ABSTRACT
Resilience is a culture- and context-specific process of socialisation. This chapter quantitatively compares the resilience process of Chinese Canadian and Chinese Australian children who are faced with various forms of structural constraints. The measurement model of Child and Youth Resilience remains psychometrically invariant across the two groups of children. The role of family support and cultural identity in the resilience process of the two groups does not show any statistical difference. Positive outcomes from the resilience process are seen in the strengthened social cohesion valued by multicultural societies. In this vein, the primary socialisation within the domestic milieu and the ideology of the multicultural state interpenetrate each other. Although the notion of resilience is traditionally rooted in the school of psychology, this chapter makes an attempt to develop a sociology of resilience through Bourdieu’s triad notions of habitus, capital, and field. Despite varied dynamics in different diasporic contexts, resilience can remain durable and transposable. Family upbringing and socialisation can enculturate Chinese children into a system of embodied dispositions responsive to challenge and change and empower these children with a set of capacities required for bounding back from adversities and participating in multicultural societies.
