University of Victoria

Negotiating Gender, Generation and Migration in a Transnational, Global Context

Globalization is the result of the exchange of ideas, peoples, goods, capital, information and technologies, and the general compression of time and distances. Families respond in different ways to the challenges and opportunities offered by globalization. In this session we hope to bring together research areas that are often separate. There is interesting work being done on the family structures and practices of different immigrant ethnic and cultural groups; on the impact of policies and practices of multiculturalism on families; and on the ways generations of immigrant families interact and negotiate change. In this session we encourage contributors, using a feminist perspective, to address aspects of the following: transnational migration; intergenerational, familial and gender relations; the realities of multiculturalism policies and politics for families; and cultural and ethnic transmissions across generation. We also welcome papers relating to various effects of globalization and transnational migration on families e.g. the impact on family structure, economics, work, functions, culture, media, relationships, education, and government policies. The goal of this session is to develop a more sophisticated analysis of these topics and to highlight the relations between gender, race, class, ethnicity and cultural diversity as they play out in the everyday lives of transnational migrants.

Session Chair: Guida Man, York University

Session Discussant: Marilyn Porter, York University

Session Organizer: Rina Cohen, York University, rcohen@yorku.ca ; Meg Luxton, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, mluxton@yorku.ca ; Guida Man, York University, gman@yorku.ca ; Marilyn Porter, Memorial University, mporter2008@gmail.com

Settling In, Settling Down, Settling For: Everyday Family Life from Beijing to Vancouver

Nathanael Lauster, University of British Columbia, nlauster@mail.ubc.ca , Jing Zhao, University of British Columbia, francie1980@hotmail.com

This paper explores the processes associated with transnational settlement through the study of change and continuity in the everyday lives of immigrants. We pay special attention to family life and retrospective comparison through qualitative interviews with three cohorts of prospective, recent, and more established immigrants from Beijing to Vancouver. Through our analysis of everyday life and change, as described by immigrants, we discuss the interrelationship between three forms of settlement: settling in to a new place, settling down into a stable home-life, and settling for often more limited job prospects. Through this comparison, and contrary to prominent theories of immigration and settlement as a labour-oriented process aimed at socio-economic advancement, we reveal how immigrants from China frequently view the move to Vancouver as a chance to settle down and spend time with their families. We consider the gendered aspects of interrelated settlement processes, and their link to the noted pattern of Chinese men remaining behind to work while their families move and settle around their absence.

Wednesday June 5, 2013 03:15 PM - 04:45 PM Building: Elliott Building, Room: E-061

First- and Second-Generation South Asian Muslims’ Negotiations of Conflicting Cultural Norms Regarding Dating

Amanda Couture, University of Toronto, amanda.couture@mail.utoronto.ca

Within the area of immigration research, it has become recognized that challenges can arise post-migration due to exposure to multiple, and sometimes incompatible, cultural norms and expectations. This is especially true for the young first- and second-generation who are often socialized according to the norms of a least two cultures. The country of origin’s cultural norms are typically transmitted across generations and through exposure to the cultural community, while the country of settlement’s cultural norms are generally imparted outside of the home (e.g., in school). This can become problematic when these norms and expectations conflict. One issue that has been identified as leading to such conflicts is dating. Using qualitative data from an exploratory study, this paper examines how 11 first- and second-generation South Asian Muslims perceive, experience, and negotiate conflicting norms surrounding dating. In particular, it discusses the influence of South Asian Muslim cultures by looking at their perceptions of their South Asian Muslim community’s acceptance of dating. It also examines the influence of the mainstream Western culture in terms of participants’ experiences with pressures to date. The paper concludes with a look at the participants’ negotiations and management of the conflicting expectations in the development of their own perceptions and level of acceptance of dating.

Wednesday June 5, 2013 03:15 PM - 04:45 PM Building: Elliott Building, Room: E-061

Not Ethnic Enough: The Cultural Identity Imperative in International Adoptions from China

Xiaobei Chen, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Carleton University, xiaobei_chen@carleton.ca

This paper examines how the cultural identity imperative operates in international adoptions of mostly girls from China to Canada. It locates changes in cultures of adoptions, specifically attitudes and approaches to racial and ethnic differences in adoptive kinship, in the shifting currents of broader politics of difference and cultures of recognition. I argue that the intense cultural heritage celebration labor over children adopted from China is shaped by contemporary Canadian culturalist ethos, the history of North American Orientalist imagination of Chinese culture, and the Asian model minority mythologizing. The cultural identity imperative, as a core component of multicultural governmentality, perceives culture as objects, demands non-white Canadian subjects with rooted belongings, and operates in ways that includes as it subordinates, and legitimates as it depoliticizes.

Wednesday June 5, 2013 03:15 PM - 04:45 PM Building: Elliott Building, Room: E-061

Negotiating identity: experiences of Mexican immigrant women in interracial families in Canada

Monica Sanchez-Flores, Thompson Rivers University, Msanchez@tru.ca

Mexico differs greatly from its partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), not only economically and in its position of power in the world, but also in its history and culture; and this clash is evident in the life stories of immigrants from Mexico to Canada or the US. The clash becomes deeper when considering the life stories of Mexican immigrant women to the far north due to marriage. This research focuses on qualitative analysis of the life stories of a group of Mexican women that immigrated to Canada in order to marry a Canadian man and bring up their families in a language that is not their own. This group of women come from various social backgrounds in Mexico and most have some amount of higher education, and while some of them have lived in various cities in Canada, they have finally settled in a small city of the British Columbia interior. My aim is to investigate the negotiations of identity that these women experience and the issues of power that arise in this kind of family situation.

Wednesday June 5, 2013 03:15 PM - 04:45 PM Building: Elliott Building, Room: E-061