Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
movement. Responding to geopolitical, quality of life and educational
gradients they have achieved a massive re-location of capital from the global
accumulation hot-house of East Asia to the cooler shores of 'white settler
societies' around the Pacific Rim. For some, Vancouver has become some-
thing of a post-colonial hill station, home for a season for recuperation and
family development, while the heavy lifting of capital accumulation occurs on
the muggy coastal plains of distant shores. In a remarkable transformation
and circulation of capital forms, economic capital from East Asia is converted
into cultural capital through investment in the overseas education of the 1.5
generation, which is then exported back with these high achieving young
adults to Hong Kong and Taiwan to be transformed into economic capital in
the labour market, where job-seeking is aided by the social capital of existing
networks of alumni, friends and family. This westward pan-Pacific movement
in human talent has accompanied the eastward flow of property investment,
far different from the economic terms of trade in British Columbia antici-
pated by neo-liberal governments as benefits of the BIP.
What undergirds this trade is geographical difference not sameness, the
varying attributes of East Asia and the settler societies. The transnational
social field is integrated by the variable resources that may be retrieved on
each shore of the Pacific, career acceleration and capital accumulation in
East Asia and educational and quality of life services together with geopo-
litical security in Canada. There is an articulation of these resources at dif-
ferent stages of the life cycle, prescribing serial movement on the HKG-YVR
great circle route. Moreover there is also selective articulation within the
family unit; women, children and retirees are drawn to the quality of life
habitus
in Vancouver, while working men and young adults follow the gravi-
tational field toward the economic rush of East Asia.
But geography can be a liability as well as a benefit. Too much difference
in the economic environment between the opposite sides of the social field
incapacitated even those migrants who toiled diligently to establish an eco-
nomic beach head in Vancouver. In addition the more complex politics in
Canada than in Hong Kong or Taiwan toward the open borders of globali-
sation left millionaire migrants mired in confusing political conflict as they
brought proven models of capital accumulation into the Vancouver land
market and encountered a more complex regime of objectives, policies,
rights and expectations. Most acutely, the costs of separation among spa-
tially fragmented astronaut families led in many instances to silent suffer-
ing, the emotional costs of absent intimacy, support and guidance. In the
words of one astronaut head of household, briefly re-united with his family
in Vancouver, 'Don't tell me I have a big house. This is a house of tears'.
Among the varied meanings of distance, this emotional register requires
much closer attention in an ever more transnational world. Rationality pro-
vides an incomplete guide to cosmopolitan life.
