Contesting Chineseness

Sylvia Ang is Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI), Deakin University. She was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore from 2018 to 2020. Her research draws on her engagement with the superdiverse cities she has lived in (Singapore and Melbourne, Australia) to analyse migration and ethnic relations, class, gender and racism.

Contesting Chineseness is well organized and structured. The book provides a comprehensive summary of the theoretical background and details on the methodology and offers a nuanced analysis of how the state and people imagine nationality, class and gender in the contestation of Chineseness. Readers find multiple noteworthy ideas, which makes Contesting Chineseness a useful read for anyone interested in ethnicity, race and migration, as well as in new mobilities in Asia., - Yanxuan Lu, Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, July 2026

• Acknowledgements, Introduction: Contesting Chineseness, 1 Who’s Chinese?, 2 Not the lower classes, 3 A better Chinese man, 4 When a Chinese does not speak Chinese, 5 In the new Chinatown, Conclusion: A hierarchy of Chineseness, Index