Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and represents less of a brain exchange, as it is sometimes portrayed, than a
brain drain removing highly talented young managers and professionals. More
fluent usually in English than in Cantonese or Mandarin, these graduates
have very high levels of education secured primarily in Canada; 70 percent of
the children of immigrant Chinese-Canadians complete a university degree,
an extraordinary rate of achievement that is 2.5 times greater than the
Canadian-born (Abada et al. 2008). Although Chinese-Canadians are able to
translate this impressive human capital into good jobs in Canada, there is an
abiding sense that the grass is greener on the other side of the Pacific.
Byron's declaration of satisfaction with economic life in Hong Kong is
repeated by most of his cohort. A number of young adults seemingly 'fall
into' positions in Hong Kong while on holiday there with family or friends.
Whether the holiday masked a more intentional job search or not, dis-
guised perhaps in case it was unsuccessful, I often heard that young return-
ees had secured a position 'by chance'. No doubt they were also benefiting
from a much denser network of social capital than was readily available to
them in the mainstream labour market in Canada. Nancy, a young Toronto-
trained physiotherapist found that even in the sometimes rocky labour
market of the 2000s, it was not difficult to pick up a job: 'You know because
of all the different opportunities in Hong Kong, it is quite easy for any
returnee to find a job, as long as you are not picky' (Salaff et al. 2008: 40).
But that initial position had to morph into a more substantial opportunity
quickly, for returnees were not in Hong Kong to waste time. After com-
pleting her business degree in Vancouver, April Wong flew to Hong Kong
to celebrate, staying with her father who had continued as an astronaut
during his daughters' secondary school and university education overseas
(Sin 2005). After a casual job search, April found a stopgap job, enabling
the fun to continue - 'life is so much more exciting here' - a job which she
upgraded six weeks later for a career position in a bank. Responding to her
success, her two sisters followed her, and their mother, now alone in a
Vancouver suburb, sold their house, completing the family reunification in
Hong Kong.
Audrey Kobayashi and I heard many stories like these as we conducted a
series of seven focus groups, with a total of 56 returnees, in Hong Kong
(Ley and Kobayashi 2005). Some of the groups were assembled with the
assistance of the alumni associations of the University of British Columbia
and the University of Toronto and these participants typically included
young managers and professionals in their twenties and thirties, precisely
the group identified as leading the charge back to Hong Kong in the data
bases reviewed earlier. The focus groups presented a familiar set of motives
for the initial move to Canada. A mix of political security ('passport insur-
ance'), quality of life, and children's education (often their own) triggered
the first instance of trans-Pacific mobility of their families, an account that
