Transnational familial strategies, social reproduction, and migration: Chinese immigrant women professionals in Canada

Abstract

This paper fills a lacuna in the literature on gender, work, and migration by exploring the migration experience and familial arrangements of middle-class Mainland Chinese migrant women who were professionals in their home country. Informed by theoretical debates on social reproduction, and transnational migration frameworks, it explores how transnational migration is shaped by intersectional gender, race/ethnicity, and class processes, and demonstrates how these Chinese immigrant women utilized transnational familial arrangements as strategies for social reproduction. In doing so, the Mainland Chinese immigrant women professionals provide what they perceive as better opportunities for themselves and for their families. Our research starts with Chinese immigrant women’s individual articulations of their own migration trajectories, we then go further to examine how the women’s transmigration strategies are embedded in the context of the changing social, economic, political, and cultural processes in China and in Canada. In this paper, Mainland Chinese immigrant women’s motivations for immigrating to Canada; how migration shapes their experiences in Canada; as well as their transnational strategies for social reproduction are explored.