Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese ...

&KDQJLQJ*HQHUDWLRQDO'\QDPLFVLQ&KLQHVH$PHULFD DFURVV7LPH 0LQ=KRX Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, Volume 18, Number 1/2, Spring/Summer 2009, pp. 89-116 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\8QLYHUVLW\RI7RURQWR3UHVV DOI: 10.1353/dsp.2015.0008

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Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America across Time1 Min Zhou Nanyang Technological University, Singapore This article examines the causes and consequences of generational formation in the Chinese diaspora in America. Based on a review of the existing literature and a reanalysis of data collected from my prior research on China-born immigrants in the United States, I document the formation of immigrant cohorts in four historical periods of Chinese immigration and illustrate how contexts of emigration and host-society reception intertwine to influence the evolution of immigrant cohorts across time and, in turn, produce variations on patterns of immigrant adaptation, leading to differences in the outcomes of host-society integration and levels of homeland engagement. Keywords: generation, Chinese diaspora, Chinese America, Chinese exclusion, Chinese immigration

Emigration from China is centuries old. Long before European colonization, the Chinese had moved across sea and land to other parts of Asia and the rest of the world to pursue alternative livelihoods. As a result, over time, the Chinese diaspora has spread to over 150 countries around the globe. It was estimated in 2009 that more than 45 million people living outside mainland China could trace their ancestry to China, and about three-quarters were concentrated in East and Southeast Asia (Liu 2011). Such an expansive diaspora is captured in an ancient saying, “Wherever the ocean waves touch, there are overseas Chinese” (Poston and Yu 1990, 481). Chinese America makes up only a fraction (less than 10%) of the Chinese-descent population worldwide. Even though it began to take shape only in the mid-nineteenth century, it is one of the largest and oldest diasporic Chinese communities outside Southeast Asia, and the United States has served as the most preferred destination for emigrants from China since the late 1970s. In this

Min Zhou, “Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America across Time,” Diaspora 18, 1/2 (2009): 89–116. © 2015 Diaspora: a journal of transnational studies. 89

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 article I trace historical waves of Chinese immigration to the United States to examine the causes and consequences of generational formation. Based on a review of existing literature and a reanalysis of data collected from my prior research on China-born immigrants in the United States, I illustrate how a historically grounded conception of generations, which is central to this special issue, can help explain variations in the patterns of immigrant adaptation, outcomes of integration, and levels of homeland engagement. Immigrant Generations in the Diaspora The classical notion of diaspora is tied to ethnicity and implies exile and aspirations to return. From this perspective, a diaspora is defined as a distinct ethnic community vis-à-vis a host society, along with a shared collective identity constructed on bounded solidarity and an orientation toward a real or imagined ancestral homeland (Brubaker 2005). If a migrant community maintains a distinct group identity over time, it can qualify as a diaspora (Mokrushyna 2013). Diasporas may evolve into multi-generational ethnic communities but may also dissolve into merely symbolic existence or even disappear over generations. Chinese America is arguably a diaspora, one that has been continually shaped and reshaped by waves of new immigrants from China. Notwithstanding a relatively long history of settlement, Chinese America has maintained a distinct diasporic identity, one that is in constant flux, susceptible not only to structural and cultural changes but also to generational change. In migration studies, generation is often defined by an individual’s place of birth relative to immigrant parents or grandparents. For example, the first generation refers to foreign-born immigrants, who may be further categorized into the 1.25, 1.5, and 1.75 generations (the foreignborn who migrated as dependent children at different ages), whereas the second generation refers to native-born individuals with one or two foreign-born parent(s), and the third generation is the native-born with one or two native-born parent(s) (Rumbaut 1991). This biologically based conception has been widely adopted by both assimilationist and transnationalist scholars (Eckstein 2002, 2004). Alternatively, generations may be defined by specific sociohistorical contexts. Karl Mannheim ([1952] 1997) posits that particular social and historical events shape individuals’ lived experiences and that differences in individuals’ responses to similar sociohistorical events can produce distinct historically grounded generations. Such social formations have a significant impact not only on a particular age cohort but also across age cohorts. Susan Eckstein (2004) uses such a historically grounded definition of generation to capture the diversity among Cuban émigrés in the United States. She argues that pre-migration experiences and the timing of emigration have had long-term impacts on 90

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America Cuban-born migrants as well as their US-born offspring. For example, the 1959–1964 cohort of Cuban émigrés had very little first-hand lived experience with Castro’s regime. As political refugees, they developed a distinct generational consciousness that was “conservative, devout Catholic, elitist, and deeply anti-Castro and anti-Communist” (Eckstein 2004, 131). The formation of this social generation shaped not only the Cuban born but also their US-born children, distinguishing them in significant ways from post-1980 Cuban émigrés, who had grown up under Castro. Similarly, Mette Louise Berg (2011) developed the concept of “diasporic generations” based on her ethnographic study of Cuban émigrés in Spain. Her study suggests that Cuban émigrés are not a homogeneous group or community but comprise different generations shaped by their varying pre-migration experiences. While these studies of the Cuban diaspora emphasize pre-migration lived experiences as a key determinant for generational formations, studies of the Chinese diaspora across the globe emphasize the interaction between pre-migration and post-migration lived experiences and the interaction between structural circumstances in both sending and receiving countries. Wang (1991) identified four dominant patterns of Chinese emigration in different historical periods, shedding light on the dynamics of generational formation. The first pattern was the trader (huashang) pattern, which characterized Chinese emigration before full-fledged Western colonization. In this period, Chinese traders were inherently transnational, moving back and forth between their countries of settlement and homeland, maintaining dual households. The second pattern was the coolie/labor (huagong) pattern, with labor migration resulting from Western colonization between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1920s. Labor migrants shared similar pre-migration experiences and were mostly temporary migrants intending to eventually return to their homeland. The third pattern, typical of the first half of the twentieth century, involved sojourners (huaqiao), Chinese migrants who settled abroad but remained distinctly Chinese and were unwilling, or unable, to become fully incorporated as citizens where they settled. The fourth pattern involved post–World War II remigrants (huayi), people of Chinese descent who were born in China but had acquired naturalized citizenship in their countries of residence or those who were born and have citizenship status in their countries of birth outside China.2 Within each of these historical patterns prior to 1990, Wang paid special attention to how pre-migration social status (e.g., occupation) intertwined with host-society reception to shape the experiences of adaptation in the host society and relations with the homeland among Chinese overseas. In this article, I draw on the theoretical idea of historically grounded immigrant generations, developed by Eckstein, Berg, and associates, and on Wang’s historical patterns of Chinese emigration to develop an analytical framework in which I conceptualize a generation as shaped 91

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 by and grounded in particular migration histories, and an immigrant cohort as a subset of a generation. I address two questions: (1) What affects generational formations in a diasporic community, and how may immigrant cohorts evolve within a generation or change over time? (2) How are generational formations associated with differences in patterns of immigrant adaptation that lead to different outcomes of integration and transnationalism? Figure 1 outlines my analytical framework. In it I consider generational formations to be determined by groupspecific migration histories that entail the interaction between migrants’ contexts of emigration and the host-society reception. Immigrant cohorts may emerge as subsets within a particular generation based on differences in pre-migration lived experiences or means of entry into the host society. Contexts of emigration are associated with a migrant’s socioeconomic background, his or her access to local social networks facilitating migration, and the political circumstances of the sending state, including emigration policies. Host-society reception pertains to the immigration policies of the receiving state; the migrant’s group position in the social hierarchy of the host society, including public attitudes toward the group; and the existence and organization of the diasporic community. These two sets of contextual factors intertwine across time to create historically grounded generational cohorts. In turn, diverse generational formations have consequences for host-society integration and homeland engagement. My analysis focuses on China-born immigrants in the United States and is organized in two main parts. First, I offer a descriptive analysis of immigrant cohorts that have evolved along the historical axis of Chinese immigration and the associated patterns of adaptation. I then discuss how generational formations are associated with variations in immigrant integration and transnationalism. “Birds of Passage”: The “Free” Migration Period (1848–1882) The history of Chinese in America dates back to the late 1840s, beginning with the arrival of contract laborers, known as huagong in Chinese, which paralleled the huagong pattern impacted by European colonization in Asia that Wang (1991) identified. Although immigration to the United States at the time was unrestricted, Chinese laborers to America were not “free” laborers in the true sense of the word. Rather, they were highly controlled contract or indentured laborers who initially arrived in large numbers in Hawaii and the US mainland along the West Coast. During the 1850s and 1860s, some 223,100 Chinese entered the United States legally (US Department of Homeland Security 2013). Their transpacific journey was primarily financed by the Chinese credit ticket system, in which brokers advanced the cost of the trip to destinations and ensured that their advances would be repaid via control 92

Liberal Migration Period Free-Will Settlers (Family migrants, student migrants, undocumented migrants, re-migrants, refugees)

Restricted Migration Period Forced-Choice Settlers (Family migrants, political refugees, re-migrants)

Exclusion Period Forever Sojourners (Laborers & merchants)

“Free” Migration Period Birds of Passage (Contract laborers)

Figure 1: Generational formation: An analytical framework

State policies Group position in society Diasporic community

Host Society Reception

Socioeconomic backgrounds Local social networks State political circumstances

Contexts of Emigration

Patterns of adaptation

Host Society Integration

Homeland Engagement

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America

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Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 over laborers’ employment (Zhou 1992; Zo 1978). In Hawaii contract laborers worked on plantations (McKeown 2001). In the US West, they first worked in mines, then on railroads, and subsequently in select industries and agriculture (Chan 1989; Saxton 1975). Most of the contract laborers worked for non-Chinese employers in the expanding labor market of the host society. During this time, a class of Chinese merchants evolved to take advantage of the new opportunities for profit. However, the migration of Chinese merchants was not associated with the distinct trader (huashang) pattern in precolonial Southeast Asia that Wang (1991) noted. Chinese merchants opened up businesses where their co-ethnic workers lived, including in work camps, to provide fellow countrymen with familiar and culturally specific goods, ranging from imported ethnic foods, clothing, and herbal medicines to tobacco and liquor. Over time, their businesses became meeting places where the socially isolated laborers gathered and engaged in nostalgia and personal interactions (Zhou and Kim 2001). Despite their different occupations, both Chinese laborers and merchants belong to the same immigrant generation, which I call the generation of birds of passage. They came to America to make money, or, in their own words, to “dig gold in the gold mountain,” with no intention to resettle permanently nor to integrate into the host society. As contract laborers, they merely adapted to life and work in America such that they could return home with gold and glory, a pattern of adaptation quite different from that of European immigrants in America during the same time period. However, geographic distance constrained their physical movement across the Pacific, and their transnational engagement was limited to sending remittances to their families back home. The lack of integration among Chinese laborers was largely shaped by their shared pre-migration lived experiences. In the main, both the laborers and merchants were men subject to similar family situations. They used migration as a strategy to keep their families in mainland China afloat economically and to maintain their transnational households across the Pacific (McKeown 1999, 2001; Zhou 1992). Married men typically left their families behind; unmarried men returned home to get married but then left their brides behind to take care of their parents and raise children. Although they were “bachelors” in America, they were part of the traditional Chinese family and bounded by it. Families in China referred to the migrants during this historical period as gum san hak (gold mountain guests). Hak, or guests, connotes the image of the temporary migrants, who were expected to return to their families in China with gold—money and wealth (Hsu 2000; Zhou 1992). Second, both laborers and merchants hailed from the same places of origin—rural villages in Si Yi and the Pearl River Delta regions of southern Guangdong Province in China—and had the same bonds of placebased social structures: home villages. For example, among those who 94

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America resided in Hawaii in the 1880s, 75% were from a single county— Zhongshan—in the Pearl River Delta region; and among those who migrated to California before the Chinese Exclusion Act, nearly 75% were from merely four counties—Taishan, Kaiping, Enping, and Xinhui—in the Si Yi region (Hsu 2000; Zhou 1992). Common origins were not just coincidental but rather reflected persistent and continuous kin- or clanbased migrations within China and from China to other parts of the world (McKeown 1999; Yun 2008). Third, both laborers and merchants were exposed to a culture of emigration as an alternative means of livelihood. What drove them to seek work abroad was not merely poverty, overpopulation, lack of economic opportunities, or social turmoil. Many Chinese were impacted by much more devastating situations in other parts of China but did not migrate internationally. Rather, those who went abroad were enmeshed in intimate social relations with a long-standing tradition of overseas migration and access to transnational organizations that facilitated migration (McKeown 2001). Their move was facilitated by co-ethnic labor brokers who were their kin or fellow villagers, via labor contracts and the credit ticket system, which bound both laborers and merchants in the same migration network. Living and working in America was harsh but bearable for the birdsof-passage generation because the goal of an eventual return was clear. Yet even as they themselves expected, and were expected by their families, to return home, Chinese laborers soon realized that such a return was increasingly unattainable. Many could not afford to go home after their labor contract ended because their wages were barely enough for them to pay off debts or because their savings were too small to afford the hoped-for glorious return. They therefore had to delay their return in hopes of fulfilling their gold dream in the foreseeable future. Their prolonged stay, intertwined with changes in labor market conditions in the United States, led to the transition from temporary to long-term sojourning and the budding of a diasporic Chinese community in America. “Forever Sojourners”: The Exclusion Period (1882–1943) For sojourning Chinese laborers, the time frame for return was always in the near future. However, circumstances changed to make it more and more distant. When the mines were depleted, the railroads completed, and a recession set in, Chinese laborers became scapegoats for economic distress. In the 1870s “white” workers who experienced labor market insecurities and exploitation channeled their frustrations into racist attack on the Chinese. Racism and violence drove the Chinese out of the mines, farms, wool mills, and factories on the West Coast and pushed them into urban Chinatowns in major immigrant gateway cities, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago 95

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 (Chan 1989; Lee 2003). Under intense political pressure from organized labor against the Chinese, the US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 (Saxton 1975). The act prohibited importation of Chinese labor for ten years, and subsequently indefinitely, until its repeal in 1943 (Chan 1989; Daniels 2006). As a result, the number of new immigrants from China plunged from 133,000 in the 1870s to 15,000 in the 1890s and to a historic low of 5,800 in the 1930s. Chinese merchants were not excluded by law. However, they were drastically different from their counterparts in Chinese diasporic communities in Southeast Asia. The latter had established their elite status and dominance in the local economy and society and had proactively responded to Western colonization by carving out new occupational niches, expanding beyond maritime trade into farming of cash crops, such as rubber and sugar, and other land-based industries, such as tin and gold mining, while serving as agents for, or partners of, European colonists and other Westerners who traded in Southeast Asia (Wickberg 1999). Chinese exclusion in America subjected Chinese merchants to the same hostile host-society reception as their co-ethnic laborers and, paradoxically, also contributed to diasporic development. On the one hand, exclusion strengthened and expanded the existing diasporic networks. Despite legal restrictions, Chinese immigrants continued to enter the United States through illegal means. Longestablished ethnic networks used to bring contract laborers to the United States developed new nodes to facilitate continual importation of laborers, which involved agents in China, Hong Kong, Cuba, and Mexico, as well as San Francisco, New York, and other port cities in the United States. Some of the Chinese laborers entered under fictitious identities—taking on the identities of individuals who were legally entitled to reside in the United States. Others used substitution, in which traveling Chinese in transit switched places with Chinese who were legal residents or US citizens (Romero 2010). Yet others migrated on false papers, a phenomenon called “paper sons” (Lau 2007).3 Legal exclusion also fueled the development of a self-sustaining ethnic economy and a range of social organizations lodged in Chinatown, giving rise to a pattern of adaption via ethnic entrepreneurship and wage employment within the ethnic enclave. Merchants used Chinatown as a platform to launch businesses, providing jobs and culturally specific goods and services for fellow Chinese, while making Chinatown an exotic place serving to meet the occasional curiosity of a small non-Chinese clientele. Laborers served as a loyal co-ethnic labor force to Chinatown’s ethnic economy as well as consumers. In Chinatown both workers and merchants belonged to the same generation of exclusion despite differences in pre-migration socioeconomic backgrounds and post-migration occupational statuses. They came together to form mutual aid societies, which were based on family or clan, hometown, and merchant group affiliations; merchants 96

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America assumed leadership roles in these organizations and maintained reciprocal patron–client relations with co-ethnic laborers. For example, many merchants’ associations in old Chinatowns included workers as their members. These ethnic associations operated on the basis of a shared moral system, based on a patriarchal structure of rights and obligations, and a shared pool of resources, manifested in bounded solidarity and enforceable trust (Kuo 1977; Portes and Zhou 1992; Wong 1988; Zhou 1992). The shared basis for association among co-ethnics reinforced the interdependence between the settled merchant elite and the working-class immigrants, which served to ease overt class conflict within Chinatown. Chinese immigrants who entered the United States during the exclusion period, regardless of means of entry and occupational status, shared pre-migration experiences and a “gold dream” quite similar to those of the previous period. Hostile reception in the host society homogenized their class status and turned them into a generation of “forever sojourners” who still held to their sojourning dream but were unsure about when they could actually return. They were statutorily barred from citizenship and prohibited from participating in American life (Ngai 2008). They were forced to work and live in Chinatown, which developed into a self-sustaining bachelors’ society (Zhou 1992). Return to China remained a goal, but one increasingly unlikely to be attained. Legal exclusion increased the costs of movement to and from China while constraining opportunities in America to accumulate material wealth to bring home. Political turmoil in China, such as incessant fighting between local warlords, war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and the war of resistance against Japan, also created barriers to return. “Forced-Choice Settlers”: The Restricted Migration Period (1943–1979) In the post–World War II period, Chinese America underwent a gradual transition from a generation of sojourners to one of settlers, but this transition reflected a forced choice for Chinese immigrants, most of whom had immediate family members back in China. The forced choice was initially a product of US immigration quotas that applied to all immigrants regardless of national origin, and later of the closed-door policy of China. The repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, during World War II, in principle opened up Chinese immigration anew. However, few Chinese emigrated, owing to the national-origins quota system in effect since the implementation of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which allotted China an annual quota of only 105 immigrant visas. The main exception was that 10,000 Chinese entered the United States immediately after World War II as war brides, facilitated by the War Brides Act of 97

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 1945 (Daniels 2006). The arrival of Chinese women strengthened the Chinese immigrant family and began to transform an ethnic enclave of sojourning “bachelors” into a family-based community. Later, the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act enabled Chinese immigrants to become naturalized US citizens for the first time. The removal of legal barriers, along with a diminution of anti-Chinese sentiment, opened up opportunities for the Chinese to participate in mainstream America. For the first time Chinese immigrants had the option to resettle outside their ethnic enclaves. Concomitant with the structural changes favoring immigrant integration in the United States, the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), followed by the Cold War, shattered the sojourners’ dreams of ever returning to China, with or without “gold.” China not only closed its door to migration in or out of the country but also confiscated properties (housing and land) owned by overseas Chinese and their families and purged family members who had ties to the Chinese diaspora. Under the circumstances, Chinese immigrants were forced to shift their orientation from sojourning to resettlement in the United States and started to help relatives back home to emigrate whenever possible. Some forced-choice settlers were able to find better job opportunities in the mainstream labor market that now opened to them, and they eventually moved out of Chinatown. However, cultural and linguistic barriers kept the majority of them, including merchants, in ethnic enclaves. But unlike the generation of forever sojourners, many forcedchoice sojourners who were confined to Chinatown were compelled to pledge their US patriotism and demonstrate their anti-Communist, antiPRC stand (Yeh 2008). During this period of restricted immigration, two other unique immigrant cohorts emerged in addition to family migrants: political refugees and remigrants from the Chinese diaspora. Political refugees were pushed out of China because of war and the radical change of political regimes. The Chinese civil war between 1945 and 1949 drove hundreds of thousands of refugees to Hong Kong, then a British colony. Many more refugees fled with the defeated Kuomintang troops to Taiwan at the collapse of the Republic of China (RoC) and the founding of the PRC. In the 1950s the United States admitted Chinese political refugees, most of whom had already fled to Hong Kong and Taiwan before the Communist takeover (Skeldon 1996). According to official US immigration statistics, during the 1950s 8,836 emigrated to the United States from China (including some 5,000 students who had been studying in the United States and many mainland-born living outside of China), 13,781 from Hong Kong, and 721 from Taiwan (US Department of Homeland Security 2013). The political refugees had little in common with their co-ethnics who had migrated in earlier decades. They spoke mainly Mandarin rather than Cantonese and were of urban middle- and upper-class backgrounds. 98

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America They held professional jobs in the host labor market, residentially integrated into suburban white middle-class communities, and intentionally distanced themselves from co-ethnics who lived and worked in Chinatowns. Unlike political refugees from Communist Cuba and the Soviet Union who moved to the United States and Israel, respectively, described in other articles in this issue, Chinese political refugees who moved to the United States during the restricted migration period were relatively few in number and did not cluster geographically. They thereby formed a unique immigrant cohort, different from their co-ethnic settlers who were concentrated in Chinatowns as well as from other refugees from Communist countries. They formed few or weak ties to the existing diasporic community and kept homeland politics at arm’s length. Remigrants (huayi) formed another unique immigrant cohort. This cohort emerged in the 1960s and 1970s and was made up of those migrants who were born in China and had resettled in countries outside China.4 The United States implemented a major immigration reform in 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act, also known as the HartCellar Act. The act abolished the national-origins quota system and gave priority to family reunification and admission of highly skilled workers. However, in this period China shut down possibilities for emigration. After 1949 the newly founded PRC exercised tight control over population movements, within as well as across its borders. During the 1960s China experienced the dark days of the Cultural Revolution, in which relatives of Chinese overseas were publicly suspected of treason and Chinese were not allowed to emigrate. As a result, despite the liberal US immigration policy, fewer than 15,000 mainland Chinese moved to America between 1960 and 1979 (US Department of Homeland Security 2013). Among China-born migrants who entered the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, many had migrated to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries before the collapse of the RoC. Others were refugees who fled China at the time but were not granted refugee status to resettle in the United States. They were later able to benefit from the Hart-Cellar Act to obtain immigration visas to remigrate. Still others were students from Taiwan and Hong Kong who fled China with their parents and who were able to find work in the United States after completing their studies. They obtained immigrant visas under the sponsorship of their employers and later became naturalized citizens. Like the political refugees, most of the remigrants were highly educated and skilled professionals working in the mainstream host labor market and residing in white middle-class suburbs. “Free-Will Settlers”: The Liberal Migration Period (1979– Present) The year 1979 marked a new beginning for contemporary Chinese immigration to the United States. In this year China normalized 99

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 diplomatic relations with the United States and launched its economic reform program, which has continued until the present day with remarkable success. Several macro-structural factors in China had profound impacts on emigration. First, foreign investment in China, more than three-fourths of which came from the Chinese diaspora in the 1980s, helped restore transnational family ties and rebuild migration networks (Portes and Zhou 2012). Second, China removed barriers to emigration, easing requirements to obtain passports to travel and allowing Chinese citizens with overseas sponsors to emigrate. Third, China sponsored hundreds of thousands of scholars and students for academic exchanges or study abroad, while allowing many more to study abroad with private funding, first from their overseas relatives and, since 1990, from their newly enriched families in China. These factors, interacting with the liberalization of US immigration outlined above, have ushered in a new era of massive Chinese immigration, which shows no signs of slowing down. Between 1980 and 2012 (a period of 32 years), nearly 1.8 million Chinese immigrants came to the United States legally from mainland China, compared to fewer than 438,000 between 1850 and 1979 (a period of 129 years). The surge of immigration from China has led to exponential growth of the Chinese American population, from fewer than 812,000 in 1980 to more than 4.3 million in 2012. As of 2012, about 60% of the ethnic Chinese in the United States were foreign born.5 In the post-1979 period, China-born immigrants to the United States are “free-will settlers.” Compared to the forced-choice settlers of the earlier periods, the post-1979 generation is free from most of the structural barriers in the host society and homeland that used to constrain their transnational movements and integration. Understandably, given their large numbers, they are a diverse lot who cannot meaningfully be classified into a relatively homogeneous and distinct generation. New immigrant cohorts have emerged, but cohort boundaries are more fluid and overlapping, less distinct than those in previous periods. Three new immigrant cohorts have emerged among post-1979 Chinese immigrants—family migrants, student migrants, and undocumented migrants—while the existing cohorts of remigrants and refugees are undergoing changes. Family-based immigrants constitute nearly twothirds of the total immigrants from China, while employment-based immigrants make up about one-quarter, and refugees around one-tenth (US Department of Homeland Security 2013). Family migrants hail from diverse places of origin and socioeconomic backgrounds, including poor and low-skilled peasants and urban workers as well as the highly skilled, highly educated, and highly resourceful from the emerging middle and upper-middle classes. However, those who arrived before 1990 differ from those who have arrived after 1990 in two main respects. 100

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America First, the 1980s cohort was more or less an extension of the earlier generation of reluctant settlers, who now served as the key links in a chain of family migration. Because of this historical linkage, most of the family migrants who entered in the 1980s came from the historical migrant-sending regions (particularly the Si Yi and Pearl River Delta regions) of southern Guangdong Province. This was true of migrants from rural as well as urban backgrounds. In contrast, the post-1990 cohort has hailed from both rural and urban areas all over China, including many cities that historically had few international emigrants. Second, the 1980s cohort had more lived experiences with the negative outcomes of the Communist regime, especially the Cultural Revolution, and fewer experiences with the positive outcomes of China’s economic reform. In the decades before the open-door policy, immediate family members and relatives of overseas Chinese were subject to purges and stigmatization. They were discriminated against as “suspects,” anti-revolutionaries, or bourgeoisie. Family migrants of the 1980s, of rural and urban origins alike, were generally of low socioeconomic status and had little English language ability, few economic resources, minimum education, and few job skills suitable for the US labor market. They were segregated in ethnic enclaves regarding residence and/or work upon arrival in the United States. In contrast, the post-1990s cohort benefited from economic reforms in China that have given rise to a new urban middle class, including nouveaux riches, and that have by and large raised the standard of living for most Chinese. Those sponsored by political refugees and remigrants of the earlier period and by student migrants of the current period are able to reproduce the social class statuses of their sponsors. Family migrants of middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds are socioeconomically mobile. They are not only able to resettle in white middle-class suburbs but also capable of building new “ethnoburbs,” referring to new multiethnic and Chinese immigrant-dominant suburbs, and resettling there (Li 1997; Zhou 2009). Student migrants from China are essentially a post-1990 phenomenon. Since 1979 the Chinese government has sponsored hundreds of thousands of students to study abroad, while many others studied abroad with private funding, first from their overseas relatives and, since 1990, from their newly enriched families. The government has also sponsored visiting scholars on academic exchanges. The combined sources of public and private funding led more than 755,000 students to study in more than a hundred countries between 1979 and 2008. About half of them studied in the United States, and less than 15% returned to China upon completion of their studies.6 Most of these Chinese exchange students and scholars were high achievers in China and came to the United States to seek advanced training. For a variety of reasons, including better career opportunities, professional freedom of expression, higher incomes, and a more desirable lifestyle, many Chinese 101

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 scholars and students prolonged their stay and found employment in the United States upon completion of their research or degree programs. However, a single historic event, the Chinese government crackdown on the pro-democracy student movement in Tiananmen on 4 June 1989, made them seek permanent residency in the United States, hence a cohort of student migrants. In 1993 over sixty thousand Chinese students, scholars, and their families were granted permanent residency status, or “the June 4th green card,” as the Chinese call it, in conjunction with the US Senate bill (S1216) that offered protection for Chinese scholars and students.7 Unlike political refugees, however, most of these student migrants holding June 4th green cards have favorable attitudes toward their homeland, and they are actively engaged in immigrant transnationalism where opportunities arise. Most within this cohort are educated, and many have been willing to be retrained in more marketable fields. Most of them have succeeded at very quickly securing professional jobs in the mainstream US economy and have resettled in either ethnoburbs or white middle-class suburbs. Undocumented immigrants are also a post-1990 phenomenon. Known as “snake people,” undocumented Chinese immigrants have been smuggled to the United States by Chinese smugglers, who evolved from long-standing migration networks that used to facilitate labor migration and undocumented migration in the Chinese diaspora (Chin 1999; Kwong 1997; Liang 2001). The majority of this group hails from the rural Fuzhou region in southeastern Fujian Province. Fuzhou has a long history of migration, mainly to Southeast Asia, which long predated Western colonization and nineteenth-century labor migration. When China opened its doors to emigration, there were barriers for Fuzhounese to emigrate legally. On the one hand, countries where Fuzhounese have family or kinship ties are mostly less developed countries in Southeast Asia that restrict immigration. On the other hand, developed countries, such as the United States, are attractive destinations but less attainable for the Fuzhounese because of their lack of sponsorship based on immediate families already resettled there, since, historically, few Fuzhounese migrated to the United States. However, the Fuzhounese have access to “snakehead”-driven human smuggling networks that have stimulated and met their demand for migration to the United States (Chin 1999; Kwong 1997; Liang 2001). Increasingly, kinship and friendship networks in the diaspora offer tangible assistance for their settlement and employment upon arrival in the United States. The Fuzhounese are similar to their counterparts in the exclusion period. Most are from rural villages without transferable job skills or English proficiency. They are sojourners without legal status, clustering in ethnic enclaves (initially concentrated in New York’s Chinatown and later branching out to suburbs and other parts of the United States) and working in Chineseowned restaurants in Chinatown and in fast-food takeouts. They have a 102

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America flexible plan: their main goal is to make enough money to buy land and build homes in their places of origin and then return to “enjoy life” once they achieve this goal. However, they are also prepared to stay in the United States permanently if they are able to legalize through amnesty programs. The remigrant cohort in the post-1979 period includes China-born remigrants from countries outside China. They too are a more diverse lot compared to the same cohort in the earlier period. Among them, some have long resettled and acquired citizenship status in a third country; others were students who had completed their studies in a third country but did not want to return to China; and still others had achieved significant economic gains in a third country and looked to the United States as a country of permanent residency to safeguard or reinvest their newly attained wealth. Since their migration to the United States is based on family or employer sponsorships, their characteristics overlap with those of post-1990 family and student migrants. The refugee cohort has changed as well. The refugee cohort in the generation of forced-choice settlers was made up of political refugees fleeing China because of war and the change in political regimes. Since 1979 China has become increasingly open to the outside world. Except for a small number of high-profile political opponents, such as the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democratic movement, and religious or cult leaders, such as those in the Falun Gong cult, many Chinese refugees today are those who entered the United States as undocumented immigrants and are seeking legalization and permanent residency status in the United States by way of making refugee claims on the basis of human rights abuses, one of which is forced sterilization/ abortion resulting from the implementation of China’s one-child family policy. Discussion: Integration and Transnationalism Focusing on China-born immigrants in the United States, I have shown how different immigrant cohorts have emerged and evolved across time. The existing literature suggests that different social formations or historically grounded generations are associated with particular patterns of adaptation, outcomes of integration, and levels of homeland engagement (Eckstein 2002). The case of China-born immigrants confirmed these associations, as Table 1 shows. Adapting to versus Integrating into American Society

Adaptation and integration may be viewed as two analytically distinct processes, where the former refers to the adjustment to life in a host society irrespective of being part of that society or not, and the latter refers to the incorporation into a host society to become part of it. 103

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 Table 1. Characteristics of Chinese Immigrant Cohorts in the United States Immigrant cohort

Patterns of adaptation

Outcomes of integration

Levels of homeland engagement

Birds of passage (1848–1882) Contract laborers

• Low-wage work in host labor market

Workers, merchants

• Low-wage work and entrepreneurship in Chinatown

Family migrants

• Low-wage work and entrepreneurship in Chinatown

• Low socioeconomic status • Strong Chinese national identity

• Monetary remittances for families

Forever sojourners (1882–1943) • Low socioeconomic status • High dependence on ethnic community • Strong Chinese national identity and emergent diasporic identity

• Monetary remittances for families • Direct and indirect involvement in homeland politics

Forced-choice settlers (1943–1979)

• Salaried employment in host labor market Political refugees

Remigrants

• Salaried employment in host labor market

Overlap with political refugees

• Low to average socioeconomic status • Weakened dependence on ethnic community • Strong diasporic identity • Average to high socioeconomic status • Detachment from ethnic community • Ethnic American identity Overlap with political refugees

• Severed ties to homeland • Occasional involvement in homeland politics in United States • Severed ties to homeland • Minimum involvement in homeland politics Overlap with political refugees

Free-will settlers (1979–present) Family migrants

• Low-wage work in ethnic enclave

• Entrepreneurship • Salaried employment in host and enclave labor markets

• Average to high socioeconomic status • Strong attachment to ethnic enclaves and ethnoburbs • Hybridization: national, diasporic, and ethnic American identities

• Monetary remittances for families and hometowns • Moderate economic engagement • Moderate involvement in homeland politics in United States

(Table continued on next page )

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Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America Table 1 (Cont.). Free-will settlers (1979 to present) Student migrants

• Entrepreneurship

Undocumented migrants

Overlap with forever sojourners

• High socioeconomic status • Strong attachment to ethnoburbs • Hybridization: national, diasporic, and ethnic American identities Overlap with forever sojourners

Remigrants

Overlap with family migrants

Overlap with family migrants

Refugees

Overlap with family migrants

Overlapping with family migrants

• Salaried employment in host and enclave labor markets

Overlap with family migrants

Overlap with forever sojourners Overlap with family migrants Overlap with forever sojourners

Outcomes of integration may be measured by levels of socioeconomic status (as measured by education, occupation, and income), ethnic attachment, and identity formation, using the native-born as benchmarks. The birds-of-passage generation comprised temporary contract laborers. For them, integration into the host society was irrelevant as they only intended to work in America within a specific time frame. Even though their labor was much needed by US employers and they indeed constituted an important part of the labor force in the host economy, they merely adapted to working in the United States but otherwise remained outsiders to the host society. The generation of forever sojourners grew out of the birds-of-passage generation, whose members prolonged their sojourning. They might have further evolved into a more settled group in America or returned to China under different historical circumstances. Chinese exclusion, however, made neither option possible. As a result, the Chinese adapted to exclusion by carving out their own niches on the margins of the host society, and they did so via self-employment and low-wage employment in Chinatown. Even their US-born children, who had birthright citizenship status, were confined to Chinatowns and suffered the same fate as their parental immigrant counterparts. The sojourners’ low socioeconomic status and high dependence on the ethnic community mainly resulted from legal exclusion rather than unwillingness to integrate. Out of their lived experiences of ethnic segregation, the generation of forever sojourners looked to their homeland to maintain their sense of self-worth and re-affirm their Chinese national identity while simultaneously developing a diasporic identity as Chinese overseas (huaqiao). 105

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 The US-born children also openly embraced a Chinese national identity, and some of them even adopted China as their “surrogate homeland” (Chun 2004, 120). Emigration from China, the generation of forever sojourners experienced a dramatic transition to become settlers. This transition was sudden and entailed a forced choice, a level of reluctance, and a sense of hopelessness on the part of the sojourning immigrants. The Chinese felt reluctant to settle permanently in America because of the lingering effects of racial discrimination. They felt hopeless because their dream of returning home was shattered by the regime change in China. During this period, emigration from China was restricted, and the overall influx was low. Among the relatively small number of newcomers from mainland China during that time, many were family migrants, women and war brides in particular, joining their families. Despite positive changes in favor of integration, the main pattern of adaptation for the majority of the immigrants continued to be through the diasporic Chinese community by way of ethnic entrepreneurship or low-wage employment in ethnic enclaves (Zhou 2009). Members of the merchant class and the US-educated were able to move out of ethnic enclaves and become residentially assimilated. The out-movement of middle-class co-ethnics inadvertently led to the social isolation of coethnic workers while also weakening interdependent relations and the bounded solidarity that used to hold the classes of workers and merchants together in the diasporic community (Zhao 2010). The outcomes of integration for political refugees and remigrants of the forced-choice generation were different as they arrived in a more open host society than had earlier migrants during the exclusion period. They did not experience legal exclusion and had only weak ties to the diasporic community to begin with. With their strong human and cultural capital, they pursued integration via occupational achievement in the mainstream labor market and residential dispersion into white middle-class suburbs, a pattern that conformed to the classical assimilation narrative. They had average to high levels of socioeconomic status, were detached from the ethnic community, and adopted an ethnic American identity. The post-1979 generation of free-will settlers is still evolving. Within this generation, the largest by far in numbers, I have identified five immigrant cohorts, each with distinct pre-migration lived experiences and means of entry into the United States. This latest generation of Chinese immigrants is following three main patterns of adaptation: the time-honored path to upward social mobility via low-wage work in the ethnic enclave, ethnic entrepreneurship within or outside of the ethnic enclave, and professional employment via educational achievement. Except for the undocumented cohort, which resembles the generation of forever sojourners under Chinese exclusion, the outcomes of 106

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America integration among all other immigrant cohorts seem to suggest convergence: that is, they are socioeconomically integrated into the host society while maintaining strong ethnic attachments to either ethnic enclaves or ethnoburbs. Their identity formation also tends to be hybridized by a mix of Chinese national, diasporic Chinese, and ethnic American identities. Transnational Engagement with China

The last column of Table 1 briefly summarizes the levels of homeland engagement by generation. For the birds-of-passage generation, the engagement with the homeland was mainly through monetary remittances to support their families back home because the transpacific journey and reentry were expensive as well as restricted. For the generation of forever sojourners, the consolidation of the diasporic community along with the rise of the merchant elite and a range of ethnic organizations allowed for both direct and indirect involvement in homeland politics. For example, Chinese immigrants played a key role in the Chinese Revolution of 1911 led by Sun Yat-sen8 that overthrew the Qing Empire. Diasporic organizations, such as the Hawaii-based Revive China Society (Hsing-chung Hui), were actively involved in fundraising, and donations from their members supported revolutionary activity in China.9 Recognizing their importance, Sun Yat-sen once referred to overseas Chinese as “the Mother of the Revolution” (Huang 2011). Chinese immigrants also raised war relief funds for the Sino-Japanese War between 1937 and 1945, inspired by their fellow Chinese living in Southeast Asia. Some of the Chinese in America returned to their homeland, joining the Chinese nationalist army to fight in the war. After World War II, especially after China closed its doors for emigration, all ties to the homeland, including family ties, were severed. The diasporic community was involved in homeland politics only occasionally, such as when the PRC sought entry to the United Nations (UN) in the early 1970s. On this occasion, both pro-RoC factions (represented by the merchant elite and the conservative associations, as well as those who were more assimilated) and pro-PRC factions (represented by workers and young people) within the Chinese diaspora community publicly voiced support for or opposition to the PRC’s bid for UN membership (Yeh 2008; Zhao 2010). However, the political refugees and remigrants of the period were not so active in homeland politics because they themselves lacked unity and had very little contact with the existing diasporic community, which was internally divided. They were not active in ethnic politics either, because they did not want to draw public attention to their ethnicity, which was associated with the enemy nation. Instead, they took a pragmatic stand on assimilation and became ethnically invisible. Their minimal political involvement forms a sharp point of contrast to Cuban political refugees, who, assisted by 107

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 an anti-Castro US government, built and ruled the diasporic community in America and successfully influenced US foreign policy toward Cuba through their political clout mustered through ethnicity (Eckstein 2004). Levels of homeland engagement have been the highest and most multifaceted for the post-1979 generation. With China becoming increasingly open and globalized, highly skilled or entrepreneurial immigrants (family migrants, student migrants, and remigrants alike) have greater capacity than undocumented migrants and refugees to engage in transnationalism as a means to realize their material goals. Previous generations of migrants stayed connected to their villages and regions of origin, but when today’s highly skilled and resourceful immigrants engage with their homeland, they tend to steer away from their native villages and hometowns and seek instead to capture greater opportunities in developed capital cities and coastal areas in China (Portes and Zhou 2012). Meanwhile, low-skilled workers struggle to achieve social mobility through the time-honored path of starting from society’s bottom and gradually moving up through hard work. They too are actively engaged with their homeland. However, they tend to focus their transnational activity in their places of origin, partly because they have limited resources and partly because their native places can serve as a familiar site through which they can readily gain public recognition and achieve social prestige to compensate for their low social status in the diaspora (Li and Zhou 2012). Undocumented immigrants, who are in an even more precarious situation than their low-skilled peers, cannot physically engage with their homeland. However, they too maintain strong ties to their native villages or hometowns by regularly sending remittances home to support their families. They endeavor to build homes and buy land for their possible return. They also make monetary donations, through their family and clan associations in the United States or their families back home, for hometown development projects (e.g., infrastructural improvements; upgrades of cultural, educational, and public health facilities; poverty reduction) in remarkable ways that are recognized by local governments in China. This form of absentee involvement with the homeland has been an effective means of social status compensation for the undocumented vis-à-vis relatives at home (Li and Zhou 2012). The Significance of Contexts

In Table 1 we can also see some observable overlaps in the patterns of adaptation, outcomes of integration, and levels of transnational engagement across immigrant cohorts. For example, the remigrants showed similarities to political refugees in the restricted migration period, but in the liberal migration period, the remigrants overlap with family migrants, and undocumented migrants overlap with the forever 108

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America sojourners of the earlier period. These overlaps suggest that generational formations are shaped not only by immigrants’ pre-migration lived experiences but also by the interplay of multilayered determinants pertaining to unique contexts of emigration and reception. Contextual factors in the receiving country matter. In the United States, for example, a single piece of immigration legislation—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—had a pivotal effect on diasporic formation. Legal exclusion functioned not only to reinforce the sojourning mentality of Chinese immigrants but also to homogenize blurred generational differences irrespective of their pre-migration socioeconomic characteristics and emigration circumstances. In the exclusion period, workers and merchants were socially isolated in Chinatown despite differences in class positions and legal statuses. To circumvent legal exclusion and racial discrimination, they had to rely on each other, hence forming interdependent relationships. In the process, they developed a strong self-sustaining ethnic enclave economy and an array of social organizations. Chinese merchants, in order to keep their businesses afloat and profitable, had to find ways to trade in markets in the homeland rather than locally. Consequently, they either engaged directly in transnational economic activities or maintained close business ties to merchants who regularly traveled to China. Like their co-ethnic workers, many merchants also left their families behind in China and would regularly send remittances home. Some of the most grandiose mansions in China today were built by wealthy diasporic merchants in the exclusion era. Merchants also served as transnational liaisons. They brought news about home to the lonely Chinese laborers in the United States and conveyed news about America to comfort the anxious relatives left behind. Sending country contexts also matter and sometimes trump the effects of receiving country factors. For example, the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, along with subsequent liberal policies (e.g., the 1945 War Brides Act, the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, and 1965 HartCellar Act), opened up mobility options for Chinese immigrants to make inroads into mainstream America and consequently weakened ethnic attachment to the diasporic community. However, these policy changes spurred neither emigration nor transnationalism until the late 1970s, owing to China’s restrictive emigration policies. China’s drive for economic reform and modernization not only opened the doors to unprecedented emigration—as families in China and students in the United States can benefit from the US Hart-Cellar Act to migrate—but also stimulated transnational engagement. Contemporary transnational engagements take on new forms, not only to support the basic needs of families left behind, but also to invest in business ventures and to remit for philanthropic purposes. This is quite different from the past, when transnational practices primarily consisted of monetary remittances to families. The Chinese central and local governments have also become transnational actors, proactively 109

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 reaching out to the Chinese diaspora to promote national, regional, and local development programs. The reengagement of the Chinese diaspora with its homeland has revived transnational flows and long-established migration networks. It has brought about tremendous changes in the pace, extent, direction, and nature of Chinese emigration, return migration, and transnationalism, which is further diversifying immigrant cohorts (Liu 2011; Pieke et al. 2004; Portes and Zhou 2012). Conclusion My analysis has traced the transition of Chinese immigrants from contract laborers to sojourners, from sojourners to settlers, and from settlers to diasporic or transnational migrants over the course of more than 160 years of Chinese American history. We would have missed the complexities in generational formations if we had merely defined generation in terms of biology or place of birth. In this article I have illustrated how a historically grounded concept of generation brings into focus differences between Chinese immigrants to the United States in different periods, which would not come to light using the genealogical definition. Through the case of China-born immigrants in the United States, I have shown that even among the foreign-born, who are often defined as the first generation, there is tremendous heterogeneity. I have also shown that the host-society reception may not only differentiate but also homogenize immigrant cohorts. Such dynamic generational formations are consequently significant as they are associated with varied patterns of immigrant adaptation, outcomes of integration, and levels of homeland engagement. Several theoretical implications may be drawn. First, the context of emigration and context of reception should be conceptualized as interactive rather than independent processes. The existing literature suggests that immigrants’ pre-migration lived experiences shape patterns and outcomes of adaptation to the host society (Berg 2011; Eckstein 2004). The diasporic Chinese experience in the United States points to the significance of the host-society reception as well. A hostile host society often serves to marginalize the immigrant group while simultaneously homogenizing generational formations, as the example of workers and merchants in the generation of forever sojourners during the exclusion period shows. Paradoxically, structural barriers to both immigrant adaptation and transnationalism forced group members to gravitate toward their ethnic community, leading to stronger intergenerational cohesion, less accentuated intra-ethnic class divisions, greater institutional development, and social formations on the basis of common ancestry and place of origin within the diasporic community. In contrast, a more receptive and open host society can reproduce pre-migration differences and heighten intergenerational distinctions. In the case of forced-choice settlers in the restricted 110

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America migration period when China was closed off, there was a split between the segregated working class and the integrated middle class, which included the merchant elite and other socioeconomically mobile coethnics, leading to the transition of the diasporic Chinese community into an ethnic minority ghetto that marginalized the working class. In the case of free-will settlers in the post-1979 period after China opened its doors for emigration, the multiplicity of ways of leaving China and entering the United States led to more diffuse generational formations with diverse paths to integration into the host society, including a viable path via the ethnic community, which has developed its potential as a mobility engine rather than a mobility trap, and the formation of hybrid ethnic identities based on lived experiences in the host society rather than a single diasporic identity based on cultural heritage. Second, transnationalism may be conceptualized as an alternative means to integration into the host society. China-born immigrants are equipped with bilingual proficiency and bicultural literacy and have ready access to homeland-based social networks. Thus, they are more likely, and in a better position, than other people of Chinese descent to engage with China, which can expand their opportunity horizon and facilitate their resettlement in the United States. However, transnationalism is not a prevailing mode of adaptation. Only a select few routinely practice transnationalism. These are the entrepreneurs; the socioeconomically mobile, highly skilled professionals; and naturalized US citizens (Portes and Zhou 2012). And most transnationals tend to be settlers anchoring their home in one place, more likely to be in the United States than in China, even when they own homes in two countries. Transnationalism is not necessarily intrinsic to the foreign-born but may also be practiced by Chinese remigrants (huayi) from other diasporic communities and US-born Americans of Chinese descent. Huayi, who often consider their birthplace (e.g., Malaysia, Thailand, or the United States) as homeland rather than diaspora, tend to reimagine their parents’ or ancestors’ homeland, China, and rekindle their symbolic ties to it because China is too far away and too removed from recent memory. Hence, their transnational engagement with China is qualitatively different from that of recent emigrants from China, and their identities are more likely to be based on a shared cultural heritage or symbolism than on Chinese nationalism or active transnationalism. The children of post-1979 immigrants from mainland China, who were born or raised in the United States, are less likely than their immigrant parents and Chinese remigrants to practice transnationalism, not only because they lack the ethnic affinity, bilingual ability, and bicultural literacy to do so, but also because they fear being treated as “forever foreigners” or as “Chinese” loyal to China in the United States. In particular, they tend to insist on their allegiance to their birth nation, or their adopted homeland, and strive to become accepted as un-hyphenated Americans while consciously distinguishing themselves from the 111

Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015 Chinese in China, Chinese immigrants in the United States, and people of Chinese descent in the diaspora. Third, the homeland state should be considered an important player in both immigrant adaptation and transnationalism. Homeland government policies and levels of socioeconomic development interact with host reception to produce significant variations in transnationalism in diverse immigrant cohorts. While a more open and welcoming homeland with fast economic growth creates fertile conditions for transnational engagement, the Chinese state at different levels of government treats its compatriots differently. Governments at local levels (e.g., counties or towns) encourage regular sending of remittances and extravagant consumption on homecoming trips by emigrants to promote economic development while improving the well-being of sending communities. Local governments also facilitate transnationalism by making migrant-sending villages and towns important sites for status compensation. For example, some immigrants of low socioeconomic background can remit a modest amount of their savings to help out some development projects in their hometowns. In return, they would be invited to attend dinners and to pose for photos side by side with the local elite and government officials, hence boosting their social status in hometowns (Li and Zhou 2012). Governments at higher levels focus on the highly skilled and more resourceful compatriots and attract their return or temporary visits by building new venues for research and development and by offering institutional and financial assistance for investment and business ventures (Portes and Zhou 2012). The gains from different types of transnational practices among different immigrant cohorts can contribute to, rather than hinder, immigrant adaptation in host societies as transnational migrants bolster their status—both economic and symbolic—at home. In the process, the Chinese government has also learned to become sensitive to the diversity of diasporic generations, distinguishing between emigrants from China (huaqiao), naturalized citizens of destination countries (huaren), and people of Chinese descent in the diaspora (huayi) in its engagement with the diaspora with culturally appropriate and politically correct languages and policies. In the twenty-first century, Chinese America, like other diasporic Chinese communities across the globe, continues to be impacted by the forces of globalization, as well as of localization and transnationalism. To attempt a fuller understanding of the nuances of diasporic social formation, we must take into account migrants’ pre-migration lived experiences and the interaction of micro- or individual-level factors with structural circumstances in sending and receiving countries as well as in transnational spaces. Min Zhou, PhD, is Tan Lark Sye Chair Professor of Sociology and Director of the Chinese Heritage Centre at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is also Professor of

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Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America Sociology and Asian American Studies and Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in US-China Relations and Communications at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has researched and published widely in international migration, ethnic/racial relations, immigrant entrepreneurship, the new second generation, the Chinese Diaspora, and Asia and Asian America. E-mail: [email protected].

Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the workshop on Diasporas, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Saturday, 19 November 2011. The author thanks Susan Eckstein, Mette Berg, Daphne Winland, Khachig Tölölyan, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and acknowledges research support from the College of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University. 2. In Mandarin Chinese, hua (华) means Chinese; shang (商), trader or merchant; gong (工), laborer; qiao (侨), permanent resident without citizenship in the country of residence, and yi (裔), descent. 3. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 destroyed local public records, allowing many Chinese to claim that they were born in San Francisco. Having obtained birthright citizenship, a Chinese-American man was able to claim citizenship for offspring born in China. Following trips home, he would report the birth of a child, usually a son. The papers of the “children” of “US-born” fathers were then sold to young men who wanted to migrate to the United States. 4. Wang (1991) defined remigrants (huayi) broadly to include all people of Chinese descent who are citizens of the country of residence by birth or naturalization. In this article I focus on China-born immigrants. So I define remigrants (huayi) here more narrowly than Wang and refer specifically to China-born immigrants from the diaspora outside China. 5. US Census: United States—Selected Population Profile in the United States (Chinese alone or in any combination), 2009 American Community Survey 1-year estimates. 6. Calculated from statistics of Chinese exchange students and scholars published in Chinese Education, 23 August 1997, p. 1. Official immigration statistics indicated that 62,000 student visas were issued to the Chinese between 1979 and 1987 fiscal years (US Department of Homeland Security 2013). Of these exchange students, slightly over half were privately sponsored students on F-1 student visas. F-1 nonimmigrant status may be adjusted to permanent residency following proper sponsorships. Governmentsponsored students were on J-1 visas. All J-1 visa holders are subject to a two-year home residence restriction before they can apply for immigration to the United States. 7. The US Senate passed Bill S1216 on 21 May 1992, and the House Judiciary Committee approved it on 22 July 1992. This legislation allowed Chinese nationals who were afraid to return home after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre to convert their temporary protected status to permanent US residency. 8. Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) became the first president of the RoC. 9. The Revive China Society was founded by Sun Yat-sen in Hawaii and Hong Kong in 1894. It consisted mainly of overseas Chinese and Christians (such as clerks, workers, farmers, and tailors).

References

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