The Location of “Chineseness”: Cultural Production and Contemporary Mobility from China to Italy

Immigrant laborers, professionals, tourists, and international students with Chinese backgrounds are creating diverse narratives in Italy across multilingual forms of art and media. While the theme of Chineseness is overt and pervasive in Sino-Italian cultural production, the different characteristics of each type of mobility often challenge “migrant” or postcolonial assumptions. This chapter examines the dynamic features of Sino-Italian cultural production by focusing on how Chineseness is constructed in literature, film, and multimedia arts by Chinese Italians. Using mobility studies as a critical lens, the chapter examines specific representations of Chineseness in relation to movement, distance, and proximity to and from China, providing three case studies that challenge standard representations of Chinese and their descendants in Italy.