Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The idea of emigration, reinforced by peers, became contagious, even
providing a market niche for a new magazine,
Emigrant
, launched in
Hong Kong in 1988, reinforcing the normality of departure. Middle-class
professionals and business families were the principal leavers; in 1987 the
Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank lost almost 10 percent of its executives to
emigration, and the following year the colonial government estimated that
45,000 residents had moved overseas, 'the cream of the work force' (Scott
1989). In the 1991 survey, 13 percent of respondents stated they would
definitely or probably apply to emigrate (Lam et al. 1995). This group was
of higher socio-economic status, with 10-20 years of work experience;
among them Canada was the most popular destination.
While 13 percent anticipated emigration, only six percent expected to be
abroad in 1997. Moreover, almost 20 percent of respondents stated that
they would be in Hong Kong in 1997 but with a foreign passport. As Lam
et al. (1995: 122) wryly interpreted these results, 'Most were clearly plan-
ning to move in order to stay'. Return migration was planned by these
respondents from the very beginning. It was not an unwelcome reaction to
economic or other disappointments overseas. Indeed by the early 1990s
return was already occurring. Interviews with 36 professionals and spouses
in Hong Kong revealed that 22 of them had earlier secured citizenship in
Canada, Australia or Britain (Li et al. 1995; Findlay et al. 1994). Skeldon
(1995a) estimated that 'at least 30 percent' of 1990-91 emigrants to
Australia were back in Hong Kong within three years. The transnational
movement of 'astronaut households' was already substantial enough that it
was showing up in national censuses early in the 1990s, with an excess of
female-headed households reported among the Hong Kong-born in the
gateway cities of Sydney, Auckland and Vancouver (Skeldon 1995a). Among
a small sample of families who had landed as economic migrants from Hong
Kong in 1988 and were living in Toronto, Lam (1994) observed that half
were astronauts, with one parent absent, while in addition 10-15 percent of
families had both parents absent and were headed by university students.
The attractions, for different reasons, of both the Canadian and East Asian
sites in a transnational social field would lead to a sequence of movements at
particular periods in the life cycle, as the advantages of first one site and then
the other would be differentially valued at distinctive life stages.
Seeking Information
Incomplete information compromises rational economic action in both
theory and practice. Significant behavioural revisions to theories of the firm
and entrepreneurial activity were prompted in part by the reality of missing
or inaccurate information that jeopardized rational decision-making before
