Betwixt and between in an ‘unreadable city’: Chinese students' urban citizenship and belonging in pandemic-era Amsterdam

Abstract

As newcomers to Amsterdam, Chinese international students arriving during 2020 – 2021 had to navigate a peculiar urban landscape shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than the pandemic's direct impacts, we highlight the unique spatiotemporal context it mediated – a period characterized by its liminality, or in-betweenness, further marked by ambiguity and uncertainty. The study draws on narrative interviews to investigate the students' urban experiences and socio-spatial engagement, focusing on their sense of belonging and urban citizenship. Citizenship is conceptualized as a ‘lived’ that is practiced and contested, making it affective and contextual. We argue that citizenship is inextricably linked to belonging and center feeling belongingness and familiarity as proxies claiming urban citizenship. The interplay of individual subjectivities, socio-spatial practices, and transnational identities helped produce reflexive spaces of home and recontextualized Chinese dynamics in Amsterdam, demonstrating the transcendent nature of the ‘urban’ beyond physical boundaries. We find that interlocutors often attached meanings to micro-spaces rather than the city as a whole. Experiencing liminal transience and racialized (micro)aggressions impacted, to varying degrees, the participants' desire and ability to become familiar with their urban environments and build citizenship.