Reimagining Chinese diasporas in a transnational world: toward a new research agenda

Abstract

This introduction article examines the changing nature of the Chinese diasporas in a transnational world and its concomitant implications for Chinese diasporas studies internationally. With a shifting paradigm of transnationalism and transnational migration, new patterns of Chinese diasporas can be characterised by unprecedented hypermobility, hyperdiversity, and hyperconnectivity. Such characterisations depict the global dispersal of overseas Chinese as one of the most hyperdiverse groups with substantial sub-group differences that distinguish it from most other diasporas. As an important hallmark of contemporary Chinese diasporas, the hyperconnectivity manifests itself in the transnational social networks, talent mobility and brain circulation between China and the globalised world. Unlike earlier movements and mobilities, the latest ones are more dynamic and fluid suggesting that the Chinese sojourn is seen as multiple and circular rather than unidirectional or final. This special issue illustrates how the analytical constructs of hypermobility, hyperdiversity, and hyperconnectivity aid in the reimagining of contemporary Chinese transnational diasporas. It also offers research findings and theorisation to further stimulate new scholarship on the Chinese diasporas in a transnational world.