Elitist in Façade

Abstract

Drawing on a qualitative study of a group of professional Chinese women navigating their career lives between China and Canada, this paper addresses how Chinese transnationalism is constituted within global capitalism. It starts by mapping the career lives of the Chinese immigrant women. Their experiences point to the emergence of a transnational field between Canada and China where skill/labor and capital conjoin in distinct ways. The study further shows that this transnational social field is comprised of a complex of social relations reticulated through multiple institutions, organizations, and actors. Although the interest of economic accumulation and Western-centric social and cultural orders are predominant in shaping the women’s career spaces, this transnational field also provides conduits for alternative flows of power, privileging the entrepreneurial quest for social, cultural, and economic capitals. Despite its elitist façade, the transnational field is itself also vulnerable, fractured, and prone to crisis.