This panel investigates the experiences and challenges of Chinese migrants globally, addressing responses to racism in Canada, language ideologies among first-generation immigrants, the dynamics of new Chinese migration to Thailand, and issues of citizenship and inequality in contemporary China.
Weiguo Zhang
University of Toronto, Associate Professor
Title:
Responding to Racism by Chinese Immigrants in Canada
Abstract:
We seek to explore the responses of individual Chinese immigrants to racism and consider the structural and cultural factors that shape these responses. Our study utilizes thematic analysis of nine focus group discussions involving 48 participants, encompassing individuals of varying genders and age groups in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, conducted between December 2021 and January 2022. Our findings reveal that (a) responses to racism among participants ranged from doing nothing to employing strategies such as avoidance, withdrawal, seeking assistance, reporting incidents, educating perpetrators, or directly confronting perpetrators; (b) contrary to stereotypes depicting Chinese immigrants as passive and non-confrontational, some individuals displayed direct, active, and assertive responses to instances of racism, albeit rarely resorting to violence. We contend that the resistance of Chinese immigrants to racism is nuanced and contextualized, shaped by a blend of cultural influences from both their home and host societies, while also constrained by their marginalized status and limited power within a systemically racist host society.
Fang Xu
University of California Berkeley, Continuing Lecturer
Title:
"You need to speak better English than Americans!”: First-generation Chinese immigrants’ language ideologies from a trans-sectional perspective
Abstract:
This paper is part of a larger California-based project examining non-native English speaking, first-generation immigrants’ language practices, language attitudes, and language ideologies, all with an eye towards the notion, “be American, speak English.” This paper focuses on 170 cases of first-generation immigrants from Asian countries and regions who speak a variant of Chinese language astheir mother tongue. The interviews were collected through an undergraduate sociolinguistics course between 2017 and 2022. Through a trans-sectional lens, this study aims to show the complexity of their translanguaging experience, and how embodied raciolinguistic ideology persistently sets them apart from identifying as American. In examining such a phenomenon among transnational, multilingual subjects, a trans-sectional approach not only embraces the multitude and palimpsests of the subjects’ opinions and experiences, also frees researchers from our own monoglot ideology. For non-white and non-native English speaker Chinese immigrants, they do not “look American,” but in their mind, they can try to sound American, i.e. speak English with an American accent, to seek and acquire acceptance. Their legal status, educational level, professional career, financial capacity or lifestyle notwithstanding, they are aware that they can never truly belong, when in their own minds, being American means being white and possessing the “correct” linguistic capital to be recognized as a native speaker – native speaker as “a static, monolithic, and privileged inner-circle norm against which all others are evaluated” (Aneja 2016, pp. 361). According to the trans-sectional indexicality, first-generation immigrants’ experiences tell a story of constant negotiation, struggle, and reconciliation to the fact that individual agency can only achieve so much when Americanness is mostly misconceptualized and internalized as a racio-ethnic category in U.S. society. (Refer to the speaker's profile page for full abstract)
Siripetch Trisanawadee
Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University, Assistant Professor
Title:
The New Chinese Migrants in Thailand
Abstract:
Concerns about the political and economic situation in China are the driving reason behind the current surge of Chinese migration to Thailand, which is the subject of this inquiry. This increase in Chinese migration to Thailand has been observed in recent years. According to the conclusions of the study, 45.71 percent of Chinese business owners who were surveyed had already left China or were making plans to leave the country. This information was derived from the survey information. Concerns about the country's weak rule of law and the absence of clear business regulations were cited as the grounds for their withdrawal from the country. Furthermore, 42.86 percent of the respondents expressed high levels of anxiety, while 35.71 percent exhibited moderate levels of concern [1].
The hunger for better economic opportunities overseas and the demand for Chinese workers to staff overseas companies by the Chinese government are two of the most major factors that are driving this migration. There are a number of other factors that are also driving this movement. Additionally, domestic job opportunities have become less appealing as a consequence of the increasing competition and the declining starting income for Chinese graduates [1]. Also, the
competition has increased. (Refer to the speaker's profile page for full abstract)
Alexsia Chan
Hamilton College, Associate Professor of Government
Title:
Pliable Citizenship and Migrant Inequality in the Xi Jinping Era
Abstract:
Why has urban public service provision for migrant workers remained uneven and devolved to local governments in China? This is especially puzzling given that this has continued at the same time Xi Jinping has centralized authority in many other policy areas, both domestic and foreign. His administration has ushered in an anti-corruption campaign, Belt and Road Initiative projects, and a greater commitment to improving the quality of life of Chinese citizens. But while he has poured resources in the first two, the last remains left to local governments to formulate and implement policies for outsiders living and working in their cities.
I argue that public service provision for migrants remains patchy and devolved to local government control because inequality serves the state. There has been more continuity than change between administrations in this particular governance issue. Local authorities enact social control through the contingent delivery of social services, and these practices have continued apace under Xi because they work well enough to support other state goals, namely economic development and social stability. It allows the central government to claim commitments to increasing equality while municipal governments can maintain a labor force for whom they do not have to provide the full set of services. However, decentralized benefits are not designed to improve the overall welfare of a group of people defined by their movement and mobility. (Refer to the speaker's profile page for full abstract)
