bout de papier, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1995) — Fall 1995 // Automne 1995, pp. 49–51
RELUCTANT EXILES? MIGRATION FROM
HONG KONG AND THE NEW OVERSEAS
CHINESE, edited by Ronald Skeldon.
University of Hong Kong Press, 1994,
352 pages, $25.00 US.
Reviewed by Joanne Pawluk
Are they reluctant exiles or bold pioneers? That’s the question writer and editor Ronald Skeldon asks about the record numbers of Hong Kong residents seeking foreign residence and citizenship. In his recently published book Reluctant Exiles, this Hong Kong academic and migration specialist has assembled a collection of essays of migration experts from Hong Kong, Canada, the United States, Australia and other immigrant receiving countries.
As a record of Hong Kong emigration, the book is unsurpassed in its scope and detail. It successfully examines different facets of the complex picture of migration from Hong Kong by analyzing the immigration policies of receiving countries, the role of immigration consultants, the effect of emigration on Hong Kong, the overseas settlement of Chinese emigrants and return migration to Hong Kong.
Although Reluctant Exiles includes chapters on migration to Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Singapore, and Britain, a large section of the book is devoted to Hong Kong migration to Canada, reflective of the fact that more Hong Kong emigrants go to Canada than any other country. University of British Columbia academics Graham Johnson and Diana Lary put Hong Kong migration to Canada in a historical context by examining changes to Canadian immigration policy and outlining the evolution of Chinese migration to Canada. Lary and Johnson’s largely descriptive and noncritical approach is in contrast to the chapter by University of Calgary Anthropology professor Josephine Smart, who takes a more critical and detailed look at Canada’s business migration program. Smart reiterates some of the common criticisms of the program (ie. that the program is being abused and that Canada is selling visas). She also looks at the perception of the investor program on the part of immigrants, who complain that they have no control over how their money is spent and believe that they are being taken advantage of since Canadian immigration policy requires that the funds be invested in risk ventures that will benefit the Canadian economy, not the investor.
The business immigration program, according to Smart, is on the surface a perfect marriage of capital, labour and migration. However she concludes that there are inherent contradictions between a business immigration program and the business immigrant’s economic behaviour, given that business requires mobility while migration requires settlement. She contends that the contradictions become apparent through the astronaut phenomenon, the frequent closure of businesses after conditions on permanent residence have been met and high return migration. “Immigration, in the sense of settlement, and business are separate issues, each with its own logic, and they should be respected as such. Forcing these two incompatible issues into a marriage of convenience, as they are in the business immigration program, creates a structural flaw that abuses both the program objectives and the immigrants’ best economic interests in Canada.”
Smart’s conclusions do not take into account the many successful business immigrants who take advantage of Canada’s flexible residency requirements to continue carrying on their businesses in Hong Kong or elsewhere in the world and at the same time establish a successful business in Canada. However, even for those business immigrants who are unable to maintain their businesses overseas while residing in Canada, Smart’s observations may only be valid for a limited number of business immigrants who are motivated primarily by their business concerns. She does not seem to acknowledge the fact that many business migrants have more diverse motives in seeking permanent residence abroad. Some seek a better more secure life for themselves and their children, even at the expense of their business interests. Others who seek permanent residence in Canada in order to secure a safe haven after 1997 have no intention of remaining in Canada after they obtain Canadian citizenship. As a result, return migration, the closure of businesses and the astronaut phenomenon may have nothing : to do with what she calls the inherent contradictions in the business immigration program and the interests of business migrants, but instead are the result of immigrants’ intentions upon arrival in Canada.
Skeldon’s theme of reluctant exiles versus bold pioneers emerges in all the essays in Reluctant Exiles. Most of the writers echo Skeldon’s thesis that migration from Hong Kong is part of a regional pattern in an increasingly international world and that many Hong Kong migrants are willing exiles. Skeldon maintains in his introduction that the chapters in the book neither confirm the paramountcy of 1997 as a reason for : migration, nor point to a reluctance to leave
While it is important to examine Hong Kong migration in an international context and even to challenge the well-accepted notion that 1997 is the driving force, the significance of 1997 is understated in the book. One of the few places in the book where the importance of 1997 is recognized is in a chapter on the characteristics of Hong Kong migrants to Toronto by historians Diana Lary and Bernard Luk. Lary and Luk conclude that Hong Kong emigrants are ’reluctant exiles’ and that most left Hong Kong not for economic reasons, but because of 1997. However, the book fails to offer a more detailed examination of the uniqueness of the Hong Kong situation with the impending return to Chinese sovereignty and the implications this has had for the nature of migration from Hong Kong. In doing so, the book does not adequately deal with the possibility that 1997 has created a distinct migration dynamic in Hong Kong which is unparalleled elsewhere in the world. Instead, the Hong Kong migration experience is largely interpreted in a way to support a pre-existing theory of migration that visualizes the emergence of transnational citizens in an increasing international world.
Despite these shortcomings, Reluctant Exiles is an important work on Hong Kong emigration which can assist in assessing future emigration trends from Hong Kong. Skeldon believes that the future of migration from Hong Kong will depend upon what happens in China. If the present pace of economic reform continues, he expects emigration from Hong Kong to continue at a reduced level. While he acknowledges that 1997 will affect migration from Hong Kong in the short run, he indicates that this will be a relatively minor fluctuation in a long-term shift from emigration in the 1980s to increasing immigration in the 1990s as Hong Kong’s population ages, demand for labour increases and its economy moves toward a regional service centre. However he makes it clear that this prediction is only valid if economic reform continues in China; if the economic and political situation in China deteriorates, Skeldon predicts there would be substantial outflows of people from both Hong Kong and China.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1995) — Fall 1995 // Automne 1995, pp. 49–51. Read the rest of this issue →
