Immigration And The Family

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What is family? Citing national security and societal welfare, the Harper government adopted a strict definition of family to limit access to citizenship for certain immigrants. Megan Gaucher analyzes the government's assessment of sexual-minority refugee claimants' relationship history, common-law and married spousal sponsorship applications, and marriage fraud, concluding that this narrative of citizenship reinforces racialized, gendered, and sexualized assumptions about the "Canadian family." As many Western governments ponder more restrictive immigration policies, A Family Matter offers a timely examination of the Canadian approach and proposes a course for re-evaluating how family is defined and implementing fairer assessments of immigrants and refugees.

This is perhaps the first book to deal with the impact of migration on family relations and child development. It also considers the policies that enhance or impede family links to U.S. institutions. Although there is extensive literature on migration, most of it focuses on the economic success of the migrants. The chapters in this book address questions central to understanding the migrant experience and immigration policy.

When migrants reach their new home, we often interpret their settlement and integration as an individual process driven largely by the labour market. But family plays a crucial role. Putting Family First investigates the experience of immigrant families settling in Greater Toronto, from newcomers’ initial reception to their deep involvement in and attachment to their receiving society. Contributors explore such themes as the policy environment, children and youth, gender, labour markets and work, and community supports in order to illustrate how the family context can be mobilized to facilitate the successful integration of newcomers.

Immigrant children and youth are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, and so their prospects bear heavily on the well-being of the country. However, relevant public policy is shaped less by informed discussion than by politicized contention over welfare reform and immigration limits. From Generation to Generation explores what we know about the development of white, black, Hispanic, and Asian children and youth from numerous countries of origin. Describing the status of immigrant children and youth as "severely understudied," the committee both draws on and supplements existing research to characterize the current status and outlook of immigrant children. The book discusses the many factorsâ€"family size, fluency in English, parent employment, acculturation, delivery of health and social services, and public policiesâ€"that shape the outlook for the lives of these children and youth. The committee makes recommendations for improved research and data collection designed to advance knowledge about these children and, as a result, their visibility in current policy debates.

Immigrant Families aims to capture the richness, complexity, and diversity that characterize contemporary immigrant families in the United States. In doing so, it reaffirms that the vast majority of people do not migrate as isolated individuals, but are members of families. There is no quintessential immigrant experience, as immigrants and their families arrive with different levels of economic, social, and cultural resources, and must navigate various social structures that shape how they fare. Immigrant Families highlights the hierarchies and inequities between and within immigrant families created by key axes of inequality such as legal status, social class, gender, and generation. Drawing on ethnographic, demographic, and historical scholarship, the authors highlight the transnational context in which many contemporary immigrant families live, exploring how families navigate care, resources, expectations, and aspirations across borders. Ultimately, the book analyzes how dynamics at the individual, family, and community levels shape the life chances and wellbeing of immigrants and their families. As the United States turns its attention to immigration as a critical social issue, Immigrant Families encourages students, scholars, and policy makers to center family in their discussions, thereby prioritizing the human and relational element of human mobility.

"Family-related migration is moving to the centre of political debates on migration, integration and multiculturalism in Europe. It is also more and more leading to lively academic interest in the family dimensions of international migration. At the same time, strands of research on family migrations and migrant families remain separate from--and sometimes ignorant of--each other. This volume seeks to bridge the disciplinary divides. Fifteen chapters come up with a number of common themes. Collectively, the authors address the need to better understand the diversity of family-related migration and its resulting family forms and practices, to question, if not counter, simplistic assumptions about migrant families in public discourses, to study family migration from a mix of disciplinary perspectives at various levels and via different methodological approaches and to acknowledge the state's role in shaping family-related migration, practices and lives"--Rear cover.

This book is about the migrations for family reunion that have taken place in post-1997 Hong Kong between mothers and children living in mainland China and their long-absent husbands and fathers, residents of Hong Kong.