Contesting Chineseness

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Ang

Nearly eleven million Chinese migrants live outside of China. While many of these faces of China’s globalization headed for the popular Western destinations of the United States, Australia and Canada, others have been lured by the booming Asian economies. Compared with pre-1949 Chinese migrants, most are wealthier, motivated by a variety of concerns beyond economic survival and loyal to the communist regime. The reception of new Chinese migrants, however, has been less than warm in some places. In Singapore, tensions between Singaporean-Chinese and new Chinese arrivals present a puzzle: why are there tensions between ethnic Chinese settlers and new Chinese arrivals despite similarities in phenotype, ancestry and customs? Drawing on rich empirical data from ethnography and digital ethnography, Contesting Chineseness investigates this puzzle and details how ethnic Chinese subjects negotiate their identities in an age of contemporary Chinese migration and China’s ascent.

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 160940692091031
Author(s):  
Chien-Juh Gu

Qualitative interviewing is a broadly used method of data collection, but its discussions have rarely been situated in ethnic-Chinese contexts and immigrant communities. What factors are crucial for conducting effective interviews with ethnic-Chinese subjects? In what contexts do general principles not apply, thereby needing adjustments, and how? Reflecting on the experience of interviewing approximately 100 Taiwanese immigrants in the United States, I discuss the importance of mindfulness, cultural sensitivity, and triangulation. I argue that researchers need to be mindful of the potential effects of interviewers’ and interviewees’ structural positions on the interview process, quality, and outcomes. Cultural understanding is necessary when assessing ethical issues and designing interview questions. However, researchers also need to set aside their knowledge of ethnic-Chinese culture from time to time in order to capture the nuanced cultural meanings. Finally, conducting ethnographic observations helps researchers understand the lived contexts of subjects’ experiences and their varied interpretations. Using examples from two research projects, I illustrate significant factors that facilitate or hinder the proceeding of qualitative interviewing with ethnic-Chinese subjects. These reflections foster researchers’ understanding and practice of reflexivity at the crossroads of methods and ethnic culture.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean H. Wang

This chapter focuses on the development of the Chinese birth tourism industry and its intra-Asian operations. It discusses Chinese birth tourism away from the United States. The chapter focuses on existing regional linkages, such as long-standing but small-scale informal birth tourism from Taiwan and a brief surge of Chinese birth tourism to Hong Kong in the 2000s, that buttress China–United States birth tourism networks. It also focuses on birth tourism agencies' operations in China and Taiwan. The chapter examines the emerging literature by providing empirics on Chinese birth tourism agencies' operations and, to a lesser extent, prospective birth tourists' experiences at these agencies. The chapter focuses on intra-Asian infrastructures of contemporary Chinese birth tourism industry, describing separately for birth agencies in China and Taiwan their modes of recruitment, clientele demographics and scales of operations. It demonstrates, contemporary ethnic Chinese birth tourism to the United States is overwhelmingly commercialised and draws its clientele from both sides of the Taiwan Strait.


Author(s):  
Phil Zuckerman ◽  
Kyle Thompson

Despite widespread suspicion to the contrary, secular living can and does serve as an adequate, or even excellent, context for moral development. In this chapter, the authors present the contours of contemporary anti-atheist prejudice, with an emphasis on the United States. Next, they explore the empirical data showing that individual atheists and highly secularized societies, such as Sweden and Denmark, are often quite moral, which serves to counter and debunk anti-atheist prejudice. Then, the authors move to a philosophical discussion centering around secular morality itself, outlining general merits of atheistic morality specifically while simultaneously pointing out various problematic assumptions of theistic morality. Finally, the authors conclude and make recommendations for future research.


2021 ◽  
pp. 019791832199478
Author(s):  
Wanli Nie ◽  
Pau Baizan

This article investigates the impact of international migration to the United States on the level and timing of Chinese migrants’ fertility. We compare Chinese women who did not leave the country (non-migrants) and were subject to restrictive family policies from 1974 to 2015 to those who moved to the United States (migrants) and were, thus, “emancipated” from these policies. We theoretically develop and empirically test the emancipation hypothesis that migrants should have a higher fertility than non-migrants, as well as an earlier timing of childbearing. This emancipation effect is hypothesized to decline across birth cohorts. We use data from the 2000 US census, the 2005 American Community Survey, the 2000 Chinese census, and the 2005 Chinese 1 percent Population Survey and discrete-time event history models to analyze first, second, and third births, and migration as joint processes, to account for selection effects. The results show that Chinese migrants to the United States had substantially higher childbearing probabilities after migration, compared with non-migrants in China, especially for second and third births. Moreover, our analyses indicate that the migration process is selective of migrants with lower fertility. Overall, the results show how international migration from China to the United States can lead to an increase in migrant women’s fertility, accounting for disruption, adaptation, and selection effects. The rapidly increased fertility after migration from China to the United States might have implications on other migration contexts where fertility in the origin country is dropping rapidly while that in the destination country is relatively stable.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-56
Author(s):  
Leander Seah (謝枝嶙)

Global port cities have played important roles in the migration of ethnic Chinese worldwide. This article argues that the scholarship on Chinese migration between port cities in East Asia and Southeast Asia has overemphasized business and trading networks. It suggests instead that other topics should be examined since Chinese migration has been complex and multi-faceted. This article does so through analyzing the history of Nanyang studies, a Chinese-language scholarly field that is renowned among Chinese intellectuals in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Nanyang studies began with the establishment of the Nanyang Cultural Affairs Bureau at Jinan University, the first school in China for Chinese migrants, because the Bureau was the first systematic attempt by China-based scholars to study the Nanyang (Southeast Asia). This article analyzes the history of Nanyang studies from the Bureau’s founding in 1927 to 1940, when the center for Nanyang studies shifted to Singapore in the Nanyang. 全球港口城市和全球華人移民已有密切關係。本文認為,關於東亞和東南亞的港口城市之間華人移民的學術著作過度注重商業貿易網絡。它建議由於華人移民是複雜的,多方面的,所以其他議題也有重要性。因此,本文將通過南洋研究的歷史而分析華人移民。南洋研究在東亞和東南亞是個著名的學術領域。它的起源於南洋文化教育事業部之暨南大學的創辦。這是因為暨南是中國第一所華僑華人學府,而南洋文化教育事業部是中國學者第一個正式研究南洋(東南亞)的機構。本文將分析南洋研究的歷史,從成立於1927年到1940年轉移到南洋之中的新加坡為止。 (This article is in English).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nivedita Rethnakar

Abstract This paper investigates the mortality statistics of the COVID-19 pandemic from the United States perspective. Using empirical data analysis and statistical inference tools, we bring out several exciting and important aspects of the pandemic, otherwise hidden. Specific patterns seen in demo- graphics such as race/ethnicity and age are discussed both qualitatively and quantitatively. We also study the role played by factors such as population density. Connections between COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases are also covered in detail. The temporal dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak and the impact of vaccines in controlling the pandemic are also looked at with suf- ficient rigor. It is hoped that statistical inference such as the ones gathered in this paper would be helpful for better scientific understanding, policy prepa- ration and thus adequately preparing, should a similar situation arise in the future.


Author(s):  
Igor Vukadinović

After the Second World War, a large number of members of the fascist regime of the Kingdom of Albania found refuge in Italy, Turkey and the countries of Western Europe, where they continued to politically act. The leading political options in exile - Balli Kombetar, Zogists and pro-Italian National Independent Bloc, decided to cooperate with each other, so they have formed the Albanian National Committee in 1946. The turning point for the Albanian extreme emigration in the West is Operation Valuable, by which the United States and Great Britain sought to overthrow the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha in Albania. Although the operation failed, strong ties were forged between US and British intelligence and Albanian nacionalist emigration, which were further intensified in the 1960s. Xhafer Deva, who was dedicated to act on the annexation of Kosovo and Metohija to Albania, immigrated to the United States in 1956 and established cooperation with the CIA. Albanian emigration in the West applied different methods in politics towards Kosovo and Metohija. Some organizations, such as Xhafer Deva's Third Prizren League, have focused on lobbying Western intelligence. The Bali Kombetar Independent, headquatered in Rome, paid particular attention to working with Albanian high school and student youth in Kosovo and Metohija. The Alliance of Kosovo, formed in 1949, was engaged in subtle methods of involving Albanian nationalists in Yugoslav state structures, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav People's Army, and educational and health institutions in Kosovo and Metohija. Albanian emigration was also involved in violent demonstrations in Kosovo and Metohija in 1968, and cooperated on this issue with the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha in Albania.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Brad Vermurlen

This introductory chapter opens with a brief summary of the big picture. It then establishes the existence of a New Calvinist movement in the United States since the turn of the millennium while acknowledging that the reality of the movement is itself a part of the puzzle. The chapter then provides an overview of the empirical data collected for this book, which includes participant observation at three (wildly popular) New Calvinist megachurches across the country, personal interviews with seventy-five Evangelical leaders (including New Calvinists and their religious challengers), and content analysis of printed and online materials, as well as how these data were analyzed. This chapter includes a section that responds to five common misconceptions about the nature and approach of this project. It ends with a summary of the narrative arc of the rest of the book, broken down by chapters.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1097184X1987278
Author(s):  
Adam Baird

Belize has one of the highest homicide rates in the world; however, the gangs at the heart of this violence have rarely been studied. Using a masculinities lens and original empirical data, this article explores how Blood and Crip “gang transnationalism” from the United States of America flourished in Belize City. Gang transnationalism is understood as a “transnational masculinity” that makes cultural connections between local settings of urban exclusion. On one hand, social terrains in Belize City generated masculine vulnerabilities to the foreign gang as an identity package with the power to reconfigure positions of subordination; on the other, the establishment of male gang practices with a distinct hegemonic shape, galvanized violence and a patriarchy of the streets in already marginalized communities. This article adds a new body of work on gangs in Belize, and gang transnationalism, whilst contributing to theoretical discussions around the global to local dynamics of hegemonic masculinities discussed by Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) and Messerschmidt (2018).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document