Engaging in or retreating from cosmopolitanism? Times, temporalities and migration

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the temporal dimensions in and consequences of migration from the perspective of how they are involved in both promoting and undermining cosmopolitan attitudes and practices amongst mobile subjects. Drawing on qualitative research with new Chinese migrants to New Zealand, the paper explores how their process of becoming cosmopolitan to participate in intercultural interactions is constructed differently in relation to momentary, everyday, remembered and imagined times/temporalities embedded in their lives. In particular, the paper asks whether and how migrant individuals navigate through temporal dissonance occurred across the migratory process by engaging in or retreating from cosmopolitanism. Essentially, this paper develops a temporally-sensitive theoretical approach to unpack how time and temporalities function in the migration process, especially how they articulate with the possibilities of migrant individuals encountering diversity and obtaining a sense of home in the host society, thus contributing to studies of cosmopolitanism and time in migration.

KEYWORDS:

• Time
• temporality
• becoming (un)cosmopolitan
• migration
• diversity encounters
• Chinese in New Zealand

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the Editor for their constructive and valuable feedback. We also appreciate the advice from Prof. Amanda Wise at the early stage of developing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The 1.5 generation refers to adolescents who immigrate to a new country with their parents generally between 6 and 14 years old.

2. ‘New Chinese migrants to New Zealand’ refer to the migrants from China mainland following immigration policy changes of New Zealand in 1987.

3. ‘first-generation’ means Rachel is a first-generation migrant; ‘30s’ is her age range at the time of interview; ‘F’ represents ‘Female’; Auckland is the current residence. This schema applies to all the interviewees cited in the article.

4. Pākehā, a Māori language term, meaning the majority population who represent mainstream socio-cultural norms in New Zealand.

5. Radice (2015) understands it as cosmopolitanism practised in the ‘microcosm’ of the multiethnic city. We extend it as those seemingly mundane or transient but meaningful everyday cosmopolitan practices.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by “All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese” (19 BZQK239).