Reframing sociologies of ethnicity and migration in encounters with Chinese London

In this paper I argue that the intersecting sociologies of ethnicity and migration work from a series of interconnected blind spots hindering effective analysis of the current UK situation. Both operate analytically within the limitations of an ‘immigrant problem’ framework; are overinvested in state agendas; privilege a nation state analysis; are narrowly focused on distributions of migrant bodies, and on receiving, at the expense of sending, contexts. Exploring these limitations with data derived from a modest small‐scale qualitative study of young Chinese migrants in London, I argue for a reframing along four dimensions. Firstly, in an era of elite migration, sociology could reach beyond its immigrant problem framework and open up to a broader range of UK migrant ethnicities and circumstances. Secondly, a stronger focus on cities as the scale on which lives are lived, and through which diverse streams of translocal activity are routed, would open new avenues of sociological exploration. Thirdly, including translocal activities connected with distributions of ethnic migrant bodies, such as capital transfers, would broaden its focus, taking migration and ethnicity more centrally into the analysis of globalization as one of its constituting practices. Finally, paying attention to sending, as well as arrival cities, reveals migrants’ thinking and shapes the ways in which they live, as my data shows. The Chinese are both one of the UK's neglected minorities, and one of its fastest growing populations. They are a good example of new UK migrants and they bring globalization's realignment with the rising significance of China to the UK.     

‘Reproduction mobility’ and motherhood construction: Chinese education migrants in Chiang Mai

‘ Reproduction mobility’ adopted in this article indicates a rising trend of social reproduction mobility serving the purpose of maintaining an alternative life that many middle-class Chinese parents, mostly mothers, are taking their children out of the hyper-competitive domestic education arena in mainland China to attend international schools in Chiang Mai. This escape implies macro-level changes in the global education market on two fronts: Chinese national education is enveloping families into a national education competition from which they cannot withdraw; meanwhile, Thailand's international education market is being industrialized as part of the neoliberal marketization of international education in less developed countries. This paper analyses the calculation, evaluation and agentive selection of Chinese families as they pursue an increasingly popular education project of reproduction mobility. It identifies different modes of mothering that are similar to the domestic phenomenon of ‘mothering brokerage’ but practised in the international education environment of Southeast Asia.     

Transnational families and their children's education: China's ‘study mothers’ in Singapore

Abstract For many middle‐income Asian families from the region's less developed countries, the education of children in a more developed country has become a major ‘project’ requiring the transnational relocation of one or more members of the family. As an aspiring global education hub, Singapore has been a recipient of many international students. In our article we examine the case of ‘study mothers’ from the People's Republic of China who accompany their children to Singapore during the course of the latter's study, while leaving their spouses at home. In the analysis we demonstrate that the transnational ‘project of education’ for these young Asian children hinges crucially on the notion and realization of the ‘sacrificial mother’. Unlike the women in elite Chinese transnational families who enter western countries as potential citizens and are able to regain their relatively privileged lifestyles after a period of transition, the study mothers are admitted to, and remain in, Singapore as transient sojourners whose lives are characterized by continuing challenges and fluidity.     

Leveraging symbolic capital: the use of blat networks across transnational spaces

In this article, we contribute to debates on how social networks sustain migrants' entrepreneurial activities. By reporting on 31 interviews with Eastern European migrants in the UK, we provide a critical lens on the tendency to assume that migrants have ready‐made social networks in the host country embedded in co‐ethnic communities. We extend this limited perspective by demonstrating how Eastern European migrants working in the UK transform blat social networks, formulated in the cultural and political contours of Soviet society, in their everyday lived experiences. Our findings highlight not only the monetarization of such networks but also the continuing embedded nature of trust existing within these networks, which cut across transnational spaces. We show how forms of social capital based on Russian language use and legacies of a shared Soviet past, are just as important as the role of ‘co‐ethnics’ and ‘co‐migrants’ in facilitating business development. In doing so, we present a more nuanced understanding of the role that symbolic capital plays in migrant entrepreneurial journeys and its multifaceted nature.     

‘Only Connect’: Unifying the social in social work and social media

‘Only Connect…live in fragments no longer’

(E.M. Forster, Howards End).

This paper utilises ‘Only Connect’, the epigraph from Forster’s novel ‘Howards End’ as the starting point for exploring the challenges and opportunities of integrating social networking with relationship based social work practice. The paper discusses the more deleterious implications of social networking, whilst assuming a deliberately optimistic stance to uncover ways in which the opportunities afforded by online space can be utilised effectively within social work education and practice. Whilst recognising that social networking platforms are transforming constantly, the paper adopts Kaplan’s definition of social media as a ‘group of internet based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0’. Whilst much of the discussion within the paper relates to Twitter and Facebook, two of the most endemic international social networking platforms, it is also applicable to myriad forms of social networking. The paper begins with a discussion of UK professional conduct cases and explores these both within Klein’s concept of splitting and historical attitudes to new technologies. Drawing from emerging research data and other examples, the positive relational practices educed by social media within social work education and practice are emphasised and discussed. The paper concludes by highlighting Forster’s plea for connection and recommending that social work embraces the renewed opportunities provided by online networking.     

Raising cosmopolitans: localized educational strategies of international families in Shanghai

This qualitative research documents the educational strategies of international migrants to Shanghai who are attempting to raise their children as cosmopolitans through immersion in local Chinese schools. We distinguish this localizing educational strategy from the established network of international schools designed to serve the families of corporate expatriates. Instead, our research subjects consist of self‐initiated expatriates, or ‘middling transnationals’, who have chosen to prioritize immersion in the language and culture of China by sending their children to local schools. This localized, or Sinocentric, model exposes non‐Chinese children to a challenging and nationalistic Chinese curriculum. Our analysis of these practices as a form of cosmopolitan education challenges both the goal of teaching a universal and placeless ethical cosmopolitanism and the assumption that a meaningful cosmopolitan education must take place in the idealized setting of a liberal cosmopolitan school system. We also highlight the difficulties families face in this approach, describing this as an ‘entangled cosmopolitanism’, an enriching but uncomfortable engagement with both local and home‐country educational cultures.     

Evaluating a Measure of ‘Social Orientation’ of Chinese Students in Social Work: Developing its Reliability and Validity

This study examines the reliability and validity of a measure of ‘social orientation’ indigenously developed from Chinese students of social work in Hong Kong. By administering two tests with Chinese social work students (n = 293 and n = 304) at associate degree level, the measure achieves strong internal consistency with r>0.75 and test–retest consistency with r>0.63. The instrument also has strong validity by attempting factor analysis of items generated from qualitative data in in‐depth interviews. The development of this indigenous measure of ‘social orientation’ will contribute to an understanding of the authoritarian, relationship and ‘other’ orientation of Chinese social work students. The authors propose that this will be a crucial factor in influencing the response of Chinese students towards different teaching and learning approaches in social work education.     

How social media transform migrant networks and facilitate migration

We argue that social media are not only new communication channels in migration networks, but also that they actively transform the nature of these networks and thereby facilitate migration. Despite some limitations, which stem from the ‘digital divide’ and the lower trustworthiness of virtual ties, qualitative data reveal four relevant ways in which social media facilitate international migration. First, they enhance the possibilities of maintaining strong ties with family and friends. Second, they address weak ties that are relevant to organizing the process of migration and integration. Third, they establish a new infrastructure consisting of latent ties. Fourth, they offer a rich source of insider knowledge on migration that is discrete and unofficial. This makes potential migrants ‘streetwise’ when undertaking migration. Based on these empirical findings we conclude that social media are transforming migration networks and thereby lowering the threshold for migration.     

WeChat use of mainland Chinese dual migrants in daily border crossing

Drawing on data derived from WeChat and the life experiences of its users, this study explores the daily affordances of WeChat in the cross-border lives of dual migrants from the Chinese mainland. In this study, 24 low-skilled Chinese dual migrants from the mainland who were working as security guards and cleaners were recruited to participate in in-depth interviews and group discussions. The lives of these dual migrants are marked politically, socially, and economically by their vulnerable status and by the stresses and vicissitudes that characterize their daily commute between Zhuhai (their place of residence) and Macao (their place of work). Dual migrants from the Chinese mainland use electronic media for support, pleasure, and access to information. One of the main online platforms they utilize is WeChat, a social networking site that is available on mobile phones. By framing these dual migrants’ usage of WeChat within the affordances of social media, this social networking site functions as a digital mediated space that provides migrants with communal solidarity, social interaction, access to information, and, in some cases, economic benefits.     

‘Car Talk’: automobility and Chinese international students in Michigan

The apparent conspicuous consumption of luxury vehicles by Chinese international students attending a public Michigan University provides an opportunity to examine the convergence of different ideas about automobility. Upwardly mobile Chinese families send their children to Michigan, a state with a tradition of auto-production, for educational opportunities not available in China. The resulting ‘car talk’ of local residents about Chinese students and their cars speaks to broader anxieties about Michigan’s shifting relationship to the global economy. However, the paper focuses on the meanings of auto-owning created by Chinese students who make decisions about the purchase and use of their autos within a social world oriented primarily to other Chinese students and societal ideas about auto-owning circulating among friends, family and society in China. For Chinese students, car owning encompasses meanings of status, safety and sociability that are created within the context of study abroad.     

Preferences for popular music in and outside school among Chinese secondary school students

During the last two decades, China has experienced the emergence of vibrant popular music, resulting from globalisation and commercialisation. This empirical study investigates Chinese secondary students' popular music preferences in daily life, and to what extent and in what ways they prefer learning about popular music in school in the city of Changsha. Based on the findings from the survey questionnaires completed by 1816 secondary school students and interviews with 45 students from 8 secondary schools, this study revealed that Chinese teenagers preferred popular music styles in their daily lives and in school, particularly popular songs from Mainland China, the USA and the UK. There was a strong relationship found between school music teachers and the students' preferences for learning popular songs. Many of the students surveyed had their own popular music idols, but they mostly maintained that they liked their music idols because of their songs' melodies and lyrics. The findings also showed that there was a gap between the students' preferences for popular music and the popular music styles taught in school music lessons. Despite the division of classical and popular music learning among Chinese youths, most students conceded that these two musical styles should be taught in school music education. This study's findings challenge the notion of how popular music education in a culturally diverse community can be improved, as well as stimulate further examination of young students' music preferences in and outside the school environment.     

A discourse of civilization/culture and nation/ethnicity from the perspective of inner Mongolia,China

After tracking the Chinese historical trajectory on the discursive relationship between Chinese civilization and the northern nomadic group, this paper examines the official discursive construction of the ‘civilization’ and ‘culture’ of ethnic minorities in contemporary China. Through the analysis of the Grassland Culture Research Project (caoyuanwenhua yanjiu xiangmu), an official project conducted in China in recent decades in response to the emergence of nomadic civilization studies as a distinct academic field, this article aims to show the way in which the concepts of civilization and culture are utilized in order to correspond to the official discourse of nation state and ethnicity in China, and the process by which Mongolian culture is thereby transformed. Civilization as a larger body supposed to include cultures was/is entitled to Chinese nation (zhonghua minzu), and a culture (wenhua) of a certain ethnic minority could only be a part of the Chinese civilization in Chinese academia today. ‘Grassland culture ’ is defined as a culture that is static, ahistorical, and therefore has to be reframed within the larger system of Chinese civilization. The concept of ‘grassland culture’ seems to be based more on the particular territory, rather than on the types of culture that have created and are owned by different ethnic groups. Therefore, it might be concluded that the project emphasized the geo-body of the Chinese nation state in order to retain the culture within the territory of China.     

Hybrid diaspora and identity-laundering: a study of the return overseas Chinese Vietnamese in Vietnam 1

Among the overseas Vietnamese around the world, many are Chinese Vietnamese. They fled from Vietnam for different political and economic reasons during the 1970s and the 1980s. Many of them have returned to Vietnam since the 1990s to work, invest or retire. What is interesting about these returned Chinese Vietnamese migrants is the fact that when they left Vietnam they were called by the Vietnamese the Hoa (華, Chinese) or Hoa ki?u (華僑, overseas Chinese) by the Vietnamese. This identity was actually one of the reasons for their escape. When they returned, they were lumped together with all other returnees into the category of Vi?t ki?u (越僑, overseas Vietnamese) and enjoyed the special rights offered by the Vi?t ki?u policy of the Vietnamese government, which was aimed at boosting the national economy. Although their ‘Chinese’ identity had once made them to risk their lives by sailing out on the roaring sea, their ‘Vietnamese’ identity brought them back to Vietnam at other turning points in their lives. The shifting identity of these Hoa ki?u-turned-Vi?t ki?u has produced an interesting migration story and an intriguing category of ‘hybrid diaspora.’     

Ethnic enclaves transcending space Chinese international students’ social networks in a European University town

ABSTRACT

Each ethnic enclave has its own idiosyncrasies, leading to disagreements as to the functions they serve for the migrants inhabiting them. However, three main functions may be identified across scholarly literature: shielding, economic and cultural. This article explores to what extent the spatial organization of the ethnic enclave is necessary for fulfilling these functions by taking the case of the Chinese international students in a Norwegian town. These students comprise a relatively cohesive group, and their conational social networks serve most of the same purposes of ethnic enclaves without the need for a separate neighbourhood. While most of their material needs are met, the students still express a lack of belonging, a need for a place that is ‘for us’, and they present an example of how an ethnic space is constructed without the need for a traditional ‘Chinatown’.     

Digital survivance and Trickster humor: exploring visual and digital Indigenous epistemologies in the #NoDAPL movement

ABSTRACT

The decolonizing turn in the humanities and social sciences calls for scholarship that analyzes social media practices through the lens of Indigenous epistemologies. In this article, we model the ways that Indigenous epistemologies might contribute to theories of social media practices as we explore ways that the digital image can drive identification with and engagement in political acts. The article analyzes social media tropes circulated across various platforms among Indigenous communities and allies in relation to the #NoDAPL movement. We argue that attempting to analyze Native American traditions through Western theory will only work towards colonizing these Indigenous texts. Thus, whereas we employ insights from digital and visual methods of analysis (Highfield, T., & Leaver, T. (2016). Instagrammatics and digital methods: Studying visual social media, from selfies and GIFs to memes and emoji. Communication Research and Practice, 2(1), 47–62), we also highlight the strategic use of humor in the visual materials shared through various social media platforms utilizing the framework of the Trickster. We argue that the visual and digital phenomena we studied might best be understood as a form of digital survivance, drawing upon Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor [(1994). Manifest manners: Postindian warriors of survivance. Hanover, CT: Wesleyan University Press]. term ‘survivance’ as a portmanteau that combines ‘survival’ and ‘resistance’ in its characterization of Indigenous storytelling traditions. Whereas centering the Indigenous figure of the Trickster might suggest that social media has failed to live up to its promises, this epistemological approach also explains the hope that Indigenous communities hold in uniting via social media for what has been and continues to be a long-term battle for sovereignty and for the protection of the earth and all of its beings.     

Migration,development and inequality: Eastern Punjabi transnationalism

Abstract Drawing on original, ethnographic research in India and the UK, in this article we discuss the impact of transnational activity on the Doaba region of East Punjab, India. We argue that some recent studies have underplayed some of the less progressive consequences of Indian transnationalism. In particular, we contend that they have underestimated the extent of division between transnational migrants and Indian non‐migrants and downplayed the relationship between transnationalism and caste inequality. This empirical study of transnationalism, when placed in the context of the dynamic caste relations of East Punjab, supports those who contend that access to international migration is becoming an increasingly significant component of contemporary global social stratification, with the ‘broad’ transnational processes of capitalist globalization driving the ‘narrow’ transnationalism studied here. In this article, we question any straightforwardly progressive relationship between transnationalism and ‘development’ within East Punjab, and suggest that the arguments presented have a resonance beyond northwest India.     

The struggle for ‘our streets’: the digital and physical spatial politics of the Ferguson Movement

ABSTRACT

The Ferguson Movement of 2014 and 2015 reached national salience immediately following the murder of Michael Brown, after residents took to social media platforms to report from what many activists called ‘ground zero.’ Some popular and scholarly conversations have couched the movement largely through its online manifestations; this study, however, places the movement within the intersections of digital and physical space as well as the broader political context of St. Louis. Triangulating data from 21 unstructured interviews with local activists in St. Louis, Missouri with GIS and digital media analysis, we illustrate how activists in the Ferguson Movement organized within St. Louis’ physical space and challenged popular arguments about resistance in digital space. Consequently, we argue that social movements’ placeness remain important despite recent emphases on digital media.     

Becoming Missionaries: Gender,Space and Subjectivities in Chinese Christian Communities in the UK

In recent years, single young women and married couples migrating from mainland China have constituted a prominent group engaging in ministry careers among Chinese Christian communities in the UK. By investigating how they construct meaning out of their career choices that were entangled in the binaries and contradictions of the past/present, home/diaspora, public/private, men/women and family/self, this study explores the complexity of gender, Christianity and space in a (late) socialist Chinese case, thereby revealing the paradoxical subjectivities of these Chinese ministers. The idea is advanced that apart from a structural demand for clergies from mainland China, the complex interaction between traditional, (late) socialist and Christian gender ideologies has also affected their choices. The interaction works as a ‘transformative mechanism’ which creates a new moral order in terms of gender relations, family relations and work ethics. The new order incurs a patriarchal backlash against women in this group as well as empowering them. This research explores an interesting relationship between feminism, socialism and Christianity.     

Why Migrant Smuggling Pays

Drawing on empirical research in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this article ‘follows the money’ for 50 migrants smuggled to the UK, to cast light on the financing of smuggling. The means used to raise the money to pay smugglers ranged from drawing on savings to selling property, land and jewellery. Payments were made to a third‐party, who did not release the payment to the smuggler until migrants had arrived in their destination ‐ effectively a ‘money‐back guarantee’ on smuggling. Smugglers disbursed about half of their fee to forgers, procurers of passports, airport officials and other intermediaries required to facilitate smuggling. Most migrants quickly found work in their destination and started remitting soon after their arrival. On average remittances were at a sufficient level to repay the initial outlay on smugglers’ fees after two years, and thereafter remittances on average more than doubled household incomes at home. In this case study, smuggling therefore paid for the range of intermediaries involved in facilitating it, for migrants themselves, and for migrants’ households at home.     

Regrounding the ‘Ungrounded Empires’:localization as the geographical catalyst for transnationalism

The emerging literature on transnationalism has reshaped the study of immigration in the USA from ‘melting pot’ and later ‘salad bowl’, to ‘switching board’, which emphasizes the ability of migrants to forge and maintain ties to their home countries. Often under the heading of ‘transnationalism from below’, these studies highlight an alternative form of globalization, in which migrants act as active agents to initiate and structure global interactions. The role of geography, and in particular, localization in transnational spaces, is central to the transnationalism debate, but is yet to be well articulated. While it has been commonly claimed that transnationalism represents deterritorialized practices and organizations, we argue that it is in fact rooted in the territorial division of labour and local community networks in immigrant sending and receiving countries. We examine closely two business sectors engaged in by the Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles: high‐tech firms and accounting firms. Each illustrates, respectively, the close ties of Chinese transnational activities with the economic base of the Los Angeles region, and the contribution of local‐based, low‐wage, small ethnic businesses to the transnational practices. We conclude that deeper localization is the geographical catalyst for transnational networks and practices.