[1] In recent decades, millions of Chinese have moved to the city, both as internal immigrants and as migrant workers.

Legally, it refers to those holding a hukou for one of the local governments in the municipality of Shanghai.

[3][4] The term Shanghainese may also refer more broadly to people from areas of the Jiangnan cultural region in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

[citation needed] Although Shanghai was long a cosmopolitan city as one of Qing Dynasty's treaty ports, its people was not connected with the large-scale emigration seen amongst the Fujianese and Cantonese.

Less-prominent communities exist in the Chinatowns of other large metropolitan areas such as New York and San Francisco in the United States, as well as Toronto and Vancouver in Canada.