Diasporic Chinese Entrepreneurship - Presented by Dr. Min Zhou

Harold F. Giedt Lecture Series
Diasporic Chinese Entrepreneurship
Presented by Dr. Min Zhou
Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies, UCLA

Entrepreneurship has been an integral part of the long-standing history of Chinese emigration and a central force in diasporic development. In this presentation, I offer a historical overview of diasporic Chinese entrepreneurship, highlighting the divergent patterns of Chinese business development in North America in contrast to those in Southeast Asia, the center of the Chinese Diaspora. In particular, I discuss how family, gender, and cultural dynamics are intertwined to affect entrepreneurship and produce intended and intended consequences pertaining to community building, transnationalism, and immigrant integration. Through case studies of Chinatowns in the U.S. and Chinese transnational practices in Singapore, I show that, while entrepreneurship is a defining characteristic of the Chinese diaspora, it is shaped by different circumstances of emigration in the sending country and migrant reception in the host country. I also show that Chinese entrepreneurship not only enhances an individual’s economic opportunities but also creates sociocultural resources by way of diasporic development

About the speaker:

Min Zhou, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies, Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in US-China Relations and Communications, and Director of the Asia Pacific Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her main research areas are in migration & development, race and ethnicity, ethnic entrepreneurship, Chinese diaspora, and the sociology of Asia and Asian America, and she has published widely in these areas, including the award-winning book The Asian American Achievement Paradox (with Lee, 2015), Contemporary Chinese Diasporas (ed., 2017), Forever Strangers? Contemporary Chinese Immigrants around the World (ed., 2021, in traditional Chinese), and Beyond Economic Migration: Historical, Social, and Political Factors in US Immigration (with Mahmud, 2022). In 2021, she edited and published two special issues in academic journals, one on “Family, Gender, Ethnicity, and Pragmatism in Contemporary Diasporic Chinese Entrepreneurship” in the Journal of Chinese Overseas, and the other (with Xiaohua Lin) on “Chinese Entrepreneurship in a Globalized World: Culture, Place, and Mobilities” in the Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. She won the 2017 Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association (ASA) Section on International Migration and the 2020 Contribution to the Field Award from the ASA Section on Asia and Asian America. She has been awarded grants, for two consecutive years, from the Eurasia Foundation (in Asia) to develop an undergraduate course at UCLA on “Asian Community: Border-Crossing, Diasporic Formation, and Social Transformation in Asia.” Website: http://mzhou.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/

This event is sponsored by CSUN Distinguished Visiting Speaker Program, CSUN China Institute, and the College of Humanities. It is free and open to the public. Campus map is available at this link, www.csun.edu/csun-maps, and public parking is available on campus at www.csun.edu/parking/visitor-parking-information. Please contact Dr. Weimin Sun at weimin.sun@csun.edu (818-677-6461) for more information.