Asian and Pacific Migration Journal

In the early 20th century, modern school curricula and new-style schools mushroomed in the Chinese remittance landscape of southern China. Breaking away from the two-and-a-half millennia of Confucian tradition, their creation marked a pivotal point of departure between the nation’s past and future. Since overseas migration and modern education both provide a fruitful context for the circulation of new objects and a cross-fertilization of ideas, new schools serve as barometers of social-material change. Research in the present-day cities of Zhongshan and Zhuhai (formerly Heung San County) suggests that diaspora-funded schools were beacons of modern learning within the China–Australia corridor. Both their physical structures and material manifestations invited a new engagement with the modern world.

The past decades have witnessed a burgeoning literature on guiqiao (Returned Overseas Chinese) in the People’s Republic of China. These works have advanced and broadened research in this field; however, there is a persistent male bias that tends to ignore the gendered nature of migration processes or simplistically frame the return migration of women through a monolithic masculine/patriotic lens. To fill this gap, this paper looks at gendered motivations behind the ‘return’ of Chinese women from Indonesia in the 1950s. Seeing gender as ‘a central organizing principle in migration flows and in the organization of migrants lives’ (Lutz 2010: 1651) and drawing upon interviews and archival studies, it suggests that the ‘return’ of Chinese women to Maoist China was closely associated with postcolonial feminist imagination, or more specifically, a longing for ‘emancipated womanhood,’ in a transnational context mediated by citizenship and ethnicity. In addition, the experiences of female guiqiao as voluntary migrants and successful careerists challenge the (mis)conception of Chinese women migrants as trailing dependents, adding a counter narrative to the overarching androcentric discourse about Chinese migration from a historical perspective.

Lee Kum Kee (LKK) is the largest and best-known Chinese sauce brand in the world. The Hong Kong-based family enterprise, which originated in South China in 1888, has prospered through its worldwide oyster sauce trading network built among the Chinese diaspora. This paper examines the rise of LKK from the perspective of its network resources. It appears that LKK’s dynamics with the ‘old’ and ‘new’ overseas Chinese communities are rather different: while it maintains its hold on the former, it has just begun to tap into the network resources of the latter. Hong Kong as a key hub of the Chinese diaspora was crucial in the construction of LKK’s trading network. It also shaped the identity of LKK, making LKK first and foremost a Hong Kong Chinese enterprise rather than a Chinese enterprise.

Singapore has served as a strategic hub of immigration in Southeast Asia over the past two centuries since its founding as an entrepot in 1819. It is not only due to its geographic location at the crossroads between the East and West, but also to its vibrant social and business organizations that have provided effective institutional links both within Southeast Asia and between the region and China. This has, in turn, contributed to the making of Singapore as a key migration corridor among the Chinese diaspora. An overlooked institutional link in this corridor is qiaopi, the remittances-cum-letters sent home by Chinese immigrants from the 1820s to the 1980s, which was part of the intra-regional circulation of capital, goods, people and information. Qiaopi was officially selected into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) “Memory of the World” Register in 2013, thus demonstrating its heritage significance. This paper examines the role of the qiaopi trade in establishing and consolidating Singapore’s place as the most important migrant corridor in Southeast Asia. It also discusses qiaopi from a transnational perspective of diasporic heritage and its contemporary relevance to the heritage corridor.

Transnational migration brings to the fore the various social and professional connections migrants maintain with their home and sojourn countries. Drawing on a qualitative case study with 12 Chinese transnational academics in the field of the social sciences and humanities in three higher education institutions in Beijing, China, this article explores their transnational ways of being and belonging. Informed by the theoretical lens of transnational diaspora, our study indicates that the concept of “returnee” is too restricted to capture the transnational work and learning practices and the self-identification of Chinese transnational academics. Our analysis reveals that the study-abroad experience as a PhD student shapes the multiple and simultaneous ways of being and ways of belonging of the transnational academics in relation to China, the host countries where they pursued doctoral studies and, increasingly, de-territorialized transnational academic communities. Mobilizing digital communication technologies, they create spaces to negotiate their identities as researchers, ethnic Chinese and members of transnational academic communities. Their work and learning in transnational spaces have contributed to the formation of virtual transnational diaspora characterized by the inter-dependence of academics across borders.

This research note uses the rise of Aw Boon Haw’s dynastic family businesses across Asia to illustrate Chinese migrant entrepreneurs’ business development and dynamism. Although it is known that the management and operation of Chinese migrant family businesses do have disadvantages, there is substantial evidence that family control and network capital can facilitate their business endeavors. Through the case of the Aw family business, it was found that by using key strategies of family control and its network capital, even though their migrant background posed multi-layered disadvantages, the Aw family was able to rise from rags to riches in the medicine and newspaper businesses. Not only did their migrant background not restrict Aw family business growth, it fostered its expansion in the region and the world.

The Chinese and Indian diasporas constituted two of the most massive migration flows in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet they were seldom compared. This commentary explores one of their key differences, namely, how they handled their lost souls. For the Chinese migrants of that period, what they dreaded most was dying alone in a foreign land and becoming a stray ghost. Their fervent wish was for their bones and souls to be reunited with their forebears in the ancestral graves. Much effort was made individually and collectively to ensure that this final wish would be realized. However, for the Hindu migrants, the same dread induced quite a different response. Their physical remains were of little importance to them. There was no urgency in seeking a return of their souls to their ancestral land. Their fervent wish was for their souls to be ritually purified and reunited with their ancestors in the sacred cosmos. This commentary further examines how these cultural differences also bear on how Chinese and Hindu migrants differ in their remittance behavior, network patterns and homeland ties.

This article examines how food practices contribute to the lived experience of the West African diaspora in Hong Kong. Drawing on in-depth interviews and participant observations of Africans in different African restaurants, grocery stalls and cultural events, this article proposes the concept of a “culinary diaspora space” to examine how they navigate spaces of solidarity and struggle during their integration process through African food-related practices. It highlights the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are contested by revealing the practical and symbolic roles played by migrants’ traditional food culture throughout the integration process. This research argues that African food outlets are a space of social frictions but also of possible cultural encounters between the Africans and Hong Kong Chinese. By focusing on food-related practices, this research demonstrates how the West African diaspora is felt, embodied and perceived by the host society.