Migrating Fujianese

With the Fujian coast at its center, this book reveals the intellectual, migratory and gendered relationships that tied Fijian to the Chinese imperial domain and to its overseas networks. This Fujian study also offers ways to analyze local histories of late imperial China from a more global perspective. Based on a wide range of sources, such as business contracts, legal documents, women’s writings, and folksongs, Migrating Fujianese elucidates China’s southeast coast and its migration patterns. Examining this multi-ethnic migrant community through the lens of ethnicity shows the complex operation of linked chain migration (overseas male emigration and overland family migration by the ethnic She people) and its impact on the gender relations and family strategies of the coastal people. The study argues that examination of Fujianese migration through the lenses of gender and ethnicity is crucial to understanding the relationship between the flow of people and the society nourishing that flow.

This book investigates the origins and mechanics of recent Chinese migration, focusing on the work and life of Fujianese migrants in the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Italy, and exploring the many transnational spaces that connect Fujianese across Europe, the United States, and China.

Over one million Chinese nationals live in Europe and this pattern of migration has brought benefits both to Europe and China. This report considers recent research findings regarding the main trends in Chinese migration to Europe, with a particular focus on migration from the Fujian province in order to examine changing emigration trends. The report identifies the principal gaps in the knowledge of Chinese migration to Europe, looks at the policy implications of this new research, and suggests future areas for study.

This report presents recent findings regarding main trends in Chinese migration to Europe and detailed discussions on the particular characteristics of Fujianese flows. It demonstrates that migrants from the central and western parts of the Fujian province are shaping changing migration patterns and creating new trends. The report also describes the professional assistance received by these new migrants in the migration process.

Controlling a New Migration World explores the factors that drive recent migration control policies and, in turn, sheds light on the unintended consequences of policies for the new character of migration. This book asks how we can account for the immigration policies of liberal states. Is the recent linkage between migration and security a rhetorical invention of elites or a reflection of changing migrant profiles? Are states' control policies effectively containing or only redirecting unwanted migration flows? This increasingly relevant issue will be of great use to anyone working in comparative politics, sociology and studying ethnicity or international migration, as well as professionals working in the migrant/asylum and public law fields.

A concise and compelling survey of Chinese migration in global history centered on Chinese migrants and their families.

Ong Soon Keong explores the unique position of the treaty port Xiamen (Amoy) within the China-Southeast Asia migrant circuit and examines its role in the creation of Chinese diasporas. Coming Home to a Foreign Country addresses how migration affected those who moved out of China and later returned to participate in the city's economic revitalization, educational advancement, and urban reconstruction. Ong shows how the mobility of overseas Chinese allowed them to shape their personal and community identities for pragmatic and political gains. This resulted in migrants who returned with new money, knowledge, and visions acquired abroad, which changed the landscape of their homeland and the lives of those who stayed. Placing late Qing and Republican China in a transnational context, Coming Home to a Foreign Country explores the multilayered social and cultural interactions between China and Southeast Asia. Ong investigates the role of Xiamen in the creation of a China-Southeast Asia migrant circuit; the activities of aspiring and returned migrants in Xiamen; the accumulation and manipulation of multiple identities by Southeast Asian Chinese as political conditions changed; and the motivations behind the return of Southeast Asian Chinese and their continual involvement in mainland Chinese affairs. For Chinese migrants, Ong argues, the idea of "home" was something consciously constructed. Ong complicates familiar narratives of Chinese history to show how the emigration and return of overseas Chinese helped transform Xiamen from a marginal trading outpost at the edge of the Chinese empire to a modern, prosperous city and one of the most important migration hubs by the 1930s.

Chinese students are the largest international student population in the world, and Japan attracts more of them than any other country. Since the mid-1980s when China opened the door to let private citizens out and Japan began to let more foreigners in, over 300 thousand Chinese have arrived in Japan as students. Student migrants are the most visible, controversial and active Chinese immigrants in Japan. The majority of them enter Japan’s labour market and many have stayed on indefinitely. Based on the author’s original fieldwork data and government statistics, this book gives a comprehensive portrayal of an often neglected group of international migrants in a society that for decades has been considered a non-immigrant country. It introduces Chinese students’ diverse mobility trajectories, analyses their career patterns, describes their transnational living arrangements, and explores the mechanisms that give rise to their identity as 'new overseas Chinese'. This book contributes to our understanding of international migration and international education in an age of globalization. It points out that student migrants are key to the internationalization of Japanese society, and potentially in other countries where immigration is still considered a challenging reality. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, Sociology and Labour Studies.

This unique study explores the relationship between informal financial systems, illegal migration and human smuggling. Focusing on Chinese illegal immigrants working in the US, it examines the motivation and patterns of the use of illegal fund transfer systems, providing a revealing insight into the workings of Chinese underground banks.