Polyrhythmic transitions in youth mobilities: suspension, fragmentation and entanglement among Chinese working holiday makers in New Zealand and Australia

IF 2.3 2区社会学 Q1 GEOGRAPHY

Mobilities Pub Date : 2025-09-03 DOI:10.1080/17450101.2025.2481307

Luyi Ye

{"title":"Polyrhythmic transitions in youth mobilities: suspension, fragmentation and entanglement among Chinese working holiday makers in New Zealand and Australia","authors":"Luyi Ye","doi":"10.1080/17450101.2025.2481307","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, this article focuses on the complex spatio-temporal dynamics of transnational youth mobility. This study explores the mobility polyrhythms of Chinese working holiday makers (WHMs), shaped by the free yet precarious rhythms of temporary youth labor migration, and the fast-paced, disciplining rhythms of China’s compressed modernity. Through ethnographic observation and interviews with 44 participants, I capture ‘suspension’, ‘fragmentation’, and ‘entanglement’ as important rhythmic transitions in the polyrhythm of Chinese WHMs’ mobilities. This rhythmanalysis reveals how young migrants from a compressed-modernity society navigated between multiple rhythms and socioeconomic patterns to experience and negotiate their uncertain mobile transitions to adulthood in the digital era. By extending rhythmanalysis into migration and mobility contexts, this research contributes a dynamic approach to conceptualising the non-linear and staggered interactions among multiple spaces, temporalities, and social forces in contemporary youth mobility.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51457,"journal":{"name":"Mobilities","volume":"20 5","pages":"Pages 871-887"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Mobilities","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S1745010125000219","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"GEOGRAPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, this article focuses on the complex spatio-temporal dynamics of transnational youth mobility. This study explores the mobility polyrhythms of Chinese working holiday makers (WHMs), shaped by the free yet precarious rhythms of temporary youth labor migration, and the fast-paced, disciplining rhythms of China’s compressed modernity. Through ethnographic observation and interviews with 44 participants, I capture ‘suspension’, ‘fragmentation’, and ‘entanglement’ as important rhythmic transitions in the polyrhythm of Chinese WHMs’ mobilities. This rhythmanalysis reveals how young migrants from a compressed-modernity society navigated between multiple rhythms and socioeconomic patterns to experience and negotiate their uncertain mobile transitions to adulthood in the digital era. By extending rhythmanalysis into migration and mobility contexts, this research contributes a dynamic approach to conceptualising the non-linear and staggered interactions among multiple spaces, temporalities, and social forces in contemporary youth mobility.

查看原文本刊更多论文

青年流动中的多节奏转换：新西兰和澳大利亚中国打工度假者的暂停、分裂和纠缠

受亨利·列斐伏尔节奏分析的启发，本文关注青年跨国流动的复杂时空动态。本研究探讨了中国打工度假者（whm）的流动多节奏，这种流动多节奏是由临时青年劳动力流动的自由而不稳定的节奏和中国被压缩的现代性的快节奏、有纪律的节奏所塑造的。通过对44位参与者的民族志观察和访谈，我发现“悬浮”、“碎片化”和“纠缠”是中国女性流动多节奏中重要的节奏转换。这种节奏分析揭示了来自压缩现代性社会的年轻移民如何在多种节奏和社会经济模式之间导航，以体验和协商他们在数字时代向成年的不确定移动过渡。通过将节奏分析扩展到迁移和流动语境中，本研究提供了一种动态的方法来概念化当代青年流动中多个空间、时间和社会力量之间的非线性和交错的相互作用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Mobilities Multiple-

CiteScore

5.40

自引率

17.90%

发文量

期刊介绍： Mobilities examines both the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world, as well as more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public and private spaces, and the travel of material things in everyday life. Recent developments in transportation and communications infrastructures, along with new social and cultural practices of mobility, present new challenges for the coordination and governance of mobilities and for the protection of mobility rights and access. This has elicited many new research methods and theories relevant for understanding the connections between diverse mobilities and immobilities.