How Class Influences the Ethnic Identity of Chinese Immigrants in the UK: Citizenship, Work, and Solidarity

One of the current focal points of ethnicity research is the relationship between ethnic identity and social inequality. This paper examines how immigrants' understandings of ethnicity are influenced by class. Through life-history interviews with 28 Chinese immigrants in the UK, I focus on the experiences and feelings of immigrants from different social classes crossing borders, as well as how these experiences influence their understanding of ethnicity and identity, which often involve ethnically salient situations and the ways they draw ethnic boundaries. By focussing on immigrants' citizenship acquisition and work strategy development, I show three ways that class affects ethnicity: the extent of barriers when crossing borders, the ability to use transnational capital, and the forms of solidarity. This work contributes to the study of the intersection between ethnicity and class, revealing the heterogeneity of Chinese immigrants in the UK from a class perspective.