Enacting Transnational Citizenship: Exploring the Structural Constraints and Agency of Chinese Immigrants' Transnational Social and Civic Practices

Abstract

The conventional presumptions of the nation-state as the sole legitimate site and boundary of citizenship have been challenged by contemporary transnational migration, through which immigrants actively and strategically engage in cross-border practices that defy the established parameters of citizenship in terms of geographic boundary and defining dimensions. The struggle over the ownership of the meaning of citizenship necessitates exploration of immigrants as legitimate actors in the social construction of citizenship. To foreground the agency of immigrants in claiming a legitimate role and space in the social construction of citizenship while recognizing their agency as deeply shaped by the dominant politico-legal framing of citizenship, this research focuses on citizenship as learning practices situated in and shaped by time-space sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts. For Chinese immigrants in Canada who face the lack of recognition of formal dual citizenship from China, on the one hand, and structural subordination of Chinese immigrants denied of substantive full citizenship in Canada, on the other hand, the transnational civil society may emerge as a liminal space for citizenship learning. This research set out to explore how Chinese immigrants enacted themselves as transnational citizens through social and civic engagement in the Canada-China transnational space, and how such engagement was shaped by the structuring citizenship policies and discourses in Canada and China. Theoretically informed by critical and relational sociology of agency and citizenship, and methodologically following a critical ethnography research design, this qualitative study focused on transnational Chinese immigrants’ perceptions and practices of citizenship through social and civic engagement in the Canada-China transnational space and revealed how they enacted themselves as transnational citizens mainly through grassroot activism in social, educational, and cultural domains. A more open and dialogic notion taking citizenship as temporal-relational and spatial recognizes individuals as active and legitimate actors who are able to and should also be supported to relate to citizenship as a way of being, belonging, and positioning through structured practices that give meaning to a citizenly life entangled in a constellation of regulations, communities, and significant social and personal life events across state boundaries.