Elena Barabantseva
Biographic Data
| ID | 3734834 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elena Barabantseva |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elena |
| FAMILY NAME | Barabantseva |
| SIGNATURE | BARABANTSEVA E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5169-8128 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 112 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Post-Soviet Brides in the China Dream
This is the first interdisciplinary work on marriage migration from the former Soviet Union to Reform-era China, almost invariably involving a Slavic bride and a Chinese husband. To understand China better as a destination for marriage migration, Elena Barabantseva delves into the politics and lived experiences of desire, marriage and race, all within China's pursuit of national rejuvenation. She brings together diverse sources, including immigra…
Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples
Descendants of the dragon
Following China’s rise as an economic powerhouse, the country’s immigrant population has quickly increased and diversified, leading to an increase in romantic relationships between foreign and Chinese citizens. This article analyzes the racialization of belonging and citizenship of Chinese nationals born into Chinese-foreign families living in China. Drawing on data gathered through analyzing online debates and media reports, supplemented by inte…
Embodied by state borders
The citizenship of Chinese-foreign children who have been brought up in China is an area of increasing political relevance because of their growing numbers and public visibility, as well as the high status accorded to children in the political agenda of the Communist Party, and wider debates on Chinese citizenship, identity and belonging. In this article we examine how decisions about children's citizenship are made across national and generation…
Losing Self to Discover National Citizenship
Drawing on the life stories of post-Soviet women from Ukraine and Russia who married Chinese citizens and moved their married lives to China, this article examines how these women engage in intimate geopolitics in the adverse immigration environment for foreign family members. The elaborated argument maintains that the women – driven by the uncertainty surrounding their legal and socio-economic status and the fear of forced separation from their …
Introduction
In this introduction to the special section on “Engaging Geopolitics through the Lens of the Intimate”, we first locate the papers collected here in the context of developing an “Intimate Geopolitics” project at the University of Manchester. We then review the importance of ‘intimacy’ and the concept of ‘the intimate’ across an array of disciplinary studies, drawing especially on the rich body of work by critical geopolitics scholars who have lon…
Diaspora Policies, Consular Services and Social Protection for Chinese Citizens Abroad
In this chapter we discuss China’s evolving policies toward Chinese nationals abroad, with particular attention to the expanding area of social protection. Our analysis shows that China’s policy-making activities concerning diaspora have been largely driven by a focus on economic agenda rather than social welfare. This chapter presents a detailed picture of China’s social protection provision towards its diaspora and shows how its policy-making i…
Marriage Immigration and Illegality in China’s Ethnic Borders
Barabantseva examines the relationship between marriage migration and illegality in the context of China’s ethnically diverse Southwestern border. She traces the effects of the changing socio-political and economic developments on the state governing practices of customary Yao ethnic marriages across the Sino-Vietnamese border. In order to understand how and why the status of the earlier accepted forms of undocumented ethnic marriages changed fro…
How do people come to identify with nations?
Ethnic and national differences and particularly their mobilisation for political ends have been at the core of many violent conflicts and political campaigns in distant and recent history. The nation is, to say the least, a concept fraught with tensions. For some it is the product of natural and objective allegiances, and for others it is a modern construct attributed to the growth of modern technology and ideologies. Hoisting a national flag, c…
Representations and Regulations of Marriage Migration from Russia and Vietnam in the People's Republic of China
Marriage migration has developed as a discursive field and a new direction of governing practices in the relations of post-Mao China with Russia and Vietnam. This article examines China's developing governing regime for international marriages from the perspective of its sovereign concerns related to border stability, population management, and national security. These concerns are considered through the analysis of material and affective process…
On intimacy, geopolitics and discipline
In this conversation, we consider the personal intellectual journey of one academic (V. Spike Peterson) in an attempt to consider the academic as produced within a web of intimate global relations
Le statut de ‘visiteuses de famille’
Depuis vingt ans, les mariages internationaux augmentent dans les grandes villes, zones rurales et régions frontalières chinoises. Cet article examine les représentations publiques et les expériences des migrantes pour mariage russes et vietnamiennes dans un contexte de pénurie démographique de femmes en Chine, pays où médias et réglementations en matière d’immigration incitent ces épouses à tenir un rôle traditionnel dans les foyers. Migrantes o…
Seeing beyond an ‘ethnic enclave’
Research on Chinatowns stresses the spatial aspects of their production as communal urban spaces. This is particularly evident in the prevailing rhetoric of ethnic ‘enclaves’ that is common in the literature on Chinatowns. This article stresses the importance of taking into account the temporal dimensions of the examinations of space and migrants’ relationships with the city. The argument maintains that, although Manchester Chinatown incorporates…
Encountering Vulnerabilities through ‘Filmmaking for Fieldwork’
In this article we discuss the potential of observational and participatory filmmaking methods to both explore and represent a research subject through a documentary film. We position our project ‘British Born Chinese’ about the experiences of the second generation of Chinese migrants in relation to other recent audio-visual interventions in IR, and present our methodological approach of observational and dialogical engagement with participants a…
When Borders Lie Within
This article examines the changing geopolitical realities which have redefined the nature of sovereign governance on the Sino-Vietnamese border. The binary forms of classification in a rigidly and clearly delimited Sino-Vietnamese borderland replace the ambiguous space of “zomia,” with its fluid and overlapping identifications. This dynamic context sets the conditions for local communities and their long-standing tradition of ethnic marriages str…
Who Are “Overseas Chinese Ethnic Minorities”? China’s Search for Transnational Ethnic Unity
This article examines why, how, and with what implications the term “overseas Chinese ethnic minorities” has recently entered the official scholarly discourse and policy discussions on overseas Chinese in the People’s Republic of China. Through examining policy documents, reports, scholarly publications, and interviews with officials and scholars, the article shows that the shaoshu minzu category has permeated the discourse on overseas Chinese to…
New and Old Diversities in Contemporary China
In Pursuit of an Alternative Model? The Modernisation Trap in China’s Official Development Discourse
The politics of everyday ethnicity in China
Doing business in rural China: Liangshan's new ethnic entrepreneurs, by Thomas. Herberer. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007, 268 pp., £32.30 (hardback), ISBN 978-0295987293 . Commun
Diaspora and Citizenship
Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism
Introduction 1. Overseas Chinese and Ethnic Minorities in Imperial and Republican China 2. Overseas Chinese and Minority Nationalities in Socialist Nation-Building 3. Post-Socialist Modernisation and China's National Outlook 4. Ethnic Minorities and Overseas Chinese in the Post-Socialist Modernisation Discourse 5. Trans-nationalising Chineseness: 'Overseas Chinese Work' in the Reform Period 6. The Politics of Localisation: Ethnic Minorities in Po…
The Chinese Party-State in the 21st Century
The Chinese in Britain, 1800—Present
Change vs. Order
This article examines how China, understood as a construct made up of multiple identities, constantly negotiates its relationships with the world. The oppositions—between tradition and modernity, the past and the present, China and the West— that are often presumed or reproduced in our thinking about China's place in the world are called into question. China's relationship with the world must be understood through the interplay between history an…
From the Language of Class to the Rhetoric of Development
In the People's Republic of China's (PRC) continuous state-building project since its establishment in 1949, the notion of nation and nationality (minzu) has been uninterruptedly utilised by the leading elite in its political programmes. The notion of the ‘nationality question’ (minzu wenti) was employed especially for addressing the issues of the officially identified minority nationalities at the time when the multinational nature of the state …
Introduction
In this introduction to the special section on “Engaging Geopolitics through the Lens of the Intimate”, we first locate the papers collected here in the context of developing an “Intimate Geopolitics” project at the University of Manchester. We then review the importance of ‘intimacy’ and the concept of ‘the intimate’ across an array of disciplinary studies, drawing especially on the rich body of work by critical geopolitics scholars who have lon…
Who Are “Overseas Chinese Ethnic Minorities”? China’s Search for Transnational Ethnic Unity
This article examines why, how, and with what implications the term “overseas Chinese ethnic minorities” has recently entered the official scholarly discourse and policy discussions on overseas Chinese in the People’s Republic of China. Through examining policy documents, reports, scholarly publications, and interviews with officials and scholars, the article shows that the shaoshu minzu category has permeated the discourse on overseas Chinese to…
Change vs. Order
This article examines how China, understood as a construct made up of multiple identities, constantly negotiates its relationships with the world. The oppositions—between tradition and modernity, the past and the present, China and the West— that are often presumed or reproduced in our thinking about China's place in the world are called into question. China's relationship with the world must be understood through the interplay between history an…
When Borders Lie Within
This article examines the changing geopolitical realities which have redefined the nature of sovereign governance on the Sino-Vietnamese border. The binary forms of classification in a rigidly and clearly delimited Sino-Vietnamese borderland replace the ambiguous space of “zomia,” with its fluid and overlapping identifications. This dynamic context sets the conditions for local communities and their long-standing tradition of ethnic marriages str…
Diaspora and Citizenship
From the Language of Class to the Rhetoric of Development
In the People's Republic of China's (PRC) continuous state-building project since its establishment in 1949, the notion of nation and nationality (minzu) has been uninterruptedly utilised by the leading elite in its political programmes. The notion of the ‘nationality question’ (minzu wenti) was employed especially for addressing the issues of the officially identified minority nationalities at the time when the multinational nature of the state …
Losing Self to Discover National Citizenship
Drawing on the life stories of post-Soviet women from Ukraine and Russia who married Chinese citizens and moved their married lives to China, this article examines how these women engage in intimate geopolitics in the adverse immigration environment for foreign family members. The elaborated argument maintains that the women – driven by the uncertainty surrounding their legal and socio-economic status and the fear of forced separation from their …
In Pursuit of an Alternative Model? The Modernisation Trap in China’s Official Development Discourse
Representations and Regulations of Marriage Migration from Russia and Vietnam in the People's Republic of China
Marriage migration has developed as a discursive field and a new direction of governing practices in the relations of post-Mao China with Russia and Vietnam. This article examines China's developing governing regime for international marriages from the perspective of its sovereign concerns related to border stability, population management, and national security. These concerns are considered through the analysis of material and affective process…
New and Old Diversities in Contemporary China
On intimacy, geopolitics and discipline
In this conversation, we consider the personal intellectual journey of one academic (V. Spike Peterson) in an attempt to consider the academic as produced within a web of intimate global relations
Le statut de ‘visiteuses de famille’
Depuis vingt ans, les mariages internationaux augmentent dans les grandes villes, zones rurales et régions frontalières chinoises. Cet article examine les représentations publiques et les expériences des migrantes pour mariage russes et vietnamiennes dans un contexte de pénurie démographique de femmes en Chine, pays où médias et réglementations en matière d’immigration incitent ces épouses à tenir un rôle traditionnel dans les foyers. Migrantes o…
Encountering Vulnerabilities through ‘Filmmaking for Fieldwork’
In this article we discuss the potential of observational and participatory filmmaking methods to both explore and represent a research subject through a documentary film. We position our project ‘British Born Chinese’ about the experiences of the second generation of Chinese migrants in relation to other recent audio-visual interventions in IR, and present our methodological approach of observational and dialogical engagement with participants a…
Descendants of the dragon
Following China’s rise as an economic powerhouse, the country’s immigrant population has quickly increased and diversified, leading to an increase in romantic relationships between foreign and Chinese citizens. This article analyzes the racialization of belonging and citizenship of Chinese nationals born into Chinese-foreign families living in China. Drawing on data gathered through analyzing online debates and media reports, supplemented by inte…
Embodied by state borders
The citizenship of Chinese-foreign children who have been brought up in China is an area of increasing political relevance because of their growing numbers and public visibility, as well as the high status accorded to children in the political agenda of the Communist Party, and wider debates on Chinese citizenship, identity and belonging. In this article we examine how decisions about children's citizenship are made across national and generation…
From the Language of Class to the Rhetoric of Development
In the People's Republic of China's (PRC) continuous state-building project since its establishment in 1949, the notion of nation and nationality (minzu) has been uninterruptedly utilised by the leading elite in its political programmes. The notion of the ‘nationality question’ (minzu wenti) was employed especially for addressing the issues of the officially identified minority nationalities at the time when the multinational nature of the state …
The Chinese Party-State in the 21st Century
The Chinese in Britain, 1800—Present
Change vs. Order
This article examines how China, understood as a construct made up of multiple identities, constantly negotiates its relationships with the world. The oppositions—between tradition and modernity, the past and the present, China and the West— that are often presumed or reproduced in our thinking about China's place in the world are called into question. China's relationship with the world must be understood through the interplay between history an…
Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism
Introduction 1. Overseas Chinese and Ethnic Minorities in Imperial and Republican China 2. Overseas Chinese and Minority Nationalities in Socialist Nation-Building 3. Post-Socialist Modernisation and China's National Outlook 4. Ethnic Minorities and Overseas Chinese in the Post-Socialist Modernisation Discourse 5. Trans-nationalising Chineseness: 'Overseas Chinese Work' in the Reform Period 6. The Politics of Localisation: Ethnic Minorities in Po…
In Pursuit of an Alternative Model? The Modernisation Trap in China’s Official Development Discourse
The politics of everyday ethnicity in China
Doing business in rural China: Liangshan's new ethnic entrepreneurs, by Thomas. Herberer. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007, 268 pp., £32.30 (hardback), ISBN 978-0295987293 . Commun
Diaspora and Citizenship
Who Are “Overseas Chinese Ethnic Minorities”? China’s Search for Transnational Ethnic Unity
This article examines why, how, and with what implications the term “overseas Chinese ethnic minorities” has recently entered the official scholarly discourse and policy discussions on overseas Chinese in the People’s Republic of China. Through examining policy documents, reports, scholarly publications, and interviews with officials and scholars, the article shows that the shaoshu minzu category has permeated the discourse on overseas Chinese to…
New and Old Diversities in Contemporary China
Encountering Vulnerabilities through ‘Filmmaking for Fieldwork’
In this article we discuss the potential of observational and participatory filmmaking methods to both explore and represent a research subject through a documentary film. We position our project ‘British Born Chinese’ about the experiences of the second generation of Chinese migrants in relation to other recent audio-visual interventions in IR, and present our methodological approach of observational and dialogical engagement with participants a…
When Borders Lie Within
This article examines the changing geopolitical realities which have redefined the nature of sovereign governance on the Sino-Vietnamese border. The binary forms of classification in a rigidly and clearly delimited Sino-Vietnamese borderland replace the ambiguous space of “zomia,” with its fluid and overlapping identifications. This dynamic context sets the conditions for local communities and their long-standing tradition of ethnic marriages str…
Seeing beyond an ‘ethnic enclave’
Research on Chinatowns stresses the spatial aspects of their production as communal urban spaces. This is particularly evident in the prevailing rhetoric of ethnic ‘enclaves’ that is common in the literature on Chinatowns. This article stresses the importance of taking into account the temporal dimensions of the examinations of space and migrants’ relationships with the city. The argument maintains that, although Manchester Chinatown incorporates…
On intimacy, geopolitics and discipline
In this conversation, we consider the personal intellectual journey of one academic (V. Spike Peterson) in an attempt to consider the academic as produced within a web of intimate global relations
Le statut de ‘visiteuses de famille’
Depuis vingt ans, les mariages internationaux augmentent dans les grandes villes, zones rurales et régions frontalières chinoises. Cet article examine les représentations publiques et les expériences des migrantes pour mariage russes et vietnamiennes dans un contexte de pénurie démographique de femmes en Chine, pays où médias et réglementations en matière d’immigration incitent ces épouses à tenir un rôle traditionnel dans les foyers. Migrantes o…
Marriage Immigration and Illegality in China’s Ethnic Borders
Barabantseva examines the relationship between marriage migration and illegality in the context of China’s ethnically diverse Southwestern border. She traces the effects of the changing socio-political and economic developments on the state governing practices of customary Yao ethnic marriages across the Sino-Vietnamese border. In order to understand how and why the status of the earlier accepted forms of undocumented ethnic marriages changed fro…
How do people come to identify with nations?
Ethnic and national differences and particularly their mobilisation for political ends have been at the core of many violent conflicts and political campaigns in distant and recent history. The nation is, to say the least, a concept fraught with tensions. For some it is the product of natural and objective allegiances, and for others it is a modern construct attributed to the growth of modern technology and ideologies. Hoisting a national flag, c…
Representations and Regulations of Marriage Migration from Russia and Vietnam in the People's Republic of China
Marriage migration has developed as a discursive field and a new direction of governing practices in the relations of post-Mao China with Russia and Vietnam. This article examines China's developing governing regime for international marriages from the perspective of its sovereign concerns related to border stability, population management, and national security. These concerns are considered through the analysis of material and affective process…
Diaspora Policies, Consular Services and Social Protection for Chinese Citizens Abroad
In this chapter we discuss China’s evolving policies toward Chinese nationals abroad, with particular attention to the expanding area of social protection. Our analysis shows that China’s policy-making activities concerning diaspora have been largely driven by a focus on economic agenda rather than social welfare. This chapter presents a detailed picture of China’s social protection provision towards its diaspora and shows how its policy-making i…
Losing Self to Discover National Citizenship
Drawing on the life stories of post-Soviet women from Ukraine and Russia who married Chinese citizens and moved their married lives to China, this article examines how these women engage in intimate geopolitics in the adverse immigration environment for foreign family members. The elaborated argument maintains that the women – driven by the uncertainty surrounding their legal and socio-economic status and the fear of forced separation from their …
Introduction
In this introduction to the special section on “Engaging Geopolitics through the Lens of the Intimate”, we first locate the papers collected here in the context of developing an “Intimate Geopolitics” project at the University of Manchester. We then review the importance of ‘intimacy’ and the concept of ‘the intimate’ across an array of disciplinary studies, drawing especially on the rich body of work by critical geopolitics scholars who have lon…
Embodied by state borders
The citizenship of Chinese-foreign children who have been brought up in China is an area of increasing political relevance because of their growing numbers and public visibility, as well as the high status accorded to children in the political agenda of the Communist Party, and wider debates on Chinese citizenship, identity and belonging. In this article we examine how decisions about children's citizenship are made across national and generation…
Descendants of the dragon
Following China’s rise as an economic powerhouse, the country’s immigrant population has quickly increased and diversified, leading to an increase in romantic relationships between foreign and Chinese citizens. This article analyzes the racialization of belonging and citizenship of Chinese nationals born into Chinese-foreign families living in China. Drawing on data gathered through analyzing online debates and media reports, supplemented by inte…
Post-Soviet Brides in the China Dream
This is the first interdisciplinary work on marriage migration from the former Soviet Union to Reform-era China, almost invariably involving a Slavic bride and a Chinese husband. To understand China better as a destination for marriage migration, Elena Barabantseva delves into the politics and lived experiences of desire, marriage and race, all within China's pursuit of national rejuvenation. She brings together diverse sources, including immigra…
Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples
Political science (22 works) · Law (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · China (17 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · China's Global Influence and Migration (8 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (8 works) · Ethnic group (8 works)