WG 5: Labour and Migration
Working Group 5 deals with Chinese migration and other forms of human mobility in Europe and with labour relations arising from Chinese investments and migration. These topics relate to the remit of the other working groups as most forms of Chinese engagement in Europe are accompanied by human flows. Issues discussed in the group include:
- various migrations (small entrepreneurs; individual labour migrants; contract labour migrants working on construction projects; white-collar transferees in Chinese-owned or –acquired enterprises; students; investment immigrants) that have successively taken place to various European regions since the late 1980s;
- labour issues arising from Chinese investments, including changing management practices and relations between Chinese managers and European workers/unions,
- various forms of non-migratory mobilities, including tourism;
- urban change resulting from Chinese immigration and investment, including commercial real estate development, residential clustering, and themed tourism development;
- changes in Chinese-local relations and host society attitudes to/perceptions of Chinese immigrants;
- changes in the politics of Chinese ethnicity in Europe as a result of recent immigration and capital flows, including the ethnic economy, Chinese organisations, schools, and media, and relations between China and the Chinese in Europe.
- Chinese digital capital and mobilities.
Leader: Martina Bofulin
ZRC SAZU
Dr Martina Bofulin is a permanent research associate at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and an expert on migration and mobility between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Europe. She has done extensive fieldwork research in China, Serbia, and Slovenia focusing on material and immaterial movements among these locations. She has published on China’s diaspora policies, Chinese migrant transnationalism, and inclusion of Chinese migrants in high-impact peer-reviewed journals (China Perspectives, Asian Studies, Journal of Chinese Overseas, etc.) as well as in contributions to edited volumes (e.g., Intimate migrations by Berghahn Books, Handbook of Overseas Chinese in Europe by Brill Publishers). Her multi-year in-depth ethnography on migrants from SE China has been published in a monograph Home and away (ZRC SAZU Publishing House).
Co-leader: Elena Barabantseva
University of Manchester
Dr. Elena Barabantseva is Senior Lecturer in Chinese International Relations at the University of Manchester. Her research interests lie at the intersection of borders, identity, migration, intimacy, and citizenship in the context of globalising China. She is the author of Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism: De-Centering China (Routledge, 2013). Her forthcoming book, Russian Brides in the China Dream, explores marriage migration as a site of geopolitical and intimate projects, revealing the complex politics of desire, marriage, and race in China’s struggle for national rejuvenation.
From 2019 to 2024, WG 5 was lead by Prof Nyíri Pál
