Return Migration and Identity: A global and local phenomenon
Worldwide, people are returning to their countries of origin at an unprecedented rate.In her new book Return Migration and Identity, Nan M. Sussman, a professor of Cross-Cultural Psychology at the City University of New York, examines both the global and local remigration phenomenon through a psychological lens.Thousands of Chinese are returning to the Mainland following education and work abroad.In Hong Kong, she estimates that nearly 500,000 have returned to Hong Kong since the British turned over their Asian outpost to the People’s Republic of China. Journalists labeled them ‘astronauts,’ but did they crash and burn on their return to Hong Kong? While immigrants from around the world are going back to their homelands, Hong Kong returnees are unique with a special cultural flexibility rarely found in other groups.The narrative of the Mainland returnees is still unfolding. Going beyond suppositions and urban myth, for the first time, the full story of the returnees is being told.
Return Migration and Identity deftly integrates views of layered cultural identities by novelists, artists, philosophers, social scientists, and psychologists.
Nan M. Sussman was born and educated in the United States. Following the receipt of a PhD in Social and Cross-cultural Psychology, she was a Professional Associate at the East-WestCenter in Honolulu and a trainee at the Stanford University Intercultural Institute. She was awarded two Senior Fulbright Research grants, to Japan and Hong Kong. For the last three decades, she has taught in universities in the U.S., Europe and Asia.In addition to her book Return Migration and Identity (Hong Kong University Press, 2010), she has published many articles on cultural transitions in academic journals and edited books. More than a dozen dissertations worldwide are currently being conducted using her theoretical model of cultural transitions.
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