The Contemporary China Centre at the University of Westminster is pleased to announce the next event in our Conference Deconstructed: New Chinese Migrants (Xinyimin 新移民) in Southeast Asia: Partnerships, Engagement and Faultlines.
As one of the fastest growing regions in the world, Southeast Asia is a major partner of China. With rapidly growing cross-border trade and deepening diplomacy in the last few decades, the migration of Chinese nationals to Southeast Asian countries has increased substantially. Commonly referred to as “new Chinese migrants” (xinyimin 新移民), they are constituted by a diversity of backgrounds. Some build economic and cultural partnerships in host economies as wealthy investors, others integrate as white-collar professionals in the local middle-class demographic, while others contribute as low-skilled workers and suffer from xenophobia and racism, and there are also groups who form crime networks which are perceived to be threatening social stability in host countries.
This panel continues the Contemporary China Centre Conference Deconstructed format, bringing together experts to examine a range of issues on new Chinese migrants in Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar at the intersections of migration, socioeconomic integration, identity formation and policing within these diverse and dynamic host societies.
Speakers
Associate Professor Wasana Wongsurawat, Dr Sylvia Ang, and Professor Enze Han
Chair
Dr How Wee Ng
About the speakers
Dr Sylvia Ang
Dr Sylvia Ang is Lecturer in Sociology at Monash University. Her research with migrants is interested in the production and experiences of inequalities, with a focus on ethnic relations, class, gender and postcolonialism. She has published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Mobilities, and Ethnic and Racial Studies, among others. Her book Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese migrants (Amsterdam University Press) was awarded the Raewyn Connell prize in 2024.
Dr. Enze Han
Dr. Enze Han is Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong. His recent publications include The Ripple Effect: China’s Complex Presence in Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2024), Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State Building between China and Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2019), Contestation and Adaptation: The Politics of National Identity in China (Oxford University Press, 2013), and more than 40 academic articles. Dr. Han was awarded Lee Kong Chian Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia at the National University of Singapore and Stanford University during 2021-2022. During 2015-2016, he was a Friends Founders’ Circle Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Dr. Han received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the George Washington University.
Dr Wasana Wongsurawat
Dr Wasana Wongsurawat is Associate Professor and chairperson of the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. She teaches courses on and related to the modern and contemporary history of China, Japan, Korea, history of East-Southeast Asian interactions, urban history in Asia, and history of the Chinese diaspora. Her research interests include nation and nationalism, transnationalism, diplomatic history, history of migration, diaspora history, and global history. Her monograph, The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation was published with the University of Washington Press in 2019.
