Coming to Terms with Our Routes: The Impact of No Contact Family Estrangement on Asian American Identity, a Reflexive Thematic Analysis

Background and Purpose: Estrangement is a prevalent and understudied phenomenon, particularly in the Asian American diaspora. Research on Asian American families often frames intergenerational conflict as a cultural clash between assimilated youth and unassimilated elders, reinforcing essentialized views of Asian identity and obfuscating the broader sociopolitical contexts in which these relationships unfold. While cultural identity has been widely problematized, “culture” continues to be utilized as a reductive explanation for complex family dynamics. This explanation reinforces essentialized stereotypes of Asian American culture and identity. While this construct may provide a sense of solidarity, it may also unintentionally limit the possibilities of Asian American identifications. As families are said to be the site of racial, ethnic, and cultural transmission, what happens when there is an estrangement? This study aimed to explore how participants made meaning of their estrangements with particular attention to the ways in which “culture” and “identity” figured into their narratives.

Methods: Thirty in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants (ages 23-57, median age 28) who identified as Asian American and had a history of family estrangement. The sample was 7% men, 84% women, 7% non-binary, 30% Chinese; 20% Mixed-race; 17% Vietnamese; 10% Taiwanese; 7% Korean; 3% Burmese; 3% Laotian; 3% Thai; 3% Japanese; 3% Indian. Participants were recruited via social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram) and professional email listservs for Asian Americans and mental health professionals. Interviews explored family history, including immigration history, and experiences of family estrangement. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, and themes were generated using thematic analysis.

Results:

The data were organized into two primary themes:

• “Survival Mode”: The Ripple Effect of History: Participants often described their families as being stuck in “survival mode,” noting the intergenerational impact of sociopolitical contexts. Despite this knowledge, family members often became racialized objects, and family estrangement became racialized. That is, family members and family dynamics were imbued with the signifiers of race, culture, ethnicity, and diaspora. This process led to the subtheme, essentialization, where participants conflated familial dynamics with broader aspects of racial-ethnic identity and identification and, thus, responded to their own racial-ethnic identity as a static essential object. Essentialization led to the last subtheme, of double displacement, whereby essentialization left participants with a sense of belonging nowhere, neither to the U.S., where they were often subjected to the perpetual foreigner stereotype nor the Asian American diaspora.
• Transitional Spaces: Coming to Terms with Our Routes: Through relationships and representations of other Asian Americans, participants began to experience their identifications as more fluid and moved away from essentialization.

Conclusion and Implications:

Implications include the need for culturally attuned, anti-essentialist clinical and methodological approaches that recognize the impact of intergenerational trauma, racialization, and sociopolitical context on family estrangement and identity. The findings suggest that scholars and clinicians need to develop agility and a critical lens to balance honoring and prioritizing felt experiences as they are described while also being willing to challenge rigid identity constructions that unintentionally reify racist stereotypes.