Abstract
Since the 1980s, China has become the source of a new type of international migration. In the liberal world of the 1990s, Chinese migrants became the epitome of “flexible citizenship” aimed at maximizing economic advantages. In the postliberal world of which a powerful, affluent, and repressive China is a key player, however, middle-class migrants increasingly leave China to pursue a better life defined in nonmaterial terms such as cultural authenticity, environmental purity, social solidarity, and individual freedom. As a new wave of middle-class migrants relocates to semiperipheral European destinations like Hungary, they seek refuge from the pressures of a society they see as polluted, competitive, and overly materialistic. Counterintuitively, some of these aspirations chime in with nativist ideologies espoused by the populists in their chosen homes.
