Social Status Compensation: Variations on the Sending of Cultural Remittances among Chinese Overseas

摘要: Economic reform and social transformation in China since the late 1970s have revitalized diaspora-homeland ties created new opportunities for transnational engagement. Chinese overseas made significant contributions to their ancestral homeland’s economic development via foreign direct investment monetary remittances. They also donated money build symbolic structures, such as village gates, monuments, spiritual statues, street altars, well cultural facilities, museums, centers, libraries, public parks, collective consumption. We call these donations While remittances left an indelible imprint on landscape of migrant-sending hometowns China, emigrants from different resettled receiving countries vary sending This paper proposes a theoretical framework status compensation explain variations this particular type practice among international migrations. illustrate with comparative analysis ethnographic fieldwork data two communities South China. find that serves unique mechanism is not merely caused by migrants’ own initiatives or state policies top, but responses actions local governments societies migrant hometowns. It interaction individual experiences at micro level, felt experienced marginalization, multi-level contextual factors, wage differential, currency exchange rates, hometown reception, affects realization accounts regional variations.