SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Memories of a Future Home: Taiwanese Teenagers in China

Abstract:

Most research on the identity of immigrant adolescents concentrates on the 1.5 and second generation of the minorities. Because they are living and educated in the host country, their identity with the home country is limited. This paper focuses on a special group of adolescents. They move abroad and they are not educated with the local students. They enter the schools following the curriculum of their home country. By analyzing their experiences at these schools and life after graduation, we may know how this type of ‘overseas education’ affects the identity formation of these adolescents.

The data of this paper is based on the author’s participant observation in two Taiwanese Schools (Dongguan and Huadong) in China in 2004-2005, and continuous contacts with the respondents in 2008-2012. The author argues that the respondents clearly claimed their Taiwanese identity while they were students. However, their Taiwanese identity is not based on their life in Taiwan but based on their life at the two schools which function as ‘replacement’ of Taiwan. Therefore, they feel depressed and alienated as outsiders while they return Taiwan. After moving backs and forwards across the Strait for several years, they gradually perceive the Taiwanese community in Mainland China, neither Taiwan nor Mainland China, as their future home.

About the speaker:

Dr Ping Lin is associate professor at the Department of Political Science at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS. His research focuses on the mobility of professionals into less developed countries, a case study on Taiwanese in China. In 2008-2011, he has conducted two research projects ‘The Return Migration in China’ and ‘The Mobility of the Intellectuals in China’ funded by National Science Council. He has published his works in Taiwan Political Science Review, East Asia Studies, and New Society and presented his works in several international conferences. He obtained his doctorate at University of Oxford in 2007.