Global Taiwanese

Illuminating how the identities of Taiwanese diasporic subjects are contextually and historically shaped, this book advances a nuanced, complex, and differentiated understanding of globalization.

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In Global Taiwanese, Fiona Moore explores the different ways in which Taiwanese expatriates in London and Toronto, along with professionals living in Taipei, use their shared Taiwanese identities to construct and maintain global and local networks.

Based on a three-year-long ethnographic study that incorporates interviews with people from diverse backgrounds, generations, and histories, this book explores what their different experiences tell us about migration in “tolerant” and “hostile” regimes.

Global Taiwanese considers the implications in leveraging their Taiwanese ethnic identity for both business and personal purposes. As people become increasingly mobile, ethnic identity becomes more important as a means of negotiating transnational encounters; however, at the same time, the opportunities it offers are rooted in local cultural practices, requiring professionals and other migrants to develop complex social strategies that link and cross the global and local levels.

With rich ethnographic detail, this book contributes to the understanding of the migrant experience and how it varies from location to location, how migration more generally changes in response to wider socioeconomic factors, and, finally, of the specific case of Taiwan and how the distinctive nature of its diaspora emerges through wider discourses of Chineseness and pan-Asian identity.