Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
antithesis of the settled parochialism of old Chinatown. It is about the
unsettled nature of living between cultures, of re-location as an often trau-
matic adventure, as a family switches roles from insider to outsider, from
host to stranger (Mitchell 2003). In the film, while a family friend moves to
Vancouver, the Chen family selects Australia, the earlier destination of a
daughter, while the oldest son remains in Hong Kong and a second daugh-
ter migrates to Germany. Scattered between three continents the family
exemplifies the 'bamboo network' of the contemporary Chinese diaspora.
Family dispersal achieves the spreading of risk and the maximizing of over-
all opportunity. It is this same spatial strategy that is often associated with
the expansion of Chinese family firms, as sons are despatched to potential
markets to develop a new outpost for the family business. Hamilton's (2000:
72) observation that 'the personal quality of many [overseas] investments
reflects the combination of centralized patriarchal control … and of the
entrepreneurial importance of external
guanxi
networks … for creating eco-
nomic opportunity' was perfected in Li Ka-shing's decision to groom the
business acumen of his son, Victor, fresh out of Stanford University, by
placing him in charge of Vancouver's Concord Pacific project with an
entourage of tested managers and business allies to add local knowledge,
while his other son, Richard, was despatched to Toronto to test his own
business mettle (Mitchell and Olds 2000; Olds 2001).
Such Canadian episodes are part of a broader narrative of travel and
entrepreneurship. Canada's Business Immigration Programme is
matched by competing schemes in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore
and other island states, by countries in Latin America, and by a more
half-hearted initiative in the United States - all told, close to 30 nations
have been trawling for
homo economicus
(Tseng 2000). Aided by the new
profession of immigration consultants, briefs on the details of immigra-
tion policy in different countries are carefully reviewed as middle-class
families from East Asia scan the international immigrant market.
If Canada, with the largest number of BIP landings, seems to have played
its hand with some finesse, it is in considerable measure because
Canadian entry requirements have been liberal and its proximity to the
United States made eventual onward migration to 'the beautiful coun-
try' an accessible option. The story I shall tell then is not simply a
Canadian story; the migrants could have moved elsewhere, some of them
will, others will return to their place of origin. A comparative eye sees
migration to Canada as one realized link in a network of locational pos-
sibilities and not necessarily the only or final outcome.
Michael Peter Smith (2001) has properly challenged the inert role of
human actors in globalization theory, their reduction before the master nar-
rative of global political economy. His position is abundantly substantiated
in the global scanning of wealthy and middle-class migrants leaving the
