RACISMS: THE REACTIONS TO CHINESE MIGRANTS IN CANADA AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

Chinese migration to the province of British Columbia, Canada, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries occurred in the context of a shortage of labour. Two classes of Chinese migrated to Canada: unfree wage labourers and petit bourgeois traders, merchants and commodity producers. Both classes were the subjects of a process of racialisation to the extent that social significance was attached to patterns of phenotypical variation. But `white' people of different class backgrounds articulated different racialised representations of the Chinese in Canada. This paper roots these differential processes of racialisation, some of which also entailed an ideology of racism, in the lived experiences and contradictions which different classes of `white' people in British Columbia faced. It suggests that racism is not a homogeneous ideology which is imposed on the working class by a ruling class, but rather an ideology which comes `from below' and which is an attempt on the part of class actors to make sense of and interpret the world. The paper calls for an examination of the various racisms which have accompanied the process of capitalist development both historically and cross-culturally.