Frontier People: Han Settlers in Minority Areas of China - Softcover

Hansen, Pro-Dean For Research Professor In Chinese Studies Mette Halskov

9780774811798: Frontier People: Han Settlers in Minority Areas of China

Softcover

ISBN 10: 077481179X ISBN 13: 9780774811798

Publisher: University of British Columbia Press, 2007

Chinese migration to Tibet and other border areas--now within the People's Republic of China--has long been a politically sensitive issue. As part of an ongoing process of internal colonization, migrations to minority areas have been, with few exceptions, directly organized by the government or driven by economic motives. Dramatic demographic and economic changes, often spearheaded not by local inhabitants but by Han Chinese immigrants have been the result.

Frontier People shows how the Han themselves have been directly involved in the process of transformation within these areas where they have settled. Their perceptions of the minority natives, their "old home," other immigrants, and their own role in the areas are examined in relation to the official discourse on the migrations. This study contests conventional ways of presenting Han immigrants in minority areas as a homogeneous group of colonizers with shared identification, equal class status, and access to power. Based on extensive fieldwork in two local areas, Frontier People demonstrates that the category of "Han immigrants" is profoundly fragmented in terms of generation, ethnic identification, migration history, class, and economic activity. In this respect, the book makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on colonizers--a diverse group of people with equally diverse perceptions of the colonial project in which they play an integral part.

This incisive volume will appeal to a wide range of scholars and students of anthropology, Asian studies, history, and immigration studies.

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Review:

'Hansen's meticulous research has lent a voice to the many life histories, hopes, achievements and disappointments of the millions of Chinese at China's frontiers, giving an invaluable glimpse of the innumerable strands that make up the story of China's colonisation of its borderlands since 1949. [...] As in countless other Chinese places, a few idiosyncratic customs, by now simply considered part of the local variant of Han Chinese culture, may all be that will survive of a non-Chinese origin that has been forgotten, if not actively denied.' --Times Higher Educational Supplement

About the Author:

METTE HALSKOV HANSEN is Professor in China Studies in the Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo.

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