Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
career development. The most substantial divide, however, occurred against
earnings, with the earnings of returnees, despite their more youthful age,
2.3 times higher than the earnings of stayers, confirming our earlier finding
on the surprisingly low incomes of the Hong Kong population in Canada.
This analysis can usefully be matched with an interview and on-line survey
of stayers in Canada and movers to Hong Kong (Deng 2007). It confirmed the
demographic and educational profile of each group, and also substantiated
Waters' (2005, 2006) argument about the role of Canada (and Australia, New
Zealand, the US and the UK) as an educational staging point in a transna-
tional social field. Returnees were likely to have moved to Canada in the first
place, usually with their parents, in order to study and learn English (Deng
2007). Armed with this cultural capital, their primary motive for return was
job opportunities in East Asia that usually exceeded those in Canada, as they
found a better economic yield there for a western education and proficiency in
English. In contrast stayers in Canada were more likely to nominate quality of
life factors that had brought them to Canada and kept them there: a less stress-
ful life, family reunion, children's schooling, the natural environment.
As we saw in Chapter 3, business immigrants were not highly motivated to
undertake business in Canada. An exchange of assets is evidently occurring
across the transnational social field. Economic capital was brought to Canada
from East Asia, transformed into cultural capital in the 1.5 generation and re-
exported as labour to East Asia where it has found a ready employment market,
reproducing economic capital. Some households with substantial economic
assets remain in Canada, while others return to East Asia as part of the reunion
of fragmented astronaut families; indeed family reunion is a secondary reason,
behind economic opportunities, for return to Hong Kong (Deng 2007). So
too young Canadians born in Hong Kong are more likely to return if they have
a family member already living there; there is a home already waiting, remov-
ing a serious cost item from a young migrant's budget (Salaff et al. 2008).
Another social dynamic fuels the flight to Hong Kong. Just as a moral panic
led to emigration from the colony earlier, social contagion among the young is
part of the return.
8
Recall from Chapter 7 that Byron returned with his class-
mates from his ersatz university courses in Vancouver: 'My best friends from
my university life, they all moved back there. We've got the same theory. We can
be very proud of what we're being paid and what we're doing', for, 'In Canada,
I cannot make a living like I'm making in Hong Kong'.
The Return of the 1.5 Generation
Like the special case of the winners of the Miss Hong Kong Pageant, young
adults are finding the gradient on the transnational social field carries them
back to East Asia. Their loss is a serious one for the Canadian labour market
