Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
through a 'blue card' programme that will position it more advantageously in
'the global war for talent' (Collett 2008), while India and China are leading
other Asian countries in repatriating their skilled workers from North America
and Europe (Iredale et al. 2002).
Even closer to the core of neo-liberal ideology than the talent hunt for
skilled workers is the recruitment of business immigrants, those who not
only have human capital derived from successful entrepreneurial experi-
ence, but also abundant financial capital to replicate their successes else-
where. Some 30 nations around the world have business immigration
programmes, intending to entice footloose entrepreneurs and investors to
re-locate their transformative energies to a new national project of economic
development (Tseng 2000).
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The carrot inducing their migration is the
promise of citizenship and the enhanced quality of life of advanced socie-
ties, assets that may well be inaccessible for these migrants through other
immigration entry classes. The neo-liberal commodification of citizenship
implied by Canada's business immigration programme (BIP) has not
escaped attention (Harrison 1996), achieving one version of the contempo-
rary 'capitalization of citizenship' (Rose 1999). With abundant capital, per-
sonal funds of more than a million dollars, as well as a history of successful
entrepreneurial activity in their homelands, the business immigrant as
homo
economicus
is a trophy acquisition in a neo-liberal policy regime, top prize in
the skilled immigrant stakes (Ley 2003). Not merely self-supporting, the
business immigrant has both the skill and the wealth to add value, to create
jobs for others, and provide tax revenues for the state.
The extravagant economic development in turn of Japan, the four tiger
economies, and China has focussed attention on Asia Pacific as the primary
contemporary incubator of
homo economicus
. Largely unregulated regional
economies have seen dramatic rates of growth, and spectacular examples of
entrepreneurial success. Acumen in capital accumulation has been associated
with the 'bamboo networks' of overseas Chinese business families. These
families are globally networked (Yeung and Olds 2000), cosmopolitan capi-
talists (Hamilton 1999), territorially ungrounded (Ong and Nonini 1997).
Among Canada's business immigrants from 1980 to 2001, 30.6 percent orig-
inated in Hong Kong and 14.4 percent in Taiwan - with a far higher share of
both groups in Vancouver.
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The encounter of the overseas Chinese business
immigrant and the neo-liberal immigrant-receiving state is seemingly a meet-
ing of minds and interests, with prospects for spiralling mutual advantage.
Conceptual Themes and Variations
There are other theoretical fields besides the neo-liberal stage and its two
principal players that contextualize the spatiality of state and immigrant
projects. Precisely because the homunculus of
homo economicus
presents an