Chinese Transnational Families

Care Circulation and Children's Life Paths

Laura Lamas-Abraira

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000508437
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

The research presented in this book explores care and its circulation in Chinese transnational families that are split between China and Spain, and the paths these families' children have taken through their lives so far: from their early years to their current position as young adults, with care, in its multiple dimensions and timescales – past, present and future – as the unifying thread.

In doing so, it provides a contribution to the emerging body of research about care and transnational families and it posits the need to question hegemonic models of family, childhood and care, and to give voice and visibility to other actors, moving beyond the adult-centred perspective that dominates migration research.

The ethnographic approach together with the focus on the day-to-day lives of these families, in which care is the core concept, as it permeates people's lives and traverses society generationally, makes this book appealing to both scholars and general public.

Part I Research context

DOI: 10.4324/9781003180807-2

Introduction: de-locating Qingtianese transnational families

In March 2017, on my first day in Qingtian, Meili’s¹ grandparents picked me up from my hotel and invited me to have lunch in their home. Sitting alongside them, their youngest daughter – who was there on a three-week visit – and their grandson – who lived with them while his parents worked in Spain – I ate home-made Chinese food at their home for the first time. Many small plates were spread over the round turning table, filled with different types of dishes and vegetables that I saw for the first time; some of them – they said – were specialities from the area. The chairs, I remember, were very heavy, being made from wood and marble. The cabinets beside us were full of European wines and liquors, and I drank a tasty Rioja² wine that they served me. Spanish sausage (fuet) had also its place on the table. They repeatedly invited me to eat it as, they said, it came from my country. I used the chopsticks instead of my hands to pick it up – as is common in Spain – as I saw that this is what they did. Nevertheless, at that point, I avoided copying the local ways and dipping it in a soy-vinegar dip. That was going too far, I guessed.

Some weeks later, from my study table in Qingtian, I checked the new notifications on my social media. One of them came from a Facebook group of Chinese migrants’ descendants in Spain,³ where a new post had been posted. It was an article⁴ from a newspaper regarding a girl who had obtained the best grade in the university access exams in the Balearic Islands, in Spain. Her name was Yali Chen, and she was a descendant of Chinese migrants. When she was very young, she had lived in China with her grandparents, and later on, at the age of four, she was reunited with her parents in Spain. She speaks four languages; she paints and is learning to play the piano by herself. That summer of 2017, she would help her parents in the restaurant as usual, before moving to Madrid to study medicine. The members of the aforementioned Facebook group expressed their pride about her peer, about her endeavour, and they emphasised the achievements and the heterogeneity of the paths followed by Chinese migrants’ descendants in Spain nowadays. Days later, while eating with a family in Qingtian, they asked me if I was aware of this news, and they showed me the Chinese version of it.⁵ They told me that the news was circulating across social media and could be found on many WeChat⁶ groups and the WeChat walls of their kin, friends and neighbours. Their pride in her achievements, which they extended to the Chinese community in Spain, was similarly present.

The hot temperatures foreshadowed what would turn into a never-ending summer. It was the end of June (2017), and Qingtian city became more renao (热闹) or lively every day. The streets were unusually full of children and young people who had arrived in Qingtian to spend the summertime there. The fashionable restaurants were crowded, and suddenly, free sofas in the bubble tea and yinliao (饮料) or beverage shops seemed to be hard to find. I went down the riverside to avoid the afternoon sun, and I walked along the river path. Before heading to the steps of the Taihe Bridge (太鹤大桥), I observed three children playing. I thought I had heard Spanish, so I walked slower. And then, it happened: a boy who looked between seven and nine years old used three different languages in one single sentence: Mandarin, Spanish and Catalan.⁷ This fact seemed to be remarkable only to me, and the three children kept playing normally.

In 2018, after spending some months in Lishui,⁸ I was back in Qingtian. Manuel, a Chinese migrants’ descendant born in Spain whom I had met some weeks earlier, invited me to go with him to his cousin’s wedding, as he thought it could be interesting for my research. I loved the idea, but I asked to double-check with his family if it was okay: it was. I saw him the day before the wedding, and we agreed that we would meet the following day at 4:30 pm to walk together to the wedding venue. It was around 3 pm and I was trying to tie my hair up when my phone rang. Manuel repeatedly apologised and said that I could not go to the wedding. His parents from Spain had just phoned and forbidden him from attending a wedding with a foreign female, being afraid of who could figure it out or spread rumours about it.

The four circumstances described above are part of my research – and my life – in Qingtian. Nevertheless, in each of them, the spatial and social frame of reference is not limited to the borders of Qingtian and necessarily extends beyond it, far beyond. This frame of reference incorporates a transnational dimension, which further field data detailed in this book will show to be undeniable. This transnational condition surpasses the lives of the migrants and permeates the day-to-day of those who did not migrate: of those who stayed in Qingtian, but also of the new family members born in Europe. All of them participate – in different ways – in social fields which go beyond the borders of one state (Glick Schiller et al., 1992). Nevertheless, this is not to say that places no longer matter and that practices and experiences can be completely de-territorialised. For the people whose lives I have tried to understand, spatial references are meaningful, although they have no fixed or uniform weight for different individuals and families. While the importance of Qingtian as a physical, social and emotional space varies for each individual, exploring the patterns and features of social life in this specific location is key to understanding the general and generational dynamics of these transnational families.

Chapter 1 Chinese migration to Spain

DOI: 10.4324/9781003180807-3

Migration history and main characteristics

Chinese international migration has displayed a history of ‘longue durée’: firstly, in its first waves mostly concentrated on Southeast Asia through merchant trade, and later on, at the end of the nineteenth century to America and Australia through labour migration and, in lesser extent, to Western Europe. Most recently, migration movements have also expanded to South and East Europe and also to Africa (Chee-Beng, 2013; Li & Li, 2013). The Chinese diaspora – that is estimated to be around 39.5 millions of people – actually reaches 130 different countries (Chee-Beng, 2013; Li & Li, 2013). However, the largest percentage of Chinese people living out of China still remains in Southeast Asia (around the 75%). Studies on Chinese migrants have mostly relied on their experiences in the migration destination country under the integration-paradigm lens, and the relationship between Chinese migrants and the Chinese state. It is only recently that they have incorporated the transnational perspective (Chee-Beng, 2013).

The Chinese in Southern Europe mainly come from Zhejiang province (Southeastern Coastal province in China), following a migration chain that – on a very small scale – was also initiated a long time ago (Thunø, 2003). The presence of people from Qingtian county (Zhejiang province) in Europe was linked to merchants of stone carvings at the end of the nineteenth century in countries of Western Europe, such as the United Kingdom or France (Benton, 2011; Thunø, 2003), arriving in Spain in the 1920s and 1930s (Beltrán Antolín, 2003, 2006). Similarly, at the end of the First World War, about 2,000 men from Qingtian county who fought with the Allies remained in France (Thunø, 2003). This first migratory phase was characterised by being male-led and not involving a settlement project. It would be after the Second World War that they would make their entry into the catering sector, leading to long-term settlement (Beltrán Antolín, 2006).

It was after China’s opening and Reform era (1978) that large migratory flows to Europe began, about two-thirds of the total migrants originating in the Wenzhou and Qingtian districts in Zhejiang province. From the 1980s onwards, a significant number of Chinese people started arriving in Southern Europe, taking advantage of new economic opportunities in the region (Benton, 2011; Beltrán Antolín, 2003). More specifically, after the death of the Spanish dictator and the entry of the country into the European Union, Spain was seen as an attractive migratory option. Some of these migrants moved from other European countries, where they had already settled and had businesses (Beltrán Antolín, 2003, 2006). In addition to new opportunities in the Southern European economies, the extraordinary large-scale migrant regularisation processes carried out in these countries served to pull Chinese migrants from other European countries, and within the various Southern European ones (Beltrán Antolín, 2003). This circulation between countries is not unusual, as it is common for different members within an extended family to be spread over different European countries, maximising their economic opportunities and minimising their risks (Beltrán Antolín, 2003; Ceccagno, 2003).

Wenzhou and Qingtian are the migration origin areas for Chinese people living in Spain, Italy and Portugal (Beltrán Antolín, 2003; Chang, 2012; Sáiz López, 2005), and, to a lesser extent, France, where most of the Chinese people who have settled in the country come from Rui’an district, also in Zhejiang province (Guerassimoff, 2003). Spain is the country with the largest proportion of Qingtianese-origin people, and together with the flux of people from the neighbouring city of Wenzhou, they constitute about 70% of the total Chinese-origin population there (Sáiz López, 2005). Their migratory project is family-based, starting with a man, a woman or both, depending on the available kin network in Spain, followed by other members of the nuclear family (Sáiz López, 2005, 2012).

Their main economic niche in Spain during the 1980s and 1990s were Chinese restaurants, before diversifying in the mid-1990s when the sector became saturated (Beltrán Antolín, 2003, 2006; Sáiz López, 2005). At that time, Chinese families started to broaden their businesses by including budget bazaars, corner shops, shoe shops and wholesalers; in the last decade, they have also moved into import trade and clothing manufacture and, to a lesser extent, co-ethnic client services in big cities (Beltrán Antolín, 2006). There has also been a trend of Chinese families taking over local business, such as Spanish bars, which continue to offer the same kind of service, but are run by Chinese people (Beltrán Antolín, 2006; Beltrán Antolín & Sáiz López, 2015; Masdeu Torruella, 2014). These family businesses employ nuclear family members and sometimes hire additional workers from the extended family, or friends and neighbours from the origin town, enabling and sustaining the migration chain and settlement process (Beltrán Antolín, 2003). The cycle starts with a migrant working as an employee in one of these businesses, which serves to pay off their migration-related debts and save money – in combination with an austere lifestyle – as well as enabling them to learn the basic skills to later run their own family business, created by using their savings and/or informal loans (Beltrán Antolín, 2006).

Although their migratory project is family-based and their aim is to achieve reunification in Spain (Sáiz López, 2005), these families tend to keep strong bonds with their origin town. Beltrán Antolín (2003), through his multi-sited ethnography between Spain and Qingtian, compiled the history of Qingtianese migration to Spain and sketched out the connections that these families maintained across borders, including with third countries. He highlighted the role of remittances and migration pioneers in the development of the origin towns, through donations to public projects and private investment in business and house building. Furthermore, the development of associations⁹ of Chinese-origin people served as a link between both countries, offering information and help for migration and settlement, commercial support within and across borders, and promoting the Chinese culture in Spain (Beltrán Antolín, 2003, 2006, 2015; Nieto, 2002); the association’s leaders are generally having a high status within the Chinese community in Spain (Beltrán Antolín, 2003; Sáiz López, 2005). Moreover, Beltrán Antolín highlights the role of the origin town as a source of workers and marriage partners. Later on, Masdeu Torruella (2014) explored the different mobility experiences of the diverse generations of Qingtianese families between China and Spain, and the influence of transnational links and practices in transforming Qingtian’s physical, institutional and social landscape.

Following the last official statistics published on the Qingtian County’s government website,¹⁰ the county has a total area of ​​2,493 square kilometers and at the end of 2020 the total registered population was 572,300. This population is mostly rural, counting with 404,200 people living in rural areas and 168.100 people living in the urban areas of the ten towns (镇) of the Qintian county, the biggest percentage of this urban population concentrated in Hecheng town, popularly known as Qingtian. Despite being a small city/town, particularly from a Chinese scale, its migratory history and derived transnational links result on large economic fluxes which are reflected on peoples’ lifestyles and town’s infrastructure counting for example with a high-speed train station and many modern tall buildings that remain empty most part of the year.

Despite the continued prevalence of people from Qingtian and Wenzhou, the area of the provenance of Chinese migrants in Spain is becoming more wide-ranging, increasing their demographic diversity. As Benton (2011) highlights, ‘there is not one Chinese community in Europe but many’ (p. 62), which does not necessarily prelude contact between them or a shared social class, origin or language, despite the fact that they are often imagined as qui...