The Huaqiao in Taiwan 1895-1945: their ambivalent localization 1

The Taiwan huaqiao are the migrants from mainland China who went to work in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945). They were mostly workers, who were ethnically akin to the local population, but had an official status as foreign migrants and were supposed to return to their country of origin. In fact many among them tended to settle permanently and as a result of the discrimination also tended to form a social underclass; their number grew to at least 60,000 in the 1930s. This article argues that they should be studied more systematically as part of Chinese foreign migration