Building the Chinese Diaspora across Canada: Chinese Diasporic Discourse and the Case of Peterborough, Ontario

Abstract

It has become a vogue for scholars to describe and analyze Chinese migration and migrants under the term “diaspora.” However, most previous studies have focused on the Chinese diaspora in a global, national, or metropolitan context and neglected the diasporic phenomenon as manifested in towns and small cities. A major purpose of this essay, therefore, is to fill the gap in the diasporic scholarship concerning small, localized communities by examining Chinese migration and networks around Peterborough, Ontario, which is about 110km to the northeast of Toronto. Peterborough developed as an incorporated town from 1850 and then as an incorporated city from 1905, and it has long attracted migrants from China. It is typical of the many small urban communities of eastern Canada whose Chinese communities have rarely received scholarly attention. While this essay mainly reports the results of empirical research on the Peterborough case, it also offers a theoretical critique of cultural, ethnic, and especially diasporic studies of the Chinese overseas.

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