Open Collections

UBC Faculty Research and Publications

Labor migration and the missing work of homemaking : three forms of settling for Chinese-Canadian migrants Lauster, Nathanael Thomas, 1972-; Zhao, Jing

Abstract

Much of migration theory has come to revolve around the category of the “labor migrant,” without taking into account labor, like home-making, that remains unrecognized by the market. Drawing from qualitative interviews with thirty one Chinese migrants in different stages of making a move from Beijing to Vancouver, we attempt to bring better visibility to how the labor involved in home-making intersects with migration. Defining home-making as work in the pragmatic-existentialist context of the stabilization of everyday routines, we uncover three themes to home-making work: settling in, settling down, and settling for. Discussion of these themes reveals two important issues for migration theory: settlement relies upon the work of home-making and the work of home-making in many cases motivates migration. For these reasons, the work of home-making should be more carefully studied within the migration literature.

Item Metadata

Title
Labor migration and the missing work of homemaking : three forms of settling for Chinese-Canadian migrants
Creator
Lauster, Nathanael Thomas, 1972-; Zhao, Jing
Date Issued
2017-03-10
Description
Much of migration theory has come to revolve around the category of the “labor migrant,” without taking into account labor, like home-making, that remains unrecognized by the market. Drawing from qualitative interviews with thirty one Chinese migrants in different stages of making a move from Beijing to Vancouver, we attempt to bring better visibility to how the labor involved in home-making intersects with migration. Defining home-making as work in the pragmatic-existentialist context of the stabilization of everyday routines, we uncover three themes to home-making work: settling in, settling down, and settling for. Discussion of these themes reveals two important issues for migration theory: settlement relies upon the work of home-making and the work of home-making in many cases motivates migration. For these reasons, the work of home-making should be more carefully studied within the migration literature.
Subject
Immigration; Settlement; Home-making
Geographic Location
Beijing (China); Vancouver (B.C.)
Genre
Article; Postprint
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2018-03-14
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI
10.14288/1.0364272
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/64811
Affiliation
Arts, Faculty of; Sociology, Department of
Citation
Lauster, Nathanael & Jing Zhao. 2017. Labor Migration and the Missing Work of Home-making: Three Forms of Settling for Chinese-Canadian Migrants. Social Problems 64(4): 497–512.
Publisher DOI
10.1093/socpro/spw035
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty; Graduate
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

Item Media

Item Citations and Data

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International