Hong Kong Movers and Stayers: Narratives of Family Migration (Studies of World Migrations)

Half a million Hong Kong residents fled their homeland during the thirteen years before Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997--and nearly half of those returned within several years of leaving. Filled with detailed, first-hand stories of nine Hong Kong families over nearly two decades, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers is an exhaustive and intimate look at the forces behind Hong Kong families' successful and failed efforts at migration and settlement.

This multi-faceted study was begun in 1991, when migration was attributed primarily to the political anxieties of the time and the notion that Hong Kong residents were seeking a better life in the West. Defining migration as a process, not a single act of leaving, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers provides an antidote to ethnocentric and simplistic theories by uncovering migration stories as they relate to social structures and social capital.

With an approach that melds survey analysis, personal biography, and sociology, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers provides a depth of understanding by comparing multiple families and gives voice to the interplay of diverse family roles, gender, and age as motivating factors in migration.