Transnational Mobilities of Expertise: Case Studies of Chinese Biomedical Scientists

• In Event: (Re)Thinking Mobilities and Chinese STS:" The Politics, Practices, and Cultural Logics of Diasporic Chinese Scientists in Technosciences, 1919–2018

Abstract

China’s economic rise as has led to heavy state-led investments in the biomedical sector, as well as programs to attract diasporic Chinese researchers to return and contribute to the nation’s development. The paper focuses on two groups of Chinese scientists with differently mobile forms of expertise: researchers in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and genomic and precision medicine (PM). Using these contrasting cases, the paper reframes the study of high-skilled migrants through the lens of the sociology of expertise or the “networks that link together objects, actors, techniques, devices, and institutional and spatial arrangements” (Eyal 2013, p. 864). Instead of just identifying the conditions that contribute to the mobility of experts, the paper looks at strategies that scientists deploy to create the networks of relationships that enable them to effectively deploy their expertise in new contexts. The paper focuses on the ways that these scientists construct boundaries that restrict the mobility of their knowledge, and the strategies deployed to traverse and rework these boundaries. By deploying this understanding of expertise, migration scholars can better understand the successes and failures of state plans to attract “human capital” and “knowledge workers”. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with over 50 researchers in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and a content analysis of relevant newspaper publications and documents.

Author

• Larry Au, Columbia University