Becoming 'at home' in Sydney: young Chinese migrants' belonging and social engagement

Abstract

This thesis examines the strategies migrants use to attempt to turn their places of settlement into a ‘home’. The study builds on and expands upon the concept of homing (Boccagni 2017; 2022), which is understood here as sets of practices aimed at sustaining a sense of home through the ongoing negotiation of one’s senses of belonging. The study explores senses of belonging through social engagement. In the research, the ability to feel at home in different social settings is understood as a capacity that can be accumulated, learned, developed and reshaped by both positive and negative affects throughout one’s process of migration and settlement. It can be shaped not only by personal encounters in places of settlement, but also by pre-migration and transnational experiences as well as migrants’ social positions including, but not limited to, ethnicity.

The findings suggest three homing strategies that examine how belonging is experienced and negotiated differently. These strategies are: rebuilding previously experienced homely feelings; seeking new ways of feeling at home; and extending the sense of home created by themselves into their family roles and the expectations placed on them by their families. All three strategies involve not only these migrants’ relationships with national spaces (China and Australia) but also affective experiences with multiple spaces and people. Each strategy reflects, and also limits, the capacity to feel at home, which I argue shapes different forms of belonging: diasporic, elective and intensified hybrid belonging. Thus, the three homing strategies that surface in this thesis offer rich insights into the complexities that underpin belonging. Specifically, the thesis examines the multi-scalar nature and varying intensities of belonging. Understanding belonging through homing strategies thus decentres nationality and ethnicity as the only critical variables in migration, therefore contributing to a processual, relational and flexible understanding of belonging. Through such an approach, the study also contributes to the understanding of Chinese migrants in Australia, specifically by revealing the challenges young Chinese migrants experience in accessing and participating in forms of social engagement during homing.

Date of Thesis submission	2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Sponsors	Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship
Supervisor	Benjamin Hanckel (Supervisor), Megan Watkins (Supervisor) & Gregory Noble (Supervisor)