Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 8.1
Chek Lap Kok airport, Hong Kong
with a transnational twist. For interviews revealed that returnees to Hong
Kong had not necessarily completed their trans-Pacific travels (Figure 8.1);
return was itself conditional, relative to distinct stages in the life cycle and a
reading of ongoing comparative advantages between East Asia and Canada
across changing economic and social objectives. For many Hong Kongers
re-migration is a distinct possibility, for some an intended probability.
'Return' disguises what is more properly a serial process; ongoing circulation
more accurately describes actual and intended movements.
Return Migration: Themes and Variations
Every great outward surge of voluntary departures has been accompanied
by a weaker counter flow. There are always those for whom family or per-
sonal illness, the failure of economic aspirations, homesickness, and aging
encourage a return home. Until recently, this movement has been under-
studied, submerged beneath the dominant settler society narrative of immi-
gration, settlement, and assimilation. As Mark Wyman noted in
Round Trip
to America
, the stories of those who failed to join the dominant narrative
during the years of massive European immigration from 1880 to 1930 have
been largely overlooked: 'Returned immigrants rejected America and, it
seems, American scholars have rejected them' (Wyman 1993: 4). Estimates
