Abstract
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted since 2009 with Cantonese-speaking Chinese senior migrants in Boston’s downtown Chinatown and its satellite community in Quincy, MA, this paper contributes to a growing scholarly literature on the problem of senior support within the changing dynamics of contemporary Chinese family life by highlighting how the paid and unpaid caregiving work performed by Chinese-born senior migrants in the U.S. provides a means for them to act strategically to secure their own support in older age. The paper describes how these senior migrants work to negotiate their value within the family through caregiving while dealing with the familial conflicts that also arise in the process.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The mandated retirement age in China is 60 for men and 50–55 for women. However, for Chinese seniors in rural areas, these ages may not matter, since many seniors need to continue to work in agricultural production to support themselves as they grow older.
Boston’s Chinatown serves as the regional hub, followed by Quincy, which has almost 15,000 Chinese residents, forming the majority of Quincy’s 24 % Asian population (City of Quincy 2013). My data collection has centered on Chinese seniors who have immigrated to the U.S. since 1990 at the age of 60 or older. All participant observation took place in Boston or Quincy Chinatown organizations and residential buildings in which Cantonese was the primary language of communication, and I conducted all research interviews primarily in Cantonese, although sometimes also in Mandarin or in Toisanese (with the help of a Toisanese-Cantonese interpreter).
In Massachusetts, almost 20 % of Chinese Americans aged 55–64 are low income, and that number jumps to almost 45 % for individuals aged 65–74 and 55 % for those over 75 (Lo 2006).
In Massachusetts (where in 2010 7.3 % of migrants were Chinese-born), recent Chinese senior migrants fall roughly into two groups. Migrants with longstanding family ties to the area tend to originate from rural areas in southeast China, speak a Cantonese regional dialect, have low levels of education, and live in Boston’s densely populated Chinatown or in nearby urban, lower class communities (like Quincy). In contrast, seniors who have migrated through the sponsorship of adult children often originate from urban areas across China, speak Mandarin, are educated, and have held jobs in government, teaching, and other professional capacities. This latter group tends to reside in wealthy, suburban locations and is rapidly growing. These two groups are not, however, mutually exclusive, and my interviewees are drawn from both groups (see also Newendorp 2011).
Some Cantonese speaking seniors also speak Mandarin, but many do not. Toisanese refers to the Cantonese regional dialect spoken by individuals from the Toisan (Taishan) area of Guangdong Province. This area was the primary sending region for Chinese who migrated to the U.S. beginning in the mid-1800s and continues to be an important sending area for Cantonese migrants to the U.S. today. (See Hsu 2000 for more details on the transnational connections between Toisan and the U.S.).
Many of my interviewees, particularly those from urban areas, had small pensions that they received in China from the work unit (danwei) to which they belonged as working adults. Pensions for seniors in China vary considerably depending on the size of the danwei and position held (see Davis-Friedmann 1991). My interviewees who did have pensions explained that their pensions were very small, generally not more than enough money to take friends to lunch on return visits to China or contribute to family caregiving expenses for grandchildren or elderly parents in China.
Mrs. Lung is a pseudonym, as are all names of Chinese senior migrants used in this article.
References
Chi, I., Chappell, N. L., & Lubben, J. (2001). Elderly Chinese in pacific-Rim countries: Social support and integration. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press.
City of Quincy Demographic and Census Data Analysis (2013) Report compiled by Elizabeth Manning, with assistance from Stephen Connelly, (http://www.quincyma.gov/CityOfQuincy_Content/documents/Quincy%20Demographic%20Update%20May%202013.pdf).
Constable, N. (1999). At home but Not at home: Filipina narratives of ambivalent returns. Cultural Anthropology, 14(2), 203–228.
Constable, N. (2007). Maid to order in Hong Kong: Stories of migrant workers. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Davis-Friedmann, D. (1991). Long lives: Chinese elderly and the communist revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hochschild, A. (2003). “Love and Gold.” In Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, eds. B. Ehrenreich and A. Hochschild, Metropolitan Press, pp. 15–30.
Hsu, M. (2000). Dreaming of gold, dreaming of home: Transnationalism and migration between the United States and China 1882–1943. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ikels, C. (1988). Aging and adaptation: Chinese in Hong Kong and the United States. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books.
Ikels, C. (Ed.). (2004a). Filial piety: Practice and discourse in contemporary east Asia. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Ikels, C. (2004b). “Serving the Ancestors, Serving the State: Filial Piety and Death Ritual in Contemporary Guangzhou.” In Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia, ed. by Charlotte Ikels. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Kleinman, A. (2009). Caregiving: the odyssey of becoming more human. The Lancet, 373(9660), 292–293.
Kuhn, P. (2008). Chinese among others: Emigration in modern times. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Lo, S. (2006). Chinese Americans in Massachusetts: Portraits of Asian American subgroups in Massachusetts. Boston: The Institute of Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
McCabe, K. (2012). “Chinese Immigrants in the United States.” Migration Policy Institute on-line article published January 18, 2012, (http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/chinese-immigrants-united-states-1).
Newendorp, N. (2008). Uneasy reunions: Immigration, citizenship, and family life in post-1997 Hong Kong. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Newendorp, N. (2011). “Chinese-born Seniors on the Move: Transnational Mobility and Family Life between the Pearl River Delta and Boston, Massachusetts.” Institute for Asian American Studies Publications. Paper 26.
Newendorp, N. (2014). “Boston’s Chinatowns and Recent Senior Migration.” Paper presented at the Massachusetts Historical Society Immigration and Urban History Seminar, March 25, 2014.
Parrenas, R. (2001). Transgressing the nation-state: The partial citizenship and ‘imagined (global) Community’ of migrant Filipina domestic workers. Signs, 26(4), 1129–1154.
Parrenas, R. (2005a). Long distance intimacy: class, gender, and intergenerational relations among mothers and children in Filipino transnational families. Global Networks, 5(4), 317–336.
Parrenas, R. (2005b). Children of global migration: Transnational families and gendered woes. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Rodriguez-Galan, M. B. (2013). Grandmothering in life-course perspective: A study of Puerto Rican grandmothers raising grandchildren in the United States. In L. Caitrin & D. Jason (Eds.), Transitions and transformations: Cultural perspectives on aging and the life-course. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Terrazas, A. and Jeanne, B. (2010). “Chinese Immigrants in the United States.” Report published by the Migration Policy Institute.
To, Wing-kai. (2008). Chinese in Boston 1870–1965. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishers.
“The Rise of Asian Americans”. (2012). Pew Center Research Report.
Watson, J., & Rawski, E. (Eds.). (1990). Death ritual in late imperial and modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yan, Y. (2003). Private life under socialism: Love, intimacy, and family change in a Chinese village: 1949–1999. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Zelizer, V. A. (1985). Pricing the priceless child: The changing social value of children. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Zhang, H. (2009). “The New Realities of Aging in Contemporary China: Coping with the Decline in Family Care.” In The Cultural Context of Aging: Worldwide Perspectives (Third Edition), ed. by Jay Sokolovsky. Westport CT and London: Praeger.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Informed Consent
As there is no person or personal data appearing in the paper, there is no one from whom a permission should be obtained in order to publish personal data.
Ethical Treatment of Experimental Subjects (Animal and Human)
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This research was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Harvard University. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Newendorp, N. Negotiating Family “Value”: Caregiving and Conflict Among Chinese-Born Senior Migrants and Their Families in the U.S.. Ageing Int 42, 187–204 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-016-9269-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-016-9269-z