Diasporic placemaking: the internationalisation of a migrant hometown in post-socialist China

Abstract

ABSTRACT International migration profoundly reshapes the urban landscape in sending and receiving countries. Compared to ethnic enclaves in migrant-receiving metropolises and remittance houses in sending communities, we know little about systematic urban changes led by emigration states. In this article, based on three months of fieldwork in a migrant hometown in China, I argue that the dispersion of emigrants per se does not make its urban space inherently ‘diasporic’. Rather, a ‘diasporic place’ can be strategically constructed by local sociopolitical actors, a process I conceptualise as ‘diasporic placemaking’. To create an international city branding and boost the consumption-based urban economy, the local state promotes Western architectural forms and imagines globalisation as a new way of life. To understand how migrants and local residents make sense of diasporic placemaking, I analyse deep-running tensions between their diverse self-perceptions and state construction. Instead of an innocent project, diasporic placemaking is replete with ambitions, achievements, and anxieties in post-socialist China’s march towards modernity, progress, and prosperity. To advance the constructivist momentum in diaspora studies, I explore how diaspora construction is realized and contested in urban transformations while shedding light on how migrant spaces are valorised and performed by local actors for economic and symbolic purposes.