Hong Kong Movers and Stayers: Narratives of Family Migration (review)

Hong Kong Movers and Stayers: Narratives of Family Migration is an interesting and important addition to the University of Illinois Press series Studies of World Migrations. This book looks at the emigration from Hong Kong in the wake of the retrocession of Hong Kong to China in 1997. This is done at both a macro and micro level by using careful survey and interview data and seeking to complicate simple or universalizing theories surrounding migration patterns by grounding their research in institutional theory, transnationalism theory, and sociological analysis of in-depth narratives.

The authors began this research in 1991 in order to capture the emigration patterns of Hong Kong residents during the period from 1984 to the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. They surveyed 1,552 residents and found that 12% of them had plans to emigrate, so it was not quite the mass exodus that might have been expected. Nine of these potential emigrants were then selected for in-depth interviewing, and the stories of their hopes, challenges and fears are presented in this volume.

The book is divided into three parts which represent different experiences based largely on the class of immigrants, and it also identifies three levels of social institution, which are “large-scale regulatory institutions, intermediate-level social relations, and more personal cognitive-cultural frames” (217), that provide the framework for their analysis. The book’s divisions, based on social class, are the Cosmopolitans, the Rooted, and the Working Class, each of which relates the story of three families from those categories. Each class, however, has its own sets of challenges and the common core value of family unity and the goal of creating the best conditions for the thriving of that family and its networks. The institutions that they describe include Hong Kong political and social institutions and the family—the Chinese family in particular—as an institution with varying “family scripts” that “shape their migration trajectories” and how they adjust and react in unique ways. The strong family ties play a part in the majority of the migrant narratives. Migration stories are not simple point A to point B stories, and this is captured in rich detail in the book.

The three “Cosmopolitan” families, with their skills, education, and global connections, still had settlement issues, some of which were resolved and one of which resulted in reverse immigration. The three “Rooted” families demonstrated not just what immigrants gain through their emigration, but what they leave behind, and that adaptation to changes in one’s home country might be easier than adapting to a new country. Brian Wan, supposedly “rooted,” also has a story that shows the “different migration experiences and expectations of women and men and of various generations” (135). He wanted to join his family in Canada, but his wife, Wai-Yin, did not want to emigrate, and his family, which had emigrated to Canada, disappointed him by changing their family emigration plan and denying him support. The three “Working Class” family stories emphasize that economic instability makes family and local support networks difficult to leave, along with the slim possibility of meeting the skills requirements of immigration programs such as those in Canada. It also challenges assertions that transcultural identities are now the norm (Castles and Miller, 1993Castles and Miller, 1998) by showing the enduring nature of national cultural identities and loyalties.

The psychological factors of family decision-making are important ones and the book does well to emphasize this, as much of migration research relies on one-dimensional or unsophisticated views of immigrant motivation. The purpose of Hong Kong Movers and Stayers appears to be to provide an alternative to universal theories of push and pull factors such as Peter Li (2003) has presented. It pushes us to look at patterns of migration in more flexible and nuanced ways. It emphasizes that it is not a single decision of...