Aspirations as territorial assemblages: refrains and the future imaginaries of university students in Hong Kong

Youth aspirations in Hong Kong are shaped by intersecting postcolonial, neoliberal, and geopolitical forces, including Greater Bay Area integration, pandemic disruption, and digital transformation. Drawing on interviews and focus group discussions with 110 university students in 2022, this study applies Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of refrains as territorial assemblages to offer a new theorisation of how aspirations are formed through encounters with overlapping milieus. The analysis traces how rhythmic motifs and counterpoints (economic prosperity, socio-political uncertainty, familial obligation) stabilise and destabilise aspirational orientations. It examines how students regroup heterogeneous forces and reorganise functions into expressive territories oriented towards social impact, work-life balance, and well-being. The findings demonstrate that aspirations are relational, emergent, and provisional, assembled through creative navigational practices rather than fixed as individual goals, advancing the conceptual vocabulary for understanding youth aspiration-making under crisis and rapid structural transformation.