Interpreting the Chinese Diaspora

Guanglun Michael Mu is Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. His work in this book was supported by the Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship at Queensland University of Technology and the Australian Research Council grant DE180100107 (Resilience, Culture, and Class: A Sociological Study of Australian Students).Bonnie Pang is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom (2019–2020), Senior Lecturer and a school-based member of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, Australia.

• Foreword1. Chapter One: Approaching Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu2. Chapter Two: Looking Chinese and learning Chinese as a Heritage Language: Habitus realisation within racialised social fields3. Chapter Three: Young Chinese girls’ aspirations in sport: Gendered practices within Chinese families 4. Chapter Four: Understanding the public pedagogies on Chinese gendered and racialised bodies 5. Chapter Five: Reconciling the different logic of practice between Chinese students and parents in a transnational era6. Chapter Six: Coming into a cultural inheritance: Building resilience through primary socialisation7. Chapter Seven: Resilience to racial discrimination within the field of secondary socialisation: The role of school staff support8. Chapter Eight: Does Chineseness equate with mathematics competence? Resilience to racialised stereotype 9. Chapter Nine: Recapitulating Chinese diaspora and sociologising diasporic selfIndex

‘What binds us together and what walls us apart across borders, generations and geographies? In an era of increasingly shrill nationalism and geopolitical conflict, understanding diasporic community, identity and position is more crucial than ever. This new volume is a major sociological contribution to our understanding of 'overseas' Chinese communities.’ - Allan Luke, Emeritus Professor, Queensland University of Technology, Australia‘This is a highly ambitious book, aiming to develop a critical sociology of Chinese diaspora by applying, for the first time, Bourdieu’s influential reflexive sociology to understanding the social experiences and practices of diasporic Chinese communities in the West. Drawing on a wealth of empirical research – both quantitative and qualitative – among young Chinese in Canada and Australia, the book places these young people’s identity work, educational trajectories, and resilience building in response to structural societal constraints (such as racism) in a broad sociological framework which transcends macro perspectives on diaspora and micro perspectives on the formation of Chinese subjectivities through Bourdieu’s conceptual apparatus of capital, field and habitus. In this way the book develops pertinent new insights into the contradictory meanings and experiences shared by many among Chinese diasporic subjects, such as ‘looking Chinese but not speaking Chinese’, the entrapments of inhabiting gendered and racialized bodies, family pressure in schooling, and their responses to racist stereotypes of Chineseness.’ - Ien Ang, Distinguished Professor, Western Sydney University, Australia‘The bold collaboration of two exciting scholars provides convincing evidence of the relevance of Bourdieu to an emerging area of study on diasporic Chinese youth. Mu and Pang draw on diverse studies in Australia and Canada to enrich our understanding of family, community, and resilience in the Chinese diaspora. Their important book makes a significant contribution to wider debates on identity, legitimate knowledge, and transnationalism in the fields of education and applied linguistics.’ - Bonny Norton (FRSC), Professor & Distinguished University Scholar, University of British Columbia, Canada‘Drawing on the work of Bourdieu and his notions of field, habitus and capital, this book provides a theoretically informed and empirically rich examination of Chinese diasporic youth in Australia and Canada. With a particular focus on educational contexts, Mu and Pang shed new light on questions of racialisation, identification and resilience demonstrating the heterogeneity of the Chinese diaspora and the importance of countering the cultural essentialism that often colours their popular representation. With the rise of China and the continuing spread of Chinese diasporas, this book makes an important contribution towards understanding these phenomena especially in relation to the experiences of young people proving a valuable text for the sociologies of youth, health and education.’ - Megan Watkins, Professor, Western Sydney University, Australia