About the talk:

The internet and digital platforms have revolutionized how migrants and potential migrants connect, share information, and build social networks. Yet, the layered effects of Internet-based networks on migration and integration are less understood. Based on a comparative analysis of two groups of undocumented Chinese immigrants (snake people of the 1990s and post-COVID zouxian people) to the United States, we explore how migrant social networks have been transformed from networked collectivism to networked individualism and examine their effects. We found that, while both network types facilitated undocumented migration, their effects varied drastically not only on border crossings but also on adaptation upon arrival. Snake people of the 1990s relied heavily on traditional migrant networks, which were embedded in their hometowns, intermediaries, and the ethnic community at destination, and had access to social capital characteristic of bounded solidarity and enforceable trust. They were quickly integrated into their ethnic community and moved upwardly from within. In contrast, post-Covid zouxian people had few prior connections to established migrant networks but managed to exercise individual agency to build new networks through social media platforms in the virtual space and in the subsequent border-crossing process. However, their new social networks were unstable and fragile because of the lack of embeddedness in ethnic social structures, and the social capital generated from virtual networks did not have the same advantages of strong or weak ties and the same mechanism of social control commonly seen in traditional migrant networks. As a result, zouxian people drifted away from the ethnic community, facing the dilemma of double marginalization from their own community and the larger society.

About the speaker:

Dr. Min Zhou is currently Distinguished Professor of Sociology & Asian American Studies and Director of the Asia Pacific Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her main research areas are in migration & development, race and ethnicity, Chinese diaspora, and the sociology of Asia and Asian America. She has published widely in these areas, including the award-winning book The Asian American Achievement Paradox(with Lee, 2015), The Rise of the New Second Generation (with Bankston, 2016), Contemporary Chinese Diasporas (ed., 2017), and Beyond Economic Migration: Historical, Social, and Political Factors in US Immigration (with Mahmud, 2023). She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She won the 2017 Distinguished Career Award of the American Sociological Association (ASA) Section on International Migration and the 2020 Contribution to the Field Award of the ASA Section on Asia and Asian America.