The Family-migration-network Of South African Chinese: On The Perspective Of Social Network Analysis

Although South African C hines has been living in South Africa for more than three hundred years, researchers have never paid much attention to them. With the growing of C hinese’s national strength, China is bonding with South Africa, and studies on South Africa are becoming popular. But studies on South African Chinese are still waiting for daybreak.The earliy C hinese migrants to South Africa are mostly Cantonese. The embryonic form of their Family- Migration-Network was structured through chain migration and family founding. Influenced by Apartheid, the Family- Migration-Network was reshaped and became more Apartheid-type. Meanwhile, South Afrcian Chinese started to remigrate. Under the double impacts of Remigration and Apartheid, South African Chinese, who were previously disconnected with their homeland, founded a new transnational migration network, and managed to build a Family-Migration-Network, including relations within family members, among families, and relations with remigrations.Previous migration network researches considered migration network as a single actor, and overlook the interaction among the relations within the network. In this thesis, the author introduced the method of structurized analysis in social network theory, and studied the establishment of South African C hinese Family- Migration-Network under the background of Apartheid History and Sino-South African relation changes, and tried to combine the theories of International Relations and social network theories, in order to make efforts to develop the theoretical paradigm of International Relations.