New Chinese Migrants in Europe

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.