After the Migration Dream: Where Can Parents Find a Home in Later Life?

Many parents in mainland China have a clear picture of what sending a child overseas might lead to. The child studies abroad, finds work after graduation, gains permanent residency and perhaps citizenship. Once the parents retire, they join their child. The child has better prospects, the parents have support in old age, and the family is eventually reunited somewhere with a pleasant environment.

Before graduation, that future often inspires great hope. What can be overlooked is that a child’s ability to build a life there does not mean the parents will feel equally at home. The child has made their own transition. The parents may not begin theirs until retirement.

There can be a considerable distance between those two transitions.

At home, parents have their own housing, familiar friends and habits established over many years. They know how to shop, where to seek medical care and whom to contact when something goes wrong. Much of everyday life requires no help. That ease rarely attracts attention because it has become part of ordinary living.

Overseas, some people who previously managed independently become dependent on their children. Their abilities have not suddenly disappeared. Those abilities relied on familiar language, information and social relationships. Someone who handled practical matters efficiently at home may need their child’s help even to make an appointment, complete a form or ask for directions in a country whose language they do not speak.

Things they once handled themselves now have to wait until someone else is available. Friends they once saw whenever they liked have been replaced by a life with few people to talk to beyond the family. Younger people often enter a new society through education, work and peers. Retired parents may have none of those openings.

The world outside can be expansive while the life available to them is narrow. Blue skies are welcome, but they cannot replace friends, conversation or the ability to organise one’s own day. A life others envy may feel frustratingly confined to the person living it.

Research draws attention to this situation. An Australian study published in 2016 compared 59 older Chinese immigrants with 60 Australian-born older people. Among the Chinese participants, 49% reported loneliness. They had higher levels of loneliness and lower quality-of-life scores than the comparison group. Yet their median quality-of-life score remained above the scale’s midpoint, showing that loneliness and an overall positive assessment of life can coexist.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27388260/

The US PINE study, published in 2014 and involving 3,159 older Chinese adults in the Chicago area, reported a loneliness prevalence of 26.2%. The samples and measurement conditions of these two studies differ, so the figures cannot be compared directly. Neither study specifically examined parents who moved after retirement to join children who had studied overseas. They establish that loneliness among older Chinese people abroad deserves attention, but do not demonstrate that the vast majority of such parents cannot adjust.
Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9950797/

A more defensible conclusion is that when migration in later life brings language barriers, disrupted social relationships and substantial dependence on adult children, the hope of reunion can turn into a difficult everyday reality.

Sharing a home can intensify these difficulties.

Even in their home country, parents and adult children may struggle to live together over the long term. Daily routines, food, housework, parenting practices and personal space can all cause friction. Overseas, when parents lose their former life outside the family, more of their needs tend to fall on their children.

Children studying and working locally gradually establish lives of their own. They may place greater value on household boundaries, be more accustomed to organising their own time, and want to make family decisions with their partners. Parents may still associate living together with closeness and involvement in their children’s daily affairs with care. Both perspectives have their reasons, but their expectations of a shared life may differ.

It is too simple to conclude that Western education has made the children stop valuing family bonds. Caring about parents and being available whenever they need companionship or help are different things. Adult children have jobs, partners and sometimes children of their own. A willingness to fulfil family responsibilities does not guarantee the time and energy to support every aspect of their parents’ lives.

Parents need more than a bed and meals. They need friends, conversation, interests of their own and the freedom to act without waiting for someone else to organise everything. When their children become their main connection to the outside world, the family relationship is asked to serve too many purposes.

A Sydney study published in 2025, based on 57 in-depth interviews and six focus groups, found that volunteering could help older Chinese immigrants access public services, build social connections, reduce dependence on their children and improve family relationships. Such research cannot estimate how widespread the problems are, but it points towards an important response: parents need to rebuild a social life beyond their children.
Source: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70009

Buying a home overseas therefore does not, by itself, settle the question of ageing there. Housing provides separate space. It does not automatically provide language skills, the ability to get around, friends or social support. Even when parents live separately, dependence remains if travel, practical tasks and medical care still require their children’s help at every turn.

Another consideration easily obscured by hopeful expectations is the cost of living.

Savings accumulated in China and monthly retirement income usually have to be converted into Australian dollars, US dollars or euros and spent at local prices. It would be misleading to describe this simply as the renminbi being inferior to foreign currencies. A currency’s face value does not establish purchasing power. The real question is whether income received in renminbi can cover actual expenses in the destination country.

Retirement income sufficient for a comfortable life in China may not sustain the same standard overseas. Housing, insurance, paid services and long-term care can produce a budget quite different from what the family imagined. The pressure depends on the city, living arrangements and spending habits, while exchange-rate changes also affect the money available.

When parents rely mainly on Chinese pensions and savings, and their children have mortgages, childcare and everyday expenses to meet, reunion can create additional financial strain. Parents become cautious about spending and children take on more costs. Even when neither says anything, both may feel the burden.

More fundamentally, visiting family overseas and being able to spend the rest of one’s life there are different matters.

A child’s permanent residency or citizenship does not automatically give the parents the same status. In the United States, for example, a child who holds a green card cannot sponsor parents through the parent category for permanent residence. That route requires the child to be a US citizen aged at least 21, and the parents must still complete the relevant application process.
Source: https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-of-us-citizens/bringing-parents-to-live-in-the-united-states-as-permanent-residents

Australia also has different parent visas. The Sponsored Parent (Temporary) visa, subclass 870, allows stays of three or five years at a time, but does not itself lead to permanent residence. Holders must maintain adequate health insurance. Being able to spend an extended period with one’s children does not mean the conditions for permanent settlement are in place.
Source: https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/sponsored-parent-temporary-870

Even after permanent residency is granted, pension and healthcare eligibility must be considered separately. They should not be treated as benefits that all arrive automatically with immigration status. Australia’s Age Pension generally requires a person to be at least 67, meet income and assets tests, and have at least ten years of qualifying Australian residence, including five continuous years. Medicare has separate eligibility rules. Permanent visa holders can generally apply to enrol without first meeting the pension’s ten-year residence requirement.
Source: https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/age-pension https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/residence-rules-for-age-pension?context=22526 https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/documents-to-enrol-medicare-if-youre-permanent-resident?context=60092

The assumption that moving to a developed country brings access to its pension and healthcare benefits is therefore too broad. Parents need to know what visa they hold, how long they can stay, what coverage they qualify for and which costs they must meet themselves.

These are precisely the matters that older people can least afford to leave unclear. When someone is healthy, insurance and healthcare eligibility may seem like paperwork. Once illness, ongoing treatment or care becomes necessary, they directly affect whether savings will last, whether the children can meet the costs and whether the parents can continue living there.

Often the hardest situation is one in which neither side means harm, yet both feel hurt.

Parents may wonder why, after so much money and so many years devoted to their child’s future, their own later life feels so uncomfortable. Children may feel that they are willing to care for their parents but already too busy to take responsibility for everything. Both want to preserve the relationship, and both find the arrangement difficult.

Sometimes a child’s manner leaves parents feeling that they have become a burden. But caregiving pressure, failures of communication and actual indifference need to be distinguished. Attributing every difficulty to a lack of filial responsibility obscures practical problems. Treating all parental needs as excessive dependence is equally unfair.

It is also worth asking how the dream first took shape.

Sending a child abroad can be a carefully considered educational choice and an expression of hope for wider opportunities. In some families, it may also involve comparison with others and a desire to demonstrate success. If other people’s children go overseas, one’s own child may seem obliged to do the same. Being able to pay overseas tuition fees and living costs becomes a display of the family’s financial means and achievements.

Appearances do not establish another person’s motives. But when overseas education and migration become standard measures of success, people can focus on completing the expected steps without asking whether the child is suited to them, whether the parents actually want that life, or how retirement will work.

Hundreds of thousands or millions of renminbi can support a child’s education and opportunities. They cannot guarantee the parents’ future happiness. Once the child’s qualifications, career and immigration status are secured, the parents’ later life still requires separate planning. An educational investment achieving its aims does not establish that the whole family’s living arrangements have succeeded.

A different migration experience can help explain the distinction.

Consider someone who migrates independently before retirement and works and lives in the new country. They handle housing, transport, shopping, healthcare and administrative matters themselves. Work, neighbours and shared interests also offer opportunities to build social relationships. After years of adjustment, these foundations may be relatively stable by retirement. Later life then unfolds in an environment that is already familiar.

Someone who moves only after retirement to join their children may have to learn the language, rebuild social relationships, adjust daily habits and organise retirement support at the same time. Their children often become the main source of help, while the changes associated with migration and retirement arrive together.

It is reasonable to infer that, with other conditions being similar, someone who migrated independently earlier and has local work and life experience may find overseas retirement easier to adjust to. The important difference is not simply arriving earlier. It is having more time to develop the abilities, relationships and support needed for independent living. This does not mean early migrants always adjust well or that people who migrate in later life cannot adjust.

Long residence also changes which surroundings feel familiar. Someone accustomed to local food, language, transport and social interaction may feel less at ease during a short return to their country of origin. This is first of all a matter of lived experience. It need not express superiority or a rejection of another way of life.

The example suggests that retirement planning should consider more than where the children live. It must also address how parents can establish lives of their own.

This is particularly important in families with an only child. As parents age, care responsibilities can fall on that one person. If the child also has a partner, work and a younger generation to care for, willingness alone may not make it possible to provide all the care over the long term.

Parents can want their children to care about them and take responsibility when needed while also wishing not to trouble them over every matter. Those wishes are compatible. Maintaining as much independence as possible does not remove the children’s responsibilities. It gives family relationships a more sustainable practical foundation.

Independence does not mean never needing help. With age, care may become unavoidable. A more realistic aim is for housing, income, healthcare, social services and family relationships to provide support together, rather than placing every responsibility on one child.

People who join their children abroad after retirement need to assess their starting position carefully. Their children are already settled, while they themselves must learn how to manage everyday life and address costs, residence rights and retirement and healthcare coverage. Treating reunion as the endpoint makes it easy to underestimate what follows.

Planning for that future therefore requires more than asking whether the child can stay. Parents need to consider whether they actually enjoy life there, can travel independently, handle ordinary tasks and find people to talk to. They need to calculate what their income and savings can support, establish their residence and healthcare eligibility, and discuss living together or separately, how much help each person can provide and what alternatives remain if the arrangement does not suit them.

These conversations are best held before the move. A clear account of reality does not diminish family affection. It can prevent the relationship from carrying expectations that cannot be fulfilled.

The migration dream is not inherently right or wrong. Wider opportunities for children and reunion with parents are both valuable. But a child’s future being secured does not automatically settle the parents’ later life.

Parents can take pleasure in their children’s success and expect their care. They still need friends, conversation, autonomy and things that give substance to their own lives. Those needs do not disappear because a child has done well.

What deserves reflection is whether too many wishes have been placed in a single dream: a successful child, a reunited family, secure retirement and recognition from others that the family is doing well. Each wish is understandable. They may not all be achievable through the same choice.

Happiness in later life ultimately depends on how each day is lived. Being able to look after oneself, having someone to talk to and things one wants to do, being financially secure enough, having reliable healthcare coverage and receiving help when it is needed: these ordinary, concrete conditions are closer to what parents actually need than a family success story admired from outside.