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Fan tokens: Day trading your favorite sports team

With the pandemic separating fans from their stadiums and sports clubs from their revenues, fan tokens are now big players in the game, helping teams generate revenue and bringing fans together again.Though stadium seats in some countries have been filled

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With the pandemic separating fans from their stadiums and sports clubs from their revenues, fan tokens are now big players in the game, helping teams generate revenue and bringing fans together again.

Though stadium seats in some countries have been filled with paper cut-outs of fans to present a well-intentioned yet creepy facade of normality during the pandemic, the distance between the teams and their followers has grown farther apart. One solution is found in sports fan tokens. Through fan tokens, many fans are able to feel a more direct connection to their teams emotionally and financially.

Broadly understood, fan tokens are digital assets connected to the fan experience. They come in two distinct varieties fungible and nonfungible.

So far on the fungible side, dozens of European soccer teams are associated with actively traded fan currencies or fancoins, whose sales have brought in over $200 million in Covid-year revenues. Unlike nonfungible tokens where each token is unique, each unit of fungible tokens like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Dogecoin is the same as any other like dollars.

Malta-based blockchain sports firm Chiliz and its fan engagement platform, Socios, are the undisputed market leaders pushing the fungible fan token/fan currency business model with the help of over 160 staff. With a new office in New York, Chiliz is looking to further disrupt the sports industry through partnerships with the likes of National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL), Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and more.

 

 

Fan tokens
Fan tokens are taking the sporting world by storm. (Pexels)

 

 

In five years, Chiliz and Socios CEO Alexandre Dreyfus imagines hundreds, potentially thousands, of major sporting organizations and some of the biggest entertainment franchises from film and music fully embracing fungible fan tokens as a core part of their digital engagement strategy. This means that the potential of the fan token phenomenon goes far beyond professional sports, and can be expected to impact other areas of entertainment including music, with Kpop Fan Token as an early example.

From passive to active

Fan tokens, Dreyfus believes, will transition passive fans into active fans through transactional fan engagement, giving the sports teams in the post-physical world a powerful revenue stream. Soon, the company will be adding NFTs to their strategy as a likely next step, considering entertainment figures like Paris Hilton have already done so. He adds:

We believe fan tokens are the biggest new trend in the industry and that this will be widely recognized as we add hundreds more partners in the future and millions more fans embrace them.

Fungible fan tokens, however, have no clear precedent. These fan currencies are forging a new path.

 

 

Fan tokens supply

 

 

In blockchain terminology, fungible fan tokens are termed as utility tokens, an apt description as they have undeniable utility as part of “gamifying” the fan experience. Purchasing and using tokens allows fans to materially show their support and congregate in online communities where they can play a small part in running the club by voting for proposals (regarding things like what music will be played during a match), join draws for merchandise and even interact with the team directly.

Juventus fan Giuseppe Bognanni told Reuters that, Its nice that the song you voted for is the one you hear, and you think, I participated in that.

 

 

 

 

But, are fan tokens a genuine way for clubs and fans to interact, or are they just a way of squeezing fans for extra dollars?

Though securities regulators are yet to strike, many in the sports industry are suspicious of the fan token trend. One of these is Malcolm Clarke, chair of the U.K.-focused Football Supporters’ Association, who suggested that fan tokens might amount to little more than clubs trying to squeeze extra money out of supporters by making up inconsequential ‘engagement’ online polls.

 

 

 

 

Itd be unsurprising if they were particularly after sales at Europes top 20 revenue-generating clubs dropped 12% to 8.2 billion euros ($9.9 billion) in the 2020 fiscal year.

But Jorge Chemez, an Argentinian football fan of the national team, is bullish on the Chiliz project because it’s applicable in a lot of ways and to all kinds of sports, even eSports every human likes at least one type of sport, the potential is infinite. He figures that while most sports fans are not likely to embrace tokens, those that do will be able to be closer with their teams.

Socios gives you privileges, like Inter Milan fan token owners were invited to a VIP sector to watch the football match

The phenomenon of sports clubs raising money through the sale of cryptocurrency is sure to continue to spread around the world as the incumbent platform Chiliz encounters new competitors and business models. Do fungible fan tokens represent a new type of indirect equity in the teams (or celebrities/groups) themselves?

 

 

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Fungible fan tokens

Fungible fan tokens are generally marketed as utility tokens, implying that the tokens have concrete use cases. This concept of utility tokens dates back to the initial coin offering (ICO) boom of 2017 when companies began raising money by releasing cryptocurrencies to the public in a way comparable to stock offerings.

On the regulated securities market, these are known as initial public offerings, or IPOs, and cryptocurrency issuers used the utility token designation as a way around securities laws, as tokens with use cases were arguably not securities. Some early use cases included accessing proprietary services or online communities, and for gameplay.

In contrast to security tokens, utility tokens attempted to avoid being seen as investments. Digital currencies of all types are often released via initial exchange offerings, or IEOs, directly from an exchange where trading is to commence.

 

 

Fan tokens 2
Are fan tokens a legitimate way to involve fans in clubs, or simply a money making exercise? (Pexels)

 

 

Today, fungible sports fan tokens are launched as utility tokens via an IEO. The Chiliz platform is the biggest actor in this sector, selling fungible fan tokens for its native CHZ, the Chiliz platform token, in what they term a fan token offering, or FTO.

Though fan token use is largely confined to Chiliz Socios app, Turkish exchange Bitci offers a rival fan token platform and has signed deals with the national teams of Spain, Brazil, and Uruguay in addition to Mclaren F1. Despite Bitcis inroads, Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of both Chiliz and Socios, is not worried about losing its dominant market position, asserting that we dont believe we have competitors, we have only those trying to compete.

 

 

 

 

Socios tagline influence your team and get rewarded, invites comparisons to governance tokens for decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, which also come with voting rights. An up-and-coming example of this may be found in The Krause House DAO, which has a roadmap to purchase a fan owned National Basketball Association (NBA) team after reaching a treasury valuation of $2 billion.

The crucial difference with the DAOs plan is that fan tokens, as they exist, currently do not include collective ownership of any sports clubs assets, nor are fans likely to be given the ability to make material business decisions regarding important things like the signing of new players or coaches.

And despite the utility function of fan tokens, it seems impossible for buyers to not at least partially see their fan tokens as investments. Even the prominent risk disclaimer on Chiliz IEO portal states that users are strongly encouraged to carefully consider their investment objectives when participating in the IEO. The same sentiment has been echoed by competitor Bitcis CEO Alan Tan who made it clear that these tokens will also be an investment tool.

 

 

 

 

Fan concerns

There have been technical problems that left fans disappointed Chemez, for one, is upset because although Socios is a sponsor of the Argentinian national football team, he has struggled to get fully verified via his mobile phone provider in order to purchase tokens. You can’t be the official sponsor of the Argentinian football national team and leave Argentinians out of it, he complained.

Even when verified, users such as Thomas Ragauskas have been left disappointed after being unable to purchase tokens during an FTO because the amounts of tokens offered were limited and sold out within 17 minutes.

Ragauskas describes that although he set up an alarm to ensure he did not miss the event, he was forcefully logged out five seconds after launch due to what Socios described as a technical issue. The system threw me off the app, and there was no possibility to get back in the app, he said, adding that when he did manage to get back in three hours later, all the tokens were gone. Presale price was 2, and now it is 7. I wanted to buy 250 coins.

 

 

 

 

Dreyfus, Socios CEO, is aware of the issues, saying that a few growing pains are unavoidable when bringing millions of fans to the platform. With new staff being added, he is confident that platform-related issues will subside and the firm will be able to deliver the best possible experience for our users.

The velocity at which the business grew this year, especially over the summer, with multiple major new partners and fan token launches on a weekly basis meant that we had to move extremely fast to keep up.

Lions share tokens as club equity?

When Lionel Messi, one of the best-known soccer players in the world, signed his two-year deal with football club Paris Saint Germain (PSG) after 21 years with Barcelona, a significant portion of his $30 million signing bonus was paid in $PSG tokens. This was a point of pride for the club, which boasted that Messis tokens instantly ties him with millions of Paris Saint-Germain fans around the world. Messis overall share of the tokens is small, however, considering the supply cap of nearly 20 million tokens gives it a market cap of over $500 million.

 

 

 

 

So, what utility can PSG tokens have for Messi, arguably the star player of the team? It’s unlikely that he will care to vote for a motivational message on the wall of the dressing room, nor trade tokens for personal video calls with his teammates or himself. The only thing he can do is hold them, hope that they increase in value, and eventually sell perhaps after his 2-3 year contract is up.

As a business, PSG has invested heavily in bringing Lionel to the team and it makes sense for the club to align incentives with him, in the same way that a company is likely to give freshly poached executives golden handcuffs in the form of generous equity packages.

 

 

 

 

But, why part with stock when you can hand out hype-shares? Hype, after all, is the currency of entertainment. As the star, Messi is able to get fans hyped up which translates to club revenues in the form of ticket sales, broadcasts, merchandise and probably PSG by reason of association. With this hypequity, Messi is financially rewarded for raising the team’s brand power. This would come as no surprise to the club, which lauds the hype surrounding the latest signing as the cause of the latest surge of interest in PSG.

Daytrading sports teams?

Sports betting is big business, with the global industry pegged at $203 billion and supporting nearly 200,000 workers across 30,000 businesses. The online fantasy sports market, at about $8 billion, is a smaller but growing force. With this in mind, it seems obvious that there is massive potential in combining the online community aspects of fantasy sports with crypto betting and sports.

Though the premier place to buy fan tokens is the Chiliz Exchange where they are traded against the native CHZ tokens, other traditional cryptocurrency platforms have entered the game. After partnering with Chiliz, Binance has listed several top-trading tokens like FC Barcelona fan token (BAR) and Atletico Madrid fan token (ATM), vying for new users who hope to become crypto traders after being introduced to the asset class through their favorite teams.

The ability to easily rotate fan tokens positions as one does with stocks or any other tokens invites users to trade actively, a practice implicitly encouraged by the stock market atmosphere of the Chiliz exchange.

 

 

If you didn’t know better you’d think chiliz.com was a regular crypto exchange.

 

 

Chemez agrees, noting that if you are smart you can make money with the fan tokens, even if you are not even a huge fan. He considers long-term holding the CHZ token, along with occasional fan token trading, a viable strategy.

Though it is clear that each club targets its own fans in the IEOs, there is nothing stopping speculators and traders from entering the market who we might see as a new breed of sports better.

But, there are concerns about merging the two worlds, as people who are not equipped to understand crypto markets may be involuntarily thrusted into a potentially addictive gambling experience. Advocacy group Clean Up Gambling has described Socios-style fan tokens as a gateway into speculative cryptocurrency, making clear the implication that speculative cryptocurrency is a bad thing.

On the other hand, depending on how the sector evolves, the development of a proxy stock market for sports teams would have huge implications for the entire industry, as privately owned sports clubs might suddenly begin to resemble public companies, with token holders representing a new type of stakeholder in the overall business. Players who do not traditionally receive equity could receive large portions of their bonuses in locked team-specific tokens whose vesting schedules could influence their loyalty to the team long after their contracts expire.

As entities to which anyone around the world could indirectly invest without barriers, sports clubs that can generate enough hype could graduate from regional and national players to become truly international entities in the way of multinational companies.

 

 

 

 

The rise of fan tokens also opens up additional doors to a digital and decentralized future we do not yet understand. Consider the DAO-fication trend, whose proponents foresee decentralized autonomous organizations operating on the blockchain as serious competitors to the modern corporation, meaning that pre-existing communities of fans cryptographically organized fans could be a great foundation for unknown future transitions.

Wild valuations, mild scarcity

But, that’s a long way in the distance and at present, fan tokens seem like an uncertain bet for seasoned crypto holders. Though the circulating supply and total market cap are key metrics, the Chiliz platform does not readily display such information making it difficult for traders to make informed judgments.

According to CoineGecko, only a small portion of the full issuance of fan tokens has been released into circulation. About 7.5% of FC Barcelonas 40 million BAR tokens are in play, which means that at the current market value of $16 per token, the club is sitting on over $600 million in unissued tokens theoretically adding about 10% to the clubs $5.76 billion valuation, or roughly an entire years revenue.

 

 

 

 

The number is even more extreme in the case of Paris Saint-Germain, whose $440 million in tokens adds 18% to the clubs $2.5 billion paper valuation and theres no guarantee the clubs wont keep diluting the supply to infinity. It is fascinating to consider how this may impact the true valuations of sports teams in the future, and what regulatory changes the fan token trend may inspire.

Many questions remain for how various types of fan tokens can be expected to revolutionize the entertainment industry in the future, but it is clear that they represent a new front of disruption in line with macro trends inducing digitization, gamification and globalization.

While such tokens present fans with many new ways of interacting with the teams that they love, one is left to wonder what aspects of sports this progress leaves to history. With easier to reach global fan bases and active markets reacting to daily team progress, will the sports teams of tomorrow be able to hang on to their local roots, or will they become global actors with little connection to their old hometown glory?

 

 

 

 

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Vaccine-skeptical mothers say bad health care experiences made them distrust the medical system

Vaccine skepticism, and the broader medical mistrust and far-reaching anxieties it reflects, is not just a fringe position in the 21st century.

Women's own negative medical experiences influence their vaccine decisions for their kids. AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

Why would a mother reject safe, potentially lifesaving vaccines for her child?

Popular writing on vaccine skepticism often denigrates white and middle-class mothers who reject some or all recommended vaccines as hysterical, misinformed, zealous or ignorant. Mainstream media and medical providers increasingly dismiss vaccine refusal as a hallmark of American fringe ideology, far-right radicalization or anti-intellectualism.

But vaccine skepticism, and the broader medical mistrust and far-reaching anxieties it reflects, is not just a fringe position.

Pediatric vaccination rates had already fallen sharply before the COVID-19 pandemic, ushering in the return of measles, mumps and chickenpox to the U.S. in 2019. Four years after the pandemic’s onset, a growing number of Americans doubt the safety, efficacy and necessity of routine vaccines. Childhood vaccination rates have declined substantially across the U.S., which public health officials attribute to a “spillover” effect from pandemic-related vaccine skepticism and blame for the recent measles outbreak. Almost half of American mothers rated the risk of side effects from the MMR vaccine as medium or high in a 2023 survey by Pew Research.

Recommended vaccines go through rigorous testing and evaluation, and the most infamous charges of vaccine-induced injury have been thoroughly debunked. How do so many mothers – primary caregivers and health care decision-makers for their families – become wary of U.S. health care and one of its most proven preventive technologies?

I’m a cultural anthropologist who studies the ways feelings and beliefs circulate in American society. To investigate what’s behind mothers’ vaccine skepticism, I interviewed vaccine-skeptical mothers about their perceptions of existing and novel vaccines. What they told me complicates sweeping and overly simplified portrayals of their misgivings by pointing to the U.S. health care system itself. The medical system’s failures and harms against women gave rise to their pervasive vaccine skepticism and generalized medical mistrust.

The seeds of women’s skepticism

I conducted this ethnographic research in Oregon from 2020 to 2021 with predominantly white mothers between the ages of 25 and 60. My findings reveal new insights about the origins of vaccine skepticism among this demographic. These women traced their distrust of vaccines, and of U.S. health care more generally, to ongoing and repeated instances of medical harm they experienced from childhood through childbirth.

girl sitting on exam table faces a doctor viewer can see from behind
A woman’s own childhood mistreatment by a doctor can shape her health care decisions for the next generation. FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images

As young girls in medical offices, they were touched without consent, yelled at, disbelieved or threatened. One mother, Susan, recalled her pediatrician abruptly lying her down and performing a rectal exam without her consent at the age of 12. Another mother, Luna, shared how a pediatrician once threatened to have her institutionalized when she voiced anxiety at a routine physical.

As women giving birth, they often felt managed, pressured or discounted. One mother, Meryl, told me, “I felt like I was coerced under distress into Pitocin and induction” during labor. Another mother, Hallie, shared, “I really battled with my provider” throughout the childbirth experience.

Together with the convoluted bureaucracy of for-profit health care, experiences of medical harm contributed to “one million little touch points of information,” in one mother’s phrase, that underscored the untrustworthiness and harmful effects of U.S. health care writ large.

A system that doesn’t serve them

Many mothers I interviewed rejected the premise that public health entities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration had their children’s best interests at heart. Instead, they tied childhood vaccination and the more recent development of COVID-19 vaccines to a bloated pharmaceutical industry and for-profit health care model. As one mother explained, “The FDA is not looking out for our health. They’re looking out for their wealth.”

After ongoing negative medical encounters, the women I interviewed lost trust not only in providers but the medical system. Frustrating experiences prompted them to “do their own research” in the name of bodily autonomy. Such research often included books, articles and podcasts deeply critical of vaccines, public health care and drug companies.

These materials, which have proliferated since 2020, cast light on past vaccine trials gone awry, broader histories of medical harm and abuse, the rapid growth of the recommended vaccine schedule in the late 20th century and the massive profits reaped from drug development and for-profit health care. They confirmed and hardened women’s suspicions about U.S. health care.

hands point to a handwritten vaccination record
The number of recommended childhood vaccines has increased over time. Mike Adaskaveg/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images

The stories these women told me add nuance to existing academic research into vaccine skepticism. Most studies have considered vaccine skepticism among primarily white and middle-class parents to be an outgrowth of today’s neoliberal parenting and intensive mothering. Researchers have theorized vaccine skepticism among white and well-off mothers to be an outcome of consumer health care and its emphasis on individual choice and risk reduction. Other researchers highlight vaccine skepticism as a collective identity that can provide mothers with a sense of belonging.

Seeing medical care as a threat to health

The perceptions mothers shared are far from isolated or fringe, and they are not unreasonable. Rather, they represent a growing population of Americans who hold the pervasive belief that U.S. health care harms more than it helps.

Data suggests that the number of Americans harmed in the course of treatment remains high, with incidents of medical error in the U.S. outnumbering those in peer countries, despite more money being spent per capita on health care. One 2023 study found that diagnostic error, one kind of medical error, accounted for 371,000 deaths and 424,000 permanent disabilities among Americans every year.

Studies reveal particularly high rates of medical error in the treatment of vulnerable communities, including women, people of color, disabled, poor, LGBTQ+ and gender-nonconforming individuals and the elderly. The number of U.S. women who have died because of pregnancy-related causes has increased substantially in recent years, with maternal death rates doubling between 1999 and 2019.

The prevalence of medical harm points to the relevance of philosopher Ivan Illich’s manifesto against the “disease of medical progress.” In his 1982 book “Medical Nemesis,” he insisted that rather than being incidental, harm flows inevitably from the structure of institutionalized and for-profit health care itself. Illich wrote, “The medical establishment has become a major threat to health,” and has created its own “epidemic” of iatrogenic illness – that is, illness caused by a physician or the health care system itself.

Four decades later, medical mistrust among Americans remains alarmingly high. Only 23% of Americans express high confidence in the medical system. The United States ranks 24th out of 29 peer high-income countries for the level of public trust in medical providers.

For people like the mothers I interviewed, who have experienced real or perceived harm at the hands of medical providers; have felt belittled, dismissed or disbelieved in a doctor’s office; or spent countless hours fighting to pay for, understand or use health benefits, skepticism and distrust are rational responses to lived experience. These attitudes do not emerge solely from ignorance, conspiracy thinking, far-right extremism or hysteria, but rather the historical and ongoing harms endemic to the U.S. health care system itself.

Johanna Richlin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Is the National Guard a solution to school violence?

School board members in one Massachusetts district have called for the National Guard to address student misbehavior. Does their request have merit? A…

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Every now and then, an elected official will suggest bringing in the National Guard to deal with violence that seems out of control.

A city council member in Washington suggested doing so in 2023 to combat the city’s rising violence. So did a Pennsylvania representative concerned about violence in Philadelphia in 2022.

In February 2024, officials in Massachusetts requested the National Guard be deployed to a more unexpected location – to a high school.

Brockton High School has been struggling with student fights, drug use and disrespect toward staff. One school staffer said she was trampled by a crowd rushing to see a fight. Many teachers call in sick to work each day, leaving the school understaffed.

As a researcher who studies school discipline, I know Brockton’s situation is part of a national trend of principals and teachers who have been struggling to deal with perceived increases in student misbehavior since the pandemic.

A review of how the National Guard has been deployed to schools in the past shows the guard can provide service to schools in cases of exceptional need. Yet, doing so does not always end well.

How have schools used the National Guard before?

In 1957, the National Guard blocked nine Black students’ attempts to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. While the governor claimed this was for safety, the National Guard effectively delayed desegregation of the school – as did the mobs of white individuals outside. Ironically, weeks later, the National Guard and the U.S. Army would enforce integration and the safety of the “Little Rock Nine” on orders from President Dwight Eisenhower.

Three men from the mob around Little Rock’s Central High School are driven from the area at bayonet-point by soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division on Sept. 25, 1957. The presence of the troops permitted the nine Black students to enter the school with only minor background incidents. Bettmann via Getty Images

One of the most tragic cases of the National Guard in an educational setting came in 1970 at Kent State University. The National Guard was brought to campus to respond to protests over American involvement in the Vietnam War. The guardsmen fatally shot four students.

In 2012, then-Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, proposed funding to use the National Guard to provide school security in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting. The bill was not passed.

More recently, the National Guard filled teacher shortages in New Mexico’s K-12 schools during the quarantines and sickness of the pandemic. While the idea did not catch on nationally, teachers and school personnel in New Mexico generally reported positive experiences.

Can the National Guard address school discipline?

The National Guard’s mission includes responding to domestic emergencies. Members of the guard are part-time service members who maintain civilian lives. Some are students themselves in colleges and universities. Does this mission and training position the National Guard to respond to incidents of student misbehavior and school violence?

On the one hand, New Mexico’s pandemic experience shows the National Guard could be a stopgap to staffing shortages in unusual circumstances. Similarly, the guards’ eventual role in ensuring student safety during school desegregation in Arkansas demonstrates their potential to address exceptional cases in schools, such as racially motivated mob violence. And, of course, many schools have had military personnel teaching and mentoring through Junior ROTC programs for years.

Those seeking to bring the National Guard to Brockton High School have made similar arguments. They note that staffing shortages have contributed to behavior problems.

One school board member stated: “I know that the first thought that comes to mind when you hear ‘National Guard’ is uniform and arms, and that’s not the case. They’re people like us. They’re educated. They’re trained, and we just need their assistance right now. … We need more staff to support our staff and help the students learn (and) have a safe environment.”

Yet, there are reasons to question whether calls for the National Guard are the best way to address school misconduct and behavior. First, the National Guard is a temporary measure that does little to address the underlying causes of student misbehavior and school violence.

Research has shown that students benefit from effective teaching, meaningful and sustained relationships with school personnel and positive school environments. Such educative and supportive environments have been linked to safer schools. National Guard members are not trained as educators or counselors and, as a temporary measure, would not remain in the school to establish durable relationships with students.

What is more, a military presence – particularly if uniformed or armed – may make students feel less welcome at school or escalate situations.

Schools have already seen an increase in militarization. For example, school police departments have gone so far as to acquire grenade launchers and mine-resistant armored vehicles.

Research has found that school police make students more likely to be suspended and to be arrested. Similarly, while a National Guard presence may address misbehavior temporarily, their presence could similarly result in students experiencing punitive or exclusionary responses to behavior.

Students deserve a solution other than the guard

School violence and disruptions are serious problems that can harm students. Unfortunately, schools and educators have increasingly viewed student misbehavior as a problem to be dealt with through suspensions and police involvement.

A number of people – from the NAACP to the local mayor and other members of the school board – have criticized Brockton’s request for the National Guard. Governor Maura Healey has said she will not deploy the guard to the school.

However, the case of Brockton High School points to real needs. Educators there, like in other schools nationally, are facing a tough situation and perceive a lack of support and resources.

Many schools need more teachers and staff. Students need access to mentors and counselors. With these resources, schools can better ensure educators are able to do their jobs without military intervention.

F. Chris Curran has received funding from the US Department of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and the American Civil Liberties Union for work on school safety and discipline.

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Chinese migration to US is nothing new – but the reasons for recent surge at Southern border are

A gloomier economic outlook in China and tightening state control have combined with the influence of social media in encouraging migration.

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Chinese migrants wait for a boat after having walked across the Darien Gap from Colombia to Panama. AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko

The brief closure of the Darien Gap – a perilous 66-mile jungle journey linking South American and Central America – in February 2024 temporarily halted one of the Western Hemisphere’s busiest migration routes. It also highlighted its importance to a small but growing group of people that depend on that pass to make it to the U.S.: Chinese migrants.

While a record 2.5 million migrants were detained at the United States’ southwestern land border in 2023, only about 37,000 were from China.

I’m a scholar of migration and China. What I find most remarkable in these figures is the speed with which the number of Chinese migrants is growing. Nearly 10 times as many Chinese migrants crossed the southern border in 2023 as in 2022. In December 2023 alone, U.S. Border Patrol officials reported encounters with about 6,000 Chinese migrants, in contrast to the 900 they reported a year earlier in December 2022.

The dramatic uptick is the result of a confluence of factors that range from a slowing Chinese economy and tightening political control by President Xi Jinping to the easy access to online information on Chinese social media about how to make the trip.

Middle-class migrants

Journalists reporting from the border have generalized that Chinese migrants come largely from the self-employed middle class. They are not rich enough to use education or work opportunities as a means of entry, but they can afford to fly across the world.

According to a report from Reuters, in many cases those attempting to make the crossing are small-business owners who saw irreparable damage to their primary or sole source of income due to China’s “zero COVID” policies. The migrants are women, men and, in some cases, children accompanying parents from all over China.

Chinese nationals have long made the journey to the United States seeking economic opportunity or political freedom. Based on recent media interviews with migrants coming by way of South America and the U.S.’s southern border, the increase in numbers seems driven by two factors.

First, the most common path for immigration for Chinese nationals is through a student visa or H1-B visa for skilled workers. But travel restrictions during the early months of the pandemic temporarily stalled migration from China. Immigrant visas are out of reach for many Chinese nationals without family or vocation-based preferences, and tourist visas require a personal interview with a U.S. consulate to gauge the likelihood of the traveler returning to China.

Social media tutorials

Second, with the legal routes for immigration difficult to follow, social media accounts have outlined alternatives for Chinese who feel an urgent need to emigrate. Accounts on Douyin, the TikTok clone available in mainland China, document locations open for visa-free travel by Chinese passport holders. On TikTok itself, migrants could find information on where to cross the border, as well as information about transportation and smugglers, commonly known as “snakeheads,” who are experienced with bringing migrants on the journey north.

With virtual private networks, immigrants can also gather information from U.S. apps such as X, YouTube, Facebook and other sites that are otherwise blocked by Chinese censors.

Inspired by social media posts that both offer practical guides and celebrate the journey, thousands of Chinese migrants have been flying to Ecuador, which allows visa-free travel for Chinese citizens, and then making their way over land to the U.S.-Mexican border.

This journey involves trekking through the Darien Gap, which despite its notoriety as a dangerous crossing has become an increasingly common route for migrants from Venezuela, Colombia and all over the world.

In addition to information about crossing the Darien Gap, these social media posts highlight the best places to cross the border. This has led to a large share of Chinese asylum seekers following the same path to Mexico’s Baja California to cross the border near San Diego.

Chinese migration to US is nothing new

The rapid increase in numbers and the ease of accessing information via social media on their smartphones are new innovations. But there is a longer history of Chinese migration to the U.S. over the southern border – and at the hands of smugglers.

From 1882 to 1943, the United States banned all immigration by male Chinese laborers and most Chinese women. A combination of economic competition and racist concerns about Chinese culture and assimilability ensured that the Chinese would be the first ethnic group to enter the United States illegally.

With legal options for arrival eliminated, some Chinese migrants took advantage of the relative ease of movement between the U.S. and Mexico during those years. While some migrants adopted Mexican names and spoke enough Spanish to pass as migrant workers, others used borrowed identities or paperwork from Chinese people with a right of entry, like U.S.-born citizens. Similarly to what we are seeing today, it was middle- and working-class Chinese who more frequently turned to illegal means. Those with money and education were able to circumvent the law by arriving as students or members of the merchant class, both exceptions to the exclusion law.

Though these Chinese exclusion laws officially ended in 1943, restrictions on migration from Asia continued until Congress revised U.S. immigration law in the Hart-Celler Act in 1965. New priorities for immigrant visas that stressed vocational skills as well as family reunification, alongside then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s policies of “reform and opening,” helped many Chinese migrants make their way legally to the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s.

Even after the restrictive immigration laws ended, Chinese migrants without the education or family connections often needed for U.S. visas continued to take dangerous routes with the help of “snakeheads.”

One notorious incident occurred in 1993, when a ship called the Golden Venture ran aground near New York, resulting in the drowning deaths of 10 Chinese migrants and the arrest and conviction of the snakeheads attempting to smuggle hundreds of Chinese migrants into the United States.

Existing tensions

Though there is plenty of precedent for Chinese migrants arriving without documentation, Chinese asylum seekers have better odds of success than many of the other migrants making the dangerous journey north.

An estimated 55% of Chinese asylum seekers are successful in making their claims, often citing political oppression and lack of religious freedom in China as motivations. By contrast, only 29% of Venezuelans seeking asylum in the U.S. have their claim granted, and the number is even lower for Colombians, at 19%.

The new halt on the migratory highway from the south has affected thousands of new migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. But the mix of push factors from their home country and encouragement on social media means that Chinese migrants will continue to seek routes to America.

And with both migration and the perceived threat from China likely to be features of the upcoming U.S. election, there is a risk that increased Chinese migration could become politicized, leaning further into existing tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Meredith Oyen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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