Is Chinatown a ghetto, an area of exotic sensations or a business venture? What makes a European Chinese, Chinese? The histories of Chinese communities in Europe are diverse, spanning (amongst others) Teochiu speaking migrants from French Indochina to France, and Hakka and Cantonese speaking migrants from Hong Kong to Britain. This book explores how such a wide range of people tends to be - indiscriminately - regarded as 'Chinese'. Christiansen explains Chinese communities in Europe in terms of the interaction between the migrants, the European 'host' society and the Chinese 'home' where the migrants claim their origin. He sees these interactions as addressing several issues: citizenship, political culture, labour market exclusion, generational shifts and the influences of colonialism and communism, all of which create opportunities for fashioning a new ethnic identity. Chinatown, Europe examines how many sub-groups among the Chinese in Europe have developed in recent years and discusses many institutions that shape and contribute ethnic meaning to Chinese communities in Europe. Chinese identity is not a mere practical utility or a shallow business emblem. For many, China remains a unifying force and yet local and national bonds in each European state are of equal importance in giving shape to Chinese communities. Based on in-depth interviews with overseas Chinese in many European cities, Chinatown, Europe provides a complex yet enthralling investigation into many Chinese communities 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.

This book analyzes the progress, gains, and effects of Chinese overseas ports through in-depth and systematic studies of numerous cases in Europe and Latin America. China’s participation in overseas ports, especially under the rubric of the Belt and Road Initiative, is a matter of great concern to businesspeople, policymakers, and researchers pondering the implications of Chinese infrastructure activities and overseas investment. Yet there is insufficient knowledge concerning the actual nature of China’s role in specific ports, the economic and other consequences associated with that involvement, and the wider economic, political, and environmental effects of those economic effects. The chapters of this book fill these gaps by examining ports in diverse European countries like Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom and various Latin American countries, including Brazil and Jamaica. The book illustrates why Chinese seaports succeed or fail, why they have the military, economic, and other consequences that they do, and why these consequences produce or fail to generate other effects such as political influence. This book will appeal to audiences with interests in China’s overseas seaports, foreign direct investment (FDI), and infrastructure specifically and foreign direct investment, geopolitics, and the political economy of national security more generally.

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.

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 book provides a comprehensive overview of Chinese migration to the countries of the former Soviet bloc – Russia, Eastern Europe and countries of Central Asia – exploring how the migration has come about, discussing the motivation of the migrants and examining the significant contribution the migrants are making.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Chinese in Russia and Eastern Europe from the nineteenth century to the present day.

Brings together the research of world-class commentators on China from across Europe to explore the policy aspects of the China-EU relationship. Aimed at practitioners, this book shows how to relate to China practically and understand its complexities for business purposes, including investment, social unrest, and China's five-year program.

European identity is as much a problem as an opportunity. Although it is impossible to provide an all-encompassing definition of what it means to be European, historicising and contextualising this problem may well lead to the clarification and even creation of a European identity. This is the contention of this volume, which approaches this complex notion from an inter- and transdisciplinary perspective, examining facets ranging from the citizen to cultural politics, from literature to traditional and digital media, from the US to China. As complex as this idea is, this volume will extend the reader’s understanding of the timely and promising problematisation of what may be termed “European identity.”

- A sweeping study of Chinese migration past and present - Highlights the growing pride in their roots among ex-pat Chinese - Of vital interest to migration scholars, but also to the Chinese diaspora and to anyone interested in the issues of migration today A bachelor society, men brought in by the shipload to labour in harsh, slave-like conditions, often for decades. Aliens despised and feared by their hosts. The hope: to return home as rich men. This was the exceptional and ambivalent nature of much of Chinese migration in the 19th and early 20th centuries--quite different in nature to the permanent migration of families and individuals from Europe to the New World at that same time. But stay, some Chinese did; rough camps and shantytowns became more settled Chinatowns across the globe. Slavery is not dead. Thousands still leave China for the industrialized world, their freedom and livelihoods in pawn to people smugglers. But China has changed, transformed by decades of economic liberalization and rapid economic growth. Most migrants--both women and men--now leave China for a more promising future and often find ways to bring their families with them. Chinese migration is no longer exceptional, yet distinct. Today, China matters--all around the world. Both its insatiable demand for raw materials and its flood of exported manufactures affect everyone; distant corners of the Third World that once had never heard of China now have a thriving Chinese presence. And, suddenly, third-generation Chinese who once could not wait to escape their Chinatown now proudly proclaim their ethnic Chinese identity. Because it opens a new approach to the study of recent Chinese migration, this volume will be of vital interest in the field of both general and Chinese migration studies. But, bringing to life as it does the momentous changes sweeping the Chinese world in all parts of the globe, it will also attract a far wider readership.