New rules of the game? Education and governmentality in Chinese migration to Poland

Abstract

The Chinese in Poland are an understudied but rapidly growing migrant community, undergoing a transition from an established pattern of economic chain migration to one based on investment of wealth in pursuit of a better life environment. Educational immigration by middle-class families provides insight into a broader trend of popular resistance to China's established model of governmentality. Refusing to conform to prescribed patterns of achievement and social mobility, these families exemplify a younger generation's aspirations and challenges involved in transnational mobility, which go beyond the traditional capital accumulation strategies.

Keywords

Chinese migrants Poland social mobility educational desire governmentality

Introduction

Chinese migration to Poland is changing rapidly. After the 2008 economic crisis, a community initially shaped by a tradition of economic chain migration is now joined by a new wave of arrivals, investing their wealth in search of an alternative to life in China's fast-paced environment. In particular, middle-class families focused on educational migration have emerged as important actors in the evolving community dynamic. On the surface, these families arrive in pursuit of cultural capital, which is essential to social mobility in China, but limited to a degree offered by a handful of elite universities. But rather than just seeking a higher income or a better school, recent Chinese arrivals in Poland are part of a growing population resisting this trajectory of achievement and creating their own paths. Thus, there is a need to understand these new migrants in the context of China's growing social stratification and the existing model of governmentality,¹ which links education and personal development with the project of national modernization. The challenges they face in the process of resisting that model, both as migrants and as a new generation of parents, reveal new trends reshaping overall Chinese mobility in Europe. Education, as an aspect of a “better life” pursued by present migrants, is used then to highlight broader socio-economic processes, aspirations and anxieties.

The new wave of Chinese arrived in Poland during a time of its ongoing transformation into an immigration country. Poland has long been a country of origin, but with the increased emigration, following Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004, Poland is now changing as it experiences rapid population aging and relative economic prosperity. This has led to increased demand for a migrant labor force and policies aimed at streamlining (labor) immigration.² Poland's ongoing transformation into a migrant destination country saw a major influx of labor migrants from different countries in particular Ukraine. Unlike the Ukrainians, however, the Chinese are not driven by economic factors.³ Thus, Chinese migration should be considered in a different context.

International migration used to be a regional phenomenon pursued largely by southern Chinese entrepreneurs relying on kinship and native-place networks; it has gradually transformed into a mainstream, nationwide practice embraced by the white-collar middle class relying on specialized agent services. However, the traditional focus on economic migration is increasingly changing to include the pursuit of cultural capital (Ma, 2003; Lan, 2018; Li and Wong, 2018). The increasing concentration of wealth and resources means that opportunities for social mobility in China are few and narrowly defined (Xiang and Wei, 2009), and that both the social elites and the aspiring middle classes increasingly rely on premium education as a guarantee of future status and opportunities. The education route, however, is exam-driven and highly competitive, and requires overwhelming financial and emotional investment (Fong, 2004; Kipnis, 2011).

The present literature on educational migration from China reveals a growing demand for higher education, which as a result of limited options is increasingly pursued overseas. (Lan, 2018). This tendency is often discussed through the framework of “flexible citizenship” (Ong, 1999), which presents Chinese transnational mobility as a strategy to navigate around limitations or constraints of any particular territory and to maximize potential gains. Within that framework, education is presented largely as a family strategy of “capital accumulation,” where investment in children's learning will bring future returns. The literature on family educational mobility shows different examples that describe how efforts to secure best opportunities result in “astronaut families” and “parachute kids” in Canada or New Zealand (Kobayashi and Preston, 2007; Waters, 2003; Ho, 2002), or “study mothers” in Singapore (Huang and Yeoh, 2005). In such circumstances, the family is split between two places, with the father usually returning to China to pursue financial opportunities, while the children and their mother remain in the destination country.

The migration of Chinese families to Poland is not just a search for acquiring acceptable educational credentials. While Poland is accessible to families who would otherwise be hard-pressed to entertain the idea of migrating overseas, their motivation is more than just about transnational “capital accumulation” strategies. This paper argues that Chinese migration to Poland is also a struggle against a state-sponsored model of achievement, which reflects both resistance and compliance to established educational norms and values.

To better explain the change taking place, I will draw on the idea of “governmentality” which Kipnis (2011) employed in his analysis of China's “educational desire.” Traditionally, education was a source of both intellectual and moral cultivation, and, through its ties to the imperial civil-service examinations,⁴ education was a main vehicle of social mobility. Families with sufficient means would invest heavily in children's learning of classical knowledge to prepare them for examinations. Thus, education played an important role in the making of a desired subject – a literate gentry class at the core of national governance. Fong (2004, 2011) discusses how education has become linked to the state discourse on modernization in present-day governance. Personal growth and education intertwined with the idea of national rejuvenation as currently enshrined in official government discourse as “the Chinese Dream.”⁵ The drive for education as the foundation for success and modernity, enhanced by the one-child policy (1979–2015), has become central to popular aspirations. Many Chinese families currently invest up to a third of their total income in children's education (Mazaroll and Soutar, 2002).

While both Kipnis and Fong focus their discussion on education and migration as processes of “subject making,” in my research, I highlight notable efforts at resistance to state discourse on education and the Chinese dream. Foucault defined governmentality not only as an effort to shape or influence the conduct of a person, but also as an ongoing process, where every demand and action applied in governance is met with counter-demand and reaction of the governed subjects (Gordon, 1991). Educational migration from China is written into such a dynamic. By moving abroad and opting out of the Chinese system altogether, these families hope to re-invent their experience of education and opportunity according to their own terms. This is not an easy task as the migrant families remain a product of the Chinese system. Their struggles provide insights into the complex motivations which shape migration trends and the decision-making process of the present generation.

This article approaches international educational mobility as “educational immigration” (Brooks and Waters, 2011), which usually involves families with youth and children under 18 years of age migrating for education, rather than tertiary-level international students covered by the literature on international education. Research on family educational migration is constrained by lack of data. Pre-college educational migration is often not captured by official visa statistics. Pre-college international students may be part of mobility taking place under work or family reunion visa (as is the case in Poland). The available data cited in this article suggest the expansion of educational flows to younger students.

While focusing on family educational migration, this article also contributes to a gap in the literature discussing Chinese migration in Poland and the broader Central and Eastern Europe region. With few exceptions (e.g., Liu, 2017; Moore and Tubilewicz, 2001; Nyiri, 2003, 2007, 2014; Ondris, 2015), there has not been much discussion of Chinese migration in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly the impact of educational migration. Following the introduction, the next section discusses the background of Chinese migration to Europe. Next, the discussion proceeds to show how educational migration has emerged as a new phenomenon and as the main driver behind the new Chinese migration to Poland.

Methodology

The findings presented in this article are largely from the research conducted from August 2016 to November 2017 as part of a project on the economic integration of migrants in Poland conducted by Warsaw University.⁶ The work on the Chinese community involved 20 qualitative interviews as well as a respondent-driven sample (RDS) survey conducted among 102 individuals in the metropolitan Warsaw area. The survey, carried out from July to November 2017, was the first ever to be conducted based on a representative sample of the community.⁷

As a modified version of chain-referral sampling, the RDS method is often adopted in the study of hard-to-reach populations without an accessible sampling frame. The method relies on a double-incentive system to develop recruitment chains and uses frequency weights in the final analysis to improve the representativeness of the sample (for details, see Heckathorn, 1997 and Górny, 2017). In the case of the Chinese in Poland, questions were designed to compare the legal, residential and professional situation of respondents: prior to emigration, upon arriving in Poland and at the time of the survey. In addition to questions on economic integration, the second part of the survey was focused on personal aspirations and migration plans, and the role of family and personal ties in migration. The surveys were prepared in a bilingual Chinese-Polish print version and administered in Chinese by a team of Polish and Chinese researchers coordinated by the author. The study group was comprised of adults aged 18 years or older, who were born in China (or, in the case of second-generation, those born to Chinese parents), and came to Poland for any purpose other than leisure or tourism. The results reveal important changes both in terms of profile as well as motivation of the new arrivals, including a growing focus on education-oriented migration.

While the survey results were essential in highlighting some of the new migration patterns, the subsequent interviews were necessary to deepen the understanding of the most important trends. The 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted by the author and included 10 members of the new migration wave, five members of the old diaspora, and five former students and second generation now working in Poland. In addition to a round of interviews based on the author's personal network, 10 respondents representing the new migration wave were recruited for interview from among the participants of the RDS survey. The initial interviews were focused on topics directly relevant to the research project (including personal background, migration motivation and socio-economic adaptation in Poland). However, these were followed up by further interviews focused on the impact of education on the overall migration experience. The information from 10 interviews conducted with the old diaspora and young professionals served as a comparative reference, helping to understand the new migrants' experience in the context of the established community. All interviews were conducted in Chinese, with handwritten notes or voice-recording taken with the respondent's consent. See Table 1 for a detailed breakdown of the respondents' profile.

Table 1.

Overview of research participants (n = 20).

Variable	Number	%
Gender
Male	8	40.0
Female	12	60.0
Age
Below 30	5	25.0
30–39	6	30.0
40–49	6	30.0
50 and up	3	15.0
Education completed
Below university	3	15.0
University and higher	17	85.0
Marital status Single, but dating/in a relationship	4	20.0
Married/cohabiting	15	75.0
Separated/divorced	1	5.0
Year of arrival in Poland
1980–1990s	5	25.0
2000s	5	25.0
2010s	10	50.0
Visa status in Poland
Permanent resident	6	30.0
3-year residence card	9	45.0
Other	5	25.0
Work status in Poland
Employed	11	55.0
Self-employed/owns business	9	45.0
Ages of migrants' children (at time of interview) (n = 29^a) 6 and under	7	24.1
7–12	11	37.9
13–18	9	31.0
Older than 18	2	6.9
Educational level of migrants' children (at time of interview) (n = 29)
Kindergarten	7	24.1
Primary school	11	37.9
Middle school	5	17.2
High school	4	13.8
College	2	6.9
Living arrangement
Couple and child(ren) in Poland	13	65.0
Respondent and child(ren) are in Poland; spouse in China	1	5.0
Respondent and child(ren) are in Poland; separated or divorced	1	5.0
Chinese young professionals living in Poland; no children	5	25.0

Six of the respondents interviewed were parents of one child, five had no children, while other families had two or more children.

Chinese migration to Europe and the evolution of the community in Poland

The Chinese in Europe are estimated at a little over two million people, which is about 5 percent of the Chinese global diaspora (Tan, 2013; Overseas Community Affairs Council, 2017). It is a community shaped by a tradition of economic migration, with roots in the history of trade and labor migrations in Southeast Asia (and later, North America), as well as by large-scale domestic migration in China following the launch of economic reforms in 1978. Much of the Chinese diaspora in Europe comes from China's southern provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong, where migration was long established as an important means of gaining financial independence and supporting a family (Laczko, 2003; Benton and Pieke, 1998).

The earliest Chinese presence in Europe dates back to 19th-century colonial ties with France and England and to the recruitment of indentured labor. Following the Second World War, ethnic Chinese migrated to Europe from former colonial territories. Many of those migrants established family-run enterprises, such as Chinese laundries in Britain, or leather workshops in France, with a business model based on low investment, low wages and labor-intensive low-skilled activities. Workers who endured these conditions could eventually aspire to open their own shops or businesses, which was the main strategy for economic advancement due to limited opportunities in the mainstream job market (Christiansen, 2013). A model of chain migration developed where new arrivals worked to pay off the fees incurred for passage, learned the trade and set up their own business, bringing over more people from China. An important factor contributing to this model is also the experience of China's domestic labor migration, in many ways emulated abroad, when original Chinese communities in Europe began to expand as result of China's reform and opening up policies. The example of a large but informal migrant trading community in Beijing known as Zhejiang Village (Xiang, 2013), which originated in clandestine migration, and the cases describing Zhejiang migrant communities active in France (Li, 2013), Italy (Dei Ottati, 2016) or Hungary (Nyiri, 2007) all show a similar pattern of economic advancement and support.

This model of chain economic migration also served as the bedrock of the Chinese community in Poland, which emerged as a result of three distinct migration waves. Official contacts and cooperation between Poland and China started in the early 1950s. However, the development of an actual migrant community in Warsaw began in the mid-1980s, in the context of a broader trend of Chinese migrants pursuing economic opportunities in Eastern and Central Europe, starting with Hungary. The early entrepreneurs and student traders in Poland first arrived to do business in the open-air market in a former sports stadium in Warsaw. From the mid-1990s onwards, they were concentrated in the wholesale trade center on the outskirts of the city, in Wólka Kosowska. For many years, the community functioned as a small enclave of less than 1,000 people and began to develop on a larger scale only after Polish accession to EU in 2004, which set off a second wave of migration and effectively shaped the development of the Chinese presence in the country. Access to the common European market and to the Schengen zone marked a period of booming wholesale trade and competition from Chinese businessmen arriving in Poland from South and Central Europe, and also, in growing numbers, from China. It was a period representing perhaps a final peak of the existing economic migration model.⁸

A turning point came with the 2008 economic crisis, which gradually but inevitably sent the Chinese wholesale trade and migration model into decline. Many of the traders in Poland were forced to close shop and moved away, or had to look for ways of remaking their business.⁹ The interviews conducted for this research suggest that the 2008 crisis was an important catalyst for a new wave of migration from China, with increasing numbers of middle-class migrants turning to Europe (in particular South and Central and Eastern European countries) as a new attractive destination. European destinations were easier to access and carried lower costs than the usual top choices – such as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – which have become increasingly saturated and difficult as migration destinations. Countries, such as Italy, Greece, Portugal or Hungary, in need of a boost for their flagging economies, all introduced a form of investor visa, offering residence status in exchange for investment in property, business ventures or government bonds. The experience of Poland, which offered streamlined residence and work permit applications as part of its revised migration law, forms part of this broader trend of Chinese migration to Europe.

The available data documenting a growing Chinese presence are scarce and limited to official residence statistics and literature summaries (e.g., Wysieńska, 2012; Wardęga, 2017), which provide little insight into the migrant flows taking place over the last decade. In Poland, as in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, the situation still very much resembles the state of affairs described by Nyiri:

There are no reliable data for the number of Chinese in any Eastern European country. In most countries, there are one or several relatively low official figures and a second set of much higher ‘estimates’ that officials frequently operate with, while researchers and the Chinese themselves prefer in-between figures (Nyiri, 2007:68).

The poor quality and fragmentation of data are additionally complicated by the frequent mobility of Chinese migrants, who might not remain in the country where they obtained residence documents. The available information, however, points to a gradual and steady increase in immigration across Central and Eastern Europe, with exceptional population surge in countries offering direct residence-for-investment schemes (most notably Hungary)¹⁰ (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Valid residence permits of Chinese citizens (12 months or longer), selected European countries.

Country/Year	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
Bulgaria	88	195	187	179	894	984	700	1,137
Czechia	5,191	5,041	5,139	5,487	5,735	5,833	6,374	6,718
Hungary	13,107	14,301	13,187	8,459	10,092	13,016	13,758	36,131
Poland	689	2,721	4,507	3,588	4,241	4,891	7,148	8,852
Romania	6,519	6,642	6,413	6,624	7,091	7,296	7,477	6,547
Slovenia	683	701	745	829	908	975	1,088	1,201
Slovakia	1,657	1,480	1,573	1,687	1,873	1,972	2,145	2,258

Source: Eurostat (2018).

The expansion of the Chinese population in Poland, as noted before, is taking place amid its gradual transition to a migrant destination country. While the Chinese still account for less than 3 percent of the total migrant inflows (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2017), they often choose Poland due to a combination of the “pull factors” which remain important for other large migrant groups: a stable economy, an affordable cost of living, a convenient location in the EU Schengen zone and favorable visa regulations.¹¹ As a result, the traditional trading community in Poland is now in the midst of change, shaped by a third migration wave which I set as starting in 2012, a year marking growing formal engagement with China, beginning with a series of top-level bilateral visits. This is marked by the opening of the first branch offices in Warsaw of two main Chinese state banks, and political initiatives focused on investment and cooperation, including the “16 + 1” initiative launched in 2012 in Warsaw.¹² This new political drive for cooperation has led to a growth in awareness and interest in the country, and within a few years the Chinese population in Poland has more than doubled, from about 3,800 in 2011 to over 8,800 in 2017 (Urząd do Spraw Cudzoziemców, 2018).

The survey conducted in relation to this study revealed a changing profile and a different motivation and resources driving the new wave of Chinese migration. According to the survey, the average age of the population is now 33.7 years and over 50 percent have a higher education degree. About 50 percent of respondents came to Poland in 2014 or later and came mostly from the northern parts of China — Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong and the Northeast – rather than from traditional origin areas in the south. More than two-thirds of respondents came from large Chinese cities (five million or over), rather than the rural areas, and around 42 percent of the sample were women. Alongside Chinese traders and investors, white-collar professionals and middle-class families (55 percent of respondents were married) are also part of this new wave of Chinese migrants. Interestingly, 40 percent of respondents aged 18–39 are working in information technology (IT) and related services, while 87 percent of those aged 40 or above work in trade and the food industry.

The results also highlight that the majority of Chinese migrants no longer seem to come to Poland in pursuit of wealth, or to make a living. Instead, their personal wealth and capital are invested to secure a better environment and quality of life, particularly good and affordable education for their children. Nearly half the respondents felt they have worse career development prospects in Poland than in China, and only a few said they were motivated by higher earnings (4 percent overall and 8.8 percent for arrivals since 2014). However, a growing number pointed to “better quality of life” (23 percent overall, 38 percent among arrivals since 2014) and children's education (13 percent overall and 20 percent among arrivals since 2014) as the main reasons for choosing to move to Poland. When asked to compare their life in Poland to that in China, Figure 2 indicates that the majority of respondents considered Poland as better or much better in terms of access to education (64 percent); quality of education (45 percent); medical care access (48 percent); quality of medical care (51 percent). Almost all respondents (98.5 percent) rated Poland's natural environment as better or much better. Nine out of 10 said Poland offers a healthier lifestyle. In what might further indicate a growing trend, nine out of 12 families that arrived in Poland in 2017 stated they did so exclusively due to concerns over the children's education.

Figure 1.

Motivation for coming to Poland.

Figure 2.

Comparing life in Poland and China.

The growing importance of education as suggested by the survey results fits in with the substantial educational migration from China. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2018) data show a total of 869,000 Chinese tertiary-level international students globally, with roughly two-thirds studying in only four countries: the US (310,000), Australia (128,000), Japan (76,500) and Canada (60,000). Data on Chinese students attending tertiary level institutions in Europe are presented in Table 3.

Table 3.

Chinese tertiary-level educational flows.

Country/Year	2006	2016
UK	50,753	89,318
France	17,132	32,378
Italy	960	13,768
Russian Federation	..	10,693
Belarus	915	1,252
Poland	306	814
Hungary	138	1,239
Czechia	71	207
Romania	49	92
Bulgaria	9	20
Slovakia	4	34

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2018).

In the 2016/2017 academic year, Poland had only 814 registered tertiary-level Chinese students, but it has one of the largest numbers of Chinese students among East and Central European countries. Although the number of Chinese students in Poland and other East and Central European countries is small, what is of interest is the role of educational opportunities emerging as a motivation behind recent Chinese migration to the region. The motivation also reflects the search for an alternative to the life trajectory offered in China. In what follows, I will discuss the key factors which have contributed to this new migration and the ways in which educational migration can be useful in understanding the dynamic reshaping the Chinese community in Poland.

Poland in the context of China's “educational desire”

To understand how Poland has become part of the rapid expansion of Chinese studying abroad, it is important to explain how educational migration is embedded in the ongoing project of governmentality and how it shapes the aspirations of Chinese families.

As mentioned earlier, education in China symbolized the ideal of both intellectual and moral self-cultivation, being at the center of the Confucian ethics system and the idea of zuoren or “becoming a person.” In Confucianism, the status of a full-fledged member of society is not gained at birth but is acquired through self-cultivation, where education is the means of separating “nature from culture.” An educated individual meant a civilized one and superior to others. Moreover, because of its close ties to the imperial examinations system, educational achievement was closely linked to social hierarchy and prestige (Kipnis, 2011; Yan, 2013). Interviews conducted for this research indicate that this still holds true today. Just as success in the imperial examinations meant an official posting and represented a link to temporal power, college graduates in the People's Republic were assigned state-unit (danwei) jobs, which often went with an urban residence permit (hukou) and lifelong benefits. In both traditional and modern education systems, learning was established as a ticket toward a better life, while personal “culture”¹³ remains central to discourse on social class and inequality.

The present educational system – based largely on competitive examinations and rooted in an extensive assemblage of writing, schools and bureaucracies — draws on traditional governance to create what Kipnis defines as a powerful and universal “educational desire.” Understood as a rapidly spreading social dynamic — with the semblance of partly political campaign and partly consumer fad — “educational desire” is an example of a “social fever” occurring when official policies coincide with and facilitate popular aspirations. As a result, an issue such as educational attainment is turned into a collective desire “manipulated by political elites” and “reproduced by new forms of media” (Kipnis, 2011: 5–7, 132–136).

This phenomenon involves everyone, including parents, teachers and peers, contributing to a state-sponsored drive for educational excellence. If the Confucian education system played an important role in creating a literate gentry class as the backbone of national governance, its modern version has become linked to a state discourse of modernization. As was discussed earlier, the government discourse of the “Chinese dream” links personal growth and learning with the idea of national rejuvenation.

The founding of China's key universities and the campaign for national modernization (symbolized, for example, by the May Fourth Movement¹⁴) were all linked to the idea of education as the key to national strength and mobilization. After the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), China embraced economic reform and “scientific development.” Thus, the idea of modernization and improving the “quality of the people” were both essential to the new governance, whether in policy-making or public discourse. The one-child policy introduced in 1979 was an extension of this philosophy, with a focus on “quality” rather than “quantity” (Kipnis, 2011; Woronov, 2010). The same was true for efforts aimed at building up a vast urban educated middle class. A range of policy changes gradually brought about a shift in language and values adopted in daily life. The ideology of “class struggle” gave way to a new language of “social strata” in which socio-economic inequality was explained as “a cultural difference in a hierarchy of national belonging.” China offered “a new model of citizenship” where those with education or culture were of greater value to the State (Anagnost, 2008). As China grew increasingly wealthy, education also became described and imagined in terms of “human capital” and strategic “investment and return,” with the logic of capital accumulation becoming part of family decision-making (Woronov, 2010).

Fong (2004, 2011) describes how this combination of policy, new economic realities and a social environment of growing expectations all combined to create a powerful “cultural model.” This is where the drive for education as the key to success and modernity became central to popular aspirations. As the demand for higher education increased, so did the cost of education. Many working-class families invested their entire life savings to send their children to elite high schools to secure placement in prestigious universities. Soon, the growing number of university graduates were competing for a limited number of white-collar jobs. This increasing competition emerged as a key factor behind the early “study abroad fever” beginning in the late 1990s:

Children of factory workers who went abroad often had to use their parents' entire life savings and proceeds from sales of their family homes in addition to loans from aunts, uncles and friends just to pay for the start-up costs of study abroad … Raised with high aspirations based on comparisons to friends, classmates and relatives of even higher socio-economic status … Chinese youth in my study were reluctant to accept their “failure” to reach the high educational and career goals to which they and their families aspired and saw study abroad as a way around that “failure” (Fong, 2011: 85, 105).

Within a few years, the coveted study abroad credentials became stratified not just by country, but also by specific school rankings and major of study. The wealthiest families sent their children abroad as early as middle school, aiming for elite schools which could “guarantee” admission to one of the top universities in the US. As the new generation of parents (often born under the one-child policy) begins to come of age, this tide is also starting to turn (Fong, 2011). In an environment of relentless competition, some young parents are attempting to carve a different kind of life and a different educational environment for their children.

Migration to Poland is written into this narrative in more ways than one. With the combination of lower cost of living, a stable socio-economic environment and relative ease of obtaining residence within the Schengen zone, Poland is considered as a destination which allows for an experiment with life and education abroad. But while it can offer Chinese migrants the possibility to resist China's subject-making policy, the parents who hope to give children a freer environment often find themselves falling back on ingrained perceptions of what learning and success should be. These two aspects — of resistance and adherence to the dominant model — are both keenly present in shaping their migration experience.

The migration described below is undertaken by families (often a husband arrives first), with children studying at a level anywhere from kindergarten to high school. Many of these families consider Poland as a place to acquire both the foreign language and the cultural competence necessary to succeed in a top foreign university. Their migration, however, is often based on scarce knowledge, and vague assumptions about Europe, its education system and what might actually be possible and realistic in specific national circumstances (e.g., learning fluent English and German while studying in Poland). Many of the new-wave migrants come to Poland with the help of a migration agency, usually entering on a tourist visa and then applying for a three-year residence card, based on the employment certificate from the agency. The three cases discussed below demonstrate a range of motivations and challenges which define the new migration wave.

New rules of the game? Cases of immigration and aspirations in practice

Ms Ma arrived in Warsaw with her six-year-old son in early 2018, with a goal of providing him with the kind of education she felt was beyond their reach in Beijing. As a white-collar professional working in Beijing, Ma described herself as “the rock-bottom of the middle class” and a reluctant migrant who had little choice but to move abroad. However, with her Beijing residence status (hukou) and three apartments among family assets, few would actually consider her as being badly-off. Her relative sense of deprivation was brought on by a failure to purchase real-estate in the catchment zone of one of the elite schools in Beijing, to which she aspired for her child.¹⁵ To do so would require a loan of CNY 1.5 million, on top of selling all the family property. Running out of options, she started to consider emigration. She explained her desire for child's elite schooling in detail:

What is the difference? It is in the kind of students that go to a particular school, their background and the resources their families command. Parents discussing this on Internet forums tend to agree that what you really get in exchange for such investment is a different kind of atmosphere and environment … At least, you have a guarantee that your child's peers with whom he will study for up to nine years, those people that will form his future social circle and contacts will be kids who take their studies seriously, kids with culture and good upbringing, who are supported by their parents … I'm sure it is the same abroad, you have “good and bad places,” and if you were in the US, you wouldn't want your child to go to an unsafe place … The impact of good environment and of good habits is really very important. Just like when we say “do not go to play with this or that child.”

In effect, the real selling point for top Beijing schools was not just the teaching they provided (which Ms Ma felt was good in most of Beijing's schools) but the environment where a child could associate with other high achievers who come from select families; that is, an environment for developing future social elites. In deciding that their children should study abroad, many parents hope to gain access to a similarly superior social (as well as learning) environment, but at a lesser cost and struggle than in Beijing. But, an equally important factor was a growing sense of dissatisfaction with the learning environment in China. Ms Ma saw as not only stressful, but also burdened with unnecessary emphasis on rote learning:

If your test results are good, then in the future you can, at minimum, get a job in one of the large cities. You leave your village behind and move to a big city. So, on the one hand, I support that kind of system, but at the same time, don't agree with it. And I started to think how I really don't want my child to go through that kind of education.

When she moved to Poland, Ms Ma knew almost nothing about the country. She originally planned to go to Spain but changed her mind after an acquaintance in an Internet forum suggested Poland, which has an easier visa procedure and offers a lower cost of living — and it is in Europe. However, she was convinced that a foreign education would allow her son to pursue the kind of learning and opportunities which she and her husband did not have:

When I was a child, I really liked arts and design. And I wonder if I had the right circumstances, perhaps I could follow my interests. Regardless of whether I would be good at it or not, at least I would be able to do something I enjoy … My husband [he remains in China] is a typical case too … [He] was very good at arts but his father pushed him into the sciences. It was the same with my father, who thought the arts were useless. So, my husband went through polytechnic and studied industrial design, got a related job and only then decided that he's finally independent and this is not what he wants to do. So, he decided, at mid-life, to change his career and enrolled in a Fine Arts Bachelor's program … I admire this, I think it took real courage to start over at his age.

A sense of dissatisfaction with the education and social environment in China was also important for Li, a middle-aged businessman, who moved to Warsaw with his family in mid-2016. Li used to work at a state-owned company in Shenzhen but quit the job years ago to focus on investments. He has two sons who previously attended schools in different cities — the older one in Shenzhen and the younger in Hong Kong.¹⁶ Li considered emigration as a chance to give both of them an opportunity to have an a good education, without excessive examinations and with a curriculum relevant to their interests:

In China, we didn't sign up our kids for any after-school classes, because we really feel it is unnecessary and exhausting, but other people didn't believe us. Our point of view on this is different from other parents and we don't put so much value on test results, but rather on good environment and on a well-rounded education.

His choice to move to Poland was deeply pragmatic and based on easier visa procedures and a lower cost of living and education. Like many other Chinese families in Poland, he considered schools with an International Baccalaureate (IB) program to be an ideal solution, providing his sons with a number of good options for future international mobility. He felt a foreign residence would also allow the children to easily qualify to gain admission to a top Chinese university if that was necessary.¹⁷ But his ultimate plan was to send his sons to a medical school in Hungary which offer a fast-track doctor of medicine (MD) program. His actions still resemble a series of strategic “investment” decisions, with a mindset aimed at maximum “return” and outrunning the competition:

[The MD program] takes you from BA to a PhD¹⁸ in six years' time and it's also not expensive, it costs some CNY 600,000. I've been telling my sons this is a good option. The dentistry program takes even less time, only five years. I told them, jokingly, that one could train to be a dentist and one as a doctor and then we're set … They could save time and with a medical degree in Hong Kong they could easily earn CNY 100,000 per month. An intern makes CNY 50,000. Other professions are not as stable or as good, I really think this would be the right choice for them. Just recently, I heard there is a shortage of doctors in Denmark, they could consider migrating there if they needed to in the future. The annual salary for a doctor is over EUR 200,000. So, I keep telling them that with this paper [MD diploma] they could be in Hong Kong or in Europe with no problem and a good salary. My older son mentioned that he would like to go back to China after all and I told him, well, your work environment will be so-so, the salary about CNY 10,000 a month, and an apartment costs a million, do you think you can afford one then?

For both Ma and Li, the move abroad was a form of gaining independence from the Chinese learning environment and its rigid requirements. As a generation of parents raised under the traditional system, they hoped for something better for their children, pushing the set rules of the game closer to their own aspirations. But while they were both critical of the Chinese environment, much of their thinking and decisions still followed deeply rooted ideas of what schooling and career should be — and they often struggled to negotiate these within a Polish educational setting.

The tension is clearly illustrated in the experience of the Wang family, who moved to Warsaw with their two daughters in 2016. The couple quit their office jobs in Shenzhen, where they had lived for the past 15 years. While their younger daughter, aged 4, was born in the US, the older one, aged 17, completed most of her education in Shenzhen. By moving abroad, the parents hoped to give both of the girls an equally good chance at international education. Mrs Wang strongly disapproved of the exam-based education in China, which she felt produce shu daizi (“bookworms”) with no relevant social or professional skills. Mrs Wang hoped that the older daughter could develop confidence, initiative and language skills, the way she imagined foreign children do. Soon after coming to Warsaw, the girl was enrolled in a private school with an English-language curriculum. However, it quickly turned out that the more relaxed and open learning she and her husband aspired for did not quite conform with their expectations:

As parents, we still feel you should be studying every day, that as a child you need to work hard. But here, the teachers seem to leave the students to themselves and rely on their own self-discipline, and if you don't have it, they won't push you to finish your homework. In China, the education is different. If you haven't done something or you are making mistakes, your teacher will point it out, there is a feedback on a daily basis. But here, there is almost none. And there are so many holidays! It feels like they have more free time than kids in primary school, or even in kindergarten. There is really no classwork to speak of at all; back in China, high school really is exhausting.

The initial disappointment and setbacks encountered when trying to enroll their daughter in an English-language bachelor's program at Warsaw University quickly turned to worry and doubts about whether they were making the right decisions. The girl soon lost her initial enthusiasm about studying in Europe and was persuaded by her parents to return to China and sit for the university entrance exam, just to make sure she secures a place at a good university:

[My daughter] felt their teacher doesn't pay attention to them … she struggled to get used to her classes, and as parents, we also started to worry. “Why don't they seem to study at all, what do we do?” We got so nervous! We felt she's wasting her time and started to reconsider that perhaps she should just go back and take gaokao and … now I don't know whether it was the right or wrong decision.

As such, the attempt at establishing an alternative environment was often shaped and constrained by the very same pressures and ideas which parents resisted when they were in Beijing and Shenzhen. Their negotiation of a new playing field was also complicated by the reality of adjustment to a life in a very different social and cultural setting. This is well illustrated by how each family selected a school for their children. Both the Ma and Li families picked a school by searching through Google maps on their phones and settling for a place near where they lived. The Lis Li family hired a translator to visit the school and communicate with the principal. The Wang family relied on word of mouth, and picked a private school recommended by other Chinese parents in Warsaw. Within the year, other children from China also enrolled in the same school and the children quickly formed their own Chinese-speaking group. Most of the time, Mrs Wang had to rely on email and translation software to be able to communicate with her daughter's teachers. All three families also struggled with the lack of stability due to their temporary residence status, uncertain job prospects and the lack of local knowledge and contacts.

While the three cases above do not represent the entire spectrum of Chinese educational pursuits in Poland, they do point to an important trend. As the young parents attempt to provide their children with a better future, they engage in a difficult process of negotiation. On one hand, they try to resist or overcome the firm “rules of the game” in China, while on the other hand, they struggle to do so in a new environment they hope to claim as their own.

Conclusion

Chinese migration to Europe shows a shift away from economic migration toward accessing a better living environment and resources which are increasingly difficult to obtain in a highly competitive and stratified Chinese society.

Chinese migration to Poland reflects a new form of educational migration, pursued by younger middle-class families who have little to no information about the country, and who move to Central Europe in a gamble-like search for opportunity. The optimism and determination shown by these families characterize a migration oriented to exploring a new environment as an alternative to the trajectory of achievement and social mobility offered by Chinese society. Leaving the familiar behind, they encounter challenges and uncertainties in Poland and outcomes which are far from clear-cut. These families exemplify a broader and uncertain search for an alternative to the life trajectory offered in China, marked by challenges in adaptation, peer pressure and deeply ingrained cultural values. As education increasingly emerges as a key motivation behind family migration projects, it will remain as an important tool in analyzing the evolving migration trends which shape Chinese presence and integration.

While the realities of the Chinese diaspora in Central and Eastern Europe are rapidly changing, however, they remain largely overlooked in the literature. By highlighting the new migration wave, this article aims to encourage understanding of the Chinese in Central and Eastern Europe beyond the established image of traditional entrepreneurs. While this article explores education, further work is needed to understand the connections between changing migration and the impact of China's evolution and growing international engagement following the 2008 global economic crisis.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this paper.

Funding

This research was funded by the Narodowe Centrum Nauki (Sonata Bis project 2014/14/E/HS4/00387).

1

Governmentality is understood here as a form of comprehensive “conduct of conduct” where state-driven regimes of power and value help to shape and regulate everyday social dynamics and individual practice (Foucault, 1991).

2

This phenomenon is described in the literature as “intermediate phase of migration cycle” with Poland now following patterns observed before in West and Southern European countries (e.g., see Okòlski, 2012 for details). An example of revised laws includes a flexible circular work permit system targeting six countries (including Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia) and streamlined procedures which, as of May 2014, allow the application for a temporary residence and work permit by a single procedure. The demand especially for unskilled and semi-skilled labor remained unaffected by a growing wave of Polish returnees triggered by the Brexit process.

3

I acknowledge the complex nature of “economic” vs “life quality” motivations behind emigration, which even in the case of Ukrainians in Poland, is far from clear-cut. However, by “economic factors” I focus specifically on “wealth accumulation,” which is no longer the main motivation for Chinese migration to Poland.

4

Imperial examinations based on knowledge of Confucian classics were the means for screening candidates for the civil service; the system served as a bedrock of China's gentry class of scholar-bureaucrats. The system shaped the pattern of learning and social mobility through much of China's imperial history (see Fairbank and Goldman, 2006 for details).

5

Introduced in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the idea of the Chinese Dream () enjoins popular support in pursuit of national revival, with emphasis on national rather than individual achievement.

6

National Science Center Sonata Bis project 2014/14/E/HS4/00387 implemented by Dr Hab Pawel Kaczmarczyk.

7

The analysis in this article excludes the three surveys conducted with second-generation Chinese and covers 99 individuals. The author would like to thank Malgorzata Wrotek for her support in processing and initial analysis of the survey data.

8

For a more detailed discussion of Chinese migration to Europe, see .

9

A study of the Chinese in Ireland by is a good illustration of the impact of the financial crisis on Chinese migration to Europe post-2008.

10

Under a program operating in 2012–2017, some 15,000 Chinese are said to have obtained residency in exchange for a minimum investment of EUR 300,000 in Hungarian government bonds (Lajtai-Szabo, 2018).

11

The relative ease with which migrants entering Poland on a tourist or a family visa could convert it to a residence permit (a common practice among recent Chinese immigrants) is coming to an end, however, as regulations were tightened in 2019. In addition, since 2018, those wishing to apply for long-term EU residency are now also required to pass a Polish-language proficiency exam, at minimum B1 level.

12

The China–Central and Eastern European Countries Cooperation Initiative or “16 + 1 initiative” was launched in 2012 to facilitate greater economic, technological and cultural cooperation and exchange between China and selected partner nations (11 EU members and five non-EU Balkan countries). As of 2019, Greece joined the initiative as a new member.

13

The Chinese use of the term “culture” is a complex issue and its meaning can range from personal quality (see Kipnis, 2011) to education and wisdom. In this article, I use culture to refer to a degree of personal cultivation. It now includes embodied cultural capital marking one as part of a cosmopolitan elite and of the modern knowledge economy.

14

What originated as student protests in Beijing on 4 May 1919, in reaction to China's acceptance of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, soon led to a nationwide cultural and political movement aimed at national strengthening and modernization. Traditional Confucian values were perceived as a limitation and source of China's political weakness (see Fairbank and Goldman, 2006 for more details).

15

Beijing's Xicheng () district is commonly perceived to have the best schools offering K-12 education in China, with the best resources and student body. Students in this district have the highest chance of successfully passing the entrance exam of top universities and of building networks with the country's future elites. Only those with official residence in the district are now allowed to enroll their children in one of these schools. The property prices in Xicheng are among the highest in the country.

16

Growing affluence has allowed many families to obtain foreign residency for the younger children. This is often done through “birth tourism,” – i.e., traveling to give birth in a country, such as the US, for the purpose of securing citizenship for the child (Ji and Bates, 2007). In so doing, the child can enroll in the local education system. This sometimes means that an older child who attends a public school in China is seen as disadvantaged.

17

One of China's policies aimed at engaging its diaspora allows children of huaqiao (overseas Chinese residents), as well as students from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, to take a simplified university entrance exam (liankao), instead of the much more demanding national examinations (gaokao). However, as current requirements defining “foreign residence” are generous (anyone with permanent residence and at least two years spent abroad qualifies), some Chinese families decide to move abroad simply to qualify for the easier university exams.

18

Mr Li kept on referring to the MD program as PhD, suggesting that he sees the program as a top-ranking qualification to be completed quickly and inexpensively.

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