Presented by the A/P/A Graduate Student Working Group. Hosted by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU.

REGISTER

Graduate students are invited to join the next workshop hosted by the A/P/A Graduate Student Working Group featuring Karen Hui (CUNY Graduate Center). Hui will present, “Anxious Futures: Middle Class Parenting in Shenzhen,” a chapter from her dissertation, which examines the politics and ethics of middle-class child-rearing in contemporary Shenzhen, China, and its relationship to national imaginaries of the future.

The A/P/A Graduate Student Working Group hosts monthly workshops for graduate students to foster interdisciplinary discussion and interdepartmental collaboration on each other’s research and interests in Asian/Pacific/American Studies.

NYU campus access guidelines: This is an in-person event, open to graduate students from NYU and nearby universities. Registration is required. Non-NYU guests may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID. NYU guests must present their NYU ID.

Accessibility note: This venue has an elevator and is accessible for wheelchair users. There are single-stall, all gender restrooms available. If you have any access needs, please email apa.rsvp@nyu.edu.

Abstract

In the second chapter of her dissertation, “Anxious Futures: Middle Class Parenting in Shenzhen,” Karen Hui argues that the makings of a middle class subjectivity in Shenzhen is anchored by the particular narratives that emerge surrounding Shenzhen’s status as China’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Following the lead of critical urban studies in Shenzhen that identify the SEZ as oscillating between “experiment” and “model”, this chapter explores how these contradictory poles embedded in Shenzhen narratives are operationalized as key sites where the reproduction of the moral conditions of development (individualism, hard work, entrepreneurialism) happen. Through interviews with mothers who recount their experiences of moving to and working in Shenzhen between the late 1980s and early 2000s, Hui examines how “generational” narratives of an early-reform Shenzhen emphasize a sense of opportunity and fairness encoded in market relations, qualities that are formed in opposition to notions of guanxi (personal connections) and state power. Inheritors of these values, middle class mothers struggle to reconcile these Reform narratives to the contemporary moment marked by growing anxiety around economic crisis. In particular, this ambivalence places more pressure on mothers who are deemed primarily responsible for caring for and managing children. By  focusing on how mothers contrast their own migrant experiences to the futures their children will experience, this chapter explores parental ambivalence towards China’s future validity, and ultimately reveals how Shenzhen remains a central site for imagining Chinese nation-state futures.

Photograph by Karen Hui.