Reimagining Chinese Diasporas in a Transnational World: Hypermobility, Hyperdiversity and Hyperconnectivity

In this talk I examine the changing nature of the Chinese diasporas in a transnational world and its concomitant implications for Chinese diaspora studies internationally. With a shifting paradigm of transnationalism and transnational migration, new patterns of Chinese diasporas can be characterised by unprecedented hypermobility, hyperdiversity, and hyperconnectivity. Such characterisations depict the global dispersal of overseas Chinese as one of the most hyperdiverse groups with substantial sub-group differences that distinguish it from most other diasporas. I then illustrate how the analytical constructs of hypermobility, hyperdiversity and hyperconnectivity aid in the reimagining of contemporary Chinese transnational diasporas and its implications for developing new scholarship on Chinese diasporas studies in a transnational world.

Dr. Shibao Guo is Professor at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada. He is also Honorary Professor of the University of Nottingham. Over the past twenty years as a transnational academic and scholar, Dr. Guo has developed research expertise in the areas of transnational migration, diaspora studies, internationalisation of higher education, international student mobility, and comparative and international education. He has numerous publications including books, journal articles, and book chapters. His latest book is: Reimagining Chinese Diasporas in a Transnational World (Routledge, 2024). He is former president of the Comparative and International Education Society of Canada. Currently he is co-editor of Canadian Ethnic Studies. He edits two book series for Brill Publishers: Transnational Migration and Education, and Spotlight on China. In 2024 Dr. Guo was named among the world’s top 2% most-cited scientist in the Stanford/Elsevier rankings.