Negotiating Global Chinatowns: Difference, Diversity and Connection

Abstract

Over the past two centuries, diverse and changing Chinatowns have become global enclaves where separation from a surrounding city and society intersects with both the construction of “Chinese” communities and the processes that integrate Chinese into wider contexts while challenging or changing these contexts. Based on a decade of fieldwork in Chinatowns in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa, the investigators highlight the tensions of segregation and communit(ies) through the lenses of physical form and boundaries, social centers, and imagery. Drawing on Henri Lefebvres’s tripartite vision of the social construction of urban spaces (les espaces perçus, conçus and vécus), this article shows that Chinatowns, as distinctive spaces within a city, encapsulate intense debates about place, citizenship, rights and diversity that speak more generally to cities, nations and global urbanism.