Heritagization of Chinese Migration

Abstract

In the last few decades, migrants’ past experiences and memories have become increasingly recognized as a heritage. While this can be seen as a positive shift towards a more inclusive evaluation of the past, migration heritage is still overwhelmingly portrayed through a binary between the country of origin and country of settlement. This tendency obscures the multiple transnational connections migrants sustain with different locations along the migration process. Drawing on examples of Chinese migration to Europe, this article argues in favour of forgoing the national(istic) approach to heritagization and instead focusing on the connections formed during a century of Chinese migration to Europe.

Keywords

• migrants’ heritage
• heritagization of migration
• Chinese migration
• Chinese diaspora
• Chinatown