Layered Belonging Under Negotiated Mobility: An Integrative Review of New Chinese Migration to Thailand

Abstract

Thailand has become a prominent destination for contemporary Chinese mobility through international education, employment, entrepreneurship, family relocation, retirement, and lifestyle-oriented movement. However, these pathways are usually studied separately, obscuring how education, work, legal status, digital infrastructures, everyday adaptation, and belonging interact over time. This article reports a structured integrative review of 53 empirical, theoretical, methodological, and policy sources identified through targeted searches of publisher platforms, scholarly discovery services, Thai journal repositories, and institutional sources, supplemented by citation chaining. The synthesis develops a framework of layered belonging under negotiated mobility. Mobility begins with aspirations and capabilities situated within a regional opportunity structure; educational and other entry pathways provide uneven access to linguistic, social, and professional resources; and the conversion of these resources is mediated by language, digital and interpersonal networks, institutional support, and everyday competence while being filtered through visa rules, work authorization, employer dependence, occupational access, and public narratives. Belonging is therefore differentiated across six interdependent dimensions: affective-place, relational-social, functional-everyday, professional-economic, legal-institutional, and future-temporal. This framework explains why migrants may feel emotionally at home and socially connected in Thailand while remaining legally temporary, professionally dependent, or uncertain about long-term residence. The review clarifies the added value of the framework relative to place-belongingness, integration domains, social anchoring, and differentiated embedding; proposes six empirically testable propositions; and identifies implications for universities, employers, public agencies, and migrant-serving organizations.