ABSTRACT
The notion of minzu shapes contemporary domestic and international migration. Many of the Uyghur migrants I met in Australia began their business-related journeys in China and later moved to Australia as a result of successful entrepreneurship. This chapter explores the fundamental role of the concept of minzu in Uyghur migration in wider Chinese society, outside of Xinjiang. Uyghur migration in contemporary China has never been separated from the state’s policies or wider social, economic, and political changes. This chapter discusses Uyghur migration sponsored by various levels of government and self-motivated migration in the early 2010s. It examines how Uyghur migrants deploy and negotiate the concept of minzu to adjust to the co-ethnic Islamic business sector in the Chinese city of Xi’an. This has helped them to support themselves, but they have also been excluded from accessing the rights enjoyed by local residents. The chapter then covers social change since 2017, which has largely restricted Uyghur individuals’ mobility within and outside of Xinjiang as a result of the people’s war on terror. The consequences of developments in Xinjiang have stirred China’s Islamophobia, bringing further uncertainty and social barriers for Uyghur and other minzu migrants who are Muslim.
