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Chinese international students represent a significant social, economic and cultural force in Australian society. Research has demonstrated that Chinese students enrich Australia not only through their economic contribution, but through soft diplomacy and cultural links. Despite this, and the recent rapid growth in the number of Chinese international students to the country, only a small number of studies have focused specifically on understanding the health and employment experiences of Chinese students in Australia. This paper examines interview data from an ethnographic study involving ten Chinese international students pursuing higher education in New South Wales, Australia. Topics concerning work rights and exploitation, migration, and cultural differences are touched upon within their health and employment experiences. This paper provides insights for those working with Chinese international students in the areas of health education and promotion, diversity and inclusion, employment and mobility studies. The results contribute to broader insights into the inward/outward mobility of higher education students and Australia's National Strategy for International Education 2025. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an increasingly complex world marked by transnationalism and globalisation, the role of physical cultures in everyday life is undergoing change, as people with different orientations to movement and bodies, especially its dominant Western forms, negotiate their relationships to it. The examination of race in Europe and the United Kingdom (UK) in the current intellectual landscape is often located within a Black-White debate that often excludes the Chinese from any form of critical analysis. This lack of academic recognition and critical engagement is coupled with gendered and racialised British Chineseness in everyday discourses. The ambivalent positions of the hyper-visibility of high-achieving British Chinese students in educational research is in contrast to the invisibility of their other everyday lived experiences, such as physical activity, leisure, sport and health. This juxtaposition is reflected through the complexity of how discourses and practices, shaped by colonial and racial legacies, contribute to a form of Chineseness that remains 'at risk' and overlooked in research about their bodies and physicality. This paper calls for explorations of Chinese minority ethnic students' voices to set the impetus for a critical sociology of Chinese diaspora and health and physical cultures research agenda. It critically engages with the contestable work of cultural norming in relation to Chinese diasporic students' health and bodily experiences. In response to these challenges, this paper introduces the Rethinking Health Experiences and Active Lifestyles – Chinese Students (REHEAL-C) project in the UK (supported by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship 2019–2020) as one contribution to shifting the academic landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines British Chinese communities' lived experiences of leisure in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The data that inform this paper are based on my ongoing ethnographic research with British Chinese students in two supplementary schools in the United Kingdom (UK) about their leisure and health-related experiences (supported by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship 2019–2020). The current findings are discussed in relation to my field notes, interviews with the students and their significant others from the schools, and social media sites that report on Chineseness and COVID-19. Results include the participants' change of lifestyles; fear and the pandemic; experiences of racism in relation to their leisure; and leisure and solidarity among Chinese communities. As a Hong Kong Chinese Australian researcher situated in the UK, I have an "insider and outsider" positionality which has an impact on data collection with the participants amidst the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research that delves into the sociocultural perspectives of health and physical education and physical activity (HPEPA) in the lives of ethnic minority students in Westernised countries is often conducted by investigators who are Westerners, native English speakers and racially different from the study participants. Limited research is conducted by researchers who have racial and/or linguistic identities similar to those of study participants, and even fewer reports include the reflexivity data of the research process. This paper draws upon my own experience, as a young Hong Kong-Chinese female Australian, of conducting research with Chinese students and their White HPE teachers in Australia. I discuss a number of aspects of the epistemological dilemmas of being an insider and outsider as a researcher, and the practical and methodological issues in recruiting participants and conducting research with them. In addition, reversing the ethnic gaze by focusing on the teachers (i.e. a young Chinese female conducting research with White teachers) can help to illuminate new perspectives on the construction of otherness and positionalities within research. The reflections add to current discourse on problematising HPEPA research in general, particularly when researching the Other. This paper concludes that an intersection of racial, ethnic, class, gender and age identity can and does have some effect on the research process, as the Chinese students raised particular questions to a young, female Chinese researcher, and they were more willing to talk about racial and cultural issues they felt I could relate to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]