UI Press | Janet W. Salaff, Siu-lun Wong, and Arent Greve | Hong Kong Movers and Stayers: Narratives of Family Migration

Hong Kong Movers and Stayers

Narratives of Family Migration

An intimate account of what migration means to Hong Kong families

Half a million Hong Kong residents fled their homeland during the thirteen years before Hong Kong's reversion to China in 1997. Nearly half of those returned within the next several years. Filled with detailed, first-hand stories of nine Hong Kong families over nearly two decades, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers is a multifaceted yet intimate look at the forces behind Hong Kong families' successful, and failed, efforts at migration and settlement.

Defining migration as a process, not a single act of leaving, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers provides an antidote to ethnocentric and simplistic theories by uncovering migration stories as they relate to social structures and social capital. The authors meld survey analysis, personal biography, and sociology and compare multiple families in order to give voice to the interplay of gender, age, and diverse family roles as motivating factors in migration.

"Hong Kong Movers and Stayers is an engaging and superbly researched sociological ethnography that treats migration as a process and not a singular act of departure and settlement. . . . Indeed, the book represents collaborative work at its best."--Contemporary Sociology

"An impressive resource for academic researchers who will find a wealth of historical and institutional information if they are studying Hong Kong and China . . . . Overall it is a valuable contribution to the area of Asian studies, as well as migration studies and theory."--Canadian Ethnic Studies

"A solid contribution to our knowledge about migration, not just in Hong Kong but more widely."--China Quarterly

"There is no other study like this in the China migration literature, nor in the literature on emigration from Hong Kong. The thoroughness of this longitudinal research provides a highly nuanced account of how changes in family life over a period of fifteen years have affected motivations and outcomes for migration."--Nicole Newendorp, author of Uneasy Reunions: Immigration, Citizenship, and Family Life in Post-1997 Hong Kong

Janet W. Salaff was a professor emerita of sociology at the University of Toronto and the author of Working Daughters of Hong Kong: Filial Piety or Power in the Family? Siu-lun Wong is a professor of sociology and director of the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong. Arent Greve is a professor of organization theory at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen, Norway.

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