Karen V. Hansen, Brandeis University:
This riveting book, Time and Migration, develops empathic portraits of migrant elders who claim citizenship in two countries but often belong to neither. With eloquence and deep sociological insight, Sun interweaves the strands of migration, aging, gender, and time into a complex tapestry of the meanings of kinship, intimacy, and dislocation in a transnational world. This is an ideal book for courses in families, immigration, globalization, and qualitative methods.
Russell King, University of Sussex:
Based on years of meticulous research, and following the "temporal turn" in migration studies, this beautifully written book explores through a life-course perspective multiple aspects of the lives of aging Taiwanese migrants in the United States and in Taiwan.
Mary C. Waters, Harvard University:
In this beautifully written, groundbreaking work, Ken Chih-Yan Sun incorporates time into the understanding of immigrants' lives. His study of older Taiwanese immigrants shows that they are separated from their homelands not just by distance but also by time. The places they left a long time ago have changed a great deal, and they have changed as they have grown older in a place far from home. As their lives unfold in a new land, their families, their memories, and their active engagements with both sending and host societies shape their belonging and well-being. This book contributes to our understandings of immigrants, the life course, and aging with theoretical creativity and ethnographic empathy.
Nazli Kibria, Boston University:
By drawing attention to the importance of temporality and life stage, Time and Migration challenges the field of migration studies to move away from analyses that are based on one point in time in the life of a migrant. Beautifully written and chock-full of insights, Time and Migration is essential reading for those interested in migration, families and aging.
Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College, author of Artifacts and Allegiances:
Based on rigorous research and fieldwork, Time and Migration drives home just how much aging is a transnational process involving sending and receiving countries that change dramatically over time. Sun's book captures this vividly through engaging stories written with a lot of heart. Scholars of migration, aging, and transnational social protection will learn much from these pages.
This book is a prototype of transnational research at its best, with the longitudinal multisite ethnography and the comparative research design at its core, thus yielding key insights in the intersection of migration, aging, and family.
Time and Migration is a valuable book for scholars and students in multiple subdisciplines[.] It makes an essential call for additional, longitudinal research on older immigrants.
Time and Migration is a valuable book for scholars and students in multiple subdisciplines: migration, aging, and family. [T]his research uncovers how people and places change over time, the interaction between these changes, and their impact on immigrants' own identities and relationships.
This book highlights transnationalism, the complex, evolving, and continuing identity and allegiance that these Taiwanese migrants have to both their country of origin and their country of choice. Time and Migration makes a significant contribution to research examining the diversity of immigrant experiences worldwide.
