Chinese Migration And Economic Relations With Europe

This book explores how far existing networks of overseas Chinese and new flows of migrants act as drivers of economic relations between China and the host countries. It considers migration, trade, the flow of capital, and foreign direct investment, includes both skilled and unskilled migrants, and outlines the complex different waves of migration flows. It includes detailed case studies, based on extensive original research, on the position in a range of European countries, and concludes with policy-oriented analysis and with an overall assessment of how far the Chinese diaspora matters in stimulating increased bilateral economic activity and stronger bilateral economic relationships.

This title was first published in 2003. Globalizing Chinese Migration is the first volume to deal comprehensively with the most recent wave of the migration from the People's Republic of China to Europe and Asia. By analyzing the Chinese state’s role in this migration, the authors dismiss as fiction the theory (sometimes advanced by hostile and racist foreign observers) that Chinese authorities are intent on using mass emigration as an expansionist tool. They go on to explain that migrants who might, in earlier times, have been reviled as traitors and absconders are today more likely to be viewed by sections of the Chinese state bureaucracy as patriots who remain part of China’s polity and economy and contribute to its standing overseas. Some senior officials, however, particularly diplomats, stress the harm done by new migrants, both to China’s economy (which loses assets as a result of the migrants’ entrepreneurial activities) and to its reputation in the world. An essential resource for academics and students alike, the volume presents important new data on aspects of Chinese migration largely neglected in the existing English-language literature. These include new forms of emigration from China (by students and by workers from the country’s north-eastern provinces) and emigration to destinations (including Russia, Southeast Asia, and Japan) normally unremarked by students of population movements.

Through an analysis of Chinese migration to Europe, this volume examines the most pressing migration and integration issues facing many societies today, from the political and policy-based challenges of managing increasingly diverse communities, to individual lived experiences of identity and belonging. In addition to chapters on the UK, France and Italy, the book spotlights one of the most extraordinary examples of Chinese migration to Europe: that provided by the city of Prato, just 20km from Florence in Tuscany, Italy. Renowned for its historic textile industry, Prato is now home to one of the largest populations of Chinese residents in Europe, a phenomenon that is remarkable not only for its magnitude but also for the speed with which it has developed. This edited collection, which brings together twenty-seven separate contributors, deepens our understanding of the case of Prato within the context of Chinese migration to the new Europe.

We are living in a world in which the visible and invisible borders between nations are being shaken at an unprecedented pace. We are experiencing a wave of international migration, and the diversity of migrants – in terms of how they identify, their external and self-image, and their participation in society – is increasingly noticeable. After the introduction of the Reform and Opening Up policy, over 10 million migrants left China, with Europe the main destination for Chinese emigration after 1978. This volume provides multidisciplinary answers to open questions: How and to what extent do Chinese immigrants participate in their host societies? What kind of impact is the increasing number of highly qualified immigrants from China having on the development and perception of overseas Chinese communities in Europe? How is the development of Chinese identity transforming in relation to generational change? By focusing on two key European countries, Germany and France, this volume makes a topical contribution to research on (new) Chinese immigrants in Europe.

The Chinese are among Europe's oldest immigrant communities, and are now, in several countries, among the biggest and, economically, the most powerful, drawing increasing interest from other ethnic minorities, governments, and researchers. This volume opens up and delineates this new field of European overseas Chinese studies, reporting on pioneering research on the Chinese in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, and exploring the networks, self-organizations, and migration patterns that are the fabric of the Chinese community in Europe, together with the issues of identity, language, integration, and community building that Chinese throughout the continent face.

First published in 1999, this book is a political enthnography of recent migration from the People’s Republic of China into Europe. It argues that the very high mobility and intensive communications of Chinese migrants enable them to maintain a transnational community within which they easily shift countries and social roles - from student to trader to worker - if doing so is economically expedient. This makes them the natural beneficiaries and users of the Western globalization discourse, even more so that - contrary to culturalist explanations of global Chinese networks - anonymity, sovereign decision making and freedom from social pressures are at least as important in motivating migration as family connections. Yet their identity discourse expresses an authentic Chinese globalization . Chinese migrants see themselves not as local minorities but as a global majority attached to China by a deterritorialised nationalism. This nationalism is not only encouraged by China’s official discourse but also supported by the economic dependence of new migrants on cultural capital built up in China, which makes them less reliant on resources in their countries of residence.