New Chinese Immigrants in New Zealand

Abstract

This book focuses on new immigrant families from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to New Zealand and investigates how these new Chinese migrants have adapted to NZ immigration policy regime, which does not accommodate their cultural preference to live as multi-generational families. The book analyzes a three-generation framework: first-generational immigrants parents, their children and older parents. It examines how migratory mobility and inter-generational dynamics configure migratory trajectories of individual family members and shape immigrants’ family life and sense of identity. The book also sheds light on how the different generations pursue their own interests and goals while maintaining family unity and cohesiveness in contexts of increasing mobility opportunities and constraints. Finally, the authors investigate how familial ties, transnational connections and a sense of identity and belonging being defined and redefined during the process of transnational migration. This book serves as a heuristic reference to and meaningful comparative parameter for studying family migration in other contexts. A significant theoretical contribution to the theory of transnational family formation in contexts where restrictive immigration policies result in members of multi-generational families living across different countries, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of sociology, anthropology, race and ethnic studies as well as Asian and Chinese studies.