Navigating Networks of Support

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the ways temporalities of migration can be observed through the aging immigrants' relations with their communities. It talks about older immigrants who remained in the United States and those who returned to Taiwan and developed strategies to organize their social relationships. It also elaborates how aging immigrants often grappled with belonging in the community when engaged in social networks. The chapter cites two groups of immigrants that adopted different approaches to their cross-border networks, wherein one group knew their place within their social relationships in the United States while returnees in Taiwan tried to reacclimate to communities they had once left. It compares how the processes through which the two groups of immigrants maintained relationships transcended national borders and motivated them to rethink membership in transnational communities.