Paper short abstract:

This paper will analyze the flexible citizenship of the Chinese origin population in Spain, specially those from South Zhejiang province. The family chain migration has changed along the time to adapt to the Spanish official reunion family policy, but Chinese migrants have developed many different.

Paper long abstract:

Aihwa Ong’s Flexible Citizenship (1999) focused on the elite Chinese practice to get two citizenships in times of uncertainty. In fact, this strategy has been also used by non-elite Chinese international migrants since long time ago as we will discuss in this paper focused on the Chinese origin population in Spain, especially those come from rural areas in South Zhejiang province. Family chain migration has been fully exploited by migrants since the beginning of the migration regime from China to Spain and goes beyond the nuclear household to include extensive kins and lineage members. The Spain official family reunion policy has changed along the time to become more restricted, and so the Chinese migrants’ strategies has also changed to adapt and to overcome it. Sometimes different members of the same family have different citizenship. We will analyze this phenomenon as well as other strategies that question the dominant and limited understanding of family reunion in a context characterized by transnational practices, cosmopolitan expectative and global identities. The cross-border of citizenship and ethnicity is not only a privilege of the elite, but also a common practice of rural origin international migrants.