Chinese Migration to Lesotho as a Springboard toward a Better Future? The Ambiguous Social Class Positions of Migrants’ Children

Migration from China to Africa is associated with upward mobility and middle-class aspirations, but few studies investigate whether these aspirations become real for Chinese migrants and how migration affects their children’s future. This article explores how migration contributes to or disrupts the middle-class aspirations of Chinese families in Lesotho through the perspectives of their daughters, who grow up in China and join them for a few years in Lesotho. The article shows that transnational migration divides families and affects cycles of care, as well as the generational transmission of capital and class identities. In the long run, daughters seem launched into the same class as their parents. Therefore, migration to Lesotho is not a springboard to upward mobility.