This Is Not Chinatown is a short documentary exploring the experience of six Chinese students living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Meet Jinming, Yuyang, Patrick, Xinyu, Yuyue and Lixiang while they are sharing their personal stories with us. How do they think, feel and go about their daily lives in the international student city of Amsterdam, where nationalism is on the rise and Chinatown does not seem Chinatown?

The number of international students at Dutch universities has been growing rapidly in the past ten years. By the early 2020s, more than 120.000 students from abroad were enrolled in universities across the Netherlands, making up about 15 percent of the country’s total student population. The city of Amsterdam, home to two universities, hosts the largest number of international students, about 20.000. While the majority of these students hail from other European countries, particularly Germany, Italy and Romania, an increasing number comes from China. 

Chinese students have become one of the largest groups of international students in the Netherlands, and the largest group from outside Europe. Currently, over 6.000 Chinese are studying in various Dutch cities, many of them in Amsterdam. How do these students experience the city? What challenges do they encounter while adapting to life in Amsterdam? How do they navigate living, studying, working and socialising in the city? How do they maintain their cultural identity far away from home? And do they feel at home in Amsterdam?

About the panel discussion

The panel will discuss the documentary from the variety of perspectives brought by the following panelists:

• Maggi Leung is Professor of International Development Studies and and Chair of the Governance and Inclusive Development research group at the University of Amsterdam. Her main research interests are: opportunities and challenges of migration (with a focus on related injustices, racialisation and activism), ‘global China’ and its impact on global development, as well as climate-related challenges and adaptations among urban outdoor workers.
• Linde Luijnenburg is Assistant Professor of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She researches representations of migration and postcoloniality in European film and literature, and includes film productions into her research.

• Rui Huang is a PhD candidate at the Department of European Studies of the University of Amsterdam. She investigates what she describes as ‘Citizenship Experiments’ within Chinese communities in Europe.
• Emiel Martens is Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam and is one of the Founding Directors of the Expertise Centre Humanitarian Communication (HUCOM). As a film scholar and practitioner, his work explores cinematic representations of (post)coloniality, tourism, migration, and other mobilities.

About Chinese Selfies in Europe

The UvA research project Chinese Selfies in Europe project seeks to understand how do these ‘new’ Chinese migrants practice citizenship and cultural belonging across the EU. How do they articulate belonging? How do they use digital platforms to inform and organize themselves? How do they culturally articulate diversity?

With the Chinese government’s strict lockdown measures during the Covid19-pandemic and the subsequent white paper protests, a new generation of Chinese left the country. Many of them found their way to new homes across Europe. At the same time, new forms of local migration networks and diaspora organisation evolved during that time. These migrants find new ways of expressing themselves, politically and culturally. This project follows an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to the endlessly informative and varied context of (new) Chinese migration to Europe, to gain a better understanding of the rich and complex world of Chinese migration to Europe today.

About the making of This Is Not Chinatown

The film project This Is Not Chinatown is supported by the Amsterdam Research Centre for Migration (ARC-M), Centre for Urban Studies (CUS), Expertise Centre Humanitarian Communication (HUCOM) and Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). The production has been largely funded by UvA's Urban Studies Seed Grant XL (Dec. 2021), which resulted in a collaborative research and documentary project developed by migration scholars Maggi Leung and Özge Bilgili, film scholar-practitioner Emiel Martens, and filmmakers Philip du Plessis and Elsie Vermeer, and the (then) student assistants Aly Amer, Yanbo Hao and Yiwen Wang.