Asian diaspora research in Ethnic and Racial Studies , 1978–2025

What research has been conducted on the Asian global diaspora, and who produces this knowledge? We compiled a corpus of 128 ERS articles published from 1978 to 2025, focusing on four Anglophone countries. We examined the diversity of data, methods, samples, research topics, theoretical frameworks, and authorship in the corpus, including variations over time and across countries. Compared with the increase in the Asian population since 1980, ERS scholarship on the Asian diaspora has grown modestly, primarily focusing on the US and UK, with scant attention to Australia and Canada, where one in five residents was of Asian descent in 2021. Research has primarily focused on the largest Asian ethnic groups (e.g. Chinese) but has rarely included smaller groups (e.g. Burmese). The corpus illustrates thematic and methodological diversity, with a shift from quantitative to qualitative approaches over time. However, four subgroups were largely absent from this corpus: Asian refugees, Asian older adults, undocumented Asians, and LGBTQ Asians.