Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
that depart from Vancouver International Airport for Hong Kong, China
and Taiwan.
22
Different families vary in their deployment of routes vs. roots
as household strategies, but many have returned to their place of origin;
estimates in Hong Kong repeatedly cite in excess of 200,000 residents who
hold Canadian passports. What can we say about the meaning of citizenship
associated with these movements? Is citizenship indeed pragmatic and flex-
ible (Ong 1999) or is there a sense of belonging that complicates transna-
tional flows? Certainly, field research in Hong Kong indicates that the
closure implied by return is as limited a concept as a linear model of assim-
ilation (Ley and Kobayashi 2005). More accurate is 'return for now', as
there is always the prospect of moving back from East Asia to Canada, as
opportunities variously defined at different points in the life cycle favour
first one side and then the other of the trans-Pacific social field. The mil-
lionaire migrant articulates par excellence the Global Commission's new
paradigm of international mobility characterized by temporary and circular
movement.
The chapters that follow aim to give flesh to this paradigm in charting the
trans-Pacific life lines of wealthy migrants originating in East Asia. They act
within, against, and through such global contexts as economic neo-liberalism,
continental geopolitics, and the long-range interdependence presumed by
globalization. The politics they engage remain primarily national, as nation
states seek to project themselves onto a global stage, scanning for new
sources of capital and skilled labour in an era when economic and demo-
graphic energy is no longer limited to the historic North Atlantic axis. But
as we shall see, this expanded trans-continental reach promises rewards but
often incurs penalties. Global ambitions can run aground without local
knowledge. Cosmopolitanism can imperil social relations that require prox-
imity and rootedness.
A Note on Origins and Methods
Today authors often come clean with an outline of the back stage prepara-
tions that led to a front stage text. Research for this volume began
sporadically around 1990. My primary research concern then was a com-
parative study of inner city gentrification, which continued until topic
publication in 1996. But as a social geographer with an interest in older
inner city neighbourhoods, I could not escape the extraordinary develop-
ments in the Vancouver housing market. Taking several months off from
gentrification research in the early 1990s, I followed the conflict associated
with the remaking of the City's older elite neighbourhoods, not far distant
from my own, as wealthy immigrants from East Asia bought property,
usually large new mansions built following the demolition of an older
