“Get Rich and Get Going”: Understanding Chinese Lifestyle Migrants to Western Countries

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There is a tendency in migration studies to categorize all voluntary migrants without economic incentives as lifestyle migrants. As members of the Chinese middle class migrated to Western countries over the past two decades, after accumulating wealth in their homeland, they, too, were easily subsumed into the category of lifestyle migrants. This study argues that contemporary wealthy Chinese migrants cannot simply be classified as lifestyle migrants since affluent Chinese mainlanders are motivated to move abroad due to concerns about domestic political issues, aspirations for better education, social and natural environments, and a relatively more autonomous lifestyle in the West. The study employs sixty semi-structured interviews with affluent mainland Chinese migrants to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States since 2000. It contributes to the broader discussion of the classifications of wealthy migrants from rising global economic powers by suggesting that no single classification or category fully captures the complexities of their motivations and evolving characteristics. The findings also facilitate a deeper understanding of the complex migration phenomena involving wealthy individuals from rising global economic powers, which have so far received limited attention in the literature.