This study employs the research method of narrative analysis to investigate the self making process of 3 Chinese woman immigrants in their migration journeys to Hong Kong. I asked the women to relate their experiences before and after emigrating from China to Hong Kong. Apart from the narratives, I interviewed the husband of one participant, joined the home visit in China and "Chi Kung" class (Chinese exercise emphasizing balance of internal energy) of the other two participants ....[ Read more ]

This study employs the research method of narrative analysis to investigate the self making process of 3 Chinese woman immigrants in their migration journeys to Hong Kong. I asked the women to relate their experiences before and after emigrating from China to Hong Kong. Apart from the narratives, I interviewed the husband of one participant, joined the home visit in China and "Chi Kung" class (Chinese exercise emphasizing balance of internal energy) of the other two participants .

These modes of inquiry allow me to capture how different realms of experiences, for example, the gendered relations, class structure, culture shock, discrimination, family and conjugal interpersonal dynamics, the motivation endowed by cultural and symbolic resources, informed each other. I have emphasized how these factors interact and contribute to the ongoing making of selfhood in the immigration context. I analyzed the participants' multiple experiences expressed in the pre-immigration, immediate, and post-immigration phases and cross examined the data which aimed to detail general themes, to uncover relationships between units of meaning, and to make explicit the essential structure of the self making process.

Multiple contradictions surfaced, at various levels of intensity, throughout the immigration journeys. These contradictions sparked off a dynamism for creating new meanings recurrently about who the woman immigrants were, who they are, and who they want to become. This self meaning making process is on-going and cyclical. Experiences of contradictions in China led to tension and feeling of displacement which they sought to resolve through migration. In the transitioning from China to Hong Kong, the women related moving into a psychological in-between space where they questioned, re-examined and re-negotiated the meaning of self towards repositioning themselves in Hong Kong.

Gendered relations, socio-cultural structures, social and mother's support, are the factors that constantly influence the women's self perception and the making of meaning of self in the immigration process.