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masthead
table of contents
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Journal of Chinese OverseasNovember 2006: volume 2, number 2articles Why China Historians Should Study the Chinese Diaspora, and Vice-versa? Philip A. KUHN Transnationalism as a New Mode of Immigrant Labor Market Incorporation: Preliminary Evidence from Chinese Transnational Migrants Philip YANG Extending the three now well-known modes of immigrant labor market incorporation formulated by sociologist Alejandro Portes in 1981, this article proposes that transnationalism can be viewed as a new mode of immigrant labor market incorporation in the age of globalization. The article conceptualizes this new mode of immigrant incorporation and illustrates it with data from unstructured interviews of Chinese transnational migrants in the US and in China. It is found that the transnational mode of incorporation often offers Chinese transnational migrants business and career opportunities and rewards not available in other modes of incorporation, although it sometimes involves risks, uncertainties, and difficulties. Chinese transmigrants with a higher initial social standing, an advanced training, and a dense network are more likely to experience upward social mobility than those without such advantages. Implications of the arguments and findings are also discussed. Both transnationality and its evolving nature have been the persistent themes of many studies. However, they have often been considered separately, producing insufficient evidence to explain why migrants and their communities have acted in transnational ways and how transnationality repeatedly acts on diasporic identity. This article will use the data collected in the Chinese community in Australia to explore the correlation between the transnationality of individual migrants and the evolving nature of their diasporic identities. The discussion will outline and analyze various transnational activities that have taken place in the community since the early 1990s, focusing on their form, content and trajectory, as well as their organizational structures and meaning. The article will conclude with an explanation about why community members initiate the transnational activities, what goals they have set for their transnational lives and how transnationality and their identity are correlated. Expanding the Cantonese Diaspora: Sojourners and Settlers in the West River Basin Steven B. Miles This article describes Cantonese migrants along the West River basin linking the two southern Chinese provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong during Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) times. Based primarily on genealogies of Pearl River delta lineages, the article examines a range of interconnected activities - including land settlement, commerce, and temporary sojourning in order to win civil service examination degrees - that Cantonese sojourners and settlers pursued outside the delta. These delta genealogies also prove to be valuable sources for the study of Cantonese overseas migration. In fact, many of the families discussed in this article sent sojourners both upriver along the West River basin and abroad to Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Thus, the author argues that the West River trajectory was an important component of the larger Cantonese diaspora.
This article examines the discovery and appropriation of the Chinese diaspora in nationalistic and literary discourse in early 20th-century China. The overseas Chinese experience entered into the main field of vision of the Chinese intellectuals at a strategic moment at the turn of the century, when the diasporic frontier was uncovered only to be re-incorporated into the nationalistic imagination. This analysis begins with a look at Liang Qichao's ambivalent attitude toward the overseas Chinese whom he praised as national colonial heroes on the one hand, and denigrated for tarnishing China's image abroad on the other. In the context of national survival and the theory of evolution, Chinese laborers were hailed by some writers as the exception to the rule of extinction of the unfit. This representation was in no small part reinforced by literary and fictional writings about post-apocalyptic societies where the Chinese once again found their proper role of leadership and dominance over other races. After examining the hitherto largely unknown novels and stories on the subject, the discussion ends with an analysis of the 1906 novel, Icy Mountains and Snowy Seas, set in the 24th century in a brave new world near the South Pole.
This article aims to illustrate the trading culture of jade stones by examining the social life of the traded stones in their transnational movement from Burma to Thailand during the period of the Burmese socialist regime. Drawing on the work of the well-known anthropologist, Appadurai, I adopt a perspective emphasizing processes to look into the complex intersection of economic, political, and cultural factors relating to repeated transactions. These factors include the politics of organization, the politics of knowledge, personal guts, and the uncontrollable factor of luck. The research shows that market laws entwined with intricate socio-political forces of the region were the driving force in the exercise of the trade beyond national boundaries.
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