Transnational Familyhood and Migration Strategies among Parachute Kids-turned-Parents from Hong Kong

Abstract

The impact of separation on children’s well-being and family relations has attracted growing attention in the study of transnational families, but little is known about its continued effect on life-course transitions and pathways. Focussing on 25 returnee parents who as “parachute kids” had lived away from their families in Hong Kong, this study explores how their prior experiences of family separation affect how these parents plan for the emigration of their own children. Instrumentalism has been a common theme in the study of middle-class East Asian transnational families, but our findings reveal that emotions and cultural values, especially filial piety and family togetherness, are also integral to migration plans. Our discussion complicates the adverse impact of splitting the family transnationally, which is commonly studied at the point of separation. It unsettles the representation of East Asian transnational migration as an instrumental strategy for household accumulation. We argue that research into transnational migration benefits from a life-course perspective and more explicit attention to the emotional dimensions of migration. This is especially so when reverse migration to previous places of settlement is increasingly common among a younger generation of returnees.