article explores why Chinese nationals move to the United Kingdom and continue to stay there illegally, even in recent years, when China has witnessed significant economic growth and the United Kingdom has been increasingly hostile towards irregular migrants. Using a biographical approach to study irregular migration, this article elicits migrants' life histories and considers their migration as part of their biographies and as related to other key life events. By reconstructing the biographies of three irregular Chinese migrants in the United Kingdom, this article argues that their migration is a way to escape from personal sufferings (negative childhood experiences and intimate relationship dissolutions) and a means of orienting themselves in a mobile social world. This article provides new insights into the field of irregular migration that remains dominated by economic rationalist perspectives, and it also helps to undermine the artificial dichotomy between voluntary and forced migration.
Published Version
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