The influx of marriage migrants and their children of mixed heritages has reconstructed the demographic landscape and national membership in East Asia. Through in-depth interviews with sixty adult children from cross-border marriages in Taiwan, Lan’s research explores their identity management at the intersection of geopolitical tensions and multicultural policies. Taiwan's evolving regime of “geopolitical multiculturalism” started to associate Southeast Asian immigrants with a reward for difference, while PRC immigrants are still considered a threat of similarity. Accordingly, Southeast Asian second-generation youths are increasingly encouraged to claim a bicultural identity, but the children of PRC Chinese immigrants continue to face geopolitical stigmas and conflicting identities. Three major strategies of second-generation identity work are identified: majority identity, biculturalism, and rescaling. Lan will also discuss policy implications for immigrant incorporation and multicultural future in the region. 

This event is part of APARC's Contemporary Asia Seminar Series.

Pei-Chia Lan is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan University and also a 2024-25 Stanford-Taiwan Social Science Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. Her major publications include Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan (Duke 2006, won a Distinguished Book Award from the Sex and Gender Section of the American Sociological Association and ICAS Book Prize: Best Study in Social Science from the International Convention of Asian Scholars) and Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US (Stanford 2018).