Long a source of migrants, China has now become a migrant destination. In 2016, government sources reported that nearly 900,000 foreigners were working in China, though international migrants remain a tiny presence at the national level. Shanghai is China’s most globalized city and has attracted a full quarter of Mainland China’s foreign resident population. This book analyzes the development of Shanghai’s expatriate communities, from their role in the opening up of Shanghai to foreign investment in the early 1980s through to the explosive growth after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2000. Based on over 400 interviews and 20 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, it argues that international migrants play an important qualitative role in urban life. It explains the lifestyles of Shanghai’s skilled migrants; their positions in economic, social, sexual and cultural fields; their strategies for integration into Chinese society; their contributions to a cosmopolitan urban geography; and their changing symbolic and social significance for Shanghai as a global city. In so doing, it seeks to deal with the following questions: how have a generation of migrants made Shanghai into a cosmopolitan hometown, what role have they played in making Shanghai a global city, and how do foreign residents now fit into the nationalistic narrative of the China Dream? Addressing a gap in the market of critical expatriate studies through its focus on China, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of international migration, skilled migration, expatriates, urban studies, urban sociology, sexuality and gender studies, international education, and China studies.

One consequence of China’s economic growth has been a massive increase in migration, both internal and external. Within China millions of rural workers have migrated to the cities. Outside China, many Chinese have migrated to other parts of the world, their remittances home often having a significant impact within China. Also, China’s increasing links to other parts of the world have led to a growth in migration to China, most interestingly recently migration from Africa. Based on extensive original research, this book examines a wide range of issues connected to Chinese migration.

This book is a compelling account of China’s response to the increasing numbers of ‘foreigners’ in its midst, revealing a contradictory picture of welcoming civility, security anxiety and policy confusion. Over the last forty years, China’s position within the global migration order has been undergoing a remarkable shift. From being a nation most notable for the numbers of its emigrants, China has increasingly become a destination for immigrants from all points of the globe. What attracts international migrants to China and how are they received once they arrive? This timely volume explores this question in depth. Focusing on such diverse migrant communities as African traders in Guangzhou, Japanese call center workers in Dalian, migrant restaurateurs in Shanghai, marriage migrants on the Vietnamese borderlands, South Korean parents in Beijing, Europeans in Xiamen and Western professionals in Hong Kong, as well as the booming expansion of British and North American English language teachers across the nation, the accounts offered here reveal in intimate detail the motivations, experiences, and aspirations of the diversity of international migrants in China.

The centrepiece of the book consists of six chapters that together present an unusually rich case study of migration and transnationalism among migrants from southern Zhejiang province in both Chinese and European cities.

More than 1.2 million students have left China to study abroad during the past three decades of economic reform in China. In 2007 alone, China sent around 144,000 students abroad, 167 times of the number of students in 1978. This large scale of student migration has often raised debate on brain drain, because many of these student migrants do not return to China upon graduation. However, there has been a reverse trend in the past decade as China witnessed a growing wave of return migration. More and more Chinese students are coming back to China after their studies and work abroad due to the strong economic situation and promising career opportunities at home. These returnees are given the nick-name Haigui or, in English, sea-turtles. This doctoral research is therefore an academic inquiry to this emerging social phenomenon. While international migration is mainly researched on the national level, this innovative doctoral research seeks to understand the relationship between migration and global city formation. To do so, it analyses inter-city migration flow by applying a relational case study of circular student migration between Shanghai and Paris and examines the rationale behind return migration and the role of management/business student returnees from French business schools on Shanghai s pathway to become China s premier global city. This research reveals that global cities have become the strategic points for Chinese talents (students and skilled professionals) acting the role as sending, transiting and receiving sites, which are interconnected in the dynamic process of knowledge accumulation, contact making and network creation. Chinese student returnees contribute to the development of Shanghai by actively engaging in transnational activities including developing and maintaining cross-border organisation/corporate ties and personal networks, knowledge transfer, acting as global-local business and cultural interface, as well as enriching cosmopolitan and multicultural business and cultural spaces in Shanghai.

Hong Kong is a small city with a big reputation. As mainland China has become an 'economic powerhouse' Hong Kong has taken a route of development of its own, flourishing as an entrepot and a centre of commerce and finance for Chinese business, then as an industrial city and subsequently a regional and international financial centre. This volume examines the developmental history of Hong Kong, focusing on its rise to the status of a Chinese global city in the world economy. Chiu and Lui's analysis is distinct in its perspective of the development as an integrated process involving economic, political and social dimensions, and as such this insightful and original book will be a core text on Hong Kong society for students.

The Textbook seeks for an innovative approach to Sustainability Communication as transdisciplinary area of research. Following the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which are intended to transform the world as it is known, we seek for a multidisciplinary discussion of the role communication plays in realizing these goals. With complementing theoretical approaches and concepts, the book offers various perspectives on communication practices and strategies on an individual, organizational, institutional, as well as public level that contribute, enable (or hinder) sustainable development. Presented case studies show methodological as well as issue specific challenges in sustainability communication. Therefore, the book introduces and promotes innovative methods for this specific area of research.

Seoul, as one of Asia’s rising global cities, has been a place where enormous changes in politics, industry, and culture have taken place over the last five decades. This book explores the new urbanism in Seoul from the perspective of global political economy, focusing on the contexts in which the city has witnessed the transformation of its population structure, such as the rise of the global urban middle class and the city’s increased nodal function in commodity chains. The burgeoning signs of Seoul’s status as a global city are discussed in terms of transnational tourism and the frequency of study abroad, the immigrant community, and cross-border cultural flows. Examining the labour structures within the city, economic growth policy, the role of advanced information technology, and neoliberal urban development, the authors also examine the local response in the city to its emerging status. A study of the development of the Korean capital and its deep embeddedness in the world economy, Seoul, Korea’s Global City will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and economics with interests in political economy, urban studies and Asian studies.

This text examines the global nature of cities - cities whose openness has shaped their dynamism and character. It explores cities as sites of movement, migration and settlement where different peoples, cultures and environments combine. Unsettling Cities explores the mix of proximity and difference that exists in the rich and diverse texture of city life. The contributors reveal the association between the changing fortunes of cities and the power and influence of global networks.

At a time when European unity is politically challenged by the question of immigration and integration, it is easy to overlook the fact that there are significant numbers of Europeans leaving the continent. Academically, little is known about why Europeans leave the continent, how they chose their destination, and how they experience their migrant life. Drawing on the lived experiences of contemporary European emigrants from a range of different countries, this book sheds light on how global economic, political and social transformations spur new forms of migration and mobility experiences. Contemporary European Emigration explores how Europeans experience economic, cultural or social integration, and the power relations which play out between them and their hosts. By delving through the lenses of national and racial identity, gender, age, and profession, this book provides enticing insights into how Europeans see themselves in the world. By shifting our focus to migrants leaving Europe and observing the emerging challenges to European superiority as they play out in the microlevel of people’s everyday lives, this book provides a nuanced understanding of contemporary migration. Researchers within Migration Studies and European Studies will find this book an important addition to the literature.