Abstract
Research on transnational migration from China since the 1990s has focused on stories about highly educated, skilled migrants. Little has been done about the transnational migration of skilled trade workers who moved from China to Western countries. This article endeavors to analyze the experiences of this cohort through a case study of skilled trade workers who migrated to the state of Western Australia (WA) from China in the early 2000s. The life trajectories of these workers saw them migrate from villages to cities in China and then from Chinese cities to WA. By conducting semistructured in-depth interviews with eleven skilled trade workers, this study has found that trade workers’ translocal and transnational experiences should be viewed as a continuous process with both consistencies and discontinuities between the two scales of mobility. International migration strengthens the economic capital of these workers in their new context. Although the sense of social status disparity in internal migration is reduced, the language barrier becomes more salient. The workers have developed a dependence on bonding social capital by using social media to maintain their social networks in their host and home countries. These migration narratives demonstrate new modes of transnational mobility emerging from China's rise on the global stage and the fluidity and mutability of class identities and personal capital in transnational migration.
