Transnational healthcare seeking : how ageing Taiwanese return migrants view homeland public benefits

• Main Author: Sun, Ken Chih-Yan
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Sociology::Social problems and reform
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/107169; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/25425; http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/glob.12050
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In this article, I argue that, by offering ageing return migrants new opportunities both to organize their lives and to rethink their social attachments, the extension of public healthcare in Taiwan constitutes a new contextual feature of the transnational social field bridging Taiwan and the USA. I use the concept of ‘transnational healthcare seeking’ to describe how returning seniors try to maintain their physical, psychological and social well-being by accessing the benefits of public healthcare available in their homeland rather than in the USA. Furthermore, I offer the concept of ‘logics of social right’ to demonstrate how older returnees seek to reconfirm their social commitment to their homeland and to defend their entitlement to its state-provided benefits against public criticism that they are free riders. In so doing, this article contributes a nuanced understanding of how ageing migrants imagine, pursue and construct an ideal later life across national borders.