Sam Morley | ASAA 2020 Conference

Chinese Muslims’ Transnationalism and Development in Southeast Asia: Transnational Business Network and Post-Chineseness

Human Geography and Demography

A/Prof Yun Zhang²

²Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

The Southeast Asia-based Chinese Muslims constitute a special transnational population group, with an imagined homeland characterized by the interaction of nation-state and non-territorial ethnicity and religion. While Chinese Muslims share common Islamic identity with the local people, they maintain transnational linkages with China, other Chinese diasporic groups, and non-territorial religious groups, especially through business networks, to maximize their development opportunities. Drawing on empirical studies in Surabaya and Kuala Lumpur, this paper examines the transnationalism and development embodied by Southeast Asia-based Chinese Muslims in a post-colonialism context. It explicitly addresses how Chinese Muslims produce and maintain transnational linkages, with their home country – China – such as via the Association of Chinese Entrepreneurs, and with their non-territorial religious ‘homeland’ such as via Islamic chambers of commerce and al-Bank al-Islami. This study finds that Chinese Muslims who hold multiple identities – citizens of the Southeast Asian countries overlapped with transnational identity towards China and Muslim religion – have developed unique development-oriented transnationalism. This not only facilitates their integration to the local society but also significantly influences economic and socio-cultural structures in Southeast Asia through diffusing the “post-Chineseness” that inherits clan concept, life values and working spirits from Chinese tradition.

Biography

Yun Zhang holds a PhD in Political Science. He is an Associate Professor in School of International Studies (Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies) at Jinan University and an editorial board member of Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. His research includes Southeast Asia studies, international society theory and overseas Chinese studies.

An Anthropological Analysis of Revitalizing Chinese Business and Economy in Cambodia Post-Khmer Rouge from a Transnational Perspective

Human Geography and Demography

A/Prof Yang Luo³

³The China Institute of Chinese Overseas Studies, Beijing, China

Transnational studies on the migration-development nexus have focused on how diasporas shape development of homelands but paid little attention to the impacts of transnational linkages on destination countries. Drawing upon a case study of Cambodia-based Chinese businessmen, this study explores how transnational linkages maintained by Chinese diasporas shape the social and economic structure of Cambodia. The paper proposes an “intermediary sphere” model for understanding Cambodia-based Chinese businessmen’s role in shaping development in the destination from a transnational perspective. The study finds that Chinese businessmen have promoted two transformations in the Cambodian history by enabling Cambodian economic transformation that shifted from relying on agriculture to thriving on maritime trade, and by facilitating the adaptation of the Western incomers to the local labour markets during the French protectorate period. After the tumult of the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese entrepreneurship played a significant role in another two forms of transformations. First, Chinese businessmen established a “regional trading system”, integrating the Cambodian economy into the wider world economic system. Second, they developed “land economy” that facilitated the outsiders’ adaptation to local economic system. The “intermediary sphere” model is proven effective to understand the embeddedness of Chineseness in shaping the culture and society of Cambodia.

Biography

Yang Luo is an Associate Professor at the China Institute of Chinese Overseas Studies. Her research focuses on theories and methodologies of social anthropology, religions in Southeast Asia and overseas Chinese community.

Opportunistic Transnationalism: The New Generation of Malaysian Chinese Entrepreneurs Amidst a Rising China

Human Geography and Demography

A/Prof Na Ren²

²Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

With the ongoing generational change, the backbone of ethnic Chinese society in Southeast Asia has been mostly made of a new generation of immigrants’ descendants who were born and grown up in their host land. Under the transnational framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched by China in 2013, ethnic Chinese, as a major economic workforce in Southeast Asia, have been confronted with both business opportunities and complex challenges. How does the new generation respond to the multiple transnational forces initiated from the BRI? How does their transnationalism with China interact with their national identity with the host countries? Through a case study on Chinese diasporas’ institutional involvement in transnational Chinese business organizations in Malaysia, this paper argues that the new-generation entrepreneurs have built opportunistic transnationalism. The construction of their networks with China has become an arena where the entrepreneurs try to seize potential business opportunities from the BRI by taking advantage of their ethnic and cultural ties with China, and simultaneously reinforce their national identity with Malaysia. To fully understand the construction of the new generation’s transnationalism, this paper discerns three patterns of transnationalism: proactive, reactive and passive.

Biography

Na Ren is an Associate Professor in the School of International Relations (Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies) at Jinan University, China. Her research interests are overseas Chinese studies, including Southeast Asian Chinese society, transnational Chinese migrants and globalization of China, and overseas Chinese business networks.

Overseas Chinese’s Engagement in Beijing’s Soft Power Program: Dynamics, Institutions and Transnational Outcomes

Human Geography and Demography

A/Prof Ying Zhou²

²Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

China has established the global network of Confucius Institutes (CI) and the extension form of Confucius Classroom to promote language and culture in an effect to enhance national soft power and create a more positive attitude toward China. Yet the overseas Chinese’s extensive participation in establishing and operating oversea CIs has been literately ignored by existing studies. That is prominently demonstrated in Southeast Asian countries. Why do the oversea Chinese actively engage with this government-sponsored soft power program? How do they engage? What are the transnational outcomes of their engagement in CIs and the implication for China’s foreign relations? This article drew on the theory of agent and the concept of soft power in international relations to reveal the role of overseas Chinese, one of the multiple types of agents that embody Chinese culture within soft power projects. Based on case studies in Thailand, Indonesia and Philippine, this article argues that the overseas Chinese’s engagement in CIs produced complex results and even contradictory goals and effects for China’s soft power.

Biography

Ying Zhou is an Associate Professor in the School of International Studies (Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies) at Jinan University, China. Her research focuses on Confucius Institute, public diplomacy, soft power, and international relations in East Asia.

Chinese Diaspora and Development in Asia: A Transnational Perspective

Human Geography and Demography

A/Prof Yan Tan¹, A/Prof Ying Zhou², A/Prof Na Ren², A/Prof Yang Luo³, A/Prof Yun Zhang²

¹The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, ²Jinan University, Guangzhou, China, ³The China Institute of Chinese Overseas Studies, Beijing, China

Chair: Yan Tan

Overview:

It is estimated that the Chinese diaspora amounted to 60 million in 2018, most of whom reside in Asia. China is undergoing profound demographic, economic, and social transitions, which in turn have reshaped its development interest. In tandem with these transitions, the role of Chinese diaspora is being transformed, evolving towards an active transnational actor who influences development outcomes in both countries of origin and destination, through sustaining domestic economic and socio-cultural development and enhancing soft power on the global stage. Bringing the concept of transnationalism to the studies on Chinese diaspora and drawing on empirical studies in Asian countries, this panel rethinks complex transnational linkages constructed by Chinese diasporas and dynamic approaches to engaging Chinese diasporas for development under the changing global, regional and national contexts. Enhanced understandings of Chinese diasporas and their impacts on development have significant implications for diaspora engagement policies and programs in China and other parts of Asia.

Transnational Care and Kinship in Australia: Perspectives from Sinhalese Migrants in Later Life

Gender and Sexuality

A/Prof Raelene Wilding⁴, Dr Shashini Gamage⁴

⁴La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

Migration is a disruptive experience that requires the reimagining and reconfiguring of connections to family, place and community. Existing studies of transnational families have clearly demonstrated how migration and resultant familyhood across distance transform the gendered roles of parents and the associated practices of parental care for both mothers and fathers. In this paper, we build on those accounts by considering how distance and transnational practices transform and reconfigure the gendered duties and roles of older migrant adults who are not only parents but also grandparents. Drawing on ethnographic interview data, we explore the experiences of older men and women from Sri Lankan backgrounds who are living in Melbourne, Australia and who are engaged in transnational relations of care that incorporate practices of grandparenting, aged care and community leadership. We demonstrate how these practices are informed by the gendered obligations, roles and responsibilities associated with ageing in Sri Lanka, but also by the divergent and relatively negative cultural narratives of ageing in Australia. We argue that engagement in both social media and broadcast media provide important resources for reimagining and enacting later life as a Sinhalese migrant in Australia who is embedded in gendered and generational roles within a transnational family and community.

Biography

Raelene Wilding is Associate Professor, Sociology at La Trobe University. Her research on transnational families pays particular attention to the intersections of intimacy and communication technologies. Her most recent book is Families, Intimacy and Globalization (2018, Palgrave).

Shashini Gamage is a researcher, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Her research interests include how transnational social fields are shaped by diasporic media, gender, and popular culture. Her ethnographic work with Sri Lankan migrants has been published in a PhD thesis, journal articles and book chapters.

Gendered Motherwork of Transnational Coorg Families in the Asia-Pacific

Gender and Sexuality

Dr Chand Somaiah¹

¹Asia Research Institute, National University Of Singapore, , Singapore

As part of an increasing cohort of transnational skilled labour, the Coorgs are facing contradictory pressures from community members to preserve Kodavame (obligations to the homeland of Kodagu and its customary ways). While moral communities are often founded and bounded upon thick social relations, my research participants’ practices of maternal transnational care towards others depicted an inter-weaving of both thick and thin social relations (Granovetter 1973). While I continue in the tradition of work which uncovers everyday transnationalism ‘on the ground’, I emphasize the gendered, maternal dimensions of doing this within the g/local South Asian, specifically Coorg context, using the site of kinwork, emotions, and charity beyond the family. Evidence is drawn from instances of reproductive caring interactions and (transnational) charity conducted by my participants. I orient the concept of ‘motherwork’ (Collins 1994), before foregrounding the ‘emotional terrain of families’ (Ryan 2008), and the affective labour of kin-keeping in transnational families. I discuss how the emotional carework of transnational Coorg families is practiced within the realm of extended kin and beyond. I conclude by offering my data as suggestion of an extended moral community with variant extensions of care and discuss its implications.

Biography

Chand Somaiah is Research Fellow in the Asian Migration cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. She received her PhD in Sociology from Macquarie University. Her research interests include gendered experiences of migration and carework.

Transnational Marriage and Women’s Situated Agency in Singapore

Gender and Sexuality

Dr Bernice Loh²

²Centre for Family and Population Research, National University Of Singapore, , Singapore

Transnational marriages – mainly between a Singaporean groom and a foreign bride – form a sizeable proportion of marriages registered in Singapore. The majority of the non-citizen women who marry Singaporean men come from Asia and specifically from developing nations in the region. In public discourse, foreign brides are often cast as harbingers of social problems: causing broken marriages, cheating Singaporean men of their savings or using marriage as a means to permanent residency. State policy tends to take a “social problems” approach to transnational marriages. Our study on transnational families in Singapore however, reveal a different story. Interviews with 49 foreign wives and 38 Singaporean husbands show that rather than a liability, non-citizen wives alleviate the experience of economic precarity of the family. Not only do they take on carework within the household, a majority of these wives also routinely take on casual jobs to supplement the family income. Departing from the “social problems” template, we give weight instead to women’s situated agency from a poststructural feminist approach as they work through their married lives. We offer a counternarrative to public discourses surrounding citizen-foreigner marriages, shedding more light on the everyday lived realities of transnational wives and families in Singapore.

Biography

Bernice Loh is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Family and Population Research, National University of Singapore. She is currently working on the Singapore Longitudinal Early Development Study (SGLEADs) conducting an ethnography of transnational families in Singapore, focusing on how these families raise children in cross-cultural homes.

Negotiating Work and the Future: Aspirations and Autonomy of Migrant Wives in Singapore

Gender and Sexuality

Dr Theodora Lam¹

¹Asia Research Institute, National University Of Singapore, , Singapore

Feminist and other critical scholars have argued that pathways to integration for marriage migrants are precariously ridden with negotiations around gender, ethnicity, nationality and class within host societies. Drawing on a study of Southeast Asian female marriage migrants in Singapore, this paper makes two arguments. First, it examines the gains and pains that foreign wives are confronted with in taking up paid work. While joining the labour force as waged workers enhances women’s financial status, autonomy and networks, it also recalibrates marital and family relationships. Second, the paper explores women’s aspirations for their own futures in Singapore. While some pursue citizenship papers in order to facilitate rooting themselves in their host country, others choose to retain their original citizenship to keep the door to return migration open. By drawing on life-story interviews with both paired and unpaired cross-national marriage partners, we foreground the women’s perspectives as they develop new statuses as foreign wives, daughters-in-law, new mothers and wage-earning workers whilst fulfilling their roles as dutiful daughters. At the same time, we highlight their spouses’ reactions and responses – whether facilitating or inhibiting – to their aspirations and strategies for work, as well as to their familial plans for their own future.

Biography

Theodora Lam is a Research Fellow at Asia Research Institute, NUS. She obtained her Ph.D. in Geography from NUS and her research interests cover transnational migration, children’s geographies and gender studies. Theodora is currently involved in several multi-country research projects including Child Health and Migrant Parents in Southeast Asia (CHAMPSEA).

Transnational Marriages, Families and Gender in Asia

Gender and Sexuality

Dr Bernice Loh², Dr Theodora Lam¹, Dr Chand Somaiah¹, A/Prof Raelene Wilding⁴, Dr Shashini Gamage⁴

¹Asia Research Institute, National University Of Singapore, , Singapore, ²Centre for Family and Population Research, National University Of Singapore, , Singapore, ³National University Of Singapore, , Singapore, ⁴La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

Chair: Dr Bernice Loh

Overview:

Transnational family studies have focused on how migrant parents make sense of, experience and organise their transnational family lives. In viewing transnationalism as a process, the panel broadens this conversation, illuminating the prevalence, shifts and composition of transnational families in Asia. Rather than taking migration and transnational family life as unidirectional (simply relocating overseas from an origin country) and couched in (anticipated) experiences of permanence, the papers in this panel offers insight into how marriages, care, kinship and gendered duties and roles are reproduced and sustained. While the literature on transnational care as gendered is well documented, gender as a lens to understand transnational families’ lives remains crucial because it is a site where inequalities-social, structural and individual-are encountered and felt. In acknowledging the transnational family as a multi-stranded and multi-sited experience, the panel visibilises gender-related themes, showing how roles, motivations and relations for and within members in the transnational family is often complex and contested.