Research Commons
      • Browse 
        • Communities & Collections
        • Titles
        • Authors
        • By Issue Date
        • Subjects
        • Types
        • Series
      • Help 
        • About
        • Collection Policy
        • OA Mandate Guidelines
        • Guidelines FAQ
        • Contact Us
      • My Account 
        • Sign In
        • Register
      View Item 
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Theses
      • Higher Degree Theses
      • View Item
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Theses
      • Higher Degree Theses
      • View Item
      JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

      Laowai: Contested Identity and Imagined Community among Shanghai's Expatriates

      Foote, David
      Thumbnail
      Files
      thesis.pdf
      9.942Mb
      Citation
      Export citation
      Foote, D. (2017). Laowai: Contested Identity and Imagined Community among Shanghai’s Expatriates (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/11122
      Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/11122
      Abstract
      Considering their significance to the globalised economy, expatriate communities have attracted relatively little scholarly scrutiny. Much has been written about non-Western migration to the West, but there has been little attention paid to population transfers in the opposite direction. Shanghai has a long historical and cultural association with the West and, thanks to China’s continued economic growth, the city's Western expatriate population has more than tripled since 2001. This research utilises ethnographic methods to examine identity and community within Shanghai's expatriate population. Using data from participant-observation, as well as text gleaned from interviews and personal narrative, I document the construction, by expatriates, of small, tightly bounded networks of support as well as the broader imagined community of "Westernness" from which these fictive kinship groups were typically drawn. Analysing transmigrancy through a ritual lens, I argue that this imagined Western community is best understood as an expression of communitas and that expatriates are liminal figures themselves, stalled in the middle phase of the migration ritual. Indeed, expatriates frequently located themselves between China and the West, unable to become Chinese but also unwilling to be seen as just another tourist. Local Chinese constructions of self also position the Western Other on the periphery - entangling "whiteness" and Westernness with assumptions of class, cosmopolitanism and personal freedom. Walled compounds and private drivers allowed some expatriates to move easily from one comfortable enclave of Westernness to another, only engaging with the local Chinese Other touristically. However, many expatriates made deeper claims of local emplacement, stitching together patchwork cosmopolitan neighbourhoods out of scattered, often discontiguous local and expatriate spaces. These blended neighbourhood bubbles provided expatriates with a space for the performance of new, liminal, transnational identities - rooted in Shanghai but still comfortably Western.
      Date
      2017
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Name
      Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
      Supervisors
      Goldsmith, Michael
      McCormack, Fiona
      Publisher
      University of Waikato
      Rights
      All items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
      Collections
      • Higher Degree Theses [1714]
      Show full item record  

      Usage

      Downloads, last 12 months
      1,562
       
       

      Usage Statistics

      For this itemFor all of Research Commons

      The University of Waikato - Te Whare Wānanga o WaikatoFeedback and RequestsCopyright and Legal Statement