Migration as Process: The Homemaking Experiences of Chinese Canadians

• In Event: 3181 - Section on Asia and Asian America Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 06. Intermarriage and Assimilation

Abstract

Existing migration research typically focuses on post-migration lives, yet a more mundane part has largely escaped sociological scrutiny: pre-migration life experiences. In this paper, I question the artificial division between immigration and settlement. Through in-depth interviews examining Chinese Canadians’ life polyvalences between then-there in China and now-here in Canada, I find migration is better not understood as two-stages procedure of getting in and fitting in, but as a homemaking process across borders. Adopting a comparative perspective, I identify the exit context in which people leave old environments as well as the entry context in which they encounter new environments. I pay attention to the life circumstances under which migration operates similarly or differently. I argue that migration process unfold in complex way of confrontation with the interplay between life situations at individual level and social transformations at societal level. In and through this dynamic process, individuals act reactively and reflectively to deal with anticipated and unanticipated life changes resulted from relocation. In the meantime, themselves are changed by patterned experiences structured by the social institutions.

Author

• Jing Zhao, University of British Columbia