Temporally Distributed Aspirations: New Chinese Migrants to New Zealand and the Figuring of Migration Futures

Abstract

This article contributes to the literature on migration aspirations by examining their temporal dimensions and capacity to shape and be reshaped through migration. Drawing on qualitative research with Chinese migrants in New Zealand, we unpack the shifting character of aspirations to migrate in relation to three dimensions: everyday times; individual lifetimes; and institutional times. Utilising this temporally sensitive theoretical approach, the article shows that migration aspirations do not occur at one time – before migration – or across one duration – but rather articulate with multiple temporalities ranging from the intensity or slowness of everyday life, through appropriate progression through life courses, to the broader vistas of institutional and geo-historical time. Migration aspirations are hence necessarily temporally distributed rather than located in a singular chronological instance, or only in relation to a linear arrangement of past–present–future, and as a result, we argue for greater attention on the generation and reconfiguration of aspirations across time.