Transnational Migration of Chinese Immigrant Women Professionals in Canada: An Intersectional Analysis on the Experience of Social Reproductive Work


Guida C. Man, York University; Sadie Gibson, York University

This paper is based on data analysis from a SSHRC Insight Grant research project entitled “Transnational Migration and Social Reproduction: Eldercare Work of Chinese Immigrant Women Professionals in Canada”. Drawing on the theorization of transnational migration and social reproduction, and using an intersectionality framework of analysis, this paper explores the myriad caring work experience of Chinese immigrant women professionals from Hong Kong and Mainland China to Canada. In particular, the paper examines how these immigrant women devise various strategies to accomplish all the work they do (paid work, eldercare work, childcare, housework etc.) both locally and transnationally. The paper elucidates how eldercare work is shaped by social, economic, political, and cultural processes in an era of neoliberalism, complicated by the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, class, age, and immigration status; and mediated by individual woman’s agency.

This paper will be presented at the following session: