Time, temporality, and (im)mobility: Unpacking the temporal experiences among Chinese international students during the COVID‐19

ABSTRACT

From the perspective of migrant times/temporalities, this paper focuses on the temporal experiences among Chinese international students (CIS) who planned to enrol overseas in 2020 but instead chose to stay in China due to the COVID‐19. Specifically, it adopts 'sticky and suspended times' and 'asynchronous and precarious times' to investigate how they encounter a set of temporal disruptions at both everyday and life course levels while staying put in China. Particularly, the paper asks how CIS exercises agency to navigate through temporal dissonances and enhance their immobile state and capital accumulation. Critically, the paper develops a temporally sensitive framework to unpack the multiple kinds of temporalities CIS confront during the pandemic, further advancing studies on 'international student mobility' and 'time in migration'. Additionally, existing studies have largely focused on how time shapes people's mobility and this paper provides an empirical case on the potential of the temporal approach to understanding immobilities.