Abstract
Time and Migration, by Ken Chih-Yan Sun, reports retrospective life-history interviews and ethnographic observations collected during 2009−2013 from 115 persons aged 60 to 88 years at the time of the interviews. All of the persons interviewed had migrated from Taiwan to the United States years ago, with most arriving in the 1960s and 1970s. Half of the persons interviewed continued to live in the United States in Boston or New York; half had returned to Taiwan after living for many years in the United States. The interview transcripts were analyzed using the method of grounded theory, supplemented with ethnographic participant observation.
This study compares and contrasts the immigrants who stayed in the United States in their old age with those immigrants who returned to Taiwan in their later years. Both sets of immigrants faced challenges of “fitting in” and developing a sense of “belonging,” becoming “American” on the one hand, and remaining Taiwanese on the other hand. The author highlights the estrangement that racialized immigrants often feel in their host society and the “strangeness” experienced in returning to a home society that has changed over the years.
This book examines the intersection of time and migration. It explores the circumstances in Taiwan and in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s that led young adults to migrate to the United States from Taiwan and discusses the dynamics of adaptation, assimilation, and evolving cross-border transnational ties as immigrants grow older and history unfolds. The author highlights the complex relationships that these migrants had with Taiwan and the United States over their lifetimes. The focus on dynamic processes is evident in the book's chapters that emphasize emigrating, staying, returning, and belonging; reconfiguring intergenerational relationships with the immigrants’ parents in Taiwan and children in the United States; remaking spousal relationships; doing grandparenthood; navigating social supports, and creating rationales for entitlement to social programs such as social security and healthcare. These dynamics are shaped by history (the 1960s and 1970s and years since), social contexts (Taiwan and the United States), and individual choices, circumstances, and trajectories over time.
More specifically, these dynamics involved a rethinking of intergenerational reciprocity and filial piety, that is, of the obligations of children to support and defer to their parents. Immigrants were less able to perform filial piety for parents left in Taiwan, and immigrants in the United States were less likely to expect their own children to perform filial piety. Aging immigrants preferred to remain independent and not burden or interfere with their children who had grown up in the United States. Further, these dynamics involved a rethinking and renegotiation of patriarchal and gendered relationships.
After exploring the renegotiation of family relationships, the author discusses navigating community social support networks such as church and ethnocultural associations, and rethinking rights and obligations to the state and in particular to state-sponsored programs such as social security and health care as they have evolved in both the United States and Taiwan. When immigrants left Taiwan years ago to pursue the American Dream, Taiwan had an undeveloped economy and a limited social welfare system. Since then, Taiwan's economy has improved dramatically, and Taiwan's National Health Insurance now provides health care at a lower cost than in the United States. In both the United States and Taiwan, reliance on family is shifting to a reliance on the state for income security and health care in old age. Immigrants who stayed in the United States and those who returned to Taiwan both express concerns about what they “deserve” in terms of state support for income security and health care.
This book highlights transnationalism, the complex, evolving, and continuing identity and allegiance that these Taiwanese migrants have to both their country of origin and their country of choice. These Taiwanese migrants maintained connections to their homeland and some returned to Taiwan in their older years. Yet, they returned to a society that was very different from the one they left years before. As a consequence, immigrants returning home often felt “strange.” This undermined their sense of belonging and fitting in.
Time and Migration is written primarily for an academic audience, including scholars from sociology, social psychology, anthropology, political science, and social geography. However, it is also of interest to social planners and policymakers, and the narrative data, that is, the stories told, have a human interest appeal for lay readers.
While this book details the lives of Taiwanese immigrants in Boston and New York and of those who returned to Taiwan, the increasing diversity of immigrants to the United States raises questions about the future of transnational identities, the complexities of simultaneous belonging and loyalty to two or more nations, and obligations to and claims on family, community, and state in two or more national contexts.
The persons interviewed for this study were “highly selected,” that is, they tended to be socially advantaged and upwardly mobile persons who came to the United States to pursue the “American Dream” for themselves and their children. This is in itself a contribution to the literature on the dynamics of migration and the experiences of immigrants. But it raises questions about how experiences and stories differ for immigrants to the United States who come from other parts of the world, different times in history, and from other social class origins, for refugees, for immigrants from other racialized categories, and for LBGT+ immigrants. It also raises questions about how the immigrant experience differs in various social contexts. The effects of American individualism and American social policies evident in health care, for example, are striking. The immigrant experience might be quite different in Sweden or Canada for example.
Time and Migration makes a significant contribution to research examining the diversity of immigrant experiences worldwide. As the author notes, health care in old age is increasingly being provided by immigrants, mostly women, from less advantaged countries and social classes. It is ironic that some immigrants who moved from Taiwan to the United States have in old age returned to Taiwan, where health care and old age care are cheaper, in part because it relies on immigrant workers from poorer countries in South-East Asia. But again, this highlights the complexities of transnationalism in a global context.