‘Forced’ family separation and inter-generational dynamics: multi-generational new Chinese immigrant families in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

In New Zealand (NZ), due to the immigration policy change against family reunifications, many ‘forced’ transnational immigrant families emerged between NZ and other immigration sending countries. Closely tied family members across generations now have limited choice but to live across different national, cultural, and linguistic localities. By taking the new Chinese immigrant families from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the case in point, and based on 45 in-depth interviews with their multi-generational family members, this paper examines how immigrant families adapt to the NZ immigration regime which does not easily accommodate their cultural preference to live as multi-generational families. It also demonstrates the importance of family reunification for immigrant families in NZ, and the changing inter-generational power relations caused by the evolving process of migration and settlement of these families.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration policy
• family reunification
• intergenerational dynamics
• Chinese immigrants
• multigenerational immigrant families

Introduction

After three decades of immigration, a substantial new Chinese immigrant¹ community has been established in New Zealand (NZ), evidenced by the presence of many multi-generational Chinese immigrant families that include the first-generational adult immigrants, their children, and elderly parents (Ho and Bedford 2008; Liu 2016). This group of Chinese immigrants are also renowned for their transnational connections and mobility: oftentimes characterised as a ‘returnee’ phenomenon to the ancestral homeland, a process of step-migration to a third country, or frequent commuting between the home and host countries (Liu 2011). This reality of transnationalism has become a more permanent feature of those immigrant lives following the gradual immigration policy change towards restricting family reunification (Bedford and Liu 2013). This has effectively resulted in the emergence of forced multi-location and multi-generational immigrant families whereby family members have limited choice but to live across different national, geographic, cultural, and linguistic localities (Liu 2016).

This paper focuses on the second-largest immigrant group in NZ – that is the new Chinese immigrants from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to explore how important the family reunification is for this group of immigrants, how they adapted to the current NZ immigration regime that does not allow family reunification so easily, and what challenges these immigrant families face even after achieving family reunifications.

What follows will first provide some background information about the new Chinese immigrants in NZ, including their demography and immigration patterns. That part will be followed by a discussion of NZ’s changing immigration policy of family reunification, and its impact on Chinese immigrant families. Both these parts serve as a contextual backdrop for the paper to help to understand the NZ social context where the researched subject and topic are located. The third section is a brief literature review on the research of transnational immigrant families, which provides a theoretical context for this paper in which a multi-generational perspective was embedded. Drawn from some preliminary results from a three-year research project, the last section will discuss the challenges that many multi-generational new Chinese immigrant families face, in particular their internal challenges resulting from the reconfiguration of inter-generational power relations alongside the migration processes. Through the NZ case, the paper can further advance the global theorisation of cross-generational dynamics in transnational family studies.

New Chinese immigrants in NZ

After three decades of migration, the new Chinese immigrants from the PRC now make up a significant part of NZ’s ethnic Chinese population as well as the total population. This has been witnessed by the latest national census: in 2018, 132,906 NZ residents were born in the PRC, which accounted for 53.39% of the total ethnic Chinese population (248,919) and 2.83% of the total population (4,699,755) in NZ (Statistics New Zealand 2019). Meanwhile, the recent data on the resident decisions by financial year from Immigration New Zealand (INZ) (https://www.immigration.govt.nz/about-us/research-and-statistics/statistics) also reveals that in the period of 1997/1998–2018/2019, the PRC ranked as the second-largest immigrant source country for NZ, just after the United Kingdom (Immigration New Zealand 2019a). Table 1 shows that during this period of time, the total number of residence approvals from the top ten source countries under the New Zealand Residence Programme (NZRP) was 692,830, of which 19.17% (132,846) were granted for immigrants from the PRC (Immigration New Zealand 2019b).

Table 1. Approvals for Residence for Top Ten Immigrant Source Countries by Nationality and Migrant Stream/Category, 1997/98–2018/19 (Source: Immigration New Zealand, 2019).

Nationality	Total Approval	Total Family Sponsorship	Family Sponsorship Sub-categories				Skilled	Business	International/humanitarian*
			Partnership/Spouse	Parent	Child (Dependent & adult child)	Other (Sibling, family quota, humanitarian, etc.)
Asia
China	132,846	62,560 47.09%	24,375 18.35%	28,820 21.69%	3,655 2.75%	5,710 4.30%	53,096 39.97%	15,690 11.81%	1,500 1.13%
India	108,087	35,294 32.65%	20,213 18.70%	10,614 9.82%	1,731 1.60%	2736 2.53%	71,587 66.23%	385 0.36%	821 0.76%
South Korea	27,433	6,558 23.91%	4,113 14.99%	1,292 4.71%	538 1.96%	615 2.24%	14,775 53.86%	5,841 21.29%	259 0.94%
Philippine	54,439	12,163 22.34%	8,623 15.84%	1,297 2.38%	1,834 3.37%	409 0.74%	41,709 76.62%	56 0.10%	511 0.94%
Pacific
Fiji	51,048	21,889 42.88%	9,825 19.25%	6,464 12.66%	1,872 3.67%	3,728 7.30%	23,968 46.95%	695 1.36%	4,496 8.81%
Samoa	45,262	20,026 44.24%	7,966 17.60%	2,027 4.48%	9,158 20.23%	875 1.93%	679 1.50%	0 0.00%	24,557 54.26%
Tonga	20,251	10,346 51.09%	5,990 29.58%	2,039 10.07%	1,450 7.16%	867 4.28%	1,866 9.21%	27 0.13%	8,012 39.56%
Other countries
United Kingdom	153,101	43,213 28.23%	30,230 19.75%	10,255 6.70%	1,519 0.99%	1,209 0.79%	105,160 68.69%	3,268 2.13%	1,460 0.95%
South Africa	74,491	10,823 14.53%	3,990 5.36%	4,814 6.46%	1,314 1.76%	705 0.95%	62,501 83.90%	525 0.70%	642 0.86%
United States	25,872	10,297 39.80%	9,149 35.36%	476 1.84%	532 2.06%	140 0.54%	13,716 53.01%	1,173 4.53%	686 2.65%
Total top ten % res. Approvals	692,830	233,169 33.65%	124,474 17.97%	68,098 9.83%	23,603 3.41%	16,994 2.54%	389,057 56.15%	27,660 3.99%	42,944 6.20%

*Note: The category of International Humanitarian include a number of immigration schemes, including 1995 Refugee Status, Refugee Family Support Tiers, Refugee Quota, Section 61, Section 35a, Pacific Access, Samoa Quota, and others.

The presence of the new Chinese immigrants in NZ is due to the changes in the social and political conditions and changing policies towards border control in both the immigrant sending country (i.e. China) and immigrant-receiving country (i.e. NZ). China’s economic reform and open-door policies, starting from the early 1990s, changing political ideology, and relaxation of its strict control over the international movements of its citizens (Xiang 2003), makes it possible for some Chinese to immigrate to NZ. In NZ, the introduction of an open immigration policy – the 1987 Immigration Act that abolished the ‘traditional origin’ preference that favoured British immigrants – proactively channelled in skilled and business immigrants from the wider Asia-Pacific region, including immigrants from China² (Trlin 1992).

The new Chinese immigrants have gone through diverse immigration routes to arrive in NZ. To show the distinct immigration routes of new Chinese immigrants, one must view their migration in a comparative framework. Table 1 shows the residence approval numbers for NZ’s top ten immigrant source countries by nationality and migration stream/category from1997/98 to 2018/19 (Immigration New Zealand 2019b). Within their respective immigrant population, South Africa, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom have the greatest percentages of residence approvals under the skilled category (83.90%, 76.62%, and 68.69%, respectively), while China has 39.97% approvals under this category. However, China has a high percentage of residence approvals under the business category (11.81%), which is much higher than the figure for the United Kingdom (2.13%) and South Africa (0.7%). This situation largely reflects the fact that China’s growing economy has played an important role in bolstering its nationals’ financial ability to obtain NZ permanent residence (Liu 2018). China also has the greatest number of residence approvals under the Parent Category (21.69%) amongst all the top ten immigrant source countries. The high percentage of the residence approvals under the Parent Category confirms a reality that family reunification plays a significant role in contemporary Chinese migration from China (Immigration New Zealand 2019bb).

The extant research suggests that the usual practice amongst this immigrant population is that once adult immigrants settle in NZ, they hope to sponsor their parents to immigrate to NZ for family reunification and to live with their parents, either in the same household or another close locality. As for the older parents, some come to retire, but many others come to support their adult children’s career progression by providing care for their grandchildren. In return, the adult immigrant children assume responsibility for supporting their parents when they are unable to live on their own (Bedford and Liu 2013; Liu 2016). This is how multi-generational Chinese immigrant families and households have typically been formed and sustained. Although family migration and reunion are not always an ideal scenario for everyone (Ryan 2008); for many new Chinese adult immigrants, a preferable arrangement is to bring their older parents to NZ as permanent residents for family reunification (Liu 2018).

Changing family immigration policy in NZ

Unfortunately, family reunification is increasingly difficult to achieve in NZ (Bedford and Liu 2013). One major reason is related to immigration policy changes. The general trend is that NZ has increasingly prioritised ‘talent’ (usually embodied in young and highly educated men and women) and discriminated against the entry of older immigrants under its immigration policy (Liu 2016). This is part of a broad immigration policy pattern in the ‘New World’ countries which border the Pacific Rim (including Australia, Canada, and the United States) (Larsen 2013; Ali 2014; Bonjour and Kraler 2015).

Initially, when NZ started an ‘open-door’ immigration policy in 1987, the economic perspective that tends to use immigration as a means to revitalise the country’s economy and remedy the drain of human capital to overseas was well advanced. Another clear immigration policy objective was to strengthen families and communities (Burke 1986). A formal Family Category which was applied to three situations (i.e. marriage to an NZ citizen or resident; a de facto or homosexual relationship; and the case of parents, dependent children, and single adult siblings and children) was established in the 1991 points-based policy which awarded points based on age, qualifications, work experience, sponsorship by family members or community groups, a job offer, and settlement and investment funds (Trlin 1997). This inclusion of parents in the Family Category was quite social-liberal compared with other countries where only nuclear family members (i.e. spouse and child) are defined within family reunification immigration categories, such as Sweden and the Netherlands (Robinson 2013; Borevi 2015).

By the end of 1998, concerns over the increasing proportion of ‘social’ category immigrants (including immigrants who granted residences under the Family Sponsorship Stream and International/Humanitarian categories) were raised, and a policy review was pursued. This review led the next significant change in immigration policy in October 2001 when a management entry policy was introduced. Within this managed entry policy, a Skilled/Business Stream was allocated 60% of the government’s total target for residence approvals, while a Family Sponsorship Stream was allocated 30%, and an International/Humanitarian Stream 10%. It was the first time that NZ immigration started to regulate the ‘economic’ and ‘social’ streams of immigrants based on numerical terms (Bedford et al. 2005). The emphasis on ‘economic’ immigration signalled a clear shift of immigration policy orientation from social-liberalism to neoliberalism, which focuses on the economic output from immigration (McMillan 2005).

This reality can be further evidenced in the policy change of the Family Sponsorship Stream in 2007. One major change was that some specific sub-categories under the family stream (including the Parent Category, Sibling Category, and Adult Child[ren] Category) were capped with actual numbers, but others not (the Dependent child Category and Spouse Category). It meant that when the cap was reached, no further visas would be granted in that visa class in the programme year. The Parent Category was given an approximately 4,000 quota per year. In addition, a requirement of a minimum income for the sponsor (i.e. NZD$33,675 per year) and an increased length of time an immigrant sponsor would have to support their parents without access to social benefits (i.e. from two years to five years) was enforced (Bedford and Liu 2013).

These policy changes were a deliberate attempt to prioritise the entry of immediate family members, especially overseas-born partners and dependent children while limiting the entry of other extended family members, especially the elderly parents of adult immigrants. The reason provided by the government was that older parents of immigrants cost more in health and medical provisions and also have a high tendency to apply for social welfare (Bedford and Liu 2013).

Such a fiscal focus in constructing parent sponsorship immigration in NZ led to further policy change in the Parent Category in 2012. A two-tier selection system was introduced. The system created two quite different criteria for immigrant adults to sponsor their older parents to immigrate to NZ. Those who can meet a high financial threshold (i.e. NZD$65,000 per year) can sponsor their parents to apply for permanent residence under Tier 1, enabling priority assessment for their applications. Those who cannot meet that financial threshold must apply for permanent residence under Tier 2 with a much lower income threshold (i.e. NZD$33,675 per year), and receive a lower priority assessment resulting in a long wait for their application to be processed. This immigration policy change was another deliberate attempt to limit entry for older parents of skilled immigrants (Bedford and Liu 2013).

On 11 October 2016, INZ decided that the Parent Category in the Family Sponsorship Stream of the NZRP would be closed for at least two years from the date of announcement (Woodhouse 2016). On 21 October 2019 after three years of the Parent Category being closed, the NZ Government finally announced that the Parent Category would be re-opened to accept applications from February 2020 with much higher financial requirements for sponsors. First of all, the two-tier system changed to a single system, with the number of people who can get the residence visa limited to 1,000 annually. Secondly, if one person sponsors one parent, the income threshold should be double the NZ median income, which is about NZD$106,080 per year. The income threshold for one sponsor to sponsor two parents is NZD$159,120. If a sponsor and his/her partner want to sponsor one parent, the income threshold is NZD$159,120. If a sponsor and his/her partner want to sponsor two parents, the income threshold is NZD$212,160 (Immigration Immigration New Zealand 2019c).

This high financial threshold is very difficult to achieve for many sponsors. One feasible solution for the new Chinese immigrant families to maintain their familyhood is for the older parents to become frequent transnational travellers moving between China and NZ based on a three-year family Visitor Visa. The three-year Visitor Visa grants immigrants’ parents multiple entries to NZ within three years. However, the visa only allows them to stay up to six months at a time, and with a maximum total stay of 18 months in three years (Immigration New Zealand 2019a). Currently, this visitor visa scheme is the only feasible way for immigrants’ older parents to come to NZ for a temporary family reunion.

Based on the discussion above, one can conclude that the gradual shift of the immigration policy towards the entry of immigrants’ older parents has been from inclusive to exclusive. Previous policy intended to ensure a certain scale of parent immigration because of the consideration of family need. However, this approach has gone through a fundamental change under the government pursuit of a neoliberal immigration regime. The rationale of such a policy trend is purely economic because of the low labour market participation, high rates of benefit uptake, and high health costs of immigrants’ older parents (Bedford and Liu 2013). The policy trend reflects the fact that contemporary NZ has progressively pursued a neoliberal immigration framework in which skilled and business immigration is favoured, while social and family reunification immigration is discouraged (Simon-Kumar 2015). The tightening-up of the policy of the Parent Category is a particular arena through which the arising of the neoliberalism-led immigration programme is evident.

The tightening-up of policy regarding the entry of immigrants’ older parents imposes vital challenges to many immigrant families’ reunification plans. This further forcibly drives many members of immigrant families in NZ to live separately across national borders – in this paper that is called ‘forced’ family separation. This ‘forced’ family separation is also one of the greatest challenges many new Chinese immigrants in NZ have to face (Tan 2017; Liu 2018).

Transnational immigrant families – A brief literature review

Transnational immigrant families, also referred to as transnational families, are those families whose members are separated geographically but maintain close ties with frequent interactions across national borders (Lima 2001; Shih 2016). Following heightened scholarly attention paid to transnational migration since the 1990s (Glick-Schiller et al. 1992; Portes 1999; Faist 2000), transnational families have also emerged as an important site for research (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002; Bryceson 2019). This field of research is now expansive and has developed in a number of directions. In general, from a macro and functionalist perspective, a large body of research has successfully built up an epistemological paradigm, which conceptualises a transnational family as a major social institution that can effectively bridge multifaceted transnational social, cultural, and political domains (Lima 2001; Gutierrez 2018). From a micro and interactionist perspective, a quite sizable and still growing body of literature makes major efforts to demystify the everyday practice of transnational families, including the rationale and working mechanism of their transitional movements, as well as associated impacts on the wellbeing of the family members involved (Benítez 2012; Zontini and Reynolds 2018). There is also a handful of recent studies also examined transnational migration decision-making in immigrant families (Yeoh et al. 2005; Liu 2018). These studies illustrate how transnational migratory decisions are made not independently by individuals, but collectively and negotiated within the family.

The most recent studies intend to provide a multi-generational perspective to analyse the roles that different generations of immigrant families play in their domestic terrains. Transnational caregiving and -receiving across borders; namely, transnational care circulation has been the centre for discussions (Baldassar and Merla 2014; Yarris 2017). For the first-generation adult immigrants, research attentions have been given to their transnational caregiving practices towards their left-behind family members, including the children and older parents. It is evident that the adult immigrant generation always plays the role of dominant caregivers in transnational families. The reason is largely that they are a generation who is at peak-earning capacity gaining significant social and financial capital, and therefore, they naturally become the principal breadwinners for the wellbeing and prosperity of their families (Wilding and Baldassar 2009; Zentgraf and Chinchilla 2012). While sending remittances back to the left-behind families is a critical manifestation of transnational caregiving (Zentgraf and Chinchilla 2012; De Bruine et al. 2013), maintaining contacts with the left-behind family members is also a significant way for the adult immigrants to provide transnational caregiving. This is a pivotal way to mitigate the emotional costs of transnational separation (Tamagno 2003; Parreñas 2005; Benítez 2012; Nedelcu and Wyss 2016). In general, this body of literature reveals that the first-generation adult immigrants are constantly located at the frontier to handle, adjust, and adapt families’ geographical separation, and accommodate the families’ various needs (Haagsman and Mazzucato 2014; Tu 2019).

As for the child generation, within the context of transnational families, the major focus is on their transnational care arrangement (Battistella and Conaco 1998; Best 2014). This focus is embedded into four specific research areas around the child generation(s) of immigrants, including the left-behind children in situ (Graham et al. 2012; Lam and Yeoh 2019), the children in the astronaut family (Waters 2002, 2005), the parachute kid (Zhou 1998), and the transnational engagement of immigrant child generations (Wolf 2002; Bartley and Spoonley 2008). Both the 1.5 and second generations of immigrant children have constituted a major cohort for scholarly investigations. Existing studies have touched upon the reasons triggering the phenomenon of left-behind children in situ (Zhou 1998; Graham et al. 2012; Zentgraf and Chinchilla 2012; Shih 2016;), impacts of family separation on their wellbeing (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila 1997; Ho et al. 2001; Waters 2002; Dreby 2006; Shih 2016), problematic features of their growing-up experience (Sun 2014; Mok 2015), and sense of identity and belonging (Levitt and Waters 2002; Huang and Yeoh 2005). Using the multigenerational perspective, some research has revealed that the practice of astronaut family is only a temporary strategy to achieve the short-term family goal, such as for children’s education. Once the accomplishment of the designated education goal for the children is achieved, the family’s structure and transnational migratory trajectories change subsequently to fit new circumstance for their future family projects (Waters 2002; Ho and Bedford 2008; Liu 2018). This is to say that an evolving feature of the transnational trajectories of the immigrant families can be only found through a multi-generational and longitudinal perspective. This also confirms one point made by some researchers that transnational family strategies might change over time due to the changing family structure, family life cycle, family member’s individual aspirations, or the broader socio-economic and political context (Huang et al. 2008). There is also a handful of literature that paid attention on the transnational engagement of the child generation in the family’s post-migration era. To be more specific, it is about how transnational the child generations are under the influence of their parents’ deep transnational engagements. Overall, two major forms of transnational engagements have been identified and discussed in existing literature – they are actual transnational movement (Bartley and Spoonley 2008; Bartley 2010; Gutierrez 2018) and emotional transnationalism (Wolf 1997, 2002). Wolf argued that, situating in the post migration era, immigrant families constantly act as a container stimulating drastic intercultural interactions between different family generations (Wolf 2002), and such interactions are mainly manifested by the cooperation and conflicts among different family generations who carry unique cultural and personal orientations, shaped by their life courses and experiences across national borders (Takeda 2012).

As for the older parents of adult immigrants, they have received steadily growing attention in transnational family studies. There are three major themes emerging, including the left-behind older parents as transnational care receivers (De Silva 2017), older parents as transnational family caregivers (Zickgraf 2017), and their lived experience after family reunification in the host society (King et al. 2014). This older generation are usually the receivers of transnational care provided by their immigrant adult child(ren), but they are also transnational caregivers. Given the reciprocal nature of human relationships, particularly in the family context, these older immigrants provide emotional, practical, even financial assistance to their immigrant adult children and grandchildren (Baldassar et al. 2007; Treas 2008; Lie 2010; Zickgraf 2017). To better understand this two-way caregiving, Baldassar and Merla (2014) created the concept of transnational care circulation. The concept articulates multi-directional family care as the consequence of multifaceted human agency interactions among different transnational family members, such as the individual caregiving capacity and sense of family obligation (Baldassar and Merla 2014; Yarris 2017). There is also an increasing research interest in the practice of transnational grandparenting (Sigad and Eisikovits 2013; King et al. 2014), and the older parent’s life after the end of prolonged transnational family separation (Treas and Mazumdar 2002; Henderson 2007; Li 2011; King et al. 2014; Ho and Chiang 2017). Evidence suggests that family reunification after a prolonged separation could possibly lead to family power structure changes, even power struggles, which could subsequently result in tension and conflicts among families (Wong et al. 2006). To a great extent, this situation is derived from the changing human agency of family members in the host society context, particularly the lifted dependency of older parents on their adult immigrant children in the immigrant destination where they face significant challenges in the adaptation of different cultural, language, and social habitus (Wong et al. 2006; Haas and Fokkema 2010). These changing family power relations, coupled with the loss of a previous comfort zone and social relationships in situ and the unfamiliar social and cultural environment of the host society could result in declined mental health for some older family members. Coping with loneliness and depression is a considerable concern (King et al. 2014).

This brief literature review suggests that transnational family practices can be understood as the consequences of intricate human agency interactions among different family members across national boundaries. Evidence firstly shows that the transnational family arrangement can greatly affect different family members’ lifelong trajectories, individual wellbeing, and their cross-generational relations (Lima 2001; Waters 2002; Parreñas 2005; Ho and Chiang 2017). It also suggests a multi-generational dimension that exists in transnational migration and many transnational families, and points out its underpinning. Overall, the literature review above helps to draw out what has been known about transnational familyhood and care circulation. These empirical and theoretical insights were used to shape the analysis of the research materials in this paper.

Inter-generational dynamics

Based on the preliminary findings from a three-year research project, this section will highlight two major interrelated findings regarding the multi-generational new Chinese immigrant families, including the importance to seek family reunification in NZ for these immigrant families, and generational differences, internal struggles, and power dynamics in their family relations.

Methodological notes

In-depth interviews were employed in this research to collect empirical data. The interviews were undertaken individually with participants across three generations who are from both physically separated and unified new Chinese immigrant families in NZ between October 2017 to December 2019. All participants are over 16 years of age, and all the first-generation adult immigrants and their older parents are originally from China, while the younger generations (i.e. 1.5 generation or second-generation) are born either in China or NZ. In total, 45 interviews have been conducted across three generations, including 16 interviews with first-generation adult immigrants, 17 interviews with the older parent generation, and 12 interviews with the child generation. The research examines inter-generational relationships and family wellbeing, which might be sensitive topics to some immigrant family members; therefore, we invited participants across generations mostly from different families to conduct individual interviews, instead of doing household interviews with the concurrent presence of multiple members from the same family unit. Despite this approach of selecting participants, the inter-generational perspectives can also manifest through the interview questions, which were tailored to suit different generations.

Purposive sampling was carried out based on the social networks that the two authors have with the Chinese community in Auckland. After that, a snowballing technique was used for reaching more immigrant families. Since Auckland hosts about 69% of the Chinese population in NZ (Auckland Council 2017), it was chosen to be the sampling location. At the participants’ preferences, most interviews with the adult immigrants and older grandparents were conducted in Mandarin, while interviews with the 1.5 and second generations were conducted in English. The interview schedule includes questions about participants’ personal, educational, and career trajectories, migration and settlement experiences, family relationship and maintenance, and identity and sense of belonging. All interviews were transcribed and translated by the authors for thematic analysis.

Longing for family reunification: Cultural orientation, morality, and family reality

As discussed before, a preferable scenario for many new PRC Chinese immigrant families in NZ is to achieve family reunification and build up multi-generational families which link all direct family members together. Overwhelmingly, interviewees across different generations, particularly the first-generation adult immigrants and their parents, expressed their yearning to build up close multi-generational families in NZ, either living in the same household or within close proximity but living separately. This can be explained by two leading reasons. The first reason is culturally orientated. Filial piety, especially filial care, is one major reason that motivates many new Chinese adult immigrants to sponsor their older parents to immigrate to NZ for family reunification. As one of the most influential traditional Chinese family values, filial piety remains significant in modern Chinese families (Yue and Ng 1999), including Chinese immigrant families overseas (Ho and Chiang 2017). This cultural value, required within the Confucian ethics, defines a hierarchical and respectful relationship shown towards one’s parents and older relatives. It prescribes a child’s absolute obedience and respect towards the parents. To provide physical and daily care for ageing parents is considered a key practice of filial piety, and co-residing with parents is proof of demonstrating commitment to providing filial care and support to ageing parents (Whyte 2004). For example, Liu, a first-generation adult immigrant mentioned:

The major reason why I want to live together with my parents is to take care of them on a daily base to fulfil my filial duty. This is a Chinese tradition. I will teach this to my children as well so that they could take care of me when I am old.

Wang, a second-generation, expressed a similar point of view:

I do think if my grandparents are getting older, we should live together so that we can take care of them. To me, only living together in a multi-generational household is a real home. I will educate my children to be responsible to their parents.

The above quotations illustrate that, even though taking care of ageing parents is more or less a universal moral responsibility for younger generations in the family context elsewhere, filial piety has been acting as a particular cultural and moral doctrine regulating the younger generation’s attitude and responsibility towards the eldercare in Chinese families.

Besides, the interviews also reveal another dimension as to why many adult Chinese immigrant parents tend to fulfil their filial duties toward their older parents – that is to bring up the concept of filial piety to their children. Over half of the first-generation adult immigrants in the research mentioned that their actions of undertaking filial duties bear the fruit for the future – that is to be the role model to their children so that their children could learn to become filial sons/daughters in the future. Such a dimension shows that, in the Chinese immigrant families, filial care is not only of relevance to the first-generation adult migrants and their older parents but also of relevance to the younger generations.

The second reason the new Chinese immigrants desire to build close-knit multi-generational families is practical. The interviews reveal that family reunification provides convenience for these families to conduct their day-to-day life in which family members can rely on and offer help and support to each other. For example, for the older parents, to live with their adult children and grandchildren is an efficient way to cope with linguistic barriers to conduct their daily life because their adult children can be handy to provide translation. Another example is that when three generations of these immigrant families live together, it is convenient for adult immigrants to look after their older parents. Reciprocally, the older parents can play a crucial role in housekeeping and caregiving towards their grandchildren when adult immigrant parents are busy working. Hong, a mother of two offered her point of view about this reciprocal family relation as a first-generation adult immigrant:

Sure, I would like to have my parents live together with me here in NZ. On the one hand, I can take care of them; on the other hand, they can help me take care of my child and manage some house chores. Sometimes, when my parents are not here, I cannot even work properly because I have to take care of my child fulltime.

As Hong looks towards the livelihood for all the family stakeholders. For example, Qian mentioned:

In NZ, kids need to be picked up from schools at 3 o’clock if you don’t want to send them to the after-school programme. Both my husband and I are full-time. When my parents are here, they can pick up Tom [Qian’s son] from his school and cook dinner. We don’t need to worry about whether we have food to eat. This takes a lot of pressure from us so that in the evening I still have some energy to study. I need to study to improve myself so that I can get a promotion and pay rise. It’s important for my family, isn’t it?

As for many adult immigrants, they are in the critical life stage of climbing their professional career ladder and raising children. If the grandparents can look after the grandchildren, this can free up the adult parents from the daily parental duties and make them at ease, so that they can focus on their work and have more time to seek career advancement. This can thus secure a sound livelihood to sustain the whole family’s wellbeing and maintenance, not just financially, but critically for every aspect of their family lives.

For those families whose older parents are not able to come to NZ as permanent residents, they expressed their deep frustrations. For example, Liao, a grandmother mentioned:

Right after I finished the visa application preparation, the NZ government closed the parent application category for resident visa. It is very annoying … My husband passed away a few years ago, my only child is living in NZ, and now I am living alone by myself in Shanghai, what should I do?

Tang, a first-generation immigrant mother revealed: ‘I cannot really imagine what should I do if my parents could not move to NZ … Who can take care of them when their health deteriorates? I feel so lost every time when I think about the situation’.

For individual Chinese adult immigrants who are not able to bring their elderly parents to NZ, many of them unanimously expressed their ‘feeling of guilt’. The sense of guilt is an important source of anxiety for them because they are constantly under tremendous pressure about the transnational care plan for their older parents. For example, Guo, a first generational adult immigrant mentioned:

I am very aware of my filial duty to my parents. But now we are forced to live apart from each other, and this really makes me feel very guilty. Well, not just feeling guilty. I feel pressured and worried. I am now even afraid to hear my phone ring in the evening. Because I think the call is perhaps from China to tell me my parents are unwell and need my attendance.

As illustrated, to be not able to reunite with older parents poses one of the greatest challenges many new Chinese immigrants have to face. This challenge comes from external forces, mainly from the restrictive immigration policy which lifts the bar high for the entry of immigrants’ older parents. Simultaneously, these immigrant families also encounter challenges from within the families; namely, the internal challenges.

Generational differences, internal struggle, and power dynamics

Although family reunification is an ideal scenario for many new Chinese immigrant families, many unified new Chinese immigrant families in NZ also encounter some significant challenges generated internally within the families. Those challenges, to a great extent, are all catalysed by their transnational family experiences and further revealed to be related to the different life priorities and interests posed by different generations, the natural evolvement of family structures and dynamics, as well as distinct life experiences in different social and cultural contexts.

Firstly, some Chinese adult immigrants sponsored their older parents to immigrate to NZ, they later left their parents and embarked on renewed migratory trajectories to other countries or returned to China for better career or business development opportunities. It has been proved that NZ is a ‘stepping board’ immigration country (Liu 2015) which often offers immigrants a platform for short-to-medium term residence rather than long-term stays. The research partially testifies this fact. It should be also acknowledged that such a phenomenon provides a competing discourse to the importance of filial care provision and family reunification emphasised by many new Chinese immigrants and their families. Accordingly, some ‘left-behind’ Chinese older parents in NZ face challenges of isolation, loneliness, language barriers, cultural differences, and lack of mobility. The phenomenon also triggered some public suspicions against the immigrants’ motivation to sponsor their older parents to NZ as permanent residents for family reunification, particularly the potential fiscal costs on the NZ social welfare system (Liu 2016; Tan 2016).

Secondly, the research found evidence of generational differences, and these differences were largely articulated through the discovery of how different generations of the Chinese immigrant families conceptualised their personal identities and the sense of belonging. For example, Lin, a grandmother who has been living together with her children and grandchildren in Auckland since 1998 clearly noticed the dissimilarities between her and her daughter and granddaughters:

I am just an immigrant from China. NZ is a great place to live, but not my home country. I am here just because of my child and grandchildren. My daughter was born in China but has been working and living here for many years. She likes here, maybe she thinks she belongs here too. My two grandchildren were both born and growing up here in NZ. They cannot even speak Chinese properly. I know, we are different.

This generational difference of perceived personal identity and sense of belonging has resulted in the situation where Lin constantly feels that she cannot have a really close relationship with her daughter and granddaughters. Lin continuously expressed herself:

Basically, we think things differently, and we speak different languages … These make me feel like I am emotionally detached from them [my daughter and granddaughters], even we are living together in the same household. Sometimes, I feel lonely and feel I am excluded in the house.

As can be seen, the generational distinction of these multi-generational Chinese immigrant families is fundamentally about a dissimilarity of personal identities. The case above shows that Lin sees herself as an outsider living here in NZ, which is significantly different from her daughter, who has been found in a follow-up interview to possess a hyphenated identity, mixing Chinese and NZ cultural influences. The same case is also applied to Lin’s grandchildren who are NZ born and think they are New Zealanders rather than Chinese. Under such a circumstance, to achieve an ideal closeness between Lin and her daughter and grandchildren becomes a mission impossible. More or less, this kind of distinction in identity-making frustrates her all the time and further undermines her close relationships with her daughter and grandchildren, especially when it comes that all family members live in the same household.

This generational difference in identity-making has also been identified from an interview with a participant who belongs to the grandchild generation. Tong, a 1.5 generation who immigrated to NZ with his parents eight years ago, stated:

I think I am different from my grandparents, maybe also my parents. I treat NZ as my home, and I think I am a kiwi Chinese although I was not born here. I immigrated here with my parents in 2010. After that, I finished my high school here in Auckland, and I am doing my tertiary education here also. I feel more attached to NZ than China now.

Tong’s grandparents are living in China but come to NZ to visit them from time to time. Growing up, especially receiving an education here in NZ shapes his idea about who he is and where he belongs. His life transition from China to NZ during his early adolescent makes him realise the growing-up differences between him and his parents and grandparents. This phenomenon is actually in line with an important concept adopted by migration scholars to investigate changing identity of migrant children in the host society – that is called ‘ethnic attrition’ (Duncan and Trejo 2015; Emeka 2019), which indicates the children of immigrants may cease to identify with their country of origin when growing up in the host society.

Apart from the emotional struggle, this research also notices that the roles and positioning of different generations in the new Chinese immigrant families are changing, which challenges the traditional Chinese family hierarchy. This consequently results in some inter-generational contradictions and power struggles within families. The research finds that while the grandparent generation is highly dependent, the adult immigrant generation is usually the backbone of their families placed at the frontline to deal with the family’s livelihood. Such status indicates that the adult immigrant generation becomes more dominant and powerful than usual compared to many non-immigrant Chinese families, particularly their power in family decision-making process. Remembering that traditional filial piety permits the highest and most respectful position of the older parents in Chinese families. In many non-immigrant Chinese families, filial piety confers the older adults power to have more influence in the family decision-making whereby their opinions and interests should be highly respected and strictly followed (Yue and Ng 1999; Whyte 2004). However, the research on new Chinese immigrant families unveils that the changing positioning of the adult immigrant generation confers on them the confidence to override their older parents’ position in the families and family decision-making. Under such a circumstance, quite often, the older parents feel challenged; thus, some inter-generational tensions occur. For example, Huang, a grandmother who just moved out of her daughter’s house, told us:

I am tired to be powerless in front of them [her daughter and son in law], I have no say in the family. They don’t listen to me and we always fight with each other. So, I think I’d better move out by myself.

Zhang, a grandfather also expressed his feelings and tried to rationalise the reasons for the changing power relations in his family:

I was usually very dominant in decision-making in my family. Everybody listened to me and did things accordingly. However, things have been changed after I moved to NZ. I am dependent on Yong [his son] for everyday life, and he pays everything and his wife is running the household. I feel I cannot criticise him like the way I did before. I have to constrain myself and be modest because I don’t have any power in the house because I don’t contribute much to the household economically. Therefore, I cannot push them around. I know that I have to adapt to the new situation. But you know, once you get used to something, it is hard to make a change.

The quotes above reflect on the reality that the inter-generational power relations are being reconfigured in those reunited multi-generational immigrant families during the migration and settlement processes mainly due to the changing financial arrangement as well as the human agency of different members within the family.

In addition, though it is not like the drastic change of power-relations between the adult immigrant generation and their older parents, the interviews also reveal some critical inter-generational gap between the grandparents and grandchildren. The gap is mainly attributed to the distinct life and educational experiences that both generations have lived in different social contexts and with linguistic barriers with each other; as a consequence, a sense of disconnection between these two generations occurs. Ding, a grandmother revealed her sorrow:

I can feel that sometimes Maggie [her granddaughter] gets really annoying towards me. She does not listen to me and just does her own things like I am not here. Well, I love her, don’t get me wrong. She is a lovely girl. But with no efficient communication with her, she is just a beautiful girl who keeps a distance from me. I try to not put too many rules on her; otherwise, she will be even far away from us. This hurts me a lot but I have to keep this with myself.

To mitigate this generational gap, the research finds that the adult immigrant generation quite often plays a role of middleman to ‘bridge’ between their children and older parents. Chi, a father of two, mentioned:

Regardless of the language issues between them [the grandparents and grandchildren], they are very different in terms of lifestyle, cultural orientation, and so on … So, I often feel like I am caught in the middle between them. When they have troubles to understand each other, I have to become the middleman to mediate their misunderstandings and even some contradictions … it could be quite stressful sometimes.

This mediation role the first generational adult parents play once again confirmes that they are the backbone of their families. They not only need to undertake the major financial and practical responsibilities for their family livelihood but also need to do the emotional work to keep up a healthy family environment whereby there is no relationship crisis among family members and everybody is happy.

Conclusion

Using the case of the new Chinese immigrant families in NZ, this paper brings the aspect of ‘forced’ immigrant family separation into a sharp focus and discusses the importance of family reunification for the immigrant families under the context of a neoliberal immigration regime. From a multi-generational perspective, the paper also brings transnational migration and the inter-generational dynamics of immigrant families into close dialogue.

Firstly, the findings show that, for many adult Chinese immigrants, it is a moral duty to bring their older parents to NZ for family reunification. This is culturally grounded on the concept of filial piety. Filial piety associated with immigrant family reunification among these immigrant families also has a reciprocal dimension in which when the older parents receive filial care, they also make contributions to their families by providing free childcare for the younger generations and undertaking major housekeeping tasks. The efforts made by both the older parents and adult immigrant children are towards the ultimate goal of maintaining the livelihood for the multi-generational families. Therefore, it can be concluded that the underlying motivations for family reunification and provision of filial care for the older parents are in a practical and normative dualism. This duality of pragmatic and normative motivations may not only co-exist in new Chinese immigrants’ reasoning of family reunification but also be common for immigrant families from other cultural backgrounds.

Secondly, the research finds that there is a generational dimension in the filial morality pursued by these Chinese families. For the adult immigrant generation, filial morality can be internalised with feelings of guilt if they are not able to bring their older parents to NZ. For the grandchild generation, filial piety and in specific filial care is still of relevance to them. The younger generations learn about the importance of providing filial care for the older generations from their immigrant parents. Therefore, it is fair to say that filial piety still frames the relationship in these multi-generational Chinese immigrant families.

Last but not least, the findings reveal that multi-generational new Chinese immigrant families face both external and internal challenges arisen from the migration process and settlement, as well as the changing family structures and dynamics. Externally, NZ’s increasingly restrictive family immigration policy causes many family members from new Chinese immigrant families to live separately. While the emotional cost for maintaining families across national borders is hard to measure, the financial burden and physical challenges the families endure with family separation are more obvious. Internally, these Chinese immigrant families have to deal with the emerging generational contradictions and differences too. Some family-specific factors, including family structure and formation, financial arrangements, different life experiences and sense of identity, and the transforming roles played by different family members through different life courses influence their family relations.

The research demonstrates the dynamics of the inter-generational relations among the new Chinese immigrant families. Thus, it provides an important reference to the research of transnational immigrant families. It also provides insights about the contemporary understanding of aged care for older immigrants – this is an emerging research area that intersects migration, family and gerontological studies. The research also challenges the traditional nuclear-structured transnational family research paradigm by advocating the application of multi-generational perspective in guiding transnational family research. By doing so, future transnational family research could go beyond the existing theoretical boundary to reach wider ranges of transnational family practices and more family members under different cultural contexts, particularly to those who emphasise extended family structures.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund (Fast-Start) [Grant Number 16-MAU-023].

Notes

1 ‘New Chinese immigrant’ in the NZ context is a term that usually refers to Chinese who emigrated to NZ after the introduction of the Immigration Act 1987, which abolished the ‘traditional origin’ preference term that favoured British immigrants. Among the new Chinese immigrants, the three major sources are immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the PRC. These three groups plus Chinese from other countries (e.g. Malaysia, Indonesia etc.) are all categorised as new Chinese immigrants in NZ. New Chinese immigrants are distinct from the earlier Chinese immigrants in NZ. The earliest Chinese immigrants to NZ were almost exclusively males, with little or no education, originating from rural Southern China, either directly or by way of other countries, and they immigrated primarily for the economic opportunities found in the gold mines in the Western world and the tin mines and plantations in Central America. The majority of the new Chinese immigrants are ethnically more diverse, as well as highly educated and possess specialised skills or financial capital, which lets them qualify and meet the entry criteria of NZ.

2 The two terms - ‘China’ and ‘the PRC’ refer to the same country. These two terms are used in the paper interchangeably.