Fran Martin follows a generation of Chinese women studying abroad and asks what “going West” means for their daily experience.

Based on ethnographic work in Melbourne, the book traces education, migration, family expectation, romance, religion, race, safety and class mobility. 

The research is thorough, sprawling and intimate. There's WeChat rumours, transnational moral panics, missionary outreach, family surveillance and the circulation of stories about danger all become part of how place is understood before or alongside direct encounter. Martin shows how gendered aspiration and mobility are shaped by both Chinese and Australian structures, often at once. The result is a close study of migration as a condition of living between competing futures.

Duke University Press, Durham, 2022. First edition. Paperback. Very light shelf wear; internally clean and unmarked, binding firm.