Objective and Significance
This research specifically examines British Chinese communities, as Chinese diasporas is the most widely spread diaspora in the world, being the third largest after German and Irish diasporas (Poston & Wong, 2016). The focus on Leeds and Manchester in this project provides the specific data on local circumstances and have contributed to the existing studies which have largely examined those cities where the Chinese have a long established community, and a high concentration or clustering such as in London (Office of National Statistics, 2011). When we look at the intellectual landscape of British Chinese communities in health-related experiences. The examination of race in the UK and Europe 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 the taken-for-granted gendered and racialised British Chineseness in everyday discourses. In the Health and Physical Education and sport, minority ethnic youths are either under-represented or represented in public health messages as ‘bodies-at-risk’ because they do not conform to the Western parameters of physical activity and health regimes. And because they are less obese than other ethnic groups, Chinese communities are often overlooked or seen as fragile, reserved and disinterested in physical movements. These racialised stereotypes in relation to bodies and physicality provide few alternatives for describing and analysing Chinese children in health-related experiences. This project meets the urgent need in providing new knowledge and insights that could potentially enable Europe’s increasingly ethnic diverse children population to lead healthy and active lifestyles, as well as the promotion of social cohesion in its citizens’ lifestyles amidst contestations about cultural diversity (European Commission, 2020).
Aims
1. To map the needs and meanings of physical activity, leisure, and health-related experiences in the lives of Chinese young people in the UK.
2. To develop contextualised understandings of influences (e.g. family, school, leisure, environment) related to Chinese young people's perceptions and experiences in health and physical activity engagement.
3. To identify new conceptual, methodological, and empirical insights on the processes of researching with British Chinese young people in health and physical cultures.
Conclusion
This research has addressed pressing gaps in ethnic diversity knowledge in health and physical cultures, by providing unique insights into Chinese children’s (aged 11-15) physical activity, leisure, and health-related experiences in England. The project has explored how Chinese children’s ethnicity, gender, social class and their intersections; their use of time and space and digital technologies, and consumption patterns that influence their practices, and has critically engaged with the contestable work of cultural norming in relation to their health and bodily experiences. This project has adopted an inter-disciplinary research underpinned by socio-cultural perspectives, arts-based methods, and digital ethnography methods to understand the health-related experiences of British Chinese children.
