The Pioneer Migrant: The Link to Chinese-Australian Family History

Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2020

This paper investigates end-of-life decisions, ethnic influences and memorialisaton of Chinese immigrants in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on interviews with 41 participants including 25 individuals and 16 community or industry stake holders, we present insights into what this group experiences and how they negotiate end-of-life choices to accommodate their hybrid circumstances as immigrants. We find evidence of merging cultures that suggests a new Chineseness played out in diverse ways. We also found this group of Chinese had acquired a sense of belonging relating to being together with family and friends that they wished to continue beyond their lived experience. Their adopted new home in Australia provided an opportunity to be together now and forever.

2021

Migration has been a vital element of human histories, cultures, and civilizations. Although it poses a long-standing issue, migration studies have made significant progress only in recent decades. The combination of the progress in interdisciplinary pursuits and the popularization of postmodern thought proved to be enough to establish it as a discipline in the late 1990s (Greenwood and Hunt 2003). Since then, scholars have used different approaches and scopes of analysis to tackle the phenomenon, ranging from 'geographies of migration' to 'diasporas and transnationalism' (Pisarevskaya et al. 2020). As Alejandro Portes (1997) predicted, the newly emerged pluralism contributed to the shift of focus from issues of governance to themes of families and gender in the twenty-first century. Academia and policymakers began to give more attention to the complexity of migration, thus leading to the increase of work on identity narratives, such as migrants and their descendants' dual identities (De Fina 2003; Jens and Carbaugh 2001). However, this change did not last long. Due to the increase of such events as the rise of neo-nationalist right-wing populism, terrorism, and the global increase of migration waves in recent years, the public discourse has returned to the preexisting practice of a collective equation. The narrative has shifted from asking the question of 'how?' and 'why?' to 'how can we stop it?' and 'where they are from?'. As a result, the migrants have become numbers and their stories irrelevant, the act of compassion has given way to depersonalization, and the popularity of the focus on the individual dimension has decreased. Amid this turn of events, scholars of migration studies have continued to further the field's progress through the formulation of more innovative and ambitious research. Among these, the publication, Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia, edited by Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton, has stood out. The book constitutes one of the most comprehensive studies of diverse migrant memories in Australia since the 1950s, when Jean Martin compiled the life and integration stories of displaced

Australian Historical Studies, 2020

Genealogy

According to scholar and Professor Wang Gungwu, there are three categories of Chinese overseas documents: formal (archive), practical (print media), and expressive (migrant writings such as poetry). This non-fiction creative essay documents what Edna Bonacich describes as an “middleman minority” family and how we have migrated to four different nation-city states in four generations. Our double minority status in one country where we were discriminated against helped us psychologically survive in another country. My family history ultimately exemplifies the unique position “middleman minority” families have in the countries they migrate to and how the resulting discrimination that often accompanies this position can work as a psychological advantage when going to a new country. We also used our cultural capital to survive in each new country. In particular, this narrative highlights the lasting psychological effects of the transnational migration on future generations. There is a wa...

Journal of Chinese Overseas

On the 10 and 11 February 2016, former residents of one of Australia's postwar 'holding' centres for migrant arrivals presented evidence at a hearing for the site's inclusion on the Victorian Heritage Register. They were aware that the Victorian Heritage Register held few places of significance to postwar migrant communities, let alone working migrant women, which Benalla largely accommodated. They chose to retell their mothers' stories and explicitly expressed a desire to honour their mothers' memory at this hearing. This article will explore the impetus expressed by these former child migrants of Benalla to tell their mothers' stories and unpack its associated implications for the history and collective remembrance of Australia's postwar migrants. These former child migrants found a platform in the heritage hearing, a platform from which they could piece together their mothers' history and insist that it is a history worthy of heritage listing and public acknowledgement. On a broad level, I ask, what can a contentious history like Benalla's offer the history of postwar migration in Australia? Specifically, what role do generational stories of single working migrant women have in the remembering of migrant history and heritage practice in Australia?

Chapter 3. The Emerald Handbook of Childhood and Youth in Asian Societies (Eds. D. Bühler-Niederberger, X. Gu, J. Schwittek & E. Kim), 2023

In transnational families worldwide, different family members have varying degrees of mobility, as well as different physical and emotional experiences with relatives and places throughout their lives. For this reason, in recent decades, increasing attention has been placed upon the experiences of migrants’ descendants growing up across borders. Based on data from a multi-sited ethnography and a survey, this chapter explores the experiences of children growing up in Chinese transnational families split between Zhejiang province and their parents’ immigration countries, located mainly in Europe. First, it introduces the migration context and methods, presenting the profiles and basic information of the 77 Chinese migrants’ descendants who participated in a ‘Roots-seeking Journey’ summer camp held in their family area of origin in China, in 2018. Second, it explores their heterogeneous early childhood paths and conditions, paying particular attention to mobility, care strategies, intergenerational relations and transnational ties. Finally, this chapter introduces the concept of fluid childhoods, and reflects on the key role of care-related mobility and communication technologies in shaping their early life paths and experiences as well as further transnational engagement.

This review essay discusses the multigenerational ethnicity of Chinese people in Australia, particularly those who are long settled and Australian-born. The recent book by Ngan and Chan, The Chinese Face in Australia: Multi-generational Ethnicity among Australian-born Chinese provides an exploration of those Australian-born Chinese (ABCs) who having been long settled in Australia, still retain their own unique Chinese ethnicity. In comparison, the article by Tung and Chung explores the way in which a diaspora can contribute to the economic operations of both the country of origin and the diasporic host country, and further explores the changes in the views of the Chinese in Australia with the changes they experienced over the course of Australian history. This essay begins with an historical account of Chinese settlement in Australia, identifying the ways in which ‘Chineseness’ is perceived and performed in the social context, within the home, within the ethnic community and comparatively within the global Chinese diaspora. The review further delves into discrimination of the basis of ethnicity and considers the ways in which Chinese have coped with racism, utilizing ethnic and cultural coping, building their resilience to continue forward. Finally, the review probes the life course theory to determine its relevance to long settled ABCs and their ethnicity as well as the impact of linkages on this ethnicity and attempts to answer the question: Is hybridism, the process that sees members of a diaspora forming hybrid identities within the host society, a way out?

Genealogy

Inspired by the work of Christine Sleeter and Avril Bell, among others, the articles that comprise this Special Issue seek to respond to questions focused on the relationship between family history and the processes of migration and colonisation and how this might impact on a family’s sense of itself today [...]

2001

Since the late 1970s, dramatic social changes in the People's Republic of China have led to a sudden emigration of Chinese from China to Australia. Given the obvious social and cultural differences between the two societies, wh at has been the impact of this crosscountry migration upon the migrants' family lives in their new country of residence? How do they cope with the changing social contex t? Are there patterns within their fami ly practi ces which are distinctive from those of the mainstream society ? This study has exam ined famil y practices th rough in-depth interviews of 40 Chinese migrants who immigrated to Australia in the past two decades. The study is intended to be broadly contex tu al ized and historical in scope. Hence, overviews of famil y traditions, culture and contemporary changes in both the home and host countries are elaborated. An analysis of the informants' motivations fo r migration and percepti ons of the host society are also examined in significant detail , as the respondents' motiva tions and perceptions have impli cations for the ways they have chosen to reo rgani ze their lives in a new country. Famil y life including marri age, attitudes towards sex uality, child rearing and the division of labo ur at home were probed among this sample within broad fra meworks utilizing scholarly perspectives of immigration, ethnoculturc and gender relations.