Supportive Women: Chinese Women's Roles in Borderlanders' Transnational Lives

Asian diasporas in the Americas and global kinship networks are crucial manifestations of Global Asians. My paper examines the diasporic experiences of Chinese women both in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and qiaoxiangs (僑鄉, hometowns of overseas Chinese) in Guangdong, which were the authors of official documents, censuses, and records of male-dominated associations often overlooked. Drawing upon family letters, oral interviews, and newspapers in Chinese, English, and Spanish, this paper argues that Chinese women significantly supported Chinese migration to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, maintained the transnationality of Chinese communities in the borderlands and overseas Chinese families in qiaoxiangs, and helped Chinese migrant families remain intact. To survive and thrive in the borderlands, first-generation Chinese female migrants were important breadwinners for their families and cultural ambassadors among other ethnic groups in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. The Chinese women also worked hard to create opportunities for their children’s upward social. In the absence of adult males, women staying in qiaoxiangs participated in household decision-making and took responsibility for preserving transnational cultural and economic ties for male migrants between the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and their hometowns through means including using overseas remittance payments to hold family celebrations. My research thus underlines Chinese women’s agency in adapting their identities to integrate into the multiracial borderlands societies and establish transnational links and kinship across the Pacific. My paper bridges modern Chinese history, Asian American studies, and Borderlands studies and embodies the concept of Global Asias through the transnationality of Chinese migrants in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and their diasporic experiences.