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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2699-4210
Date Available
4-22-2028
Year of Publication
2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
Gender and Women's Studies
Faculty
Carol Mason
Faculty
Charlie Yi Zhang
Abstract
This dissertation examines transnational educational relocation as a gendered project of future making through the figure of Chinese educational accompanying mothers, or peidu mama, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and the Greater Los Angeles area in the United States. It investigates how educational migration is organized through the intersection of affective governance, moralized motherhood, and unequal global conditions. It seeks to answer how transnational educational motherhood is represented in state-endorsed media and public discourse; how women narrate and justify educational relocation while negotiating the morally unstable label of peidu mama; how aspiration, risk, and the idea of “a better life” are reshaped by authoritarian governance and crisis in contemporary China; and how do different destination contexts reveal uneven regimes of legality, recognition, and belonging.
Drawing on a multi-sited qualitative design that combines 56 in-depth interviews, digital ethnography, and critical discourse analysis of media and policy texts, the dissertation argues that transnational educational relocation is a socially organized yet unstable form of reproductive futurity. It is sustained through women’s discursive and affective labor, through public scripts that convert sacrifice into virtue and constraint into choice, and through fragile attachments to betterment that are continually recalibrated across destinations. By foregrounding the figure of the peidu mama, this dissertation shows that educational migration is not merely a mobility strategy, but a struggle over moral legitimacy, livability, and the conditions under which a future can still be imagined.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.91
Archival?
Archival
Funding Information
This study Ashley Judd Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women, for the 2025-2026 academic year, Office of Access, Community, & Engagement, University of Kentucky.
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Jingxue Dr., "THE IMPOSSIBLE MOTHERHOOD: EDUCATION ACCOMPANYING MOTHERS (PEIDU MAMA) AND TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION IN CHINA’S GLOBAL ERA" (2026). Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies. 15.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gws_etds/15
