International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2026

The Transnational and Transcultural Experiences of Chinese Laborers in North America and the Writing of Mid-19th-Century Global History

(Abstract)

Qu Guiping and Jing Getao

The history of Chinese laborers in North America is a global history shaped by the transnational and transcultural living networks of Chinese laborers. In light of the global-history turn in the study of the history of Chinese laborers in North America, a reexamination of modern Chinese migration history, rural social history, and the history of Sino-foreign cultural exchange can further advance the study of modern China and the world. From the perspective of migration history, overseas migration history is an extension of domestic population mobility, and the framework of “transnational networks” should be employed to compensate for the inadequacy of national-level analyses. From the perspective of rural social history, the social structures of rural South China extended to North America through migration networks, while remittances and transoceanic mobility embedded the globalized economic system into rural society, turning qiaoxiang, or overseas Chinese hometowns, into micro-level nodes of globalization in the mid-19th century. From the perspective of Sino-foreign cultural exchange history, attention should be paid to the transnational living experiences of Chinese laborers, expanding elite-narrative-centered thinking, and constructing a multilayered picture of “modern Chinese entering the world.”