Beyond Remittances: How Face Drives Immigration Stories of Undocumented and Mixed-status Chinese Immigrant Families

ABSTRACT

A growing body of work that has examined Chinese immigration to the US has coined the term “culture of remittances”: money that is sent home not only provides economically but also elevates the “face” of the family. However, using qualitative data from a multiyear ethnographic study of three undocumented and mixed-status Chinese families in the US and their families in China, we find that garnering face for the family is less of a motivator than the fear of losing it. This dynamic plays a role at all stages of immigration and amplifies existing norms in a way that perpetuates disadvantage experienced by Chinese immigrants. As these undocumented Chinese immigrants craft an idealized narrative of their lives in the US, more members from their sending communities are motivated to immigrate, leading to precarious consequences.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• culture
• chinese immigrant families
• qualitative methodology

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jia-Lin Liu

Jia-Lin Liu is an assistant professor in higher education and social work at California State University, Los Angeles. Her research aims to bring further understandings to undocumented and mixed-status Chinese immigrant families – their negotiations, perceptions, marginalities, and experiences of contemporary US immigration and education. Specifically, her research centers on understanding how social class origins and cultural practices prior to US arrival shape acculturation and educational outcomes among this population.

Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng

Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng is a sociologist whose scholarly and community-based work focuses on the social lives of marginalized youth. He is Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Belonging and Associate Professor of International Education at NYU Steinhardt. His interests include comparative perspectives on race/ethnicity (with a focus on China and the US), immigrant adaptation, and social capital within the school and educational context. As such, his research examines the social relationships in the lives of minority and immigrant adolescents in the US, gender and ethnic differences in education in China, and cultural and social capital transfers between adolescents in the US.