There are no Asians in China: the racialization of Chinese international students in the United States

ABSTRACT

Foreigners who arrive in the United States experience a process of racialization by which they adjust to the new racial realities of their host society. This paper presents a unique longitudinal study of racialization, drawing upon 30 interviews with 15 Chinese international students conducted twice per respondent over six months. The first interviews were carried out within two weeks of the students’ arrival in the U.S. to capture their pre-migration racial schemas and racial identity. Upon their arrival in the U.S., Chinese students primarily understand the concept of ‘race’ through the paradigm of nationality and racially identified as Chinese. Just half a year later, however, there was a striking shift towards a conceptualisation of race that emphasises phenotype over nationality, and some respondents began to identify with the pan-national racial label ‘Asian.’ I argue that these changes can be attributed to the process of racialization in the United States.

KEYWORDS:

• Racialization
• transnational racialization
• race
• racial identity
• racial schemas
• experiential knowledge

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Van Tran, Wendy Roth, Shamus Khan, and the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions on previous drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the respondents of this study for generously taking the time to share their experiences with me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.