Sophia University ICC Lecture Series 2019: Book Launch


A Migrant Chinese Dream?

China's Inbound Skilled Migration in the Era of Sinocentric Globalization

James Farrer


19:00-20:30, May 23rd, 2019

Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University


This talk introduces the key findings from James Farrer's a new book: International Migrants in China's Global City: The New Shanghailanders (Routledge Series on Asian Migration). China has become a destination for skilled migrants, traditionally labelled "expatriates." Based on over 400 interviews and 20 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, 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. It explains the lifestyles of these 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? The answer for potential migrants is cautionary. In short, China's migration policies may work for China, but not necessarily as well for migrants and their families.


James Farrer is Professor of Sociology at Sophia University and a former Director of the Institute of Comparative Culture. His research focuses on the contact zones of global cities, including ethnographic studies of sexuality, nightlife, expatriate communities, and urban food cultures. His recent books include: International Migrants in China's Global City: The New Shanghailanders; Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (with Andrew Field); and Globalization and Asian Cuisines: Transnational Networks and Contact Zones (editor).


Lecture in English / No RSVP required

http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/html/events/2019-2020/190523_Farrer_Shanghailanders.pdf


Institute of Comparative Culture (ICC) Sophia University / 7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, JAPAN

Web: http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/ <http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/>