Echoes of silence: how student migrants navigate political taboos across borders.
People migrate from authoritarian to democratic regimes seeking greater freedom of expression, yet many continue to avoid politics in their host country. This study examines how Chinese international students in the United States navigate political taboos across borders and why they still avoid poli...
| Publicado en: | Social Forces Vol. 104; no. 4; pp. 1454 - 1475 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Jun2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=193469028&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 193469028 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00377732 SFR jtl: Social Forces issn: 00377732 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2026 vid: 104 iid: 4 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 193469028 10.1093/sf/soaf144 ppf: 1454 ppct: 21 formats: tig: atl: Echoes of silence: how student migrants navigate political taboos across borders. aug: au: Guo, Weirong affil: University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, United States su: United States China Activism Freedom of expression Social norms Social processes Self-censorship Transnationalism Immigrant students sug: subj: Activism Freedom of expression Social norms Social processes United States China Self-censorship Transnationalism Immigrant students keyword: authoritarianism copyrightHolder:University of North Carolina Chapel Hill copyrightYear:2026 inLanguage:en political avoidance political taboos publisher:Oxford University Press sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf144 student migrants transnationalism authoritarianism copyrightHolder:University of North Carolina Chapel Hill copyrightYear:2026 inLanguage:en political avoidance political taboos publisher:Oxford University Press sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf144 student migrants transnationalism ab: People migrate from authoritarian to democratic regimes seeking greater freedom of expression, yet many continue to avoid politics in their host country. This study examines how Chinese international students in the United States navigate political taboos across borders and why they still avoid political expression despite newfound freedoms. Drawing on participant observations and 93 in-depth interviews with Chinese students at two American universities and one Chinese university, I find that students develop three avoidance strategies—pragmatic disengagement, veiled allegiance, and closeted activism—as they navigate two distinct fields of political taboos. In China's "forbidden zone," where state-imposed taboos are intuitively understood but constantly shifting, avoidance is largely habitual—students perceive politics as dangerous and irrelevant, frame patriotism in apolitical terms, or engage in activism discreetly to avoid repression. After migrating to the US "landmine zone," where political taboos are decentralized, scattered, and socially enforced, these tactics evolve—students pretend to be apathetic to sidestep ideological pressure, downplay nationalism to prevent conflict, and confine activism to trusted circles to evade peer, institutional, or transnational consequences. This study bridges political sociology and migration studies by challenging the activism bias in transnational politics and the assumption of unilateral political incorporation. It also calls for a reassessment of educational institutions' roles in sustaining or challenging the culture of avoidance. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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