Transnational familial strategies, social reproduction, and migration: Chinese immigrant women professionals in Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper fills a lacuna in the literature on gender, work, and migration by exploring the migration experience and familial arrangements of middle-class Mainland Chinese migrant women who were professionals in their home country. Informed by theoretical debates on social reproduction, and transnational migration frameworks, it explores how transnational migration is shaped by intersectional gender, race/ethnicity, and class processes, and demonstrates how these Chinese immigrant women utilized transnational familial arrangements as strategies for social reproduction. In doing so, the Mainland Chinese immigrant women professionals provide what they perceive as better opportunities for themselves and for their families. Our research starts with Chinese immigrant women’s individual articulations of their own migration trajectories, we then go further to examine how the women’s transmigration strategies are embedded in the context of the changing social, economic, political, and cultural processes in China and in Canada. In this paper, Mainland Chinese immigrant women’s motivations for immigrating to Canada; how migration shapes their experiences in Canada; as well as their transnational strategies for social reproduction are explored.

KEYWORDS:

• Social reproduction
• immigrant families
• migration
• transnational strategies
• Chinese immigrant women

Acknowledgement

Guida Man, the principal investigator of SSHRC Research Grant No. 410-2009-2453, would like to extend her deepest gratitude to the Chinese immigrant women participants in this study. Guida would also like to thanks all the project research assistants for their contribution to the research study. In particular, special appreciation is extended to Elena Chou, Ian Hussey, and Willa Liu for their assistance at different stages of the research on the Chinese immigrant women. Tania Das Gupta, Roxana Ng (deceased), and Kiran Mirchandani were the co-investigators of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The International English language Testing System (IELTS) is an English language proficiency test for higher education.

2 As demonstrated in this study, such “sacrifice” is often not devoid of some degree of agency and self-interest.

Additional information

Funding

The research project “Transnational Migration Trajectories of Immigrant Women Professionals in Canada: Strategies of Work and Family” was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) [grant number 410-2009-2453].