Population aging and migration are two formidable social trends that reshape the demographic profiles of many countries. With population aging that is occurring in most part of the world, advancing long and productive lives for the burgeoning number of older adults is a topic of increasing significance. At the same time, intensified population mobility, both within and beyond a country’s boundary, challenges the migrant families’ ability to provide reliable care for their aging family members, possibly leading to reduced eldercare, weakened family relationships, and poorer physical and mental health of older adults in these families.
While the literature on immigrant families has largely derived from young immigrant populations from Europe or Latin America (Glick, Citation2010), this special issue focuses on the relatively less studied population of East Asian older adults. Addressing the intersection between aging and migration in the family context, this special issue examines the intergenerational relations and well-being of East Asian older adults in various types of migrant families in both East Asia and the United States. Collectively, this collection of work addresses two overarching questions: (a) To what extent does migration affect intergenerational relations in migrant families in both migration origin and destination countries? (b) What are the implications of these family dynamics on the well-being of older adults? Using both secondary and original data, this collection of work sheds light on the experience of older adults in transnational families in East Asia, in which children move abroad, and immigrant families in the United States, in which older adults themselves are immigrants.
Transnational families in East Asia
What happens to older adults when their children move abroad? Is the influence comparable to that of internal migration, in which children move to another city instead of another country? These questions have been rarely addressed with quantitative data. Using survey data of 332 older Chinese in Beijing, Liu and colleagues compared levels of monetary, instrumental, and emotional support received by four parent-child groups: older adults and international migrant children, older adults and internal migrant children (who migrated to other cities in China), older adults and local children (living in the same city as their parents) and older adults and coresiding children. The findings provide some evidence to the challenges of maintaining traditional family functions in the migration context—although older adults received comparable levels of intergenerational support from international and internal migrant children, they have fewer care exchanges or emotionally close relationships with both groups of migrant children.
Having children move abroad also affects intergenerational relationships through the practice of grandparenting. Xu, Guo, and colleagues’ work showed that although Chinese older adults in transnational families were less likely to provide childcare to their migrant children than to non-migrant children, providing such care to migrant children was associated with significantly more instrumental and financial support from them than from their non-migrant children. In this sense, their migrant children seemed to compensate their absence and childcare provided by their distant parents with more practical and financial support.
Taking a step forward, Guo and colleagues used latent class analysis to examine the overall patterns of intergenerational relations in Chinese transnational families by examining multiple indicators, including living arrangement, frequency of contact, support exchanges, emotional cohesion, conflict, and sense of filial obligations. Their research revealed diverse family experiences in transnational families. While the majority of these families reported frequent contact, reciprocal and close relations, and strong filial commitment, more than one-fourth of them had weak cohesion, high conflict, and low filial satisfaction, which represent potential risks for the well-being of older adults in those families.
Overall, the three articlesillustrate both the resiliency and the challenges faced by migrant families in adapting to the transnational living arrangement. These findings show that while it is important to help older adults in transnational families remain connected with their family members who live far away, they should also cultivate resources embedded in the local social networks. Regardless of the type of migration, relationship with children will continue to play a pivotal role in the well-being of older adults in migrant families. One practice implication is that efforts should be made to promote family values and intergenerational cohesion among East Asian migrant children.
Immigrant families in the United States
Compared to older adults in transnational families in their country of origin, older immigrants who live in a different country may be at a higher risk for health and mental health challenges due to the triple jeopardy of being an older adult, an immigrant, and an ethnic minority. Because the lives of older immigrants inextricably link with their families for both practical and cultural reasons, the family again is a key setting to understand the needs of older immigrants as well as to promote their well-being.
Using data from the largest population-based study on older Chinese in the United States (i.e., the Population Study of ChINese Elderly [PINE]), Chen and colleagues reported that the quality of life of these older immigrants was closely related to both positive family support and negative family strains. In addition, the protective effect of close family relations and risky effect of negative family relations are stronger among individuals with high levels of acculturation, meaning that maintaining cohesive family relationships seem to be even more important for older immigrants who are more adapted to the American society.
Using a convenience sample of Chinese older immigrants in Los Angeles, Mao and colleagues’ work provided mixed results of intergenerational support on older immigrants’ functional limitations. They found that pathways varied from different dimensions of intergenerational support to different aspects of functional limitations. Specifically, having a close relationship with their children was associated with fewer limitations in instrumental activities of daily living, whereas living with them or receiving financial support from them were related to more limitations in these aspects. Similar to Chen and colleagues, Mao and colleagues also found that the associations between intergenerational support and functional limitations were conditioned upon older immigrants’ acculturation levels. For instance, the potential protective effect of receiving help on functional limitations was stronger among those who had lived in the United States for a longer period of time.
Overall, the two studies shed light on the nature of ethnic aging and provide useful information for practitioners to promote successful aging among the rapidly increasing population of older immigrants in the United States. For instance, including assessment of conflictual family relationships is necessary to better understand the mental health risks of older immigrants, regardless of their acculturation level. More effort is also needed to help older immigrants maintain independence, particularly financial independence, which in turn seems to benefit their physical health.
Comparing older immigrants in the United States and their counterparts in East Asia
Research cannot fully understand the consequences of immigration and acculturation on individuals and families without considering relevant information in the place of origin. Without data on the immigrant source population, studies are limited in their ability to understand how family patterns are altered, adapted, and accommodated upon immigration and acculturation, and how this process affects individual well-being. Two articles in this special issue address this gap by using unique comparable data that were collected in both United States and East Asia.
Kim and colleagues compared expectation of filial piety, the core family norm in East Asia that emphasizes adult children’s obligations in care and respect for their aging family members, between older adults in Korea and older Korean-Americans. They found that the two groups had overall similar levels of filial piety expectation, showing older immigrants’ strong adherence to this traditional cultural norm. However, older Koreans in Korea reported significantly higher expectations on financial support than older Korean-Americans. They also identified similar and unique predictors of filial expectation between the two groups. For older Korea- Americans, a longer stay in the United States was associated with lower levels of filial expectation.
By comparing Chinese older adults in China and Chinese older immigrants in the Unites States, Xu, Liu, and colleagues reported that the latter group had significantly higher levels of worry. In addition, whereas emotional closeness with adult children was predictive of less worry in both groups, having some local friends seemed to have a stronger beneficial effect on older immigrants than on non-immigrant older adults.
Together, both studies represent a relatively new and substantive departure from the traditional approach of studying immigrant families using information from both immigrant sending and receiving areas. By linking the immigrant sending and receiving contexts, these studies are able to capture the hard-to-measure family processes that immigrants and their families undergo, showing older immigrants’ maintenance of their heritage culture, but also their need to establish new social networks in the receiving society.
Conclusion
By systematically examining East Asian older adults in transnational and immigrant families, this special issue provides a comprehensive picture of the diverse aging experience in the accelerated trend of population mobility. These findings help to strengthen the rigor and explanatory purview of aging and family theories that have mainly derived from literature on White non-migrant populations. Overall, they reveal how macro-level factors such as out-migration and cultural norms shape micro-level family behaviors, aging experience, and individual well-being. Whereas these findings demonstrate the importance of maintaining traditional family norms for cohesive family relations and favorable individual well-being among older adults in rapid social changes, they also reveal evolving expectations of these older adults on living arrangements and support exchanges. This knowledge is critical to identifying immigrant individuals and families who experience adjustment difficulties in the acculturation process and to developing programs to facilitate healthy adaption in a culturally sensitive way.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.