Citation:
Date Presented:
February 6Abstract:
In my ethnographic study, I examine the emergent phenomenon of “astronaut families” split between Mainland China and Canada. Hong Kong and Taiwanese astronaut families—transnational migrant families with one spouse and children settling overseas—in the 1980s gave rise to literature emphasizing the “flexible citizenship” of the Chinese family, a unit of capital accumulation adept at dispersing in pursuit of economic advancement and bound by Confucian patriarchal values. I call attention to the ways in which the lived experiences of Mainland Chinese astronaut families settling in Canada from the 1990s onwards both nuance and deviate from this instrumentalist model. I argue that Mainland China’s modernization project, epitomized by the family planning policy and the rigorous education system, impelled a reorganization of the Chinese family around the child, with parents investing in the astronaut arrangement in order to liberate their child from the demands of Chinese society and to maximize their child’s educational and professional competitive advantage in the neoliberal world system. In order to balance an objective of upward mobility with a desire for household harmony and social belonging, astronaut wives and especially husbands learn to be flexible not just in terms of their response to economic and political conditions but also in terms of their criteria for their children’s success, their negotiation of traditional Confucian, modern Chinese, and Canadian values, and their willingness to transform and to be transformed by the migration and settlement processes. In corroborating my argument, I draw from individual in-depth interviews, focus groups, participation observation, and secondary and archival sources.
I would especially appreciate feedback on whether the central argument of my thesis is clear and compelling, even as I am grappling with multiple subsidiary arguments about gender, class, race, family, migration, and citizenship. I would also particularly welcome feedback on the effectiveness of my narrative flow and my engagement with different bodies of literature.