The Chinese Face in Australia: Multi-generational Ethnicity among Australian-born Chinese

The Chinese Face in Australia: Multi-generational Ethnicity among Australian-born Chinese
ISBN-10
1461421314
ISBN-13
9781461421313
Category
Social Science
Pages
220
Language
English
Published
2012-06-07
Publisher
Springer Science & Business Media
Authors
Chan Kwok-bun, Lucille Lok-Sun Ngan

Description

The book explains how multi-generational Australian-born Chinese (ABC) negotiate the balance of two cultures. It explores both the philosophical and theoretical levels, focusing on deconstructing and re-evaluating the concept of ‘Chineseness.’ At a social and experiential level, it concentrates on how successive generations of early migrants experience, negotiate and express their Chinese identity. The diasporic literature has taken up the idea of hybrid identity construction largely in relation to first- and second-generation migrants and to the sojourner’s sense of roots in a diasporic setting somewhat lost in the debate over Chinese diasporas and identities are the experiences of long-term migrant communities. Their experiences are usually discussed in terms of the melting-pot concepts of assimilation and integration that assume ethnic identification decreases and eventually disappears over successive generations. Based on ethnography, fieldwork and participant observation on multi-generational Australian-born Chinese whose families have resided in Australia from three to six generations, this study reveals a contrasting picture of ethnic identification.

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