Diverse Social Mobility Trajectories: Portrait of Children of New Immigrants in Taiwan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well-written article that relies on a robust research study. Considering the scarcity of research in Taiwan in general, and on this topic in Taiwan in particular, as well as the importance of this issue globally, this article makes a significant contribution to literature. I have some specific, but very minor comments below to help the author to strengthen the manuscript. 

 

My main points are:

 

• The abstract and the introduction need to be slightly more detailed to create a picture of the context to allow the reader to better engage with what comes next - the findings and the discussion. I know a lot of this information I am asking for is provided in later sections, but for those unfamiliar with the context of Taiwan, the abstract and the introduction are very vague. 
• Clarity on new immigrants and their families - is it families with both parents as immigrants? Is only one an immigrant the other - local? Do children migrate with parents/parent or are born in Taiwan? etc.
• Rewriting the findings to have more themes as the current themes are too broad.
• The discussion now reads more like a summary of the findings and there is little work done on placing the findings in the context of previous work. There is also not clear focus on answering the main question about the trajectories and what exactly influences them. 

 

More detailed comments:

 

1. Abstract: 

• It’d be helpful for clarity to add what age is meant by ‘early adulthood’ here (the same in the introduction - as well as the term ‘children’)
• Words like ‘may be no significant difference’ and ‘seems to be no noticeable…’ make it seem like the author is not sure about the outcome of their study
• The word ‘decent’ is very vague - is there another word that can better represent what the author means
• What does ‘a good number of them’ mean? Is it possible to include a number here?
• ‘Parents have tried their best to support their education’ sounds demeaning - we can’t know that parents of those who are less successful didn’t try their best. I strongly encourage the author to rephrase it.

2. Introduction:

• The very first sentence on the context of Europe and North America would benefit from some more detail in terms of differences in social mobility
• What is the socioeconomic gap between Han Chinese and Indigenous peoples - is there some useful data that can be cited here?
• The very first paragraph and even the abstract would benefit from briefly stating where the new immigrants are from - and is the author talking about youth whose mothers are immigrants or both parents? Were these young people born in Taiwan? The next section says “According to a number of research studies, children of new immigrants may face 82 more obstacles than children with two Taiwanese parents in their journey to upward mobility,” but the author talks about one parent being Taiwanese and one from overseas - I suggest making this very clear throughout the manuscript whether the focus is on both parents being immigrants, one parent being an immigrant, or a combination of both.  
• Micro and macro factors could be explicated through a few examples each

3. New immigrants and their children

• In this part of the sentence - “in contrast, 32.32% of the population aged 40 and above had attained higher education in the same year” - it’s important to clarify that this refers to local Taiwanese population (perhaps important to differentiate between Han and Indigenous peoples though if there’re differences).
• Circling back to my comment above regarding which group of immigrants the author talks about and whether one or both parents are immigrants - the discussion of the Chinese language will differ. If both parents are immigrants, it is clear why this will be an issue. However, if one parent is a local Taiwanese person, the language may not be a concern?

4. Social mobility in Taiwan

• In this sentence - “students from better socioeconomic backgrounds are 138 more likely to have more years of education” - I suggest changing the word ‘better’ to ‘higher’

5. Research methodology

• The author provides background information of the interview participants. Was this information collected for the survey participants?

6. Findings

• I suggest rewriting the heading “Socioeconomic Status in Early Adulthood” in this section as it doesn’t represent the information provided 
• Sub section on the participants’ family situation is very long and contains some other themes that could be explored further and that could be broken down into smaller sub-sections. I would say the same for the other sub-sections in this section - there’s more in the text than these broad themes 

7. Discussion

• The objective of the study stated here is different to the one in the abstract - just a suggestion to make it more coherent
• It’s unclear what is meant when the author says the following - “both the participants and the respondents” - is this in reference to interview participants and survey respondents?
• Again, reference to ‘decent’ jobs - please explain what this means
• The author says that their findings show that the “respondents do not differ from the general population in terms of higher education attendance rate despite that their parents have lower levels of educational attainment and occupational status on average. As regards occupational status, there is no apparent concentration of the participants and the respondents in particular segments of the labor market.” Yet, the author says that “This seems to confirm Wu and Tsai’s (2014) argument that what truly disadvantaged children of new immigrants is their family background; … are the cause of the lower academic achievement of children of new immigrants.” These statements seem contradictory - they are not doing worse than the general population but they are still disadvantaged. I suggest the author clarifies this.
• The author says that “Hence, Wu and Tsai’s argument may be only partially true; parents’ attitude toward education may be important in this process as well.” What their argument shows to me is that in their experience, this is true, but it may not apply to other cases. Hence, it’s not being about true or not true, but about different experiences and a set of different aspects that influences people’s trajectories. What else did these participants say that may make their cases unique?
•  

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is based on a rich and interesting data set and, if revised thoroughly, promises to enhance social science scholarship on social mobility, immigration, multiculturalism and social inequality. However, the manuscript as it stands is overwhelmingly descriptive and thereby loses focus over the pages – and risks to distract readers and to mislead them to focus on minor points. I would thus strongly suggest to thoroughly revise with a clear goal and main thread in mind, to cut on lots of details and explanations, and to decide for a more solid theoretical line. Please see more detailed comments and suggestions below.

The term ‘portraits’ in the title already hints at one of the problems I had with this paper. What is the exact contribution, what the significance of this paper? It gives a lot of descriptive data, which is interesting for sure, but it doesn’t go deep enough into any theoretical discussion as to develop scholarship any further. In the discussion and conclusion, again, specific cases are named and re-iterated. The information is overwhelming and the descriptive data should not be repeated, maybe mentioned briefly if necessary (e.g. p. 21, l. 1012).

First, the paper does not tackle the question why Taiwan is chosen as a field site. It would be good if the authors could provide a few more compelling reasons and also if they could comment on what is distinct about the case of Taiwan and how the knowledge generated by their study can be informative to social science scholarship more in general. In relation to this, the authors should comment on the commonalities and differences of their findings to other studies on immigrant children in other countries. For instance, the support by religious communities or NGOs is a well-known fact. Thus, in which way are the presented findings new, how do they differ from previous studies, and how does the case of Taiwan matter in this consideration? P. 18, l. 834 ff. briefly addresses the specific policy the Taiwanese government has pursued recently and the different intake of immigrants in the US. However, this could be analysed further and emphasized in the conclusion as to provide a more solid take-away of the contribution and significance of the study.

The argument of ethnic identity as a social resource (p. 17, l. 767) is interesting and calls for a discussion of related theoretical literature on social capital, ethnic identity and multiple identities. I was surprised to read about these immigrant children’s self-identification as late as on p. 17. While the focus of the paper is not on ethnic identities, their multiple identifications and the related advantages hint at identity and ethnic networks as well as social capital playing a role in their scholarly advancement and career orientations. As such, the revised version of this manuscript might warrant a closer examination of related theoretical literature on social capital, ethnic boundaries and ethnic identity, and the way multicultural people/immigrant children use their multipolar connections and influences to achieve upward mobility. The note on the increasingly open and welcoming environment in Taiwan towards immigrants also suggests that the paper would benefit from integrating socio-cultural diversification within society in the analysis (see authors like Steven Vertovec, Susanne Wessendorf and Amanda Wise), which would again enrich the analysis of the paper and increase its interest for a wider audience interested in social inequality, globalization and socio-cultural change. That said, “ethnic identity” does not always seem to right term to be used here. While the analysis of these immigrant children’s self-identification can certainly be grasped by the concept of identity, state policies that support disadvantaged people are not about ‘ethnic identity’ but about the fact that these people are assumed to be disadvantaged due to not Taiwanese families and due to their foreign citizenship. I would advise the authors to be very careful in the way they use concepts and jargon as to avoid being misunderstood.

 

It strikes me that the findings are almost exclusively positive. Is the reason for this the fact that the sample is self-selected and that the interviewees presumably only participated if they were proud of their own story/felt comfortable talking about it? Or did the research design and the wording of the questions contribute to this? For instance, were the interviewees only asked the research questions as stated in the paper or were there open questions along the lines of “please share your struggles throughout obtaining education” or “what were your hopes and goals with regards to educational attainment and your future career? How does the current situation differ from these?”

 

Minor points:

-          Please clarify the different use of “respondents” and “participants”. It took me a while to understand that the former are those of the quant. survey and the latter the interviewees. Some readers might be confused if this is not stated upfront.

-          The literature review focuses quite a bit on indigenous families but how is this related to the focus of the paper? Very few families seem to be made up of one indigenous parent. Also, a few more consist of two immigrant parents. Did these families differ in any way from those of one (ethnic majority) Taiwanese parent and one immigrant parent?

-          Some stylistic or grammatical errors, so please have the manuscript copy-edited by a professional. (e.g. p. 11, l. 438: “her parents was…” -> were; p. 13); p. 13, l. 572: sometimes too casual style, e.g. “gangsters”

-          Too much detail, cut for the sake of clarity and readability. An example of this is p. 9, l. 363-364: “owing to some family issues, began to suffer from bipolar disorder and hence quitted her job”. It would have been enough to say that the mother could not work.

 

p. 7, l. 270/271: “child of new immigrants in Taiwan may be different from children of recent immigrants in societies such as the United States and some European countries.” This statement should be taken out since findings of a qualitative study should not be taken as generalizable and thus should not be compared to the findings of large-scale surveys on immigrant children in other countries, e.g. the US or Europe.

p. 8, l. 284-288: The apparent lack of an immigrant/ethnic community is interesting but needs to be explained and substantiated by some statistical data. What is the percentage of new immigrants in Taiwan? P. 1, l. 29 simply mentions an “increasing number of children of new immigrants since the 1990s”. What about the mothers from Southeast Asian countries and mainland China: Do they not socialize in ethnic communities? And what about rural-urban divide with regard to this, as one would expect the situation to look quite different in Taipei than on the countryside? I appreciate the comment on the specific nature of the sampling but it would be good if the author could comment on at least some of the points I raised above.

p. 10, l. 401-403: At times, the author comes across as quite judgmental, e.g. “she tells me that throughout her schooling process, her parents never paid attention to her.” Since there is no further explanation here on why the parents did not / were not able to care for her more the parents seem not to care. However, we don’t know that exact background and the author seems to take the interviewees’ quotes at face value. The author should choose the words here more carefully in order to avoid blaming the parents for their children’s hardships. The parents are likely facing all kinds of difficulties as low-income, lowly educated, international couples.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has improved, now using clearer terminology and structure. However, the presentation of the data is still too long, too descriptive, and thus the reader easily forgets the main thread. I would strongly advise to edit and shorten considerably, to cut some of the data (esp. those of similar cases , this sounds repetitive) and to give the sections more dynamism by replacing some of the summaries of cases with direct quotes or more lively (ethnographically inspired) excerpts. Next to the risk of becoming vague and losing the argument out of sight, another  problem is that a list of cases results in the reader losing track and, by the third case at the latest, has forgotten the first case already.

-          A point I found interesting and worth exploring further is that the data seems to point to the benefit of the cram schools. Such private (often expensive) schools have often been criticised for increasing inequality. But here we might see a way how they balance out (ethnic or other) minorities’ disadvantages in a (school / labour market) system and society in which lack social and cultural capital

ð  In line with the Bourdieusian analysis of the conclusion, this means they can convert economic into cultural capital (pay for cram school and get degrees)

-          P. 16, l. 650: I don’t think “neglectful” is the right word here, both in a linguistic sense but also because (as mentioned during the first stage of review) because it is judgmental.

-          P. 29, l. 1273 ff. “Therefore, it appears that family financial situation exerted a stronger effect on the participants’ education than parental educational attainment and occupational status in these cases.” This is an important finding but lacks further analysis. How does it affirm or reject the findings from previous literature and how could differences be explained?

-          Figure 1 is not particularly convincing. The difference in the ‘weight’ of the factors is not explained (most are realted through spotted lines, other lines are bold) and the factors are the same as the subsections. So either more explanation or the value of the figure might be reconsidered again – and perhaps the figure should be cut.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx