Professional remittances: how ageing returnees seek to contribute to the homeland

ABSTRACT

This article uses ageing Taiwanese returnees to illustrate how older migrants draw on their accumulated knowledge, experiences, and networks in their host society to contribute to their home society. Drawing on data collected from life history interviews with ageing return migrants, I argue that changing notions of social membership across life stages, coupled with the working experiences that professional middle-class migrants accumulate in the destination society, motivate ageing expatriates to return and devote their later lives to their home society. Specifically, I highlight how ageing migrants seek to bridge the gap between their ancestral and destination societies, further prompting social and cultural changes transnationally. Nevertheless, the extent to which ageing returnees can change their home society is conditioned by structural constraints already in place. Many ageing returnees cannot make as many changes as they would like, since they, as individuals, have trouble bringing about structural changes that require collective efforts. It is against this backdrop that many older returnees develop narratives of Americanisation (and insufficient Americanisation) to explain the difficulties that they encountered when trying to contribute to Taiwan. These narratives point to a hierarchy that ageing returnees believe exists between American and Taiwanese society.

KEYWORDS:

• Ageing
• migration
• belonging
• transnationalism
• social membership

Acknowledgement

This article benefits tremendously from the constructive feedbacks of three anonymous reviewers and the helpful instructions of Professor Paul Statham and Dr James Hampshire regarding the revision. I also gratefully acknowledge the insightful questions, comments and suggestions of Russell King, Katie Walsh, Lena Näre and all the other participants of the 2014 conference of ETMU (The Society for the Study of Ethnic Relations and International Migration). In addition, I thank my colleagues at Hong Kong Baptist University for their helpful feedbacks on the earlier version of this paper. Finally, I am indebted to Nathaniel Tuohy and Jill Smith for their meticulous editorial assistances.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research is generously funded by Andrew Mellon Foundation, Brandeis University, Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, and Hong Kong Baptist University.