From Guanxi to Social Capital and Back Again: A Qualitative Study of Australian Chinese Migrants

ABSTRACT

The global diaspora of Chinese migrants maintains vital economic, social and cosmopolitan connections between China and many Western countries. These migrants face the challenge of navigating and building social capital within Western host countries. Previous studies show that Chinese networks make use of pre-existing strong guanxi ties based on shared cultural expectations to support members. However, the thinness of guanxi networks in foreign countries raises doubts about their capacity to support the migration experience. This study uses qualitative interview data to show that both Chinese migrants and non-migrant Australians use strong ties to acquire resources, such as favours. However, Chinese migrants also make use of weak guanxi ties to seek favours in ways Australian non-migrants typically do not. This indicates a more important role for weaker – or what we call peripheral – ties in Chinese migrant guanxi networks than previous studies suggest, but also points to a lack of alternative resources amongst Chinese migrants struggling to build non-guanxi social capital ties with non-migrant populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Guanxi
• social capital
• migration
• Chinese migrants
• support

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While we wish to avoid focusing this paper on the uncertain fallout from COVID19, we note that the closing of international borders and rising suspicion towards China and its people as a result of the pandemic only add to these difficulties.

2 By ‘social capital’ we refer to the concept as normally used in the West.

3 By ‘practice-based’, we refer to the activities and practices that characterise the operation of social networks, including support, leisure, community and civic activities; see Feng and Patulny (2021) for a detailed discussion.

4 The core of a guanxi revolves around the centred-ego of guanxi circles, which includes family ties and broader familiar ties. Peripheral guanxi includes ties that become gradually more distant from the centred-ego, generally including acquaintances and outsiders/strangers, linked through chains of recommendation, vouching for character and ability. The dynamics of core and peripheral guanxi form a useful contrast – but not an exact equivalent – with ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ capital (Feng and Patulny 2021).

5 To ensure confidentiality, we used pseudonyms in place of participants’ actual names in the publication of the research.

Additional information

Funding

This study was made possible by the fund from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2021M701667] and the Jiangsu Planned Projects for Postdoctoral Research Funds [2021K625C].

Notes on contributors

Zhuqin Feng

Zhuqin Feng is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Nanjing University. She is researching international migrant social networks in China. Feng has published on the topics of social capital, guanxi, and migration in the Journal of Sociology and the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy.

Roger Patulny

Roger Patulny is an associate professor of Sociology at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His primary research areas are in in the sociology of emotions, emotion management and wellbeing, social capital and social connection, social networks, meaningful work futures, precarity and unemployment, and aspects of urban studies.