Time and Migration: How Long-Term Taiwanese Migrants Negotiate Later Life

by Ken Chih-Yan Sun

Overview

Based on longitudinal ethnographic work on migration between the United States and Taiwan, Time and Migration interrogates how long-term immigrants negotiate their needs as they grow older and how transnational migration shapes later-life transitions. Ken Chih-Yan Sun develops the concept of a "temporalities of migration" to examine the interaction between space, place, and time. He demonstrates how long-term settlement in the United States, coupled with changing homeland contexts, has inspired aging immigrants and returnees to rethink their sense of social belonging, remake intimate relations, and negotiate opportunities and constraints across borders. The interplay between migration and time shapes the ways aging migrant populations reassess and reconstruct relationships with their children, spouses, grandchildren, community members, and home, as well as host societies. Aging, Sun argues, is a global issue and must be reconsidered in a cross-border environment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501754876
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2021
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ken Chih-Yan Sun is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Villanova University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: How Time Complicates Migratory Experiences
1. Emigrating, Staying, and Returning
2. Reconfiguring Intergenerational Reciprocity
3. Remaking Conjugality
4. Doing Grandparenthood
5. Navigating Networks of Support
6. Articulating Logics of Social Rights
Conclusion: Rethinking Time, Migration, and Aging

What People are Saying About This

Mary C. Waters

"In this beautifully written, groundbreaking work, Ken Chih-Yan Sun incorporates time into the understanding of immigrants' lives. His study of older Taiwanese immigrants shows that they are separated from their homelands not just by distance but also by time. The places they left a long time ago have changed a great deal, and they have changed as they have grown older in a place far from home. As their lives unfold in a new land, their families, their memories, and their active engagements with both sending and host societies shape their belonging and well-being. This book contributes to our understandings of immigrants, the life course, and aging with theoretical creativity and ethnographic empathy."

Karen V. Hansen

"This riveting book, Time and Migration, develops empathic portraits of migrant elders who claim citizenship in two countries but often belong to neither. With eloquence and deep sociological insight, Sun interweaves the strands of migration, aging, gender, and time into a complex tapestry of the meanings of kinship, intimacy, and dislocation in a transnational world. This is an ideal book for courses in families, immigration, globalization, and qualitative methods."

Nazli Kibria

"By drawing attention to the importance of temporality and life stage, Time and Migration challenges the field of migration studies to move away from analyses that are based on one point in time in the life of a migrant. Beautifully written and chock-full of insights, Time and Migration is essential reading for those interested in migration, families and aging."

University of Sussex Russell King

"Based on years of meticulous research, and following the "temporal turn" in migration studies, this beautifully written book explores through a life-course perspective multiple aspects of the lives of aging Taiwanese migrants in the United States and in Taiwan."

Russell King

Based on years of meticulous research, and following the "temporal turn" in migration studies, this beautifully written book explores through a life-course perspective multiple aspects of the lives of aging Taiwanese migrants in the United States and in Taiwan.

Peggy Levitt

"Based on rigorous research and fieldwork, Time and Migration drives home just how much aging is a transnational process involving sending and receiving countries that change dramatically over time. Sun's book captures this vividly through engaging stories written with a lot of heart. Scholars of migration, aging, and transnational social protection will learn much from these pages."

Editorial Reviews

Time and Migration is a valuable book for scholars and students in multiple subdisciplines: migration, aging, and family. [T]his research uncovers how people and places change over time, the interaction between these changes, and their impact on immigrants' own identities and relationships.

Social Forces

This book is a prototype of transnational research at its best, with the longitudinal multisite ethnography and the comparative research design at its core, thus yielding key insights in the intersection of migration, aging, and family.

Contemporary Sociology

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. Time and Migration makes a significant contribution to research examining the diversity of immigrant experiences worldwide.

International Migration Review