Migration is at the heart of Asian history. For centuries migrants have tracked the routes and seas of their ancestors - merchants, pilgrims, soldiers and sailors - along the Silk Road and across the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. Over the last 150 years, however, migration within Asia and beyond has been greater than at any other time in history. Sunil S. Amrith's engaging and deeply informative book crosses a vast terrain, from the Middle East to India and China, tracing the history of modern migration. Animated by the voices of Asian migrants, it tells the stories of those forced to flee from war and revolution, and those who left their homes and their families in search of a better life. These stories of Asian diasporas can be joyful or poignant, but they all speak of an engagement with new landscapes and new peoples.

By the end of the twentieth century some nine million people of South Asian descent had left India, Bangladesh or Pakistan and settled in different parts of the world, forming a diverse and significant modern diaspora. In the early nineteenth century, many left reluctantly to seek economic opportunities which were lacking at home. This is the story of their often painful experiences in the diaspora, how they constructed new social communities overseas and how they maintained connections with the countries and the families they had left behind. It is a story compellingly told by one of the premier historians of modern South Asia, Judith Brown, whose particular knowledge of the diaspora in Britain and South Africa gives her insight as a commentator. This is a book which will have a broad appeal to general readers as well as to students of South Asian and colonial history, migration studies and sociology.

In Diaspora’s Homeland Shelly Chan provides a broad historical study of how the mass migration of more than twenty million Chinese overseas influenced China’s politics, economics, and culture. Chan develops the concept of “diaspora moments”—a series of recurring disjunctions in which migrant temporalities come into tension with local, national, and global ones—to map the multiple historical geographies in which the Chinese homeland and diaspora emerge. Chan describes several distinct moments, including the lifting of the Qing emigration ban in 1893, intellectual debates in the 1920s and 1930s about whether Chinese emigration constituted colonization and whether Confucianism should be the basis for a modern Chinese identity, as well as the intersection of gender, returns, and Communist campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. Adopting a transnational frame, Chan narrates Chinese history through a reconceptualization of diaspora to show how mass migration helped establish China as a nation-state within a global system.

The second half of the 20th century witnessed a series of mass migration in Asia due to war, politics and economic turbulence. Combined with recent global economic changes, the result is that Asia is now the world region producing the most international migrants and receiving the second most migrants. Asian migration has thus been of central concern to both academic researchers and policy communities. This book (together with its forthcoming second volume) provides a full span discussion of Asian migration from historical perspectives to updated analyses of current migration flows and diasporas. The book covers six sub-regional areas through focused themes: • Northeast Asia: Coping with Diversity in Japan and Korea • East Asian Chinese Migration: Taiwan, Hong Kong and China • Vietnamese Migration and Diaspora • Cambodian, Lao and Hmong Diaspora and Settlement • Singapore: New Immigrants and Return Migration • South Asian Migration and Diaspora Academics as well as general readers will find this book useful for understanding the specific features of Asian migration, and how these features have evolved since the latter part of the 20th century. In providing an overall reassessment of Asian migration, the book enhances academic discussion of Asian migration, with crucial implications for migration-related policy-making in the region.

Housing more than half of the global population, Asia is a region characterised by increasingly diverse forms of migration and mobility. Offering a wide-ranging overview of the field of Asian migrations, this new handbook therefore seeks to examine and evaluate the flows of movement within Asia, as well as into and out of the continent. Through in-depth analysis of both empirical and theoretical developments in the field, it includes key examples and trends such as British colonialism, Chinese diaspora, labour migration, the movement of women, and recent student migration. Organised into thematic parts, the topics cover: The historical context to migration in Asia Modern Asian migration pathways and characteristics The reconceptualising of migration through Asian experiences Contemporary challenges and controversies in Asian migration practice and policy Contributing to the retheorising of the subject area of international migration from non-western experience, the Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations will be useful to students and scholars of migration, Asian development and Asian Studies in general.

A concise and compelling survey of Chinese migration in global history centered on Chinese migrants and their families.

This handbook offers an analysis of Asian diaspora and development, and explores the role that immigrants living within diasporic and transnational communities play in the development of their host countries and their homeland. Bringing together an array of interdisciplinary scholars from across the world, the handbook is divided into the following sections: • Development Potential of Asian Diasporas • Diaspora, Homeland, and Development • Gender, Generation, and Identities • Soft Power, Mobilization, and Development • Media, Culture, and Representations. Presenting cutting-edge research on several dimensions of diaspora and development, Routledge Handbook of Asian Diaspora and Development provides a platform for further discussion in the fields of migration studies, diaspora studies, transnational studies, race relations, ethnic studies, gender studies, globalization, Asian studies, and research methods.

This book focuses on International migration among the Chinese long before European colonists set foot on the Asian continent. Long before European colonists set foot on the Asian continent, the Chinese moved across sea and land, seasonally or permanently, to other parts of Asia and the rest of the world to pursue economic opportunities and alternative means of livelihood. This volume addresses the new Chinese diasporas around the world, offering a snapshot of the cosmopolitan and shifting nature of Chinese population dynamics from the perspectives of anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of international studies.

This book represents a follow-up to 2014’s The Age of Asian Migration: Continuity, Diversity, and Susceptibility Volume 1. Both volumes are the result of the conference on Asian Migration and Diasporas organised by the Southeast Asia Research Centre and held at the City University of Hong Kong in 2013. Despite numerous studies on Asian migration issues having been conducted over the past few decades, no comprehensive account of Asian migrations, especially those taking place since the end of the Second World War exists. While the first volume provided a discussion of a wide spectrum of topics concerning Asian migration – from historical perspectives to updated trends – this volume is organised around three major themes, namely “Women and Migration”, “Refugee and Borderland Migration”, and “Remittances and Migration Economics”. The book contains new migration stories that provide fresh insights into human movements, and enhances academic discussions of migration through case studies from Asia.

South Asians in Diaspora is a collection of essays concerning the history, politics, and anthropology of migration in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, as well as in the numerous overseas locations, such as Fiji, Africa, the Caribbean and USA, where South Asians migrated in the colonial period and after. It addresses the connections between migration, problems of identity and ethnic conflict from a comparative perspective, and highlights the role of shared colonial experiences in providing 'communal' solidarities and discord.