Passing Through Shanghai

"Passing Through Shanghai" examines how children experience international
mobility. Focusing on a specific yet diverse group of expatriate youths in
contemporary Shanghai, the book investigates how children negotiate cultural
identity when they are subject to the highly mobile and often privileged lifestyle
associated with their parent¿s international careers. The ethnographic fieldwork
that informs the book was carried out in Shanghai from 2010 to 2012 and focused on
expatriate teenagers¿ everyday practices, their lives at international schools,
their engagement with the city, their dreams and aspirations, as well as their
questions of belonging. The book¿s ethnographic approach captures the ¿in-between¿
state of moving while growing up and explores teenage practices and positionings in
this transitory situation. The teenagers¿ own perspectives and experiences of living
in expatriate communities contribute to a larger view of the interdependence and
contradictions between the aspired flexibility of twenty-first century identities
and the rigidity of cultural divisions based on nationality, ethnicity, gender, and
class.