Ying-Ying Tiffany Liu
PhD Candidate
Ying-Ying Tiffany Liu is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Graduate Fellow in Migration and Diaspora Studies (2015) at Carleton University. She was a Visiting Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Johannesburg (2014-2016). With support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and TD Fellowship, she has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Johannesburg for a total period of fourteen months (November 2014-2015; July-September 2016) for her doctoral research project.
Her dissertation, Intra-Migrant Economy: Chinese Restaurant Entrepreneurship and Zimbabwean Migrant Workers in South Africa (PhD, Anthropology), examines the intertwining of diaspora, transnationality, economic strategy, and cultural identity. She coined the term “intra-migrant economy” to refer to the phenomenon when one group of migrants employ another group(s) of migrants as an economic strategy to escape mainstream labour market.
Besides writing her dissertation and lecturing a course, currently she is working on two journal articles. The first one explores the cultural politics of Chinese petty (small-scale) entrepreneurs and (often undocumented) working class Chinese and Zimbabwean migrant labourers among everyday racialized insecurities in urban South Africa. Based on a case study of Cantonese-speaking Chinese migrants who are involved in food and fafi (lottery) industries, her second article analyzes how newly arrived Chinese migrants’ employment opportunities are shaped by the Chinese social networking system — also known as guanxi — in Johannesburg.
Her areas of interest include, Diaspora Studies (Chinese in Canada; Chinese and Zimbabweans in South Africa); migrant entrepreneurship; labour migration; petty capitalism; guanxi / gift economy; racial relations; ethnic authenticity; the anthropology of food, identity and performativity.