Sojourners or Settlers? Early Chinese Migrants to Australia: A Case Study of Tasmania

This talk is a case study of Tasmania based on an ARC research project that attempts to research into several questions concerning early Chinese migrants to Australia. The overriding research problem is why early Chinese migrants are either assumed or argued as sojourners, in contrast to British migrant who were considered settlers. I argue in this talk that early Chinese migration to Australia might come as sojourners, but willing to be settlers, and ended up as a mixture of both. The talk ends with one theoretical postulation that early Chinese migrants to the little island Tasmania were transnationals, hybrids and ‘global citizens” more than a hundred years ago. Once migrated early Chinese migrants were less “Chinese” but could not be like “white Australians” either.