Sojourners or Settlers: Post-1965 Chinese Immigrants

Abstract

Sojourners or Settlers: Post-1965 Chinese Immigrants1 Philip Q. Yang (bio) Introduction Both the pre-exclusion era (1848–1882) and the post-1965 period witnessed massive Chinese immigration into the United States. From the beginning of California’s Gold Rush to the passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, more than 317,000 Chinese entered the U.S. 2 Although the Exclusion Act did not completely halt Chinese immigration, the numbers of arrivals dwindled to insignificance immediately thereafter and never resumed the pre-exclusion levels, even after the partial repeal of exclusion in 1943. Changes in U.S. immigration law in 1965, together with other structural changes in Asia, led to the resumption of vast post-1965 Chinese immigration. Since 1965, over 1.2 million Chinese have migrated to the U.S. 3 In 1990, over sixty-nine percent of the Chinese American population was foreign-born, 4 and in 1998 that percentage is probably even higher. A widely-held belief about pre-exclusion Chinese immigrants is that they were sojourners in America with an intention to accumulate savings and then return to their homeland for a better life. This so-called “sojourner hypothesis” originated from the writings of Paul Siu. 5 Since its emergence, the sojourner hypothesis has been overwhelmingly endorsed by scholars, and almost all major works on Chinese Americans since the 1950s have embraced the “sojourner” concept. 6 Notwithstanding [End Page 61] some doubts about the accuracy of the sojourner hypothesis, 7 available historical records and memoirs seem to buttress the contention that many of the Chinese immigrants in nineteenth-century America were sojourners. 8 For instance, my recent recalculation revealed that about forty-eight percent of all Chinese immigrants admitted between 1848 and 1882 returned to China. 9 Because many more desired to return but failed due to financial inabilities and/or worries over the loss of face, it is probably safe to say that the majority of the pre-exclusion Chinese immigrants had a sojourning orientation. In short, consensus on this issue appears to overshadow dissension. However, little do we know about whether the sojourner hypothesis is valid for the post-exclusion and post-1965 Chinese immigrants. A prevailing assumption is that post-1965 Chinese immigrants are permanent settlers rather than transient sojourners. Nevertheless, very little systematic, empirical proof of this conjecture exists. Moreover, we know very little about why, if the surmise is true, post-1965 Chinese immigrants choose settlement over sojourning, or what conditions influence their propensity for permanent settlement. This article is an attempt to fill this lacuna. The focus of this article thus is an assessment of whether post-1965 Chinese immigrants are sojourners or settlers and a determination of the process of their settlement orientation. The balance of this article clarifies the notions and measurements of sojourners and settlers, proposes hypotheses about the settlement orientation of post-1965 Chinese immigrants and the conditions that shape their orientation, discusses the data and method, presents empirical results, and finally concludes with a summary of key findings and a discussion of their implications. Concepts and Measures of Sojourners and Settlers The notion of sojourners is well defined in the literature. 10 For Siu, the sojourner is an immigrant who “clings to the culture of his own group” and who “is unwilling to organize himself as a permanent resident in the country of his sojourn.” 11 Rose Hum Lee defined the concept even more concisely: “the sojourner is a person whose mental orientation is [End Page 62] towards the home country.” 12 He “spends a major portion of his lifetime striving in America for economic betterment and higher social status, but the full enjoyment and final achievement of his objective is to be in his place of origin.” 13 It is clear that for both Siu and Lee, a crucial characteristic of sojourners is not the length of their foreign residence, but their homeland orientation and their unwillingness for settlement in the host country. By derivation, the settler, on the other hand, can be defined as an immigrant whose mental orientation is toward the host country and who is determined to take roots in his/her adopted country. Settlers, according to Clarence Glick...