Interpreting the Chinese Diaspora: Identity, Socialisation, and Resilience According to Pierre Bourdieu 9780815360216, 9781351118828

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This is a highly ambitious book, aiming to develop a critical sociology of Chinese diaspora by applying, for the first time, Bourdieu’s influential reflexive sociology to understanding the social experiences and practices of diasporic Chinese communities in the West. Drawing on a wealth of empirical research – both quantitative and qualitative – among young Chinese in Canada and Australia, the book places these young people’s identity work, educational trajectories, and resilience building in response to structural societal constraints (such as racism) in a broad sociological framework which transcends macro perspectives on diaspora and micro perspectives on the formation of Chinese subjectivities through Bourdieu’s conceptual apparatus of capital, field, and habitus. In this way the book develops pertinent new insights into the contradictory meanings and experiences shared by many among Chinese diasporic subjects, such as ‘looking Chinese but not speaking Chinese’, the entrapments of inhabiting gendered and racialised bodies, family pressure in schooling, and their responses to racist stereotypes of Chineseness. Ien Ang, Distinguished Professor, Western Sydney University What binds us together and what walls us apart across borders, generations, and geographies? In an era of increasingly shrill nationalism and geopolitical conflict, understanding diasporic community, identity, and position is more crucial than ever. This new volume is a major sociological contribution to our understanding of ‘overseas’ Chinese communities. Allan Luke, Emeritus Professor, Queensland University of Technology The bold collaboration of two exciting scholars provides convincing evidence of the relevance of Bourdieu to an emerging area of study on diasporic Chinese youth. Mu and Pang draw on diverse studies in Australia and Canada to enrich our understanding of family, community, and resilience in the Chinese diaspora. Their important book makes a significant contribution to wider debates on identity, legitimate knowledge, and transnationalism in the fields of education and applied linguistics. Bonny Norton (FRSC), Professor and Distinguished University Scholar, University of British Colombia Drawing on the work of Bourdieu and his notions of field, habitus, and capital, this book provides a theoretically informed and empirically rich examination of Chinese diasporic youth in Australia and Canada. With a particular focus on educational contexts, Mu and Pang shed new light on questions of racialisation, identification, and resilience demonstrating the heterogeneity of the Chinese diaspora and the importance of countering the cultural essentialism that often colours their popular representation. With the rise of China and the continuing spread of Chinese diasporas, this book makes an important contribution towards understanding these phenomena especially in relation to the experiences of young people proving a valuable text for the sociologies of youth, health, and education. Megan Watkins, Professor, Western Sydney University

Interpreting the Chinese Diaspora

Globalisation and migration have created a vibrant yet dysphoric world fraught with different, and sometimes competing, practices and discourses. The emergent properties of the modern world inevitably complicate the being, doing, and thinking of Chinese diasporic populations living in predominantly white, English­speaking societies. This raises questions of what ‘Chineseness’ is. The gradual transfer of power from the West to the East shuffles the relative cultural weights within these societies. How do the global power shifts and local cultural vibrancies come to shape the social dispositions and positions of the Chinese diaspora, and how does the Chinese diaspora respond to these changes? How does primary pedagogic work through family upbringing and secondary pedagogic work through educational socialisation complicate, obfuscate, and enrich Chineseness? Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology on relative and relational sociocultural positions, Mu and Pang assess how historical, contemporary, and ongoing changes across social spaces of family, school, and community come to shape the intergenerational educational, cultural, and social reproduction of Chinese diasporic populations. The two authors engage in an in-­depth analysis of the identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building of young Chinese Australians and Chinese Canadians in the ever-­changing lived world. The authors look particularly at the tensions and dynamics around the participants’ life and educational choices; the meaning making out of their Chinese bodies in relation to gender, race, and language; and the sociological process of resilience that enculturates them into a system of dispositions and positions required to bounce back from structural constraints. Guanglun Michael Mu is Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. His work in this book was supported by the Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship at Queensland University of Technology and the Australian Research Council grant DE180100107 (Resilience, Culture, and Class: A Sociological Study of Australian Students). Bonnie Pang is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom (2019–2020), Senior Lecturer and a school-based member of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, Australia.

Routledge Studies on Asia in the World

Routledge Studies on Asia in the World will be an authoritative source of knowledge on Asia studying a variety of cultural, economic, environmental, legal, political, religious, security and social questions, addressed from an Asian perspective. We aim to foster a deeper understanding of the domestic and regional complexities which accompany the dynamic shifts in the global economic, political and security landscape towards Asia and their repercussions for the world at large. We’re looking for scholars and practitioners – Asian and Western alike – from various social science disciplines and fields to engage in testing existing models which explain such dramatic transformation and to formulate new theories that can accommodate the specific political, cultural and developmental context of Asia’s diverse societies. We welcome both monographs and collective volumes which explore the new roles, rights and responsibilities of Asian nations in shaping today’s interconnected and globalized world in their own right. The Series is advised and edited by Matthias Vanhullebusch and Ji Weidong of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The New International Relations of Sub-­Regionalism Asia and Europe Edited by Hidetoshi Taga and Seiichi Igarashi Regional Connection under the Belt and Road Initiative The Prospects for Economic and Financial Cooperation Edited by Fanny M. Cheung and Ying-­yi Hong Chinese Scholars and Foreign Policy Debating International Relations Edited by Huiyun Feng, Kai He and Yan Xuetong Interpreting the Chinese Diaspora Identity, Socialisation, and Resilience According to Pierre Bourdieu Guanglun Michael Mu and Bonnie Pang Find the full list of books in the series here: www.routledge.com/Routledge-­ Studies-on-­Asia-in-­the-World/book-­series/RSOAW

Interpreting the Chinese Diaspora

Identity, Socialisation, and Resilience According to Pierre Bourdieu Guanglun Michael Mu and Bonnie Pang

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Guanglun Michael Mu and Bonnie Pang The right of Guanglun Michael Mu and Bonnie Pang to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Names: Mu, Guanglun Michael, author. | Pang, Bonnie, author. Title: Interpreting the Chinese diaspora : identity, socialisation, and resilience according to Pierre Bourdieu / Guanglun Michael Mu and Bonnie Pang. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge studies on Asia in the world | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018058379| ISBN 9780815360216 (hardback) | ISBN 9781351118828 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Chinese diaspora. | Chinese–Foreign countries–Ethnic identity. | China–Emigration and immigration–History. | Immigrants– Social conditions. | Transnationalism–Social aspects–China. | Transnationalism. | Bourdieu, Pierre, 1930–2002. Classification: LCC DS732 .M8 2019 | DDC 305.8951–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058379 ISBN: 978-0-8153-6021-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-11882-8 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents



Foreword

viii

1 Introduction: approaching Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu

1

2 Looking Chinese and learning Chinese as a heritage language: habitus realisation within racialised social fields

26

3 Young Chinese girls’ aspirations in sport: gendered practices within Chinese families

50

4 Understanding the public pedagogies on Chinese gendered and racialised bodies

62

5 Reconciling the different logics of practice between Chinese students and parents in a transnational era

73

6 Coming into a cultural inheritance: building resilience through primary socialisation

86

7 Resilience to racial discrimination within the field of secondary socialisation: the role of school staff support

102

8 Does Chineseness equate with mathematics competence? Resilience to racialised stereotype

119

9 Recapitulating Chinese diaspora and sociologising the diasporic self

141



164

Index

Foreword

With the revitalisation of China (Zhōngguó 中国) as a knowledge-­producing superpower come the historical conditions of possibility for a shift from unipolar to multipolar education and research. This revitalisation has produced a new Chinese diaspora (xīn yí mín, 新移民) which in all its complex categories is reshaping the local/global socioeconomic and political landscapes. Around the world the Chinese diaspora is reworking the identities of intellectual cultures, re-­norming the socialisation processes of education, and rebuilding resilience through transcultural self-­confidence. Given these conditions, this study by Mu and Pang can be read as asking what intellectual connections might English-­ medium educational institutions now need to make with the heterogeneous diaspora of Chinese peoples. What then might the Chinese diaspora learn from their research? Mu and Pang identify themselves as part of the complex and continuously evolving Chinese diaspora. Significantly, they demonstrate that scholars of the Chinese diaspora have an important intellectual role to play in the twenty-­first century’s shift from unipolar to multipolar education through research and education that builds transcultural self-­confidence. For instance, they frame the ‘diverse Chinese diaspora’ as an idiom that expresses a gendered, racialised, and languaging stance through generational differences; a diaspora that makes knowledge claims, negotiates varied categories of geopolitical practice, and creates its own categories for the analysis of self and others. This diverse, heterogeneous Chinese diaspora is studied though young people who live with and through its tense dynamics via family, community, school, media, and labour market. To make sense of young people’s positioning and position taking in the Chinese diaspora Mu and Pang explore new ways of being, doing, and thinking Bourdieusian sociology. In doing so, they breach the academic norms that produce a misrecognition of the Chinese diaspora and arbitrarily assign it a negative value. Through the novel concepts of ‘habitus realisation’ and ‘flipped symbolic violence’ Mu and Pang demonstrate the possibilities for stretching or otherwise elongating Bourdieu’s conceptual tools. Of all the variations and dynamics among the young people who might position themselves within, or be positioned within the Chinese diaspora, Mu and Pang attach particular significance to their linguistic diversity and the temporal

Foreword   ix differences between themselves and their parents and grandparents’ life histories. While these young people’s identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building is conditioned by the transnational hierarchical structures in which they are embedded, Mu and Pang explain how these youngsters contribute to the construction of knowledge which constitutes a world of meaning, sense, and value. For institutions of English-­medium instruction and research this knowledge is worthy of their investment of time and energy. However, Mu and Pang question the profits stressed by these institutions in their quest for Chinese consumers of English and the knowledge it provides access to, while excluding the building of educational relations through the Chinese diasporas’ intellectual culture and history. What then might others learn from Mu and Pang’s study of the young people who constitute the heterogeneous diaspora of Chinese peoples? They raise the stakes in explorations of (imperfect) intergenerational educational socialisation by bringing precision to the contested and contestable work of cultural norming. Specifically, Mu and Pang construct rigorous accounts of the pedagogically mundane landscapes provided by transnational families, social media and learning language(s), sport and mathematics. In grappling with structural constraints on young people’s identities, resilience, and socialisation, Mu and Pang take a sociological approach to ‘resilience building’. They demonstrate that educators who, despite feeling like insignificant adults have the power to remind those in power that they can design spaces within institutionalised education to free students from contemptuous labels and oppressive hegemonies. Here, the power of Mu and Pang’s methods of critical thinking is manifested in their capability to excavate ‘resilience’ from neoliberal psychology and the symbolic violence evident in its use to pathologise individuals’ supposed deficits. How do Mu and Pang move the research field forward? In terms of the move towards postmonolingual research methodologies they explicitly acknowledge the tensions associated with the monolingual mindset in research which, in this context sees English assert itself over multilingual researchers’ uses of their repertoire of languages-­and-knowledge. Mu and Pang scrutinise the privileged and taken-­for-granted scholastic view of English-­medium universities which cloak their governing monolingual mindset above and beyond questioning. In asking how and why this particular scholastic perspective is normalised and the languages-­and-knowledge of ‘others’ is systematically silenced, Mu and Pang provide a valuable critique of the construction and dissemination of knowledge in this intellectual field. This book is written largely in academic English, using theoretical tools originally produced in French and disseminated through English for international research publication purposes. However, Mu and Pang exercise ‘flipped symbolic violence’, their concept, to reject the imposition of a monolingual mindset on scholars among the Chinese diaspora, and instead make evident a range of postmonolingual research practices which they desire to use themselves. Of necessity, their study of the Chinese diaspora entails collecting evidence from

x   Foreword knowledgeable participants who speak Puˇtōnghuà (普通话), which they make evident in their use of Hànzì (汉字) and English translations. They go further, identifying in their repertoire of languages-­and-knowledge theoretical concepts from Zhōngwén (中文) that they activate, mobilise, and deploy for instance to elaborate on complexities of the concept of ‘flipped symbolic violence’ (for example, jıˇ suoˇ bù yù, wù shī yú rén, 己所不欲, 勿施于人). This elaboration of their scholarly capabilities provides a reminder for those who invest power in academic English and the knowledge it provides access to, of the power, languages and knowledge of the Chinese diaspora. The purposeful uses of these postmonolingual research methods are Mu and Pang’s strategic response to the monolingual mindset which prevails in the English-­medium universities in which they work and an intellectual field which demands their use of English for research publishing purposes. Throughout this book they take on a position as postmonolingual researchers, among other positions, to extend the history of languages-­and-knowledge exchange, shift to multipolar centres of knowledge production, and develop the new research capabilities these now require. Through this internationally significant study of the Chinese diaspora, Mu and Pang in their modesty raise an immensely significant question: what does it mean now for institutions of English-­medium instruction and research to look to Zhōngguó for trade, economic investment, knowledge workers, and students while being unable to theorise or think critically in Zhōngwén. Importantly, through their methodological extensions to Bourdieu’s theoretical framework Mu and Pang invite contemplation of the meanings yet to be generated through analytical concepts from the languages-­and-knowledge of the Chinese diaspora. To do so, they recognise the need to educate a mass of researchers capable of deep engagement with this agenda who can model the desired practices through collective efforts. To this end, Mu and Pang hold that pedagogies of doctoral research education are necessary for the intergenerational extension of capabilities engaging in research which uses postmonolingual practices to deal with the tensions posed by the monolingual mindset, in both English and Chinese intellectual fields. To advance the reciprocal learning, bilateral communication, and postmonolingual innovations in knowledge production made possible by the Chinese diaspora, Mu and Pang acknowledge the need for transforming the structural constraints – to flip the symbolic violence – of research education. Research supervision and academic mentorship which promote transcultural self-­ confidence in the rising generation of scholars from the Chinese diaspora are necessary for disrupting hierarchical, unidirectional knowledge flows in academic English. Such pedagogical interventions and associated knowledge production and dissemination are directed at securing government and university policies that embed research by the Chinese diaspora in the local/global knowledge economy. Postmonolingual researching provides a means for bringing to the fore the languages-­and-knowledge researchers from the Chinese diaspora actually use to learn from interviewees; to conduct scholarly dialogues and knowledge exchanges with colleagues, and engage in mutual critiques through

Foreword   xi peer reviews. Recent developments in knowledge production through postmonolingual researching are creating researchers among the Chinese diaspora with the capabilities for new forms of theorising and opening up new spaces for critical thinking in languages beyond academic English. Mu and Pang have moved the possibilities for intergenerational change among Chinese diasporic researchers to extend these postmonolingual research practices and the agendas produced through such research. Michael Singh Professor Western Sydney University

1 Introduction Approaching Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu

Diasporic Chinese are believed to have the third largest population, the longest history, and perhaps the widest spread in the world. Decades of research have presented us a panoramic and penetrating picture of diasporic Chinese in terms of their origin, motivation, and distribution; the potholes and distractions along their goldrush journey; their struggles for surviving and thriving in the face of discrimination, antagonism, and xenophobia in white dominant societies; as well as their identity work in modern, multicultural social spaces. In this new millennium, stories and experiences of diasporic Chinese continue to spark scholarly debate. The exponential growth of globalisation, the rapid expansion of migration, the significant development of inclusivity, the emerging forms of socioeconomic dynamics, and the striking rise of China are rewriting the quotidian life of diasporic Chinese. In turn, the life politics of diasporic Chinese comes to reshape the socioeconomic, cultural, and political landscapes of the global era. Therefore, the picture of diasporic Chinese is never complete but continues to evolve. Such continuous evolution necessitates ongoing research on diasporic Chinese. In this book, we aim to contribute in terms of enriching knowledge about the identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building of diasporic Chinese young people. The point of departure of this book is that vibrancies in the macrocosms of economy, polity, and power translate into dynamics of the microcosms of family, school, and community; and translate further into individual social dispositions and positions. At the same time, individuals have a certain level of agency to repaint the landscape of social structures. To understand and theorise power, politics, and practice around diasporic Chinese’s identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building, we have recourse to Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology. Yet, both Chinese diaspora and Bourdieu’s sociology are scholastic fields exposed to strident contestations. In this opening chapter, we first approach the scholastic fields of diaspora and Bourdieu; we then set the scene of the book by revisiting the social space of Chinatowns worldwide and a depiction of contemporary diasporic Chinese in Australia and Canada; at the end of the chapter, we provide a synoptic overview of the book.

2   Introduction We foreground the discussion of Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu to construct the research context and to establish the theoretical foundation of the book. To this end, we follow the suggestion of Wacquant (1989, p. 51): The trick, if I may call it that, is to manage to combine immense theoretical ambition with extreme empirical modesty. The summum of the art, in social science, is, in my eyes, to be capable of engaging very high ‘theoretical stakes’ by means of very precise and often mundane empirical objects. We tend too easily to assume that the social or political importance of an object suffices in itself to grant importance to the discourse that deals with it. What counts, in reality, is the rigor of the construction of the object. I think that the power of a mode of thinking never manifests itself more clearly than in its capacity to constitute socially insignificant objects into scientific objects (as Goffman did of the minutiae of interaction rituals) or, what amounts to the same thing, to approach a major socially significant object in an unexpected manner – something I am presently attempting by studying the effects of the monopoly of the state over the means of legitimate symbolic violence by way of a very down-­to-earth analysis of what a certificate (of illness, invalidity, schooling, etc.) is and does. For this, one must learn how to translate very abstract problems into very concrete scientific operations. Diasporic Chinese is becoming increasingly visible in multicultural societies. This is a ‘normal’ and normalised status in the empirical world. Here we aim to transform diasporic Chinese from ‘mundane empirical objects’ into significant ‘scientific objects’ by engaging with Bourdieu’s sociology. It is by no means our intention here to colonise Chinese diaspora research by Bourdieu’s sociological instruments; neither do we intend to test Bourdieu’s sociological theory on Chinese diaspora populations. In contrast to transplanting Bourdieu into Chinese diasporic contexts or pre-­empting Bourdieu’s explanatory power in Chinese diaspora research, we make an attempt to approach a sociology of Chinese diaspora through Bourdieu. As it is overambitious to examine every life aspect of diasporic Chinese, we focus on the identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building in this book. By doing so, we hope that we do not misinterpret Wacquant’s call, as quoted above, to ‘combine immense theoretical ambition with extreme empirical modesty’. To begin with, we construct the scientific objects of the book, that is, diasporic Chinese.

Revisiting the notion ‘diaspora’ Chinese people have long been known for their disposition of migration, with their earliest documented voyage of exploration dating back more than 2,000 years. According to 史记 (Records of the Grand Historian of China),1 Emperor Qin (Qinshihuang, 秦始皇) feared death and sought a way to live forever. He delegated to Xufu (徐福) the mission of looking for the elixir of immortality. Entrusted with the mission of discovering the secret of immortality for Emperor

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   3 Qin, Xufu made his first journey to the eastern seas in 219 bc. Xufu led a fleet of 60 barques with 5,000 crew members, 3,000 virgin boys and girls, and a mass of craftsmen with different expertise. He returned several years later without finding any immortals believed to live on the Penglai Island. He then set sail again in 210 bc. The fleet anchored in a place called ‘Flat Plains and Wide Swamps’ (平原广泽),2 where Xufu proclaimed himself king and never returned. Xufu’s journeys to the eastern seas may qualify Chinese as an ethnic group with the longest history of migration. Historical reviews of Chinese migration are abundant in the literature (W. Li, 2016b; Liu, 2015; Poston & Wong, 2016; Priebe & Rudolf, 2015; Wang, 1991; Zhou, 2017). Only a brief recount is required here. Wang (1991) proposes one of the earliest models to categorise overseas Chinese. According to Wang’s (1991) typology, overseas Chinese can be identified as huashang (华商), huagong (华工), huaqiao (华侨), and huayi (华裔). The term huashang literally means Chinese traders or merchants. This is the dominant pattern of Chinese emigration during the precolonial era of Chinese imperial states. Early huashang, predominantly from Fujian province, took seasonal workers, who were mostly their relatives or/and fellow villagers, to Southeast Asia. Some returned home regularly to prepare subsequent journeys; whereas some settled overseas, developed migration networks, and planted seeds for further trade. In either way, huashang established ‘peripheral capitalism’ (Wang, 1991) on the fringes or outside the reach of the imperial state, staying away from both the repressive, contemptuous, bureaucratic orthodoxy that disapproved of monetary profit, and the symbolic power of Confucianism emphatic about ritual and social bonding rather than financial gains. The term huagong commonly refers to Chinese coolies, mostly from Guangdong and Fujian provinces, who were indentured workers at overseas plantations, mines, and infrastructural sites. This is the dominant pattern of Chinese emigration during the colonial era, culminating in the goldrush years. The term huaqiao literally means Chinese sojourners, generally including first-­generation Chinese immigrants living overseas who retain strong connections with their motherland China. The term huayi broadly refers to people of Chinese descent, who are later generations of the former three categories, and who may or may not maintain strong connections with China. Interestingly, W. Li (2016a) politically makes a further distinction between huaqiao and huaren. The former term is formally used for designation of Chinese citizens living outside Greater China, namely Chinese Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. The latter term, with no reference to Chinese citizenship, is typically used to denote first-­generation Chinese immigrants from Greater China who have taken up permanent residency or citizenship in another country. Irrespective of different terminologies, the two notions are both China­centred, with a political connotation of recognition of, and connection to, the motherland China. Huashang and huagong, owing to their historical origin, have less current relevance, whereas huaqiao, huaren, and huayi are still widely used to identify

4   Introduction overseas Chinese. However, the sociocultural and linguistic diversity of overseas Chinese comes to shape a highly complex and demographically heterogeneous group that makes any attempt at typological conceptualisation partial and contingent at best, and misleading and problematic at worst. In some Southeast Asian states, particularly Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, a relatively large proportion of citizens are of Chinese descent. Some may well maintain Chinese culture and language, irrespective of generation, whereas others may not. In either case, they may not identify themselves as huaren or huayi. At times when national identity has high stakes, they may prefer to use Singaporean, Malaysian, or Indonesian, instead of identifying with China or Chinese (Wang, 1992). At other times when cultural identity is salient, they may choose to use Singaporean huaren (Singaporean Chinese), Malaysian huaren (Malaysian Chinese), or Indonesian huaren (Indonesian Chinese), whether they are first-­generation immigrants from Greater China or long-­ settled later generations. In some situations when Chinese cultural identity is lost or fading, they may use Singaporean huayi (Singaporean of Chinese descent), Malaysian huayi (Malaysian of Chinese descent), or Indonesian huayi (Indonesian of Chinese descent) merely for the purpose of designating their historical genesis and biological body. In this case, Chineseness has become what Gans (1979) means by ‘symbolic ethnicity’. In other situations when racial identity has more reference, East Asian or Asian may be used as a collective, pan-­ethnic identity. The aforementioned nomenclatures are equally protean in Western countries where there are relatively large populations of Chinese descent, for example, the US, Canada, and Australia. The prescribed, categorical nomenclature can become completely dysfunctional in contexts of mixed-­race and ever-­evolving and swinging identities. When successfully ‘assimilated’, overseas Chinese may identify with their colonial motherland, claiming a pure American/Australian/Canadian identity and becoming a ‘Banana’ person – yellow outside and white inside (Khoo, 2003). Some may form a pan-­ethnic Asian identity as a collective response to racism, or may (re)claim a Chinese or hyphenated identity (e.g. Chinese-­American, Chinese-­Canadian, Chinese-­ Australian), especially for first-­generation new Chinese immigrants given the rise of China (Benton & Gomez, 2014). Therefore, the imposed, predominant nomenclature to categorise overseas Chinese is difficult, if not impossible; is problematic, if not fallacious. In recognition of the challenges to typologically conceptualise overseas Chinese, we choose to use the term ‘Chinese diaspora’. It is by no means our intention to adopt a simplistic approach and overlook the heterogeneity of diasporic Chinese populations. Indeed, Hall (1990, p. 235) has long reminded us:  The diaspora experience as I intend it here is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity.

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   5 The heterogeneity of diaspora is worthy of scholarly debate, but our focus here is not to categorise diasporic Chinese populations but to decipher the matrix of identity, resilience, socialisation, and learning of Chinese children, adolescents, and young adults in different diasporic contexts, Australia and Canada in particular. The themes of this book are introduced momentarily. We now spend some space conceptualising diaspora. The term ‘diaspora’ originally referred only to the dispersion and exile of Jewish Christians from Judea and later from Israel (Safran, 1991). It was then extended to describe almost all nameable emigrant or immigrant groups as well as their descendants dispersed outside their place of birth, origin, or ancestry. Brubaker (2005, p.  1) uses the term ‘the “diaspora” diaspora’ to describe the proliferation and dispersion of the term ‘diaspora’ across semantic, conceptual, and disciplinary spaces. But the latitudinarian use of ‘diaspora’ erodes the discriminating power of the term and undermines its ability to make distinctions: ‘The universalisation of diaspora, paradoxically, means the disappearance of diaspora’ (Brubaker, 2005, p. 3). To save ‘diaspora’ from extinction, we need to reappropriate the term by relooking at its definition, boundaries, and features. Diaspora is an umbrella term ‘for the many extra-­territorial groups that, through processes of interacting with their origin state, are in various stages of coalescence or dissipation’ (Gamlen, 2008, p. 842). Diasporic populations can include temporary sojourners or transnational migrants staying/living alternately in their sending and host states, and first-­generation emigrants and their descendants, who – in certain places at certain times – form a fully fledged diaspora community in their settled country (Gamlen, 2008). Emphatic about connections to homeland and the home-­host binary, Gamlen’s (2008) understanding of diaspora aligns with Safran’s (1991) conceptualisation that proposes a helpful list of common features of diaspora. These include dispersal from the homeland, retention of a collective memory of the homeland, commitment to the homeland, desire to return to the homeland, collective consciousness and solidarity, and partial or full exclusion or marginalisation from the hostland. Less helpful, however, is the binary of home and host, as the hostland can have already become a well-­established home away from home whereas the homeland can have already become the most unfamiliar home (Mu, 2016). In addition, Safran’s (1991) criteria may overemphasise the connection to homeland. He indeed observed that some diaspora communities (e.g. diasporic Chinese community) generally have less or no desire to return to the so-­called homeland (Safran, 1991). Brubaker (2005) provides a condensed version of diasporic features and identifies three core constitutive elements of diaspora: dispersion (either forced or voluntary) across state borders, orientation to a real or imagined homeland as a source of identity, and boundary-­maintenance as a distinctive community vis-­à-vis a host society. Yet these criteria for diaspora are more suggestive than conclusive, as Brubaker (2005) acknowledges that each of these criteria is variously weighted in different diasporic contexts and each confronts its antithesis. First, dispersion is not only caused by migration of people over borders but also

6   Introduction attributed to migration of borders over people. For instance, many ethnonational communities have (once) been separated from their putative national homeland either by a political frontier (Russians as an example) or by a colonial force (Hong Kong as a historical case in point). Second, not all diaspora communities are homeland-­oriented. South Asian diaspora, for example, tends to de-­emphasise homeland orientation. Third, there is ongoing tension between boundary-­maintenance and boundary-­erosion. For instance, local-­born new generations of Chinese business people in Southeast Asia rarely depend on Chinese networks with much evidence of an absence of ethnic ties among them (Chua, 2009). In contrast, Chinese ethnic entrepreneurs in Australia maintain close ties with their Chinese ethnic community for networks and resources when establishing business (Dyer & Ross, 2000; Liu, 2011). Recently, however, new Chinese immigrants in the business sector assume strong connections to the Chinese market and China’s state given the economic power of China (Benton & Gomez, 2014). What both Safran (1991) and Brubaker (2005) miss are two things: the liberating force and the transnational nationalism of diaspora. First, the liberating force of diasporic identity can function as a symbolic freedom from a contemptuous label of ethnic minority in ‘an oppressive national hegemony’ (Clifford, 1997, p.  255). In this vein, diaspora has symbolic capital as it bestows a powerful sense of positive identification, transnational belongingness, and symbolic solidarity upon globally dispersed people of a common cultural heritage, historical origin, and ancestral root (I. Ang, 2003). The term ‘Chinese diaspora’ has evinced ‘an enormous power to operate as a magnet’ for overseas Chinese ‘no matter how remote the ancestral links’ (I. Ang, 2003, p. 142). Second and related, the ‘transnational nationalism’ embedded in diaspora is ‘based on the presumption of internal ethnic sameness and external ethnic distinctiveness’ (I. Ang, 2003, p. 145). That is to say, the liberating force of diaspora concomitantly creates limiting boundaries and bounded identities. In the graphic language of Anderson (1998, p. 131), ‘Wherever the “Chinese” happen to end up – Jamaica, Hungary, or South Africa – they remain countable Chinese, and it matters little if they also happen to be citizens of those nation-­states’. This very countable Chineseness creates a diasporic nationalism in a transnational context. Due at least in part to the strident contestations of Chinese diaspora, the term has different weights in different contexts. It has been commonly used by scholars in America, Oceania, and Europe to refer to the Chinese living outside the Chinese land/Greater China, whereas academics in Southeast Asia prefer the use of overseas Chinese to Chinese diaspora because of the sensitivity of the latter term which may imply unrooted or China-­centred orientation (Tan, 2013). Accordingly, we understand Chinese diaspora as consisting of those of Chinese descent who live outside Greater China, irrespective of their generation and citizenship. In this book, we are concerned with Chinese diaspora young people in multicultural Australia and Canada, looking particularly at their identity, learning, and resilience. Specifically, we come to grips with these young people’s identity work around gender and body, practice and politics around

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   7 their mathematics learning and physical education, as well as resilience building in the face of racial discrimination and stereotypes. In this vein, we understand Chinese diaspora as what Brubaker (2005, p.  12) calls ‘an idiom, a stance, a claim … a category of practice … and … a category of analysis’. Chinese diaspora is now the third largest after German and Irish diasporas (Poston & Wong, 2016). It is also the most widely spread diaspora in the world. Although there are no official statistics regarding the exact population of Chinese diaspora, it is estimated that there are more than 40 million Chinese residing outside Greater China, out of which about 29.5 million live in other Asian countries, 7.5 million in the Americas, 2 million in Europe, 1 million in Oceania, and 0.25 million in Africa (Priebe & Rudolf, 2015). Three quarters of Chinese diaspora are in Asia, while Australia and Canada accommodate a significant population of Chinese diaspora in Western countries (Poston & Wong, 2016). In both countries, the population of Chinese diaspora is the largest non-­ European ethnic group. This prompts us to delve into Chinese diasporic contexts of Canada and Australia, to which we turn momentarily. Given its ‘sheer critical mass, global range, and mythical might’ (I. Ang, 2003, p.  142), Chinese diaspora has attracted a steady stream of research. Econometric, longitudinal, cross-­country analysis has provided robust statistical evidence on the significant, positive contribution of Chinese diasporic populations to long-­run economic growth of their residence countries (Priebe & Rudolf, 2015). Due at least in part to this economic contribution and the view of Chinese diaspora as potential or actual human capital, coupled with the rising of China as a superpower, the volume of publications on Chinese diaspora tends to be growing. Recently published books in this regard discuss hybrid identities and cultural home (Liu, 2015), negotiation of ethnic and national identities (Gomez & Benton, 2015), the emergence of new identities and linguistic practices (W. Li, 2016b), Chinese dispositions and language choices (Mu, 2016), and the social experience of contemporary/new Chinese diaspora (Zhou, 2017), just to name a few here. Our book is built on the grounds of extant debates, but differs from them in several ways. The book differs, first, in that it does not exclusively focus on new Chinese diaspora (xin yimin, 新移民) who are post-­1978 Chinese emigrants (Zhou, 2017). It does not mean that the phenomenon of new Chinese diaspora is of less importance. Rather, we include diasporic Chinese of different generations in our analysis. Second, we move beyond the purist economic approach to construing Chinese diaspora as human capital. We do not exclude economic discussion but take into account diasporic capitalism in relation to the microcosms of family, school, and community; as well as the macrocosms of public media and multicultural state. Next, recent books tend to have a particular interest in the identity work of diasporic Chinese. Identity is also an important theme of our book, but we also grapple with the educational socialisation and the resilience building of diasporic Chinese. We string together identity, education, and resilience through the intersectionality of history, culture, class, race, and gender. Though contextualised in Australia and Canada, our research includes diverse

8   Introduction Chinese diaspora populations of different generations, different status of citizenship, and different places of birth. We therefore hope that this book has implications for wider diasporic contexts beyond Australia and Canada. Perhaps more importantly, our book is conceptually and methodologically distinctive, seen in our attempt to theorise Chinese diaspora through Bourdieu’s sociology. This is the point to which we now turn.

Approaching a sociology of Chinese diaspora through Bourdieu Sociological discussion of Chinese diaspora is not silent. Building on the grounds of a large-­scale cross-­country comparison of diaspora policy mechanisms, Gamlen (2008) proposed the notion ‘emigration state’ to map out the role of the state in transnational processes, through which sending states shape different groups of emigrants and their descendants into diaspora communities, while at the same time, diaspora communities influence the development of the state apparatus. In simple words, diasporas and emigration states co-­constitute each other. Diaspora communities not only have to negotiate with the macro-­ level forces of the sending states but also have to respond to the geopolitics of their residence country. Regarding Chinese diaspora, its population in the residence country is influenced by a set of geoeconomic factors of that country, including Gross National Product, urbanisation rate, population size and density, geographic area, and distance from China (Poston & Wong, 2016). Put together, this is what Safran (1991, p. 91) means by Diaspora-­Home-Host ‘triangular relationship’, although we disapprove of the home-­host binary as argued earlier. The idea behind the diaspora-­home-host triangular relationship is implicitly summarised by Zhou and Benton (2017): Distinct streams of emigration from China and remigrations from the Chinese diaspora are contingent upon historical, geopolitical, and socioeconomic circumstances; and influenced by the intersection of (de)colonisation, nation-­state-building, changes in political regimes, state economic development programs, diasporic networks, and the migration industry. The preceding discussions, if retheorised through Bourdieu, involve one of ‘three necessary and internally connected moments’ of field analysis (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.  104). Specifically, the preceding discussions can be understood as the first moment of field analysis, that is, the position of the field under question vis-­à-vis the field of power. In other words, these discussions are more or less concerned with the social space of emigrations and remigrations of Chinese diaspora communities in relation to the fields of government, polity, economy, and state. These discussions, though important, risk falling prey to diasporic capitalism that attributes choices of identification and citizenship, almost exclusively, to economic and political power, without due attention to history and culture. In contrast, our work is less interested in Chinese emigrations and remigrations themselves, or the macro-­level forces that drive them; rather, our work is more interested in diasporic Chinese’s social practice

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   9 associated with settlement. To this end, we need to go beyond the first moment of field analysis, and grapple with all the three moments of field analysis. To expound field analysis, we have to revisit the three signature concepts of Bourdieu – namely field, capital, and habitus – known as the foundational triad of Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology. In analytic terms, a field may be defined as a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions. These positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by their present and potential situations (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions (domination, subordination, homology, etc.). (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 97) Highly differentiated multicultural societies are composed of relatively autonomous fields, seen as objective social microcosms of objective relations with a specific and irreducible logic of practice. For instance, the field of state functions as a field of meta-­power with a tendency to manipulate other fields. The field of economy historically creates a universe where ‘business is business’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.  98) – ‘a system governed by the laws of interested calculation, competition or exploitation’ (Bourdieu, 1990, p.  113). The fields of diasporic Chinese family and community may engage in social practice of dispersion across state borders, orientation to a real or imagined homeland, and boundary-­maintenance as a distinctive community. It is observable that each field has a field-­specific logic of practice, which marks the relative autonomy of each field. That said, fields are never fully free of one another. Instead, they are heteronomous. Relooking at extant discussions in the literature, it is contestable that there is a mutually constitutive effect between the social space consisting of diasporic Chinese and the fields of economy, policy, and state, although those latter fields tend to have a stronger impact on the former than the other way around. Elsewhere Bourdieu (2011, pp. 40–41) wrote: A field is a structured social space, a field of forces, a force field. It contains people who dominate and people who are dominated. Constant, permanent relationships of inequality operate inside this space, which at the same time becomes a space in which various actors struggle for the transformation or preservation of the field. All the individuals in this universe bring to the competition all the relative power at their disposal. It is this power that defines their position in the field and, as a result, their strategies. In the above quote, people, actors, and individuals are social agents who engage in relations and vie for power by taking advantage of various valuable resources at their disposal. This is the second moment of field analysis that maps out ‘the

10   Introduction objective structure of the relations between the positions occupied by the agents or institutions who compete for the legitimate form of specific authority’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 105). The second moment of field analysis is particularly crucial for understanding the strategies of Chinese diaspora young people for survivability, sustainability, and conviviality in the fields of family, community, school, media, and labour market, where their identity, education, and resilience all come into play. The power relations and social positions of Chinese diaspora young people and other social agents are objectively defined by capital, which refers to accumulated resources and has the potential to produce profits and to reproduce itself in an identical or expanded form (Bourdieu, 1986). These forms include economic capital – financial wealth and monetary assets; cultural capital in an objectified state – socially valued cultural goods; cultural capital in an embodied state – culturally pertinent knowledge as well as socially appropriate manners of behaviours, modes of thought, and ways of speaking; cultural capital in an institutionalised state – educational credentials and qualifications; social capital – the access to, possession of, relations within, durable networks of acquaintance and recognition; and symbolic capital – reputation for competence as well as respectability and honourability (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986). Capital does not exist and cannot function except in relation to a field (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Certain resources of diasporic Chinese (e.g. Chineseness, gender, language, and body) may be made qualified as capital in exchange for value in a given field. But in a different field, these affiliates of diasporic Chinese may depreciate, lose value, or even incur penalty in forms of unease, discrimination, marginalisation, and exclusion. Although capital in various forms, quantities, and configurations has high stakes in nature at a certain time and place, it is not the only mechanism that engineers the social practice of Chinese diaspora young people. This necessitates the third moment of field analysis that comes to grips with the habitus of agents – ‘the different systems of dispositions they have acquired by internalising a determinate type of social and economic condition, and which find in a definite trajectory within the field under consideration a more or less favourable opportunity to become actualised’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.  105). Habitus constitutes the inner workings and underpinning principles of social practice. Bourdieu uses a variety of wording to explain habitus, but a commonly cited definition is offered here: Systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively regulated and regular without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 72)

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   11 For Chinese diaspora young people, their history, culture, socioeconomic status, language, body, and gender, among many other habitual states are subjective structures in constant response to the objective structures of the fields. Habitus-­ oriented dispositions, tendencies, propensities, inclinations, and internalisation of external structures often go beyond consciousness. Certain ways of being, doing, and thinking may have arbitrarily assigned value in a given field, and hence become capital at stake. Other dispositions, for example gendered identity, racialised body, and classed domestic pedagogy, may depreciate and result in marginalisation in a different field. As such, the third moment of field analysis, with a sharp focus on habitus, is essential to understand tensions and dynamics around identity, education, and resilience of Chinese diaspora young people in the fields of family, community, school, and media. Elsewhere Bourdieu’s field analysis is interpreted as having three levels (see Grenfell, 2014). Such an interpretation implies that field analysis is hierarchical and sequential. Different from this interpretation, we understand field analysis, in line with Bourdieu’s original development, as composed of three necessary and internally connected moments, with none of these moments dominant or primary. The three moments of field analysis can be applied in different ways. For example, field analysis can start from delimiting the fields under examination and the ‘cross-­field effects’ among them (Lingard & Rawolle, 2004); through mapping out agents’ relative positions objectively defined by capital at their disposal within the field in focus; to deciphering the ‘structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 72), that is, the habitus in the field. Examples for this approach to field analysis can be seen in Han (2018) and Mu et al. (2019). But field analysis can function equally well in an opposite direction. For example, when Mu (2018) objectivates his subjective dispositions in the academic field, his analysis of ‘participant objectivation’ starts from habitus, through capital, to field. We therefore propose that field analysis does not necessarily have three ‘levels’; rather, it has three necessary and internally connected moments, the layout of which depends on the research purpose. We also propose that each moment may be used as an analytic tool in its own right to take stock of a particular research problem. But to portray a complete picture of the phenomenon under question and to decode the logic of practice behind the phenomenon require all three moments of field analysis. By dint of field analysis, our work conceptually and theoretically differs from the macro-­level debate on diaspora-­home-host and the micro-­level literature on diasporic experiences and activities. Our work also differs, methodologically, from pure qualitative approaches to Chinese diaspora, which are predominant in the literature. That said, the limited research found in Chinese diaspora research in Health and Physical Education, sport, and physical activity, has been predominately quantitative in nature and with little consideration of extended analytical writing about young people’s experiences (but see e.g. Pang, Macdonald, & Hay, 2015). Such quantitative analysis helps to identify patterns of differences between subjects (e.g. boys and girls, Chinese and white) and within subjects

12   Introduction (e.g. individual change across time) but is less helpful in terms of deconstructing categorical thinking and discovering the nuances, contradictions, and lived experiences of Health and Physical Education, sport, and physical activity within Chinese diaspora young people (Pang, 2018). Therefore, both qualitative and quantitative paradigms have value in Chinese diaspora research. Bourdieu rejected methodological binaries and bequeathed us with his methodological pluralism in order to mobilise a pool of methods ‘of observation and measurement, quantitative and qualitative, statistical and ethnographic, macrosociological and microsociological (all these being meaningless oppositions), for the purpose of studying an object well defined in space and time’ (Bourdieu, Sapiro, & McHale, 1991, p. 628). Bourdieu’s pluralist epistemology would be one of the best to unveil the dynamics of Chinese diaspora – a research area that, Liu (2015) believes, requires an interdisciplinary approach. Following Bourdieu’s route, we frame our work within a pluralist paradigm that straddles quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Before we proceed to an overview of the book on diasporic Chinese’s identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building, we spare some space to discuss Chinatowns worldwide and contemporary diasporic Chinese in Australia and Canada.

Chinatown as a trans-­temporal, trans-­cultural, and trans-­spatial field Discussion of contemporary diasporic Chinese would be ahistorical without also discussing Chinatowns aggregated and dispersed in cosmopolitan spaces across the world. Historically Chinatowns functioned as the pre-­eminent spaces for Chinese immigrants in creating a sense of belonging and seeking refuge from the hostile environment in Western contexts (I. Ang, 2016). Contemporary Chinatowns worldwide, however, have seen a gradual shift in function from being an ethnic enclave to social spaces with various inner workings. The meaning of Chinatown continues to morph over time. Of all the variegations and dynamics, the most visible is the linguistic landscape in Chinatowns. For example, in Washington, DC’s gentrified Chinatown, commercial developments, primarily non-­Chinese-owned businesses, use Chinese­language signs as their design features to target non-­ethnic Chinese people as potential customers (Leeman & Modan, 2009). In contrast, bilingual advertisements are commonly used in Melbourne’s Chinatown, with the Chinese version maintaining cultural proximity to Chinese communities while the English version provides an exotic experience to non-­Chinese populations (S. Y. Chen, 2014). These visible, diverse linguistic landscapes indicate the interaction of written language, built environment, and spatial commodification. Less visible, however, is the evolution of the space of Chinatown in relation to time. Herein lies our trans-­temporal perspective: The past has never left the historical arena; the present always has its historical roots; understanding of contemporary Chinatowns worldwide needs to think through the now and the then.

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   13 Chinatown was a historical site of struggle, of identity sanctuary and crisis, of collective effort in survival, of resilient responses to political disenfranchisement, of joint resistance to racism and white hegemony. The Chinatown in Lower Manhattan in New York City throughout the twentieth century is a good example in this case. Through spectacular violence and shrewd political dealings, the tongs (堂) in Chinatown developed evolving, contradictory relationships with law enforcement and civil society, built power in the emerging Chinese American community, and ‘spiced a chaotic urban stew’ of politics around race that ‘bubbled into a peculiarly American amalgam’ (M. Chen, 2014, p.  357). But Chinatown does not always fit the race paradigm – the dichotomy between the white and the Chinese. In the contemporary city state of Singapore, the district of Geylang3 has been constructed as the ‘new Chinatown’ where Singa­ porean Chinese and newly arrived Chinese immigrants, primarily from the Chinese Mainland, negotiate ‘the politics of co-­ethnicity’ (S. Ang, 2018, p.  1181). Through such politics, the former group enacts racism against the latter. This is a form of ‘new racism’ because it is not a ‘racism between’ but a ‘racism within’. Such racism is further ‘reinforced by the media as well as state structures inherited from the nation’s colonial past’ (S. Ang, 2018, p.  1177). That is to say, in the postcolonial era, the city state of Singapore retains its institutional habitus – an institutionalised propensity inherited from the racist past, cascading from state ideology, through policy making and public media, to everyday discourse and quotidian practice. The new Chinatowns are fabricated with not merely racism but also commercialism. Zeedijk in Amsterdam has become what Rath, Bodaar, Wagemaakers, and Wu (2018, p.  95) call ‘Chinatown 2.0’ – an ethnically themed shopping area with an upmarket boutique landscape. In this respect, Zeedijk distinguishes itself from many Chinatowns elsewhere often characterised by souvenir shops and mini restaurants. Amsterdam’s Chinatown 2.0 is no longer an ethnic enclave of Chineseness; rather, it is a themed economic space where Chinese and other entrepreneurs compete for a share of the market and also for the right to claim the economic ‘public Chineseness’ (Rath et al., 2018, p.  81) of commercial domination. Similar to the new Chinatown in Singapore, Chinatown 2.0 in Amsterdam has been developed from the strategic responses of the municipality to the ongoing campaign led by Chinese individual entrepreneurs and business organisations for official acknowledgement of Zeedijk as an ethnic-­only district and for governmental support of the enhancement of Chineseness (Rath et al., 2018). Commercialism and identity politics are also observable in the post-­war transformation of New York’s Chinatown where the process of identity-­making contests with domestic urban economic restructuring and global geographical change (C. Li, 2015). In metropolises of Australia, macro social forces of globalism have gradually transformed Chinatowns into more open, hybrid, and transnational urban spaces (I. Ang, 2017). Within these spaces, identity work is shifting from a sense of belongingness to a collective group of Chinese Australians to an expression of pan-­Asian Australian identities (I. Ang, 2017). For Asian Australian artists in

14   Introduction Ien Ang’s (2017) study, Chinatown in Sydney is a social space of ‘transcultural placemaking’ (Hou, 2013, p. 7), where artistic work makes complex references to a multiplicity of Asian and Australian cultural dynamics, and weaves the traditional and the modern together into a hybridity. In this vein, Chinatown’s historical existence as an isolated enclave for Chinese Australians is gradually being absorbed into the broader, dynamic transcultural swirl of globalised urban Australia (I. Ang, 2017). Chinatown is not only trans-­temporal and transcultural, but also trans-­spatial. Today’s Sydney for example has become a very different kind of place. Many ethnic Chinese have moved further out of downtown, to suburbs such as Hurstville, Rhodes, and Burwood, creating what Li (2009) refers to as ‘ethnoburbs’. The same ethnoburbs are also found in Sunnybank and Sunnybank Hills in Brisbane. The Chinese in Canada also experienced spatial extension from the Chinatowns where earlier immigrants tended to stay, to other bigger provinces (Lai, 2003). All these ethnoburbs are extended Chinatowns, maintaining cultural, social, and economic connections with the original ones. In the racist past, Chinatowns were a historical site and a historic phenomenon, of solidarity and resistance, of political fights for citizenship and rights. However, contemporary diasporic Chinese tends to understand Chinatowns differently. Recent generations of local-­born Chinese may still remember Chinatown as a ‘root site’ and ‘cultural home’ where their forebears struggled to survive and thrive. In contrast, new Chinese immigrants may simply understand Chinatowns more as a social, commercial, or/and symbolic space, but less historical, historic, and emotional. With the interplay of globalism, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism, Chinatown has been transformed from a historical site of memories of racist history, of cultural marginalisation, of ethnic survival, and of conflictive loathed and cherished Chineseness into what Ien Ang (2017, p.  350) calls ‘a continuing symbolic space’, in which ‘hybrid subjects with both national attachments and transnational connections’ inhabit a present ‘that is at once complex, uncertain, and open-­ended where multiplicities of Asian and Australian cultures intersect, converge, and cross-­fertilise in an increasingly transculturalised urban culture’. In our view, Chinatown is a trans-­ temporal, trans-­cultural, and trans-­spatial field.

Contemporary diasporic Chinese in Australia and Canada Diasporic Chinese has been prominent in Australia and Canada since the mid-­ nineteenth century. Only in recent years, Chinese has become the largest single source of permanent new migrants to Australia (Parliament of Australia, 2017). Official data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017) estimates that a total of 526,000 residents (2.2 per cent of total Australian population) are migrants from China. In Canada, the multicultural landscape is no less similar to Australia. The Chinese Canadian population exceeds one million and is the largest minority group (Statistics Canada, 2017). Unlike earlier Chinese immigrants who were forced away from their homelands, many Chinese

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   15 students, entrepreneurs, and professionals are ‘economic migrants’ (Castles & Miller, 2003), who left their homeland for education and investment oppor­ tunities in Canada and have settled in large metropolitan cities such as Toronto and Vancouver (Lai, 2003). The sociocultural and linguistic diversity in both Australia and Canada offers an interesting point of exploring the complex identity work of diasporic Chinese for surviving and thriving in multicultural societies, one of the foci of this book. Significant changes have taken place in the settlement patterns of recent Chinese immigrants. In both Canada and Australia, Chinese immigrants tend to concentrate in a few large cities, especially Toronto and Vancouver in Canada and Sydney and Melbourne in Australia. Chinese diasporic communities in multicultural, cosmopolitan metropolises display diverse internal subethnic differences in population compositions, spatial patterns, social structures, and lifestyle activities. Such differences are due to the interacting effect of global and local forces in the formation of ‘fields’, as discussed earlier in this chapter. In transnational global cities, for example Sydney in Australia and Vancouver in Canada, a plethora of Chinese groupings share a cosmopolitan space with many other ethnic groupings. The cosmopolitan space accommodates nuances and dynamics both within an ethnic grouping and across ethnic groupings. These cosmo­ politan spaces are more than physical residential areas; they are what Ien Ang (2003, p. 148) refers to as ‘dispersed diaspora’ where diverse Chinese populations intersect and interact. Geopolitically, it is not uncommon to see isolation, disparity, or even contradiction within Chinese diaspora (see the East Timorese Chinese as an example in Inglis, 1998). Young (1995, p.  237) would call this ‘the being together of strangers’. In the hybridising context of globalism and cosmopolitanism, attempts to bring different Chineses together within a unifying structure, or a singular Chinese community as a whole, have been far from successful (I. Ang, 2003; Inglis, 1998). The figure of the banana is often criticised as ‘not Chinese enough’, or being ‘too Westernised’ – as in the critique of Chinese Canadians or Chinese Australians who do not know their ‘roots’. Instead, I would argue that the banana is representative of the porousness of identities and, more importantly, of the fact that all identities evolve and take shape through daily and multiple interrelationships with myriad, differently positioned others. These interrelationships, whether economic, political, professional, cultural or personal, are never power-­free, but they cannot be avoided and they are the stuff that makes up the invention of social life today. (I. Ang, 2003, pp. 152–153) Diasporic Chinese, whether identified as primarily Chinese or as citizens of another country, have to constantly negotiate tensions around stereotypes. Diasporic Chinese seem to have increasingly been treated as a monolithic, threatening, and not-­to-be-­trusted minority. In Australia, Watkins, Ho, and

16   Introduction Butler (2017) highlight that the education setting is increasingly ethnicised, with Asian students both admired and resented for their educational success. Chinese investors are blamed for the exorbitant rise in housing prices, yet there is a confusion within the public debate about the difference between domestic Chinese investors versus foreign Chinese investors (Rogers, Wong, & Nelson, 2017). Through this culturally essentialist lens, people tend to view cultural practices and interests as inherent and static, somehow removed from their sociocultural context, and fuelling the current simplistic and essentialist explanations of the Chinese communities’ identity, physicality, education, and everyday practices. Such perspectives easily feed politics of difference, highlighting the us-­andthem dichotomy as fundamentally incompatible and irreconcilable. Researchers elsewhere dispute this prevalence of a monolithic Chinese community and question the complexity and nuances of people who identify themselves as having Chinese backgrounds, particularly their choices and interests in sport and physical activities (Pang, 2018). The identity construction of diasporic Chinese is complex, as mentioned earlier, in terms of their differences in places of origin, geographic distributions, patterns of settlement, population distributions, and changes in characteristics across subgroups of Chinese diaspora over time. Therefore, it is difficult to capture the whole picture of diasporic Chinese within a single research project. In response, this book presents itself in the diasporic context of Australia and Canada, in the hope of providing a broader picture into the diverse Chinese diasporic youth life in the education context.

Identity, socialisation, and resilience of Chinese diaspora: a panoramic overview of the book This opening chapter resolves around the fundamental conceptualisations of the book. To this end, we revisit the notion ‘diaspora’ and review contestations around it. On the one hand, the proliferation and dispersion of the notion across semantic, conceptual, and disciplinary spaces have paradoxically eroded its distinguishing power – a phenomenon termed ‘the “diaspora” diaspora’ (Brubaker, 2005, p. 1). In transnational contexts, diaspora has a limiting connotation of ‘internal ethnic sameness and external ethnic distinctiveness’ (I. Ang, 2003, p. 145), assumes a definitive diasporic boundary and a collective diasporic identity, and hence entraps itself into the presumed diasporic nationalism. On the other hand, the notion of diaspora has a liberating force, functioning as a symbolic freedom from ‘an oppressive national hegemony’ (Clifford, 1997, p. 255), and as a symbolic capital based on positive identification, transnational belongingness, and sociocultural solidarity (I. Ang, 2003). This does not necessarily assume a purist, simplistic, or reductionist view of diaspora. Rather, investigation of diaspora experience requires, as Hall (1990, p.  235) has long reminded us, ‘the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity’. To grapple with the complexities and dynamics within Chinese diaspora communities, we realise the explanatory power of Bourdieu’s field analysis. The

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   17 first moment of field analysis is concerned with the fields of diasporic Chinese family, schooling, and community in relation to the fields of power – the fields of policy and economy as well as the meta-­field of state. The second moment delves into the positionings of diasporic Chinese, who vie for survivability and sustainability, and strategise capitals at their disposal in the fields of family, community, school, and media. The third moment comes to grips with the habitus of diasporic Chinese, and deciphers the matrix of their history, culture, socioeconomic status, language, body, and gender, among many other habitual, subjective structures in constant response to the objective structures of the fields. Our theoretical and analytical approach to understanding diasporic Chinese’s identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building is underpinned by Bourdieu’s (1989, p.  101) overarching sociological equation: ‘[(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice’. Chinese diaspora is an enigma, with its attendant questions of cultural, racial, and social identification and affiliation, of lineage and identity, of story and memory, and indeed, of participation, representation, and socialisation in multicultural societies challenged by complex and difficult issues of diversity, inclusivity, culture, race, and citizenship. Given the scope and depth of sociological problems associated with diasporic Chinese, given its growing subtleties and continuous morphing, any comprehensive, cover-­all approach to Chinese diaspora is indeed presumptuous and overambitious. In light of the constraints of our own standpoints and resources, our intention here is to provide insights into Chinese diaspora young people in Australia and Canada, into their identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building. As the chapters unfold, we work with Chinese Australian and Chinese Canadian young people, analysing the tensions and dynamics around their physicality, sports participation, and health education; the meaning making out of their Chinese bodies in relation to gender, race, and language; and the sociological process of resilience to structural constraints and racialised stereotypes. In what follows, we first craft the storyline of the book for the reader, followed by a more detailed introduction to each chapter. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 focus on the identity work of Chinese Australian young people within and across multiple social spaces. In sociological terms, the three chapters examine how habitual dispositions unfold with, and contribute to, the reproduction of doxic, stereotyped working principles of field. Chapter 2 zooms in on racialised body politics around physical looks and language socialisation. It discusses the reproduction of corporeal and cultural dimensions of habitus within the fields of family, school, and community. Chapter 3 comes to grips with gendered body politics. It looks at the ways in which the fields of family and school come to shape habitus-­oriented aspirations for sport participation and physical activities. Chapter 4 makes meaning out of the intersectionality of gender, race, and body within the field of social media. It provides pedagogic implications for health and physical education of Chinese Australian young people. Chapters 5 and 6 reconnoitre the cultural inheritance of Chinese Australian and Chinese Canadian young people through primary socialisation. In sociological terms, the two chapters scrutinise the system of (imperfect)

18   Introduction intergenerational reproduction within the field of family. Following the route of Bourdieu, the two chapters construe family as a key social site for Chinese diaspora young people to accumulate capital and develop habitus. Despite certain levels of autonomy, the field of family is heteronomous to other fields. Chapter 5 intends to reconcile different logics of practice between Chinese Australian students and their parents, looking particularly at the micro field of family and the macro field of transnationalism. Chapter 6 explores family inculcation of the resilience of Chinese Australian and Chinese Canadian young people. Here resilience is conceptualised as a sociological process that encul­ turates Chinese diaspora young people into a system of dispositions (habitus) required for bouncing back from adversities and empowers them with a set of resources (capital) recognised in multicultural states. Chapters 7 and 8 continue the discussion of resilience building. Chapter 7 sets its scene in the school field where Canadian teachers function as powerful others to reshape the landscape of the school ecology and nurture the resilience of Chinese Canadian children to racial discrimination. These teachers are pedagogues who transform misrecognised racial habitus into valued capital. Chapter 8 addresses the question: Does Chineseness equate with mathematic competence? It analyses the resilience process of Chinese Canadian and Chinese Australian young people to racialised stereotype in the fields of family, school, workplace, and community. Put together, the two chapters respond to the criticism of Bourdieu’s sociology, sometimes simplistically and mistakenly viewed as a theory of ‘social stasis’. It should be noted, however, Bourdieu’s sociology was forged in nearly half a century of research on upheavals of decolonisation of Algeria, the modernisation of rural France, the massification and diversification of French higher education, and the ascendance of neoliberal capitalism. In this vein, Chapters 7 and 8 take up the Bourdieusian promise of purchase on social change to understand the resilience process of Chinese diaspora young people to doxic stereotyping and symbolic violence. Chapter 9 concludes the book with the two authors’ reflexive discussion. Specifically, we draw on ‘participant objectivation’ – an epistemological tool that Bourdieu bequeathed us – to analyse our sociological self on the grounds of the knowledge built and the lessons learnt throughout the chapters. When writing this book, we did not merely appropriate Bourdieu or test its cultural reproduction theory in Chinese diaspora; rather, we extend Bourdieu’s sociology to understand changes and developments in the fields of family, school, and community where Chinese diaspora young people live, learn, and grow. To this end, we propose a handful of new notions to complement Bourdieu (e.g. ‘habitus realisation’ in Chapter 2 and ‘flipped symbolic capital’ in Chapter 8); we also approach a sociology of resilience to grapple with structural constraints. We hope to provide implications for wider system-­level change and create better opportunities for multiculturality in Australia, Canada, and beyond. To guide the reader, we now provide a more detailed introduction to each chapter.

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   19 Chapter 2: Looking Chinese and learning Chinese as a heritage language: habitus realisation within racialised social fields This chapter sociologically unearths the dynamics and politics around looking Chinese while being (un)able to speak Chinese. The chapter discusses the interview accounts of five Chinese Australian young people and analyses the responses of 230 Chinese Australian young adults to an online questionnaire. Chinese looks are construed not only as a set of bodily attributes but also as a system of habitual dispositions that may orient Chinese Australian participants to learn a Chinese heritage language. In this vein, the body-­language link becomes a form of ‘seen but unnoticed’ social order, to which participants conform, either consciously or unconsciously. When Chinese Australians breach the socially anticipated norm that looking Chinese necessarily means being able to speak Chinese, they reflexively make meaning out of their Chinese looks. Interestingly, such inadvertent breach of the habitual social order establishes the everyday basis for the reproduction of the social order. This is a sociological accomplishment that is termed as ‘habitus realisation’. Chapter 3: Young Chinese girls’ aspirations in sport: gendered practices within Chinese families In the rhetoric of Australian youth communities, young people are often positioned by adults as builders of society and therefore their aspirations for the future have significant implications for the structural development of the economy. Contemporary meanings of success and aspirations are often framed by discourses of competitiveness, status-­based and economic. As a result, young people are compared against this yardstick of ‘aspiration’ prescribed by adults. Aspiration has therefore been argued to have been co-­opted by neoliberal ideology such that subjects must take self-­responsibility and create their own value in a competitive environment. This chapter explores the aspirations of a group of Chinese young girls in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia. It examines how their hopes and expectations, and specifically in sport, are influenced by their families and peers of their everyday lives and the extent to which they have agency in their course of their lives. Chapter 4: Understanding the public pedagogies on Chinese gendered and racialised bodies Gender and race are key determinants of social agents’ cultural and symbolic capital and thus can influence their positions in the field. How agents are represented in the media creates a symbolic order that promotes/constraints certain dispositions and practices and results in gendered and racialised divides within society. For Bourdieu the development of a gendered and racialised habitus is the result of an internalisation of external social practices that position women/ Asians as different from men/Westerners. Media representations contribute to

20   Introduction the embodiment or internalisation of cultural norms that constructs gendered and racialised relations of domination. This chapter draws on data sources from the social media and explores how Chinese bodies are represented in gendered and racialised ways that have helped construct the current public pedagogical landscape. Chapter 5: Reconciling the different logics of practice between Chinese students and parents in a transnational era Research has explored the lived experiences of Chinese transnational students and families in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. Some of the members in transnational families were prepared to separate and live in different countries in order to work towards a promising future for their children by gaining overseas education and citizenship. This chapter expands on current literature by drawing on data from an ethnographic study involving 12 young Chinese Australians in two schools in Brisbane. Drawing on seven sets of audio-­recorded interviews, the chapter explores a range of topics including their transnational experiences, intergenerational conflicts, cultural capital, and investments as well as how their lifestyles, health, and physical activities are (re)produced within their home field. Bourdieu’s concepts are used to unpack the processes through which class, gender, and ethnicity penetrate these youths’ lives and how different forms of capital underpin their choices and strategies in their everyday activities. Chapter 6: Coming into a cultural inheritance: building resilience through primary socialisation Resilience is a culture- and context-­specific process of socialisation. This chapter quantitatively compares the resilience process of Chinese Canadian and Chinese Australian children who are faced with various forms of structural constraints. The measurement model of Child and Youth Resilience remains psycho­ metrically invariant across the two groups of children. The role of family support and cultural identity in the resilience process of the two groups does not show any statistical difference. Positive outcomes from the resilience process are seen in the strengthened social cohesion valued by multicultural societies. In this vein, the primary socialisation within the domestic milieu and the ideology of the multicultural state interpenetrate each other. Although the notion of resilience is traditionally rooted in the school of psychology, this chapter makes an attempt to develop a sociology of resilience through Bourdieu’s triad notions of habitus, capital, and field. Despite varied dynamics in different diasporic contexts, resilience can remain durable and transposable. Family upbringing and socialisation can enculturate Chinese children into a system of embodied dispositions responsive to challenge and change, and empower these children with a set of capacities required for bouncing back from adversities and participating in multicultural societies.

Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   21 Chapter 7: Resilience to racial discrimination within the field of secondary socialisation: the role of school staff support This chapter draws on a strength-­based approach to examining students’ perceived racial discrimination in relation to their social support from significant adults in school. Using a mixed-­method design, the chapter works with a sample of 494 Grade Five to Nine Chinese Canadian students, 174 of whom reported perceived racial discrimination in school and community. In the suppressing field of racial discrimination, the habitus of the Chinese body is misrecognised and arbitrarily defined with negative value. The phenotypical element of the habitual race remains visible and durable, and cannot be readily rewritten. But the social element of the habitual race can be redefined by reshaping the ecology of the field of secondary socialisation. Within the school field, significant adults have power to redesign the school climate and reposition the habitus of race. In the context of building resilience to racial discrimination, the chapter proposes secondary-­order change that reshapes the field, rather than first-­order change that reshapes the habitus. The sociological approach to resilience building distinguishes the chapter from much extant work that is reliant on an individualist, pathological perspective on the ill-­ being of ethnic minority children in the face of racial discrimination. Chapter 8: Does Chineseness equate with mathematics competence? Resilience to racialised stereotype This chapter looks at how young Chinese Australian and Chinese Canadian young people negotiate opportunities and tensions behind their mathematics learning. For these young people, learning mathematics has become an embodied disposition formulated through primary pedagogic work and domestic socialisation, and a racialised stereotype imposed through secondary socialisation within school, work, media, and everyday spaces. When faced with the entanglement of the Chinese body, Chineseness, and mathematics achievement, some participants engage in subordination to the symbolic violence of doxic racial stereotype. Some take advantage of the doxa and impose ‘flipped symbolic violence’ on the cultural dominant who produces the doxa. In either way, they contribute to the reproduction of the racialised stereotype in the field of doxa. However, some participants neither always take their cultural dispositions for granted nor easily submit to external impositions. Rather, they reflectively make meaning out of their body, identity, and achievement while also responsively negotiating social structures. They walk through an embodied, dynamic process of socialisation that enculturates them into a disposition of resilience to the doxic racialised stereotype in fields of primary and secondary socialisation. The chapter unveils complexities and subtleties behind mathematics learning of diasporic Chinese. It complements and complicates statistical evidence on the ‘math-­competence’ of Chinese students and students of Chinese descent. It calls for a sociology of resilience and a worldview of cosmopolitanism to respond to structural constraints in diasporic, multicultural contexts.

22   Introduction Chapter 9: Recapitulating Chinese diaspora and sociologising the diasporic self In the final chapter, we first revisit the foregoing chapters on the identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building of Chinese diaspora young people in Australia and Canada. We acknowledge the explanatory power of Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology in our research work on Chinese diaspora. At the same time, we highlight our tentative attempts to extend Bourdieu’s theoretical and methodological frameworks. Then we reflect our journey to and with Chinese diaspora by sociologising our diasporic selves through Bourdieu’s epistemological tools of field analysis and participant objectivation. We conclude the book with a call for moving the field forward through developing a critical sociology of Chinese diaspora.

Notes 1 史记•秦始皇本纪 See a translated version in Si, M. Q. (1961). Records of the Grand Historian of China (B. Watson, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. 2 It is believed that Xufu landed in Japan. Flat Plains and Wide Swamps could be located somewhere near Shingu, Wakayama. 3 Geylang is Singapore’s designated red-­light district, an area where both sex and food can be consumed. There is a large presence of Mainland Chinese immigrants and Chinese sex workers.

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Chinese diaspora and Pierre Bourdieu   25 Safran, W. (1991). Diasporas in modern societies: Myths of homeland and return. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 1(1), 83–99. Si, M. Q. (1961). Records of the Grand Historian of China (B. Watson, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. Skrbis, Z., Woodward, I., & Bean, C. (2014). Seeds of cosmopolitan future? Young people and their aspirations for future mobility. Journal of Youth Studies, 17(5), 614–625. doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2013.834314. Statistics Canada. (2017). Immigration and ethnocultural diversity: Key results from the 2016 Census. www.150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/daily-­quotidien/171025/dq171025beng.pdf?st=lrI6adjf. Tan, C.-B. (2013). Routledge handbook of the Chinese diaspora. New York: Routledge. Wacquant, L. J. D. (1989). Towards a reflexive sociology: A workshop with Pierre Bourdieu. Sociological Theory, 7(1), 26–63. Wang, G. (1991). China and the Chinese Overseas. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Wang, G. (1992). Community and nation: China, Southeast Asia and Australia. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin. Watkins, M., Ho, C., & Butler, R. (2017). Asian migration and education cultures in the Anglo-­sphere. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(14), 2283–2299. doi:10.10 80/1369183X.2017.1315849. Young, R. (1995). Colonial desire: Hybridity in theory, culture, and race. London;: Routledge. Zhou, M. (Ed.) (2017). Contemporary Chinese diasporas. Singapore: Springer Singapore. Zhou, M., & Benton, G. (2017). Intra-­Asian Chinese migrations: A historical overview In M. Zhou (Ed.), Contemporary Chinese diasporas (pp.  1–25). Singapore: Springer Singapore.

2 Looking Chinese and learning Chinese as a heritage language Habitus realisation within racialised social fields

The estimated diaspora Chinese population is approximately 50 million (Wang, 2012). This population is becoming increasingly prominent in many parts of the world, particularly in English-­speaking societies – the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and bilingual Canada included. The heterogeneity and complexity of this population and its associated social, cultural, and historical ramifications have drawn growing interest in multicultural societies. In this context, Chinese diasporic populations are considered to be Chinese Heritage Language Learners (CHLLs), who have to constantly negotiate the tension between their subtle, multi-­layered identity work and their nuanced, inter-­nested language practice. A point of clarification is in order here. Chinese Heritage Language (CHL) is an umbrella term embracing many Chinese dialects used in Chinese diasporic contexts as far as South East Asia, North America, Australasia, and Europe, amongst many other places in the world where Chinese is not the dominant language of the society. CHL in this chapter, however, refers specifically to Mandarin, given its growing political and economic value in various linguistic fields across the globe (Li, 2016; Mu, 2016a). Early natural CHL learning within the field of domestic socialisation often gives way to gradual CHL loss as CHLLs grow and work within the field of secondary socialisation – mainstream schools, dominant communities, and powerful institutions where English often unquestionably functions as the legitimised and recognised linguistic capital, topping the linguistic hierarchy (Gogolin, 2002) and towering over other heritage languages, CHL included. The inconsistent linguistic politics within the fields of domestic and secondary socialisation has commonly resulted in intergenerational conflicts (e.g. language choice) and identity crisis (e.g. sense of belongingness) during childhood and adolescence (Curdt-­Christiansen, 2013). Interestingly, it is not uncommon to observe the gradual shift back to the commitment to CHL learning during late adolescence or emerging adulthood (Chao, 1997; Comanaru & Noels, 2009; Mu, 2016a; Mu & Dooley, 2015; Weger-­Guntharp, 2006; Wong & Xiao, 2010). This shift often occurs when CHLLs consider their investment in CHL learning and Chinese identity to be economically, culturally, socially, and symbolically rewarding (Mu, 2014, 2016a). In this respect, CHL learning and Chinese identity have exchange value in terms of producing capital in its various forms

Bodily and linguistic identities   27 (Bourdieu, 1986) and improving capital-­defined social positions within the field of secondary socialisation. As Ang (2003, p. 141) notes: ‘Claiming one’s difference and turning it into symbolic capital has become a powerful and attractive strategy among those who have been marginalised or excluded from the structures of white or Western hegemony’. Having said that, CHL learning is not always a conscious strategy or a rational choice of investment. The picture of CHL learning remains incomplete without also taking into account embodied dispositions. The current chapter aims to contribute in this regard. In this chapter, we discuss the language choice and the identity work of Chinese Australian young people, with a particular focus on meaning making out of their Chinese looks in relation to CHL learning. First, to establish its empirical basis, we review the literature that grapples with the relationship between Chinese ethnic identity and CHL. Second, to construct its theoretical ground, we draw on Bourdieu’s sociology and conceptualise Chinese looks as a set of embodied dispositions that direct overseas Chinese to certain CHL-­ related social praxes. Next, we debunk the tensions between Chinese looks and CHL learning of the studied Chinese Australian young people. In a doxic situation replete with racialised social order, looking Chinese is taken for granted as a sign of being able to speak Chinese (Ang, 2001), and the habitus of Chinese looks remains unnoticed. In situations where Chinese Australian young people are unable to speak Chinese, the racialised social order is breached, and the habitus of Chinese looks is realised. This is a sociological phenomenon termed by Mu and colleagues (Mu & Dooley, 2015; Mu & Hu, 2016; Mu et al., 2016) as ‘habitus realisation’. The chapter concludes that the value of Chinese looks and CHL is recognised through habitus realisation within racialised social fields.

Chinese ethnic identity, Chinese heritage language, and Chinese body A steady stream of literature has debated the mutually constitutive effect between ethnic identity and heritage language (see meta-­analysis in Mu, 2015a). Such an effect remains true among CHLLs. Due in part to their demographic significance in major English-­speaking countries, CHLLs have gained much scholarly attention. The immanent relationship between their ethnic identity and CHL learning has been debated within different schools, for example the social psychological school and the poststructural school (see review in Mu, 2016a). The social psychological scholarship is concerned with the endogenous relationship between CHLLs’ self-­identification and their CHL learning (e.g. Comanaru & Noels, 2009; Feuerverger, 1991; Kiang, 2008; Oh & Fuligni, 2010). These studies indicate that CHL is often central to CHLLs’ sense of self. Consequently, CHL proficiency is positively related to CHLLs’ sense of belongingness to Chinese ethnic group/community, their perceptions of the meanings attached to this membership, their connections to family members and ethnic homeland, and their exploration of Chinese history and culture. This line of

28   Habitus within racialised social fields social psychological research provides abundant quantitative evidence on the linear relationship between CHLLs’ sense of ethnic self and their CHL proficiency. Nevertheless, the ontogenic, individualistic framework adopted by the social psychological school largely overlooks the dynamics of the social world that either liberate or limit CHL learning and identity construction. Some qualitative studies complicate the social psychological scholarship. Chao (1997) argued that CHLLs’ ethnic identity and their ‘native tongue’ (p. 8) were entangled through an ongoing and shifting process, from their teenage years’ desire to be integrated into the mainstream culture and English-­ speaking community to the gradual awareness of CHL as an undeniable part of their Chinese heritage in their young adulthood. He (2006) found that CHLLs studied their CHL to re-­establish either similarities with ethnic Chinese members or differences from members of mainstream culture. In this respect, CHLLs were committed not merely to inheriting their CHL or to maintaining their Chinese ethnic identity, but also to recreating themselves through CHL. Different from the social psychological thesis, these studies contend that CHLLs construct contradictory, multiple, and fluid identities through CHL across time and space – a complex process with multiple agencies, directions, and goals. As such, many of these studies fall into the school of poststructuralism. The poststructuralist concept of multiple and nebulous identities without a foundational basis does not go without limitations. The oversocialised assumption that identity is wholly malleable and that body can be styled to assume an invented identity runs into problems when faced with the durability of human beings’ internal schemata (Luke, 2009). These internal schemata – the bodily attributes produced through kinship and blood – are inscribed identities (e.g. colour, body, and biological phenotype) that stay irrevocable and become prominent particularly in geographical and cultural crossings. For example, many transracial adoptees failed to fully integrate within the white adoptive communities due to their different physical appearance (Yngvesson, 2002). Their sense of dislocation, uncertainties about identity, and ‘ambiguities of simultaneously belonging and not belonging’ may result from their distinct appearance (Volkman, 2005, p. 5). Some parents may contend that the adoptee’s different physical appearance should not matter in their upbringing in a white family (Randolph & Holtzman, 2010; Shiao & Tuan, 2008). However, the colour-­ blind approach oversimplifies the meaning of the body and hence is constantly troubled in everyday contexts: ‘if the child leaves that house, people say an Asian’ (Shin, 2013, p. 169); ‘with your hair, your nose, your skin, you will never be perfect Canadians’ (Norton, 2000, p. 149). This visible phenotypical difference creates one of the chief contexts for identity denial, which is not necessarily hostile in intent, but may be hurtful in effect (Benton & Gomez, 2014). The meaning of the Chinese body often multiplies through CHL learning. For example, Rosenthal and Feldman (1992) indicated that the distinguishing physical characteristics made CHLLs a visible minority in Western societies, and resultantly may contribute to their CHL learning. Interestingly, Ang (2001) reported her predicament of looking Chinese but not speaking Chinese. The

Bodily and linguistic identities   29 sense of alienation took hold of her and prompted her to argue that not speaking CHL should cease being a problem for Chinese diaspora. Nevertheless, such problem continues to trouble Chinese diaspora: ‘I’m not like Chinese, but I’m not like American. Well, I mean, I look Chinese, or whatever, there’s something, you know, different’ (Shin, 2010, p.  203). The trouble here could be solved if without the break between Chinese looks and CHL proficiency: ‘If I had spoken Chinese, I would have felt more Chinese’ (Shin, 2010, p.  211). When misunderstood as native Chinese speakers due to their Chinese looks, diasporic Chinese may make a link between their Chinese body and their CHL learning (Mu, 2016a, 2016b). Chinese people in diasporic contexts do not have to pay much heed to their Chinese looks. Neither do they have to engage in CHL learning. Having said that, Chinese looks and CHL are readable, semiotic dimensions of Chinese identity that incessantly evoke questions. Why has being unable to speak Chinese not yet ceased being a problem, at least for some Chinese people in diasporic contexts? Why is their Chinese body often taken for granted as a sign of being able to speak Chinese? Why are their Chinese looks sometimes generative of CHL learning? How does the habitual interaction between Chinese looks and CHL unfold in everyday situations? Perhaps more importantly, how does this interaction hover over consciousness and unconsciousness? To date, there has been little theoretical analysis of these empirical questions to decipher the matrix between Chinese looks and CHL learning. To address this theoretical lacuna, we have recourse to Bourdieu’s sociology, with a particular focus on his key notion of habitus.

Habitus and the Chinese body Habitus denotes a system of durable and transposable dispositions, functioning ‘as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively regulated and regular without in any way being the product of obedience to rules’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p.  72). This indicates that habitus disposes agents to conduct certain practices in particular situations while habitus itself does not explicitly or rationally follow rules. Habitus is the latent pattern that largely explains agents’ practices, without either explicit reason or signifying intent, to be none the less sensible and reasonable (Bourdieu, 1977). It represents a set of embodied dispositions that generate perceptions and practices as well as taken-­for-granted ways of thinking, being, and doing. In this vein, habitus is particularly useful when elucidating the implicitly predefined social orderliness – the grammar behind actions performed unthinkingly. If habitus largely operates in an unconscious way, how does the habitual orderliness emerge, unfold, stay, and make sense in quotidian contexts? The emergence of habitus necessitates the focus on the mundaneness and trivia in everyday life, and the course of ordinary, unremarkable ‘work of the streets’ (Garfinkel, 1996, p. 11). It is useful to analyse practical actions in the seemingly familiar environments and decipher the ‘just-­thisness’ (Garfinkel, 1996, p.  10)

30   Habitus within racialised social fields embedded within ordinary tasks that could be otherwise accomplished without thinking. Here we are not only interested in the ‘somehow’ through which the social order is made to happen, but also eager to make that ‘somehow’ an object of inquiry. In ethnomethodological terms, agents often engage in ‘contingent ongoing accomplishments’ and ‘organised artful practices of everyday life’ in relation to the social order (Garfinkel, 1967, p. 11). These accomplishments are contingent and practices are artful because they are based upon ‘commonly encountered sanctions whereby persons are reminded to act in accordance with expected attitudes, appearances, affiliations, dress style of life, round of life, and the like’ (Garfinkel, 1967, p.  125). In response to the ‘commonly encountered sanctions’, people design their actions to fit the context and contribute to the production of the context. The value of ethnomethodology, as Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, p. 9) argue, lies in its recognition of the role ‘that mundane knowledge, subjective meaning, and practical competency play in the continual production of society’. Despite this value, Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, p. 9) criticise the solipsistic ethnomethodological interpretation of social order as ‘the emergent product of the decisions, actions, and cognitions of conscious’, which largely overlooks the doxa of the social world excised and imposed on people, and consequently taken for granted and found acceptable by people. The disparities and inconsistencies between Bourdieu and Garfinkel are conspicuous, but the chasm between the two is not insuperable (see Aldridge, 2011; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Cicourel, 1989; Ochs & Solomon, 2005). This is not hard to justify as Bourdieu himself saw parallels between the school of ethnomethodology and his own emphasis on the ‘logic of practice’: Both approaches grapple with the social realities co-­constructed through the interactions of agents in social spaces, that is, through means of habitually embodied dispositions and socially ratified modes of thought and behaviour adjusted to norms of social spaces (see Blommaert, 2015). On the one hand, social practices may be generated by habitus largely in an unconscious way; on the other hand, these practices may be consciously performed in response to the taken-­forgranted, mutually anticipated social orderliness – a form of symbolic force that Bourdieu terms as doxa. Although doxa constitutes the learned, deeply ingrained, unconscious beliefs, values, and self-­evident universals, the Chinese Australian participants reported in this chapter realise their habitus of Chinese looks and strategically respond to the commonly unquestioned and unquestionable doxa – if you look Chinese you are able to speak Chinese. Marrying Bourdieu and Garfinkel helps to make sense of the locally produced orderliness of quotidian activities and the reasoning behind it. On the development and successive reworkings of habitus, Bourdieu seems to place more and more corporeal emphasis on this notion, shifting away from the cognitive or mental dimension (see Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.  120). Similarly, Garfinkel calls for the transformation of mental or cognitive categories into embodied practices and considers bodily variation – the body that acts and experiences the world – to be a key dimension in sociological analysis (Burns,

Bodily and linguistic identities   31 2012; Garfinkel, 2002; Goode, 2012). Such commensurability between Bourdieu and Garfinkel indicates the potential to integrate the two to understand the role of the body in social practice. When Chinese looks embodied in the habitus of Chinese Australians is taken for granted, Chinese Australians may not rationally make meaning out of their Chinese looks and spontaneously act in normative ways that they are held accountable for. This is particularly true in a doxic situation where there is a harmony between the objective, external structures of the field, and the subjective, internal structures of the habitus. In the doxic state, the social world is normalised and commonsensical. However, in situations when the Chinese body no longer makes sense or when the body, willingly or unwillingly, stands out against the ‘socially approved system of typifications and relevance’ (Schutz, 1970), Chinese Australians may have to consciously delve into the meaning of their Chinese looks and endow their life-­world with sense. In this chapter, we analyse how Chinese Australians read the relationship between Chinese looks and CHL learning and how such reading contributes to the link between Chinese body and CHL. Data reported here were drawn from a larger project about how Chinese Australian young adults negotiate identities through CHL learning (Mu, 2016a). The project data have both quantitative and qualitative components: (1) survey responses of 230 snowball-­sampled Chinese Australian young adults; and (2) multiple interviews with five purposefully selected Chinese Australian young adults. Data reported in this chapter, however, have a sharp focus on participants’ CHL learning experiences in relation to Chinese looks. The focus on the Chinese body distinguishes the chapter from the bulk of extant research on the cultural dimensions and empirical analyses of CHL learning. It also complements existing social psychological and poststructural work by dint of its sociological, Bourdieusian analysis of the racialised project of CHL learning. In what follows, we first discuss the interview data, and then move on to analyse the quantitative data. This sequential methodological approach was used by Bourdieu himself to decipher sociological matrix: ‘I had to learn, step by step, through ethnographic observation later corroborated by statistical analysis’ (Bourdieu, 2000a, p.  24). Indeed, Bourdieu rejected methodological binaries and bequeathed us with his methodological pluralism in order to mobilise a pool of methods ‘of observation and measurement, quantitative and qualitative, statistical and ethnographic, macrosociological and microsociological (all these being meaningless oppositions), for the purpose of studying an object well defined in space and time’ (Bourdieu, Sapiro, & McHale, 1991, p. 628).

The interview participants The five interview participants varied in their self-­reported CHL proficiency (from very limited to highly proficient), age (from 18 to 28), birthplace (HK, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Australia), current resident city (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Canberra), language use patterns at home (from English only

32   Habitus within racialised social fields through a mixture of English, Indonesian, and Chinese to Chinese only), and years of formal CHL learning (from 0 to 15). Multiple interviews (two to three) were conducted with each of the five participants, with each interview lasting 30–40 minutes. Brisbane-­based participants were interviewed face to face while non-­Brisbane-based participants were interviewed online. The five participants (with self-­selected or randomly assigned pseudonyms) are described. Adam: ‘I just need to catch up!’ Twenty-­eight-year-­old Adam was born in Jakarta to a mother who had studied in a Chinese-­medium school. For Adam, growing up in Indonesia was ‘one of the most challenging aspects to learning Mandarin’. In New Order Indonesia, Chinese was stripped of legitimacy in the national language hierarchy. Assimilatory policies proscribed Chinese names, along with public expressions of Chinese ethnic identity, including Chinese media, schools, celebrations, and signage (Purdey, 2006). Against this backdrop, Adam did not have an opportunity to formally study Chinese. When he moved to Australia at the age of 12, his Chinese was poor and he said in the interview, ‘I want to catch up with my Chinese language’. Bob: ‘Chinese is part of me’ Eighteen-­year-old Bob was born in Hong Kong and moved to Australia when he was nine months old. Given dominant usage of English in his daily life, his self-­reported Chinese proficiency was very low. As he admitted, ‘Definitely I was keen to socialise with [Chinese] people, but it’s hard because I don’t know what to say [in Chinese]’. Importantly, his low Chinese proficiency notwithstanding, Bob considered Chinese ‘part of ’ himself: ‘Because of my Chinese heritage. French would be good but I think it’s just nothing part of me. But Chinese is part of me. I just think it’s a good opportunity to do that (to learn Chinese)’. Crystal: ‘It’s really funny’ Eighteen-­year-old Crystal was born in Australia. She used English at home but Cantonese with her grandparents and extended family members. She learnt Mandarin on and off in her own time because she loved Chinese media: ‘It’s really funny’. When asked about the benefit of learning Mandarin, she said, ‘It exposes me to more entertainment stuff. Now I can go online and type in Chinese to find my own series to watch’. In this way Crystal exploited the potential of the Chinese that is now abundant in the Australian linguistic environment (Tasker, 2012). Dianna: ‘I felt how important [it was] to speak my own home language!’ Twenty-­one-year-­old Dianna was born and brought up in Taiwan. Her high Chinese proficiency can be attributed to her formal education in Mandarin

Bodily and linguistic identities   33 before she moved to Australia at 13 years of age. Dianna used Mandarin with her parents, mixed with a little Hokkien, but English and Mandarin in equal measure with her siblings. She recalled an experience at high school. After one of her Chinese friends admitted to little CHL proficiency, a white friend said, ‘If you are Asian, you should be able to speak your home language. If you can’t, it’s sort of a shame’. This is a cultural politics problematised for imposing language as an identity marker on diasporic Chinese, conflating ‘Chinese’ with ‘Asian’, and binarising Asian and Western identities (Ang, 2001). Dianna’s experience of this politics was one of pressure to learn CHL: ‘At that time I felt how important [it was] to speak my own home language’. En-­ning: ‘Learning Chinese is definitely something I am going to pursue in the rest of my life’ The Australian-­born 23-year-­old En-­ning did not see any point in learning Chinese when she was small. From early adolescence, however, she started to realise that learning Chinese was ‘an incredible personal experience’ and tried to do ‘as much as possible’ in Chinese. In return, En-­ning profited from the relatively high position of Mandarin in the national language hierarchy. By happy coincidence, En-­ning’s HL was a language of national priority: Prestigious Federal scholarships, which she won, were on offer. En-­ning attributed her success and the attendant recognition to her heritage: ‘Of course I don’t think I would have got the scholarships if I didn’t have at least some Chinese language background. … Learning Chinese is definitely something that I am going to pursue in the rest of my life’.

The accountable Chinese looks Interview questions were first asked broadly about CHL learning experiences, and then narrowed down to past, present, and prospective/hypothetical CHL learning within the domestic milieu, the Chinese community, the workplace settings, the educational institutions, and the everyday domains. One theme that emerged from the interview data was the meaning making out of Chinese looks through CHL learning, which is the focus of the chapter. What emerged from the procedural and ongoing analysis here included the taken-­for-grantedness of the racialised social order, the momentary and inadvertent breaches of the social order, the meaning-­making out of the social gaffe in everyday life, and the habitus realisation that responds to the racialised social fields. The ‘seen but unnoticed’ social order Chinese bodily features are physical entities ascribed from birth. These biological dispositions are readable and semiotic dimensions of habitus (Luke, 2009). These dimensions, for example Chinese looks, though individual and internal, are matter-­of-factly visible from the external. People of Chinese ancestry may

34   Habitus within racialised social fields have no conscious mastery of their Chinese looks, and hence may not rationally ponder over the meaning associated with their Chinese looks. When asked about CHL learning experience, participants’ interview accounts seemed to suggest a largely taken-­for-granted relationship between Chinese looks and CHL. For example, Adam reportedly intended to speak Chinese as much as possible to his grandparents. Consider his comment: As far as I know, all my grandparents are Chinese. Of course, I will look like Chinese anyway. If I try to speak Mandarin, they (grandparents) don’t say, ‘Wow, you can speak Mandarin’. They tend to go, ‘How come you can’t speak Mandarin?’ Within the field of domestic socialisation, Adam’s grandparents would never be surprised by his CHL proficiency. Instead, they took it for granted that Chinese­looking people should be able to speak Chinese – ‘How come you can’t speak Mandarin?’ This taken-­for-grantedness created a racialised field of domestic socialisation. The assumed link between Chinese looks and CHL is ‘a pre-­ established corpus of socially warranted knowledge’, ‘consisting of standardised system of signals and coding rules’ (Garfinkel, 1963, p. 215). Here, the signals of Adam’s Chinese looks were coded by his grandparents as a rule of being able to speak Chinese – the socially warranted knowledge that everyone should know without question. The perception of Adam’s grandparents was shared by En-­ning’s Chinese teacher. En-­ning recalled her CHL learning experience in a class mixed with students of Chinese and Caucasian heritage: I had one of my Chinese teachers tell me that she holds me to a higher standard, expects more of me, etc. and that’s because of the way I look. Of course this is racism but I think it’s something that is incredibly common when talking about the differences between white Australians and Chinese Australians learning Chinese. Within the field of secondary socialisation, the pedagogical context in this case, the Chinese teacher expected En-­ning to speak better Chinese than her white peers due to her identifiable Chinese appearance. The term ‘racism’ used by En-­ning is telling: It is not only a biological notion of race but also a racialised notion of biology. The racialised assumption of the necessary body-­language link is not a random one. Instead, as En-­ning noted, it is an ‘incredibly common’ perception. Dianna provided further evidence on the common assumption of the body-­language link: ‘So I guess people around me tend to say, “Oh, if you look like a Chinese, you can speak Chinese” ’. The assumption goes without saying because it comes without saying, creating a racialised field of secondary socialisation. Such racialised assumption is seldom questioned because the perceived normality of ordinary conduct is generated through habitus, and does not require an

Bodily and linguistic identities   35 explicit reason or signifying intent. The racialised assumption is taken for granted within both the field of domestic socialisation (e.g. the intergenerational communication between Adam and his grandparents within the domestic space) and the field of secondary socialisation (see En-­ning’s case in a pedagogical context and Dianna’s case in a daily context). The taken-­for-granted, racialised assumption is built on the grounds of doxa – the ‘undisputed, pre-­reflexive, naïve, native compliance with the fundamental presuppositions of the field’ (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 68). In the current case, the racialised habitus of Chinese looks fits the racialised fields of domestic and secondary socialisation. These are fields of doxa – ‘the universe of that which is undiscussed, unnamed, admitted without argument or scrutiny’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p.  170). Within the field of doxa, agents ‘are not aiming consciously towards things’ and hence ‘accept many things without knowing them’ (Bourdieu & Eagleton, 1992, p. 113). When participants did speak Chinese as expected, nothing was questioned or could be questionable due to the immediate adherence between the habitus and the field to which the habitus was attuned. Within fields of domestic and secondary socialisation, the racialised habitus informs the beliefs that looking Chinese necessarily means being able to speak Chinese. Doxa here privileges the particular social arrangement of the fields and defines the body-­language link as the dominant, socially anticipated and accepted norm. In a doxic situation, the match between looking Chinese and being able to speak Chinese is unstated common sense. It is ‘seen but unnoticed’ (Garfinkel, 1967, p. 36), and hence exceeds the conscious intention and reasoning. The indexical meaning associated with Chinese looks is the anticipated ability to speak Chinese. The underlying assumption that looking Chinese means being able to speak Chinese is historically accepted and hence inscribed in Chinese people’s mind and body as a stereotype. The corporeal dimension of habitus is seen but unnoticed when ‘history turned into nature’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 78), ‘internalised as a second nature and so forgotten as history’ (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 56). That is to say, what historically needed to be durable and transposable through a process of continuous reproduction is now inscribed through social regulations, forms, and norms. Chinese looks, ‘inscribed in bodies by identical histories’ (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 59), is semiotic dimensions of habitus that creates a form of homogeneity in Chinese people. Within racialised fields, the socially anticipated and accepted regularity that Chinese looks means being able to speak Chinese is internalised through habitus – ‘a real ontological complicity, the source of cognition without consciousness, of an intentionality without intention, and a practical mastery of the world’s regularities which allows one to anticipate in the future without even needing to posit it as such’ (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 12). The taken-­for-grantedness, though seen but unnoticed, can become visible when breached (Heritage, 1984). In this vein, the practice of breaching could be more revealing than the conformity with the norms (Heritage, 1984). Therefore, it seems obvious that the spotlight should turn onto some exceptional social practices that are inadvertently deviant from the taken-­for-granted, racialised social order.

36   Habitus within racialised social fields The breached and noticed social order The racialised assumption that looking Chinese means being able to speak Chinese did not trouble until participants failed to come to terms with it. Adam reported an experience that he had when doing his one-­year exchange programme in Singapore. Even in Singapore, the taxi drivers sometimes looked at me and said … what are the words … I tried to copy what they said in Mandarin … ‘你是 华人么 (Are you Chinese)?’ If I said yes, they said ‘你说你是华人, 为什么 你不可以讲华语 (You said you are Chinese, why you can’t speak Chinese)?’ It’s embarrassing to be Chinese while find myself in a situation where I can’t speak the language. En-­ning acknowledged a similar experience that she had when she spent her gap year in a Chinese university. Definitely there have been times that I am very conscious about the fact that I speak with a funny accent as opposed to the way I look. … Sometimes like I’ve been to 食堂 (dining hall) with my friends and people will be looking at me because they are all talking Chinese but they can tell I have a very funny accent. I had a strange feeling at that time. The ‘embarrassing’ and ‘strange’ feelings resulted from the tensions between looking Chinese and being unable to speak Chinese properly. What troubled Adam and En-­ning here was their failure in accomplishing the ‘background expectancies’ (Garfinkel, 1967, p.  53) in social spaces where Mandarin and a favourable accent of speaking it accrue symbolic value. Adam and En-­ning were expected by people around to speak Chinese due to their Chinese looks but they were unable to. In simple words, they breached the racialised assumption. This is a historically accepted, culturally legitimate, and socially approved assumption, the breach of which can never be normalised. As Crystal recalled, ‘when I’m out in China, I realise that everyone is constantly horrified at how bad my Chinese is and that’s simply because the way I look. They tend to wonder ‘你是什么样的中国人?’ (What kind of Chinese are you?)’ The word ‘horrified’ used by Crystal is telling. It connotes that Chinese looks necessarily mean being able to speak Chinese. The racialised assumption of the body-­language link is a ‘common culture’, which refers to ‘the socially sanctioned grounds of inference and action that people use in their everyday affairs and which they assume that others use in the same way’ (Garfinkel, 1956, p. 185; 1967, p. 76). Such common culture was normatively accepted by bona fide Chinese who considered any breach of the necessary link between Chinese looks and CHL to be anomalous, and hence socially disapproved. The firmer societal members’ grasp of ‘What-­Anyone-Like-­Us-Necessarily-­Knows’, the more severely disturbed should they be when the common culture is breached

Bodily and linguistic identities   37 (Garfinkel, 1967, p. 54). When Crystal deviated from the common culture, she was caught in an unanticipated predicament where people were ‘horrified’. En-­ning also detected departure from common culture: ‘How difficult it is for a lot of overseas Chinese and how shameful it is! They look Chinese but they don’t speak Chinese.’ In Garfinkel’s (1967, p.  66) term, the stability of social order ‘orients persons’ actions to scenic events, and furnishes persons the grounds upon which departures from perceivedly normal courses of affairs are detectable’. The detectable departures from common culture are fraught with sociological emotions – descriptions of ‘embarrassing’ (Adam), ‘horrified’ (Crystal), and ‘shameful’ (En-­ning) are telling in this regard. These participants have a practical, bodily knowledge of the background expectancies in the social space, a ‘sense of one’s place’ as Goffman (1951, p.  297) puts it. This very sense of placement ‘takes the form of emotion – the unease of someone who is out of place, or the ease that comes from being in one’s place’ (Bourdieu, 2000b, p. 184). In social spaces where Mandarin and a favourable accent of speaking it become legitimised, recognised symbolic capital, being unable to speak Chinese creates embarrassment, horror, and shame – the unease in Bourdieu’s term – contributing to a sense of ‘out-­of-placeness’. To restore a sense of one’s place, participants tended to make effort to learn and speak Chinese. Drawing on Bourdieu (2000b, p. 184) again, emotion governs ‘the way to behave in order to keep it (‘pulling rank’) and to keep within it (‘knowling one’s place, etc.)’. The momentary and inadvertent breach of the racialised assumption constructs a ‘perspicuous setting’ (see Garfinkel, 2002) in which the assumption is made visible, noticeable, and accountable. As Bourdieu (1977, p.  168) remarked, ‘the truth of doxa is only ever fully revealed when negatively constituted by … the locus of the confrontation of competing discourses’. Looking Chinese while being unable to speak Chinese creates competing discourses for the racialised assumption. Momentary and inadvertent breaches of the racialised assumption, however, do not necessarily shake the social order established through the doxa and the durability of the habitus. As Bourdieu (1990b, pp.  165–166) noted, ‘the stabler the objective structures and the more fully they reproduce themselves in the agents’ dispositions, the greater the extent of the field of doxa, of that which is taken for granted’. As a result, the established social order furnishes ‘the regulative resources which, by inhibiting or suppressing the production of actions constituted as deviant, contribute to the maintenance of institutional patterns of action’ (Heritage, 1984, p.  230). That said, participants in the current study were not ‘cultural dopes’ (Garfinkel, 1964). Instead, they purposefully and strategically chose to fit the image of the racialised social field. The routinised and normalised social order Participants often connected their Chinese looks to their CHL either unconsciously in doxic situations or consciously when the body-­language link was

38   Habitus within racialised social fields broken. In either way, participants tended to internalise the racialised assumption and became committed to their CHL learning. In this respect, common culture contributes ‘to the extent to which groups appear to their members (and sometimes others) as natural and necessary rather than arbitrary and optional’ (Calhoun, 2003, p.  559). For example, when asked the reasons behind CHL learning, Adam responded, For some people, they speak Chinese so that they can claim their Chineseness or something. And so do I. … So I try to expose myself to Chinese language and force myself to learn Chinese as much as possible. I would feel like a ‘foreigner’ if I could not be able to speak at least some Chinese. To be able to claim his Chinese identity, Adam considered Chinese proficiency to be essential and necessary. Such a consideration accorded with the racialised assumption and led, at least to a certain extent, to his commitment to CHL learning. Adam was enculturated into a racialised habitus of Chinese looks that directed him to CHL learning. He developed ‘a correctly used proposition’ (Garfinkel, 1967, p.  281), that is, speaking Chinese, by which he specifically expected to furnish others evidence of his bona fide status – his legitimate Chinese identity. Similar to Adam’s response to the question about the reasons behind CHL learning, Bob explained, ‘Because of my Chinese heritage. French would be good but it’s nothing part of me. But Chinese is part of me.’ Later he added, ‘I think it’s a good opportunity to do that. I mean I look Chinese and I should speak Chinese.’ Bob explicitly attributed his CHL learning to his Chinese heritage. He considered CHL an integral part of himself, a constitutive element of his Chinese identity. By his account, looking Chinese and speaking Chinese were interwoven, which, he thought, offered ‘a good opportunity’ for him to learn Chinese. For Bob, looking Chinese coupled with speaking Chinese came to mark his identity. The marking was achieved not only symbolically through representational systems, looking Chinese in this case, but also socially through learning and using a language, CHL in this case. In other words, looking Chinese was necessary but not enough to claim his Chinese identity. It was also through being able to speak Chinese that his Chinese identity was expressed, enacted, and symbolised. When asked the same question, En-­ning replied, The reason is the difference between a white person learning Chinese and the overseas Chinese learning Chinese. … For Chinese Australians learning Chinese, learning the language immediately raises issues of identity, belonging, colour, culture, and history. I think this means we are often highly motivated because of the numerous factors driving us to learn. En-­ning attributed her motivation to ‘numerous factors’ – ‘identity, belonging, colour, culture, and history’. These factors became her ‘motivated compliance

Bodily and linguistic identities   39 with background expectancies’ (Garfinkel, 1967, p. 53). Such motivated compliance consisted of her grasp of and subscription to the ‘natural facts of life’ (Garfinkel, 1967, p.  54) – the legitimate order of beliefs about life in society, such as identity, belonging, colour, culture, and history recounted by En-­ning. These ‘natural facts of life’ came to shape En-­ning’s motivation of CHL learning. It is noteworthy that she spoke of the role of colour in her CHL learning, which, she thought, would make a difference in the motivation between white Australians and Chinese Australians. The word ‘colour’ was also chosen by Dianna to explain the reasons behind her CHL learning, as she noted, ‘I was born into this culture, this colour, and this language. So they are part of my identity, my Chinese identity.’ Dianna considered her Chinese colour and Chinese language as part of her Chinese identity. Moreover, she was aware that this Chinese identity was acquired from birth as she ‘was born into’ this colour and language. This genetic element of habitus was inherited from the past, semiotic at present, and enduring in the future. Dianna also shared a story that happened in her high school where her white schoolmates once asked the Asian-­looking peers to speak their own language. Unfortunately, one of the Asian girls failed to meet the white peers’ anticipation. Dianna recalled, In my high school, there were not many Asians. People tended to be very surprised when they saw different skin colours in their class. There were two Asian-­looking girls in my grade, I think. … At that time I felt how important (it was) to speak my own home language because the white girls said ‘if you are Asian, you should be able to speak your home language. … If you can’t, it’s sort of a shame’. That’s one of the friends said at that time. I felt it’s important and it’s a pride to speak my home language. Once again, the physical trait ‘colour’ repeatedly emerged in Dianna’s interview account. This physical trait, as a form of ascribed Chinese identity, cannot be erased or elided; hence remains a habitual state of a mere enduring fact in the physical world. Dianna’s schoolmates contended that home language proficiency should be generated through this habitual state. Dianna seemed to have been convinced of her schoolmates’ view. She appeared to internalise this very life experience. Consequently, she was interested in investing in her ‘home language’ because this turned out to her as a game worth playing and a business worthy of investment. The return of such investment helps to claim her Chinese identity and justify her Chinese body. For Dianna, it was ‘a pride’ to speak Chinese because of her Chinese looks. Such pride is translated into symbolic capital in a racialised social field that, on the one hand, recognises the legitimate value of the Chinese body; on the other hand, misrecognises the arbitrary value of it. As Bourdieu (1990b, p. 121) expounds: The interest leading an agent to defend his [sic] symbolic capital is inseparable from tacit adherence, inculcated in the earliest years of life and

40   Habitus within racialised social fields reinforced by all subsequent experience, to the axiomatics objectively inscribed in the regularities of the (in the broad sense) economic order, an original investment which constitutes a given type of goods as worthy of being pursued and conserved. The objective harmony between the agents’ dispositions (here, their propensity and capacity to play the game of honour) and the objective regularities of which they are the product, means that membership of this economic cosmos implies unconditional recognition of the stakes which, by its very existence, it presents as self-­evident, that is, misrecognition of the arbitrariness of the value it confers on them. This primary belief is the basis of the investments and over-­investments (in both the economic and psychoanalytic senses) which, through the ensuing competition and scarcity, cannot fail to reinforce the well-­grounded illusion that the value of the goods it designates as desirable is in the nature of things, just as interest in these goods is in the nature of men [sic]. Participants’ positive response to the racialised assumption is a form of internalisation of the external social structures (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984, 1988). Participants were subject to the external social norms that came to shape their internal attitudes, values, perceptions, and dispositions. In other words, they were influenced, or almost driven, by the values and expectations that they internalised in their habitus, looking Chinese in this case. This habitus, through a system of internalised cognitive and motivating structures (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990b), constantly reminded participants to respond to social order, and therefore, to contribute to the stability of social order. Yet participants were not oversocialised bodies without agency. Rather, they were ‘culturally astute agents’ (Lynch, 2012, p. 224) who skilfully interpreted the locally produced orderliness, reflexively monitored their actions against the social order, and strategically fit the image of the racialised social field. For these participants, momentary and inadvertent breach of the racialised assumption gave them an opportunity to not only emphasise what they had in common with the everyday background expectancies, but also actively take on the mundane normality to instantiate, reproduce, and stabilise the racialised social order by choosing to learn CHL. Although the racialised social order often works on the grounds of unconsciousness and self-­evidence, the breach of it becomes a critical moment to reveal habitus – a phenomenon of habitus realisation.

Habitus realisation By participants’ interview accounts, the interweaving of Chinese looks, Chinese identity, and Chinese language constitutes a racialised social order. However, making sense of the social order does not happen monolithically but in a multimodal manner via everyday labour and quotidian details. The multimode is rife with the taken-­for-grantedness of the seen but unnoticed social order, the inadvertent breaching of the social order, and the restoration of the social order. Breaching the social order is of particular importance here as it creates a

Bodily and linguistic identities   41 necessary condition to reveal doxa. Looking Chinese whereas being unable to speak Chinese creates a crisis situation where the racialised social order ‘loses its character as a natural phenomenon’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 169). The crisis situation ‘brings the undiscussed into discussion, the unformulated into formulation … in breaking the immediate fit between the subjective structures and the objective structures’ (Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 168–169). What is interesting in the current data is that crisis situations did not overturn the racialised social order but regressed to it and realised the habitus. This is a phenomenon termed as ‘habitus realisation’ (Mu & Dooley, 2015; Mu & Hu, 2016; Mu et al., 2016; Mu, Liu et al., 2019; Mu, Luke, & Dooley, 2019). Through habitus realisation, what once was a covert, implicit, and connotative state of latency has been transformed into an overt, explicit, and denotative pattern of representation. What historically was unconsciously buried in the mind and body has become a consciously normalised system at present and in the future. In other words, habitus realisation creates opportunities in crisis situations to question the oft-­unquestioned and unquestionable doxa – if you look Chinese you are able to speak Chinese – and therefore, makes it possible to engender greater consciousness about the doxa. Habitus realisation does not occur in a vacuum. Instead, it occurs within ‘the plenum’ (Garfinkel, 1996) rife with worldly circumstantiality and phenomenal details. The breach of the racialised assumption, unexpectedly unable to speak Chinese in this case, makes the embodied dispositions visible, rational, reportable, and hence accountable. In other words, habitus is realised in socially unusual ways. These unusual ways provide ‘a definite situation’ where ‘habitus reveals itself … as sort of a spring that needs a trigger’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 135). These unusual ways also create ‘times of crisis’ when rationality and reflexivity may ‘take over’ from habitus and engender ‘an awakening of consciousness’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 131, 133). In the current study, occasional breaks from the racialised social order reportedly sparked participants’ choice of CHL learning, at least to a certain extent. When habitus is realised, Chinese Australians’ habitual dispositions of the symbolic Chinese looks preform as reminders of the required conduct, speaking Chinese in this case, in order to manipulate Chinese identity. By virtue of habitus realisation, Chinese Australians are able to perform tremendous social effort that goes into negotiating the life politics around CHL, and deciding which moments to pay attention to, and when to address the anticipation of the authorised normalities and to maintain the legitimate social orders. In this vein, the historically configured dispositions (Chinese looks) commence to circumscribe the possibilities and limitations of social practices (being able to speak CHL). To quote Calhoun (2003, pp. 561–562) here: ‘Challenges to the reproduction of cultural patterns engender efforts to defend them that may contribute to making them sharper identities’. The data reported here indicate that the performance and unfolding of habitus realisation is nothing other than the ‘socially informed body’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 124), with its tastes of Chinese dispositions, being able to speak Chinese in this

42   Habitus within racialised social fields case, and its distastes of inappropriate dispositions, being unable to speak Chinese in this case. In this way, habitus is realised through the sense of necessity and duty of speaking CHL, the sense of direction and reality of being able to speak CHL, the moral sense of balance, propriety, and practicality of speaking the right language in the right situation and the sense of absurdity of failing to do so. In simple words, the racialised habitus is realised through internalising the racialised social order. To further understand habitus realisation in a larger picture, the next section provides some quantitative evidence in this regard.

Internalising the racialised social order: some quantitative evidence In the larger project, an online survey was developed to gauge the mutually constitutive effect between language and identity. The online survey netted 230 complete responses from Chinese Australian young people (52.2 per cent female). They ranged in age between 18 and 35, with a mean age of 25.14 (SD = 4.23). In this sample, 111 participants were born outside Australia, with 95 born in China (Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) and 16 born in other countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam). The Australian-­born group consisted of 119 participants, including 73, 31, and 15 participants of second-­generation, third-­generation, and fourth-­ generation or further removed respectively. Participants reportedly used a variety of languages at home, including English, Mandarin, Cantonese, other Chinese dialects, Indonesian, Vietnamese, or a mixture of these languages. Their formal CHL learning varied in years from zero to 15. CHL proficiency was measured by a four-­item scale to gauge participants’ self-­reported CHL listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Measurement validation was reported elsewhere (Mu, 2014, 2015b, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c; Mu & Dooley, 2015). Cronbach’s Alpha of the scale is 0.93, indicating a high internal consistency reliability. Three single-­indicator items were selected for the current analysis given the focus of the chapter. Item one (external expectation) was used to measure the degree to which participants were expected by others to speak Chinese because of their Chinese looks. This item is reflective of the racialised social order that looking Chinese means being able to speak Chinese. Item two (self-­reminder) was used to measure the degree to which participants reminded themselves to learn CHL due to their Chinese looks. This item is reflective of the racialised habitus that connects the Chinese body to CHL learning. Item three (self-­perception of CHL meaningfulness) was used to measure the degree to which participants considered CHL to be meaningful to them. This item is reflective of participants’ embodied disposition to CHL learning. Structural Equation Modelling was used to analyse the relationships among the four variables (CHL proficiency, external expectation, self-­reminder, and self-­perception of CHL meaningfulness). All relationships are statistically significant. Standardised regression weights associated with these relationships are shown in Figure 2.1.

Bodily and linguistic identities   43

Figure 2.1 Relationships between external expectation, self-reminder, self-perception of CHL meaningfulness, and CHL proficiency.

The model explains 62 per cent of the variance of CHL proficiency. External expectation, self-­reminder, and self-­perception of CHL meaningfulness all have significant direct effects on CHL proficiency. The more participants were expected by others to speak Chinese due to their Chinese looks, the better their CHL proficiency (r = 0.31, p