Desired or disillusioned urban dreams? How Weibo discursively construct digitalized cruel mobility for Chinese skilled migrants

Anchored in the “ Hegang ” phenomenon and the recent contradictory buzzwords on Weibo, this study proposes a theoretical framework of digitalized cruel mobility that demonstrates how digital discourses on social media platforms do not merely reflect but actively construct and intensify a forced, cyclical mobility of young skilled migrants between two objects of cruel optimism. Through a qualitative analysis of Weibo discourses and supplementary Hegang -migrants’ interviews, this study draws upon the concepts of “cruel optimism,” “cruel (im)mobility,” and “cruel optimism of mobility,” further unpacking the complicated paradoxes and cyclic dynamics of hope and cruelty constructed by skilled migrants on Weibo. The findings demonstrate the precarity of fendou dreams in first-tier cities, shown in the paradoxes of material and affective aspects, while migrants discursively construct and imagine Hegang as their hopeful promises and alternative desires. However, such new promises have ended up being debated and critiqued, which leads to a new cruel optimism of mobility.