Book Review 
 
Review of Sun, Ken Chih-Yan. Time and Migration: How 

Long-Term Taiwanese Migrants Negotiate Later Life. 
Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2021. pp. 264. Price: 
$49.95 (Hardcover); $32.99 (eBook). 

 

Jeanne L. Shea 

University of Vermont 
jeanne.shea@uvm.edu 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthropology & Aging, Vol 43, No 2 (2022), pp. 119-121 

ISSN 2374-2267 (online) DOI 10.5195/aa.2022.436 

 

  

 

 

 
 

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

 
This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as 

part of its 

D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. 



           Book Review | Shea |  

  

 

Anthropology & Aging  

Vol 43 No 2 (2022) ISSN 2374-2267 (online) DOI 10.5195/aa.2022.436 http://anthro-age.pitt.edu 

119 

 

Book Review 
 
Review of Sun, Ken Chih-Yan. Time and Migration: How 
Long-Term Taiwanese Migrants Negotiate Later Life. 

Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2021. pp. 264. Price: 
$49.95 (Hardcover); $32.99 (e-Book). 

 

Jeanne L. Shea 

University of Vermont 

jeanne.shea@uvm.edu 

 

  

 

Ken Chih-Yan Sun’s book Time and Migration: How Long-Term Taiwanese Migrants Negotiate Later Life 

masterfully combines meticulous field research, rich ethnographic content, and astute analysis. As an 

anthropologist of aging and a scholar of Chinese culture and societies, I was delighted to review this 

book. While most of my research on Chinese populations has been conducted in mainland China and 

Canada, I am writing this review from Taiwan where I am on sabbatical researching Taiwan’s supports 

for older adults.  

 

Based on longitudinal ethnographic research, Time and Migration explores the ways in which 

transnational migration affects experiences of aging and how aging and the passage of time affect 

experiences of migration among immigrants from Taiwan to the US. Examining the interaction between 

space, place, and time, Sun’s book documents how long-term Taiwanese immigrants to the US view 

and negotiate their evolving needs and the changing opportunities and constraints that emerge in their 

receiving and sending countries as they grow older. The research for this book involved eight years of 

longitudinal fieldwork with older adult Taiwanese immigrants conducted between 2009 and 2017 in 

both the US and Taiwan. This book’s data was drawn from 115 interviews, many years of participant 

observation, and numerous return visits to participants over time. Allowing for an analysis from 

differing perspectives, the sample included not only Taiwanese immigrants who were still in the US, 

but also Taiwanese immigrants to the US who had subsequently returned to Taiwan. At his US sites, 

the author interviewed 58 Taiwanese immigrants between the ages of 60 and 88 living in Boston and 

New York. In Taiwan he interviewed 57 returnees, ranging from 62 to 80 years old, most of whom lived 

in Taipei or Kaohsiung, but a few of whom lived in rural areas.  

 

In Time and Migration, Sun offers a much-needed corrective to the research literatures on migration and 

on transnational aging, both of which have tended to present mostly snapshots in time. Focusing on the 

concept of the “temporalities of migration” (10), the author examines longitudinal change across the 

lifecourse in the lives of Taiwanese migrants, charting how such change relates both to the accumulated 

experiences of being an immigrant and to the evolving social contexts of the sending and receiving 

societies. This book’s content conveys how aging immigrants rethink their sense of social belonging and 

come to new understandings of their natal and host societies and what they each have to offer at this 

time in their lives. Sun also shows how Taiwanese immigrants negotiate their changing needs and 

desires and reassess and refashion their roles and relationships with various family members and 

communities. This complex analysis gives sustained attention to the resilience and agency of aging 

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           Book Review | Shea |  

  

 

Anthropology & Aging  

Vol 43 No 2 (2022) ISSN 2374-2267 (online) DOI 10.5195/aa.2022.436 http://anthro-age.pitt.edu 

120 

immigrants in contrast to some public health studies which have overwhelmingly stressed the 

vulnerability of these populations.  

 

Each of the book’s six chapters addresses a different dimension of the nexus of aging and migration in 

the context of time and space. The chapters flow from a focus on experiences of immigration over time, 

to changing experiences of aging and family relationships, to strategies for support and negotiating 

rights to social care. More specifically, Chapter 1 examines Taiwan transnational migrants’ experiences 

of emigrating to the US and changing perceptions of both societies and their membership in each. Sun 

describes an “economy of belonging mediated via temporalities of migration” (21) in which initial 

idealized visions of the American dream gave way to a more tempered understanding of both 

opportunities for and barriers to social mobility. Views of the homeland also evolved over time as 

economic conditions in Taiwan improved and the home country became a viable place to retire but with 

the difficulty of cultural readjustment.  

 

The next three chapters focus on family roles and relationships. Chapter 2 investigates how ideals of 

aging, family and intergenerational reciprocity were reconfigured over time for older migrants. Calling 

this “reconfigured reciprocity” (48), Sun shows how despite having been raised with traditional ideas 

of filial piety, Taiwanese immigrants were unlikely to expect instrumental care from their children. The 

author argues that this was due not only to the influence of American individualism, but also to how 

many of the older immigrants did not take care of their own elderly parents because of the physical 

distance. Chapter 3 looks at how spousal relationships changed over time for Taiwanese elders who 

migrated. Leaving behind their homeland communities and subsequent Americanization led them to 

rethink patriarchal gender norms, becoming more egalitarian in later life. In addition, Sun recounts how 

aging itself tended to “promote gender flexibility” (99). Especially in the face of needing to rely on each 

other in times of illness or of emerging disabilities and of the prospect of having to operate 

independently in the event of future widowhood, Taiwanese older adults found themselves adjusting 

their gendered roles. Chapter 4 examines older Taiwanese migrants’ experiences of grandparenthood. 

The chapter looks at how this life transition was affected by their immigration circumstances and by 

their relationships with their children – relationships which were, in turn, reshaped by grandparenting. 

Sun describes three styles of “doing grandparenthood” (107) among his various informants, including 

active grandparenting in place among those who stayed in the US, grandparenting from afar among 

return migrants in Taiwan, and minimal grandparenting among some members of both groups. For 

each style, the author details the factors contributing to its emergence and how migrants thought about 

and negotiated their grandparenting roles and positioned themselves in relation to cultural heritage 

transmission. The chapter also relays how gender inflected migrants’ sense of their new rights and 

responsibilities, with grandmothers more likely both to provide hands-on care than grandfathers and 

to encounter intergenerational childrearing conflicts, especially with daughters-in-law. 

 

Chapter 5 details different strategies for organizing cross-border networks and navigating social 

supports and belonging for migrants who stayed in the US versus those who returned to Taiwan, 

describing these phenomena both in their home and host societies. Sun argues that “the interplay 

between time and migratory experience profoundly affected the networks that these older adults 

maintained and the relationships that they sought to establish” (160).  He describes the process as 

“knowing their place” for those who stayed in the US and “relearning their place” for those who 

returned to Taiwan (137). In both cases, co-ethnic ties strengthened with age, and social networks 

among co-ethnics were influenced by Taiwan politics and by class distinctions, with birds of a feather 

flocking together. Those who returned to Taiwan often struggled with re-acculturation and gravitated 

toward old friends, relatives, and other returnees.  

 

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Anthropology & Aging  

Vol 43 No 2 (2022) ISSN 2374-2267 (online) DOI 10.5195/aa.2022.436 http://anthro-age.pitt.edu 

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Chapter 6 unravels migrants’ perceived rights to “social care” from the US and Taiwan governments. 

Those who stayed in the US were more likely to feel that they deserved public benefits in contrast to 

other shorter-term immigrants who they saw as less deserving. In contrast, those migrants returning to 

Taiwan after long sojourns in the US encountered critiques about their worthiness to entitlements in 

Taiwan, and many made compensatory efforts to demonstrate how their contributions to the homeland, 

despite their long absence. Taiwan’s national health insurance was a large draw for returning there, 

especially for migrants with lower incomes or more extensive health issues. 

 

Time and Migration offers a myriad of rich ethnographic accounts of aging Taiwan migrants’ views and 

lives embedded in a nuanced understanding of the historical and contemporary sociocultural contexts 

of the US and Taiwan. The book is written in clear, beautiful prose with the theoretical discussions just 

as accessible as the poignant ethnographic stories of migrants’ experiences. In addition, Sun weaves in 

reflexive content on his fieldwork experiences and on his experiences of being raised in Taiwan by 

Chinese grandparents who had migrated from mainland China. For limitations, experiences of 

Taiwanese immigrants to US locations other than Boston and New York or of returnees to Taiwan cities 

other than Taipei and Kaohsiung are not included in the analysis. The Taiwan sample did include a few 

returnees in rural locales there, but the US sample did not. In addition, readers must keep in mind that 

Sun’s research ended in 2017 and that there will have been changes in the experiences of Taiwanese 

immigrants. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic limited travel between Taiwan and the US for older 

adults and their family members and elevated health risks and everyday inconveniences in the lives of 

seniors in both places. In the continuing saga of the pandemic, the COVID calculus of comparative case 

and death rates and the looming possibility of future border closures will be a key element in the 

considerations as to where Taiwanese immigrants will opt to spend their final years and how those 

years will play out.  

 

Overall, this is an excellent book that will appeal to scholars and students interested in aging, the 

lifecourse, kinship, caregiving, migration, transnational care, intergenerational relationships, 

longitudinal change over time, globalization, and East Asian studies. It brings together the concerns of 

a small but growing number of studies that examine aging in transnational context and of a larger set 

of studies that focus on how older adults continue to evolve and change with the times. I highly 

recommend Time and Migration for researchers and for university courses. 
  
 

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