ABSTRACT

Ethnic Chinese migrants to Europe entered into economic activities and occupations as entrepreneurs, workers, traders, investors and corporate functionaries, not to speak of people in the liberal professions, academics, artists, journalists, people who get by teaching Chinese language and cultural appreciation, and those who sell their services in the various shades of the leisure industry.1

This chapter outlines how they have contributed to the diverse economies in European countries during periods of huge geo-political changes in the century and a half that have passed since the high tide of colonialism. They responded, I shall argue, to opportunities and predicaments arising from colonialism, the Cold War, European integration, the new world order that followed the end of the Cold War, and China’s economic rise. They invariably engaged creatively and dynamically with the institutions of immigration, ethnic relations, labor, social (welfare-state), and economic regulation in individual European states.2 These institutions not only create unequal legal entitlements for individuals, but are woven into a web of public discourse that generates a field of uncertainty, precarity, and exploitability beyond the workings of the mainstream economies. The ethnic enclaves and transnational communities of ethnic Chinese have contributed to the European economy at the cost of precarity and social risk.3 The main contribution offered here is to understand the ethnic Chinese economy under the changing conditions of the global political economy, integrating an understanding of transnationalism, ethnic enclave economy, and precarity.