Changing Diasporic Relations: Old Emigrants and New Mobilities in Shenzhen

This talk explores the transformations of Pine Mansion—a Shenzhen former emigrant community—and its members’ changing relationship with their diaspora around the world. For over a century, inhabitants of Shenzhen’s villages have migrated to South-east Asia, the Pacific, North and South America, and Europe. With China’s economic global ascendancy, these villages no longer consist of peasants dependent on their rich overseas relatives. As the villages have become part of the special economic zone of Shenzhen, the megacity that embodies China’s rise, emigration has waned. As overseas financial contributions diminish and diasporic ties loosen, this talk highlights the way emigration is being reconceptualized in relation to China’s changing position in the world, offering a new perspective on Chinese globalization and the politics of scale-making.

Prof. Anne-Christine Trémon is a distinguished scholar of the Chinese diaspora at the Université de Lausanne in Switzerland. Her forthcoming book with Cornell University Press is Diaspora Space-Time: Transformations of a Chinese Emigrant Community, which is a multi-sited, historically-oriented analysis of a Chinese lineage centered in Shenzhen, China, and following lineage members in diaspora in Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Pacific.