Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
status of the stranger, where one's 'thinking as usual', habitual schemes of
thought, language, and problem-solving, suddenly have no currency (Schuetz
1944). According to clinical studies depression is a not uncommon response
to disorientation and disappointment among immigrant Chinese-Canadians
(Shen et al. 2006; Todd 2008).
1
Transnationalism multiplies the unease of life as an immigrant stranger,
for the family itself becomes geographically dispersed, perhaps economi-
cally stronger but often socially and emotionally weaker, with members
separated behind distant national borders. Asia Pacific is a region with many
versions of the divided family: Filipino domestic workers overseas are sepa-
rated for years from their children and other family members (Pratt 2004;
Parreñas 2005); 'study mothers' from China accompany their children to
educational opportunities in Singapore (Huang and Yeoh 2005); and over-
seas Chinese businessmen sometimes maintain a 'second family' in China
in their absence from their legal wife in the diaspora (Lang and Smart 2000;
Yeoh and Willis 2004; Shen 2005). Each of these models of separation rep-
resents a dialectic of both opportunity and quiet suffering, frequently
rationalized as for the good of the family, or endured more specifically for
the good of the children.
In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the astronaut household with the
chief breadwinner working in Hong Kong, Taiwan or South Korea, and
commuting irregularly to visit family members on the other side of the
Pacific, is also a family form with a distinctive emotional geography.
2
As
I was told by a family temporarily re-united by a short-term visit, 'When he
leaves Vancouver… we cry in Vancouver and he cries in Taipei'. A second
woman had not adjusted to the long-term absences of her husband in Hong
Kong and had become depressed and fearful at home: 'We do miss him a
lot. But it's been like this for so many years, we are used to this situation.
It is tough… not an easy kind of life (in tears). If I don't have the religion
I don't think I could handle my life'. The anxieties and depression of sepa-
rated family members take up considerable counselling time in Chinese
immigrant churches and NGOs. Because of the stressful nature of the astro-
naut lifestyle, few families are able to sustain separation for many years.
A study of the school children of Hong Kong Chinese families in Auckland
suggested that there are some quick adjustments in astronaut status. While
more than two-thirds of children lived in an astronaut family during their
first year in New Zealand, the figure fell to just over 40 percent three to four
years after landing (Ho, Ip and Bedford 2000).
3
This remains a very large
proportion, however, suggesting the astronaut arrangement is a very
common family strategy at least in the short term. Vancouver data convey
the same impression. The Chinese-Canadian Historical Society of British
Columbia estimated that two-thirds of male Canadians of Hong-Kong
origin, between the ages of 25 and 44, live and work outside Canada
