Diaspora Diplomacy across Multiple Chinas: Using Hybridities to Analyse Diaspora Diplomacy in Chinese Jamaican Communities

Abstract

Summary Diaspora diplomacy is a fundamental framework for understanding diasporic engagement, the ways in which diasporic communities from the Global South contribute to the political and economic landscapes of their home nations, as well as the role their diasporic advocacy plays in the relationships between home and host nations. However, complex histories of migration and colonialism can complicate the perceived site of the diaspora’s diplomacy. Recent publications reflect on the concept of ‘multiple worlds’ within postcolonial diasporic communities. In this article, I partner diaspora diplomacy with the postcolonial framework of hybridities to trace the shifting roles of Chinese Jamaican institutions as diasporic diplomats over time. I explore how these organisations both navigate and reinvent themselves within the diverse formations of Chinese identity that endure within the Chinese diasporic ‘periphery’, changing local and Chinese geopolitics and their own positionality within a primarily Black, postcolonial nation.