| This study postulates that under certain circumstances related to their status in the international arena, metropolitan goverments will attempt to forge linkages with established communities of their expatriates abroad. Moreover, the latter will respond favorably, or themselves initiate overtures for linkage, given negative conditions of acceptance in their host environment. A construct was developed as follows with four illustrative cases citing variations of this tendency toward expatriate/metropolitan linkage: (UNFORMATTED TABLE FOLLOWS).;Home Government Demand.;High Low.;China and India and.;Demand for Linkage.;High the Overseas Indians.;Expatriate Chinese in Kenya.;Minority.;Demand.;France and Switzerland.;Low the French and Swiss.;Canadians Americans.;(TABLE ENDS).;Inasmuch as conditions in home or host environment are subject to change, cases are generally examined within a specific time period.;Beyond these historical cases, three of which appear in the Appendices, and the featured case of China and the overseas Chinese, described in Chapters II and III, linkage is empirically demonstrated in Chapter IV by examining a measurable mode of interaction, that of numbers of overseas Chinese "returning" to the People's Republic of China (CPR) or the Republic of China (ROC) for higher education in the 1950s. The assumption that such a mode would typify the broader relationship between home governments and expatriate population was tested by comparing these data with existing empirical research on overseas Chinese remittances to the CPR and ROC during the same period. Published CPR and ROC sources were used, as well as the author's own research in Taiwan.;The study is interdisciplinary, drawing upon the fields of international relations, comparative education, sociology, and history. Relevant literature on the topic of "international system" and "assimilation" is reviewed, as well as the copious literature on the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. However, the latter are viewed vis a vis China, rather than in the more usual manner vis a vis their host environment. |
