Gender and Trajectories of Marital Breakdown: Accounts of Chinese Immigrant Women in Canada

Abstract

The relatively sparse literature has documented various challenges international migration poses to martial stability, yet we know little about immigrant women's experiences with marital breakdown. Drawing data from a qualitative study of Chinese economic immigrants to Canada, this article explores women's experiences of navigating the processes of this life circumstance, and of how gender—including their senses of changing gender roles in post-immigration and postmarital contexts—plays out in these trajectories. The results of this exploratory study illustrate the value of transcending dichotomous conceptions of the relationship between gender and migration, and of opening spaces in which to better understand immigrant women's increasingly diversified life trajectories and the range of barriers they encounter along the way. The study also reveals multiple opportunities for social work contributions: tackling systematic barriers to settlement, facilitating social support in the community, and recognizing individuals’ diverse trajectory potentials (including the potential for this typically unwelcome event to be integrated as personal growth and transition).