Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
first instance. Religion provides another point of engagement in civil society,
as for many families spirituality adds a new dimension to social life, often
scarcely experienced prior to migration. The immigrant church offers a par-
ticular mix of social and spiritual resources that helps to assuage the mental
injuries of newcomer status, with its rude indignities and painful role revers-
als. Immigrant service and advocacy organizations are a parallel institution
committed to easing the transition from immigrant struggles to establishing
the conditions for bridge-building and integration. Consideration of these
institutions will lead us to the issue of social and political participation in
Canadian society and the questions of national belonging and territorial
identity as expressions of incorporation within a new nation state. In the
dualism of routes vs. roots, we consider in this chapter the trajectory toward
integration, beyond formal citizenship to more substantive membership as
a Chinese-Canadian.
The Transnational Chinese-Canadian Family
Clara Law's
Floating Life
(1996), a film tracing a Hong Kong family's migra-
tion to Australia, portrays both the strategic but also the painful dimensions
of long-range migration and family fragmentation (Teo 2001; Mitchell
2003). As the Chen family rejoins a daughter who has moved to Australia,
the eldest son remains in Hong Kong and a second daughter re-locates to
Germany. There are two sides to this mobility. The first is the oft-cited eco-
nomic value added of family members located in different countries, spatial
diversification that spreads risk for family interests and enhances access to
economic opportunities across national borders (Mitchell 1995; Chan
1997). This is commonly seen as one of the assets of the 'bamboo network'
of overseas Chinese family capitalism, a significant line item in the impres-
sive résumé of the business migrant (Yeung and Olds 2000). The patriarchal
control behind this network was well displayed in Li Ka-shing's deployment
of his sons to separate projects in Vancouver and Toronto to earn their busi-
ness spurs and explore some fresh sources of investment for the family's
commercial empire.
But there is a second aspect to all this mobility and it is this attribute that
Floating Lives
examines. Patriarchy alerts us to the distinctive gendering of
migration (Boyle and Halfacree 1999; Pessar 1999; Willis and Yeoh 2000;
Silvey 2004). Aihwa Ong (1999:135) has commented on the distribution of
burdens within families under the patriarchal Chinese business model, a
model she claims that has 'revived premodern forms of child, gender and
class oppression', with disproportionate penalties for women and children.
Moreover, diasporic life can be isolating and unsettling, an often troubling
adventure with all of the disorientation associated with the phenomenological
