The immigrant identity literature, which describes various routes to a range of identity claims, suffers from an assumption of mutually exclusive “categorical identities.” In this study the author re-conceptualizes immigrants’ identity formation as a historical causal process involving relational “identity categories.” The sample consists of 56 highly achieving Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants with at least twenty-year lengths of stay. They respectively represent precedents and followers of contemporary Chinese-speaking migrants to the U.S. A major finding is that while Taiwanese immigrants tend to develop an exclusive identity formation process, the Chinese process entails inclusivity. I argue that this within-group difference has its roots in pre-migration conditions. Ethnic polarization in Taiwan has generated and sustained a political form of hyphenated-American identity, a process in which “Taiwanese,” “Chinese” and “Asian” are perceived as mutually exclusive categories of identity. The lack of an equivalent pre-migration event for Chinese immigrants has resulted in the formation of a culturally hyphenated identity in which “Chinese” is interpreted as a symbolic ethnicity that complements Asian panethnicity. By addressing the enduring effects of homeland politics on immigrant identity, this study challenges existing ideas on associations among time/length of stay, culture/common language, and immigrant integration
