This project examines, how, through educational mobility, the economic, educational, and housing transformations of one city in China influence the class and racial relations of another in the United States (US). Drawing on theories from education, urban geography, migration studies, and transnational racial theories, this research connects internal migration in China to the transnational migration between China and the US. It documents family migration trajectories to China's Pearl River Delta (PRD) after the 1980s and shows how the family wealth and capital accumulated in the PRD facilitate the market-driven globalization of higher education and gentrification in the US. The ethnography (2017-19) follows a group of Chinese students as they migrated between Shenzhen, a rapidly urbanizing city in China's PRD, and the city I called Lakeside, a gentrifying university town in the US Midwest. Through my analysis, I argue that the wealth and social capital Chinese families accumulated during China's open-up and urbanization processes have translated into the foundation of their pursuit of transnational education. Educational mobility has become a means for Chinese elite class to secure socioeconomic privileges over those who are not mobile. In addition, transnational education has become a crucial part of China's nation-building in an era of intensified nationalism and globalization. While Chinese students and their families are seeking education opportunities transnationally, their everyday lives overseas are largely structured by their homeland. Further, the families' pursuit of an elite lifestyle manifested into the consumption of luxury housing in China and abroad. In particular, the booming luxury student housing carves out an exclusive geography where the wealth produced in China's urbanization translates into a gentrifying force, exacerbating the urban housing crisis for local low-income residents, particularly residents of color. Luxury housing has also become an important mechanism for Chinese students, who take up whiteness ideologies and China's state discourses on race and ethnicity, to separate themselves from local Black, Latinx, and Asian American communities. Both whiteness ideology and China's state discourse of homogeneity, unity, and ethnic harmony aim to consolidate differences to elevate the interests and values of dominant groups. Ultimately, this project illustrates the transnational nature of class, race, and spatial construction by looking at the inextricable links between education and urban spaces, and the fluidity between internal and international migration in the neoliberal era of global higher education. It aims to show that none of these processes, such as the urbanization in China, cross-border educational migration, racialization and gentrification in the university town, are natural, inevitable or confined to the borders of a single nation-state. Rather, they have been planned and facilitated by states, corporations, universities, and individuals. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]