How Time Complicates Migratory Experiences

Abstract

This chapter examines long-term immigrants in a later stage of life and their complex relations with home and host societies. It predicts that the 4.3 million immigrants estimated by the US Census Bureau in the United States aged sixty-five and over will double and grow from 16 to 36 percent of the senior population by 2050. It also discusses the logics, rationales, and strategies through which long-term senior immigrants assess and address life issues and life transitions. The chapter explores the experience of long-term migration and temporal variation of homeland contexts, which shapes the ways aging migrant populations consider, construct, and fulfill their needs and desires. It offers the concept of temporalities of migration to trace the trajectories through which aging immigrants draw on the social and cultural norms they learn transnationally and transtemporally to re-establish relationships with families, friends, home locales, and host societies.