Talk: A Humanistic Approach to Chinese Diaspora Studies

 

 

 

 

Abstract: Tiger parents. Model minority. Yellow peril. Racial wedge. Military-age Chinese men. National security threat. These are just a few of the labels attached to Chinese immigrants in the U.S. popular media and political elites’ narratives. In this talk, Dr. Shasha Lin draws on her research on Chinese Americans’ active engagement in the contentious debates over race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions, as well as on her ongoing ethnographic work with post-COVID-19 unauthorized Chinese immigrants navigating multi-layered migrant precarities in the “promised land.” Through these case studies, she elaborates on a humanistic approach to Chinese diaspora studies. Critically reflecting on her own research journey as a first-generation Chinese immigrant and woman scholar, Dr. Lin will also explore the limits and possibilities of researching and writing about international migration, race and ethnicity, and belonging in the current political climate.

Bio: Dr. Shasha Lin is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Geography at Heidelberg University in Germany. Her research is at the crossroads of American studies, sociology, and political science. Her main research interests include race and ethnicity, Chinese diaspora, and Asia and Asia America. Her new book, Chinese Americans’ Perceptions of Race, Education, and Affirmative Action (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), presents a compelling story of Chinese Americans grappling with the potent Asian admissions myths, questions of fairness in college admissions, and their positioning within racial discourses and politics. Her current collaborative research, funded by the German Research Foundation, investigates the adaptation strategies of underprivileged immigrants and their multi-scalar homemaking practices in Chinese ethnoburbs in Los Angeles and Latinx immigrant neighborhoods in Chicago. Her work has been published in leading journals, including Ethnic and Racial Studies, Comparative Migration Studies, Population, Space and Place, and China Perspectives.