Articulating Logics of Social Rights

Abstract

This chapter uses temporalities of migration as a conceptual tool to explain its manifestation among Taiwanese immigrants as they consider intimate relations with their home and host societies. It analyzes the way aging immigrants reconsider their worthiness for “social care” provided by both the US and the Taiwanese governments. It also points out how older immigrants constructed moral boundaries to govern their use of public resources and how they attempted to justify their right to government-sponsored entitlements for senior citizens and claim moral superiority over newcomers by denigrating other migrant groups. The chapter explores how temporal variation offered aging immigrants new options and resources for organizing their lives across national borders. It mentions public benefits programs that offer older returnees a new means for overcoming the difficulties they had encountered in the United States.