‘Roundabout routes and sanctuary schools’: the role of situated educational practices and habitus in the creation of transnational professionals

In this article, I examine the role of ‘education’ in the formation of transnational professionals in contemporary Hong Kong. A significant body of work has been devoted to considering the ways in which knowledge within particular global financial centres is embodied through the practices of a transnational capitalist class (TNCC). Yet, very few researchers have discussed how this TNCC is actually created. In this article, I highlight the importance of one faction of the TNCC ‐‘overseas‐educated locals’‐ and describe the sense of common identity and mutual recognition that binds them. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Hong Kong and Vancouver between 2000 and 2003, I demonstrate the salience of embedded and spatialized practices of education in the creation of the TNCC. In particular, I look at the role of inculcation within a school/university and home environment, as well as the significance of a distinctive habitus, and conclude that these situated processes are indeed crucial to the development of an exclusive class of transnational professionals.     

DOUBLE NEGATIONS: HONG KONG CULTURAL IDENTITY IN HOLLYWOOD'S TRANSNATIONAL REPRESENTATIONS

This article attempts to develop a critical understanding of the reconstitution of Hong Kong identity in Hollywood productions involving Hong Kong film talents. It argues that the ‘local’ in the city's historical context of the nineties no longer refers to any entity pertaining to a particular locality and culture but is always already determined by the framework of the transnational, which structures the perception of its local social reality. In particular, the paper suggests that the remaking of Hong Kong cultural identity in Hollywood films could be grasped in terms of the notion of a double negation. While the formation of such an identity is based on a negation of Chineseness, Hong Kong's transnational crossing to Hollywood initiates another negation that negates the very symbolic realm common to Chineseness. Jackie Chan's Hollywood blockbuster, Rush Hour, is used to illuminate the ways in which Hong Kong film stars and directors working for the global entertainment syndicate re-appropriate their agency in the production of a transnational narrative of their identity.     

The paradox of academic determinism and adolescent romance in Hong Kong

How do adolescents negotiate romance in an environment that is hostile to it? Why do they seek out and practice romantic engagements despite negative sanctions? This paper addresses these questions by examining how Hong Kong Chinese adolescents narrate and practice romance in the context of academic determinism – the discourse that academic success is the most important determinant of young people’s futures. I discuss how academic determinism shapes their narratives, ideals and practices of romance. I also analyse the paradox of academic determinism – how it simultaneously de-legitimises adolescent romance and fuels young people’s desire for it. By focusing on transactions between young people and their environments, this paper makes a unique contribution towards theorising how young people negotiate and practice romance in the context of academic pressure, adult surveillance and control.     

Cambodian youth managing expectations and uncertainties of the life course – a typology of biographical management

Globalising changes in recent decades have produced great impacts on young lives, and youth sociologists have been analysing how young people negotiate change and uncertainty in their lives. This article complements existing research by a case study on Cambodia, where young people have in recent years been charged to deal with drastic social changes but in social conditions different from the better known global North. By drawing on data from a study of young rural–urban migrant labour workers' and university students' life experiences and expectations in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, we systematically compare their sense making, action strategies and future orientation during their transition into working life. We present a theoretically informed but empirically grounded typology that illustrates three major modes of biographical management: entrepreneurial, traditional and situational, which are linked to different perceptions of uncertainty, future perspectives, action strategies, planning modes and resources available through the family, personal capacity and the larger sociocultural context. We conclude with critical remarks on the extent to which the fulfilment of Cambodian young people's hopes for a better life is shaped by broader social conditions and individual circumstances.     

The meanings of migration,remittances and gifts: views of Honduran women who stay

In this article we examine the non‐economic, emotional meanings that men's economic migration has for the wives and mothers who stay in two rural communities in Honduras. Combining the literature on economic sociology and on the social meanings of relations within transnational families, we identify three areas that allow us to capture what the men's migration means for the women who stay – communication between the non‐migrant women and migrant men, stress and anxiety in women's personal lives, and added household responsibilities. Through interviews with 18 non‐migrant mothers and wives and qualitative fieldwork in Honduras, we find that women's interpretations of men's migration are not simple, black‐and‐white assessments. Instead, these are multifaceted and shaped by the social milieu in which the women live. Whereas the remittances and gifts that the men send improve the lives of the women and their families, these transfers also convey assurances that the men have not forgotten them and they become expressions of love.     

Mapping the role of ‘transnational family habitus’ in the lives of young people and children

In this article, we develop the concept of ‘transnational family habitus’ as a theoretical tool for making sense of the ways in which children and young people from a migrant background are ‘doing families’ transnationally. Drawing on over a decade of cumulative research on Caribbean and Italian families in the UK, as well as on a new joint research project, we first investigate the opportunities and consequences of a transnational family habitus on family arrangements, kinship relationships and identity within a transnational context. Second, we analyse the role of these young people's structural location in Britain in shaping the boundaries of their transnational family habitus. We argue that one should see a transnational family habitus as an asset that can potentially disrupt conventional understandings of belonging and processes of inclusion and exclusion. However, we also detail how social divisions of class, race, and increasingly migration status, shape such a habitus.     

The post-80s generation: exploring the attitudes toward family and housing

ABSTRACT

Previous literature has paid attention to housing pathways and cohort features of young people, but studies connecting the two themes are lacking. This paper offers a perspective on the cohort analysis of young people based on their housing choices and aspirations. With empirical evidence from a two-round social survey, this study explores the ‘not leaving home’ pattern of the housing choices of young people in Hong Kong. With some supplementary subgroup analysis, the cohort label of a ‘post-80s generation’ in Hong Kong is challenged. Contradictions are revealed in the views of our young people about housing and family life, and further analysis is conducted to examine the impacts of economic and sociocultural factors in the local context of Hong Kong. This study argues that we need to look beyond the shared features and subgroup differences and consider how sociocultural factors, particularly gender, marriage, education, and social norms, interact with economic factors to shape housing choices, aspirations and apparent contradictions in the viewpoints of young people regarding their personal development and housing futures. In doing so, the paper also engages with debates around intra and intergenerational dynamics and inequalities. The paper focuses on Hong Kong but these debates have international resonance.     

Family divided: the class formation of Honduran transnational families

Although there is a growing literature on transnational families, we know little about the class formation of such families and even less about how transnational migration and generation interact in this process. In this article I draw from ethnographic research with Honduran immigrant parents in the USA and transnational youths in Honduras to theorize the class formation of transnational families. Based on Bryceson and Vuorela's concepts of frontiering and relativizing, I show how economic remittances bolster the expectations and improve the lifestyles of transnational youths to the detriment of their parents' welfare in the USA. That parents often relativize their communication, choosing not to tell children about their struggles, can contribute to increased inequalities within families. Finally, my data suggest that it will be difficult for transnational youths to meet their newfound expectations and maintain their lifestyles without a permanent flow of remittances and thus the ongoing separation of family.     

Children's agency and its contradictions in the context of transnational labour migration from Vietnam

In this article, we contribute to the growing and diverse literature on the lived experiences of children and their agency in the context of migration. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with children whose migrant parents have left them behind, as well as with those who care for them in Vietnam, we demonstrate that the various ways in which they affect migration decision‐making and transnational communication shape the children's imaginations of migration. The context‐specific social construction of childhood, or more specifically adult perceptions of children's agency and needs, in turn structures these processes. We emphasize the need for debates on children's agency to take into account both broader socio‐economic processes at the macro level and the concrete and local scale at which children's lives unfold. By outlining how children's experiences of parental migration are constitutive of their attitudes toward this livelihood strategy, we also argue that the ability of those ‘left‐behind’ to exercise agency is closely intertwined with processes of social becoming and navigation in the transnational social fields constructed for them by adults.     

The boundaries of transnationalism: the case of assisted voluntary return migrants

Few studies on transnationalism have focused on migrants who return to their country of origin with insufficient resources and limited mobility. This study sheds light on the transnational connections of those who went back to Georgia and Armenia from Belgium on a voluntary assisted return and reintegration programme. Using Boccagni's (2012) analytical framework, we reveal the returnees' interpersonal, institutional and symbolic transnational ties. Although these ties were often limited and had little effect on their daily lives, and although the migrants' desire to participate in the transnational field rarely matched their ability to do so, they nonetheless attached great value to them symbolically and emotionally. Our findings question current conceptualizations of transnationalism and the focus on the home country as the sole context in which transnational ties should have an impact. We believe that there is a need to pay greater attention to the subjective and symbolic dimensions of the return–transnationalism field, including the relationship between integration and return migration policies.     

Hong Kong and China in 1997

In 1997, Hong Kong changes from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. While officially it has been agreed that the status change should not alter the economic or social conditions in the territory substantially, many people believe that residents' lives will be considerably affected. Hong Kong society has always been highly mobile and fluid in terms of migration, and it is only very recently that over half of the population have been born in the tenitory Many elderly people in Hong Kong were bom elsewhere and many Hong Kong families are fragmented, with members living in China, elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, North America, Australia, and Britain. The potential impact of 1997 on the lives and conditions of elderly residents is only now forming a focus of concern. This article considers what may happen in the closing years of this century and early next when the SAR emerges. There is already growing popular belief that, for financial and social reasons, some elderly people are going back to China for their retirement. However, evidence from a survey of 419 noninstitutionalized respondents found relatively few expressing a desire or willingness to retire to China. This article concludes with a discussion of why this may be so. A major reason may be that, with the increasing ease of visits between Hong Kong and China, Hong Kong elderly people might feel more comfortable with alternately living in China and Hong Kong instead of taking the bold decision of permanently living in China.     

Loneliness,the search for meaning,and the psychological well-being of economically disadvantaged Chinese adolescents living in Hong Kong: Implications for life skills development programs

Assuming a relational basis of meaning-making, we examined ways in which the search for meaning and loneliness relate to the psychological well-being of economically disadvantaged adolescents. Using a survey with a sample of 366 economically disadvantaged adolescents and 304 non-economically disadvantaged adolescents recruited from 10 schools in Hong Kong, we observed that the search for meaning had a positive association with self-esteem, self-efficacy, and life satisfaction only among economically disadvantaged adolescents, whereas loneliness had a negative association with those indicators of psychological well-being in the entire sample. We also identified an interaction effect between the search for meaning and loneliness on life satisfaction among economically disadvantaged adolescents. Our results partially supported our hypotheses by showing that loneliness and the search for meaning jointly affected the development of economically disadvantaged adolescents, whereas loneliness was a more significant predictor than the search for meaning. Given such functions of the search for meaning and sense of belongingness in the development of young people amid economic hardship, practitioners and educators should initiate meaning- and relationship-oriented life skills programs in the formal and non-formal learning contexts, as well as facilitate young people's search for meaning in the informal learning context.     

Diminished tradition of return? Transnational migration in Bolivia's Valle Alto

One‐fifth of the Bolivian population lives abroad, and transnational behaviour strongly links their villages with destination communities. In this article we address whether the increasing difficulty of return migration (owing to legal and geographic barriers) results in diminished social and economic remittances to the country of origin. Results from a questionnaire survey of 417 households in the Valle Alto area of Cochabamba Department in 2007 reveal that monetary remittances account for one‐half of the income of active migrant families (and one‐quarter of income overall), and that transnational cultural ties remain strong. However, after ten years of cumulated time abroad the intention to return to Bolivia drops markedly along with economic and some social remittances. Closer analysis reveals that time abroad reduces these ties through the mediating forces of family members abroad, legal status, and home ownership abroad.     

Validating the Scale Measuring Dysfunctional Parenting with Hong Kong Adolescents

Dysfunctional parenting in situations requiring discipline is an important issue in Hong Kong. However, few scales for measuring dysfunctional parenting have been validated in the local context. The current study validated, with a sample of Hong Kong adolescents, a dysfunctional parenting scale that has been widely adopted in the West. A total of 965 adolescent students (males 43.3%, mean age 14.6, and range 12–18) were recruited for this study. Principal component analysis with varimax rotations and Tucker’s congruence coefficient were adopted to examine the factor structure of the scale and its stability. Cronbach’s alpha and correlation analysis were used to assess the internal consistency and the convergent and divergent validity of the scale and of each subscale identified. Three stable factors (laxness, overreactivity, and verbosity) were extracted, and their individual items demonstrated good internal consistency. The convergent and divergent validity of the scale (and subscales) were confirmed by its positive association with the material hardship of the families, the parental stress, and the antisocial behavior of the adolescents, their haughtiness and loneliness, and by its negative association with the adolescents’ social skills. Unlike previous studies that investigated parents’ rearing of young children, where verbosity was not detected as a significant factor, in adolescents, verbosity was detected as a factor affecting discipline. For adolescents in Hong Kong, verbosity is shown to be a dysfunctional parenting behavior; this is also true of Western adolescents but differs from traditional Chinese cultural beliefs.     

Transnational social work: using a wraparound model

In this article, we explore the wraparound approach of service delivery as a model for transnational social work. The wraparound model, used primarily within community‐based children's mental health services and child protection initiatives, has been effective when planning services for clients and their families with complicated needs, whose care has to be provided within a multiple provider context. Most social work is delivered nationally or internationally rather than trans‐nationally. In the article we outline how the model could be structured to meet the particular needs of transmigrants, including the involvement of NGOs and INGOs, and identify key obstacles and limitations.     

Suspending,settling, sponsoring: the intimate chronomobilities of young Asian migrants in Australia

In this article, I develop the concept of ‘intimate chronomobilities’ to understand some of the intersections between the temporalities of intimate relationships and of migration in the lives of young and ‘middling’ transnational migrants from Asia to Australia. Drawing on in‐depth interview data, I reveal how romantic partnerships are highly significant to experiences of transnational mobility, and how such experiences take place in the context of a governance regime in Australia in which migration has become increasingly transient, transitionary and transitory, and in which sponsored partner and spouse visas can secure migration futures. The analysis explores how the lived and imagined timelines and timings of intimate partnerships play highly significant roles in defining and structuring migrants' mobilities, and reveals how intimate chronomobilities of ‘suspending, settling and sponsoring’ are understood by migrants through lived experiences of sequence, synchronicity and tempo.     

Infrastructure of mobility: navigating borders,cities and markets

In this article, which is based on research conducted in Hong Kong from 2010 to 2013, and again in 2018, I analyse the region‐bound circulation of independent women sex workers from the Philippines across the Asian global cities of Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Macau. Migrating as visa‐free tourists, they maintain a valid immigration status and maximize their income in the informal economy by adopting a step‐down transient mobility pattern characterized by a downward hierarchical circulation to multiple city‐states and country destinations. As I show, their multinational migration is produced and structured through the instrumentalization of a mobility infrastructure constituted by a regime of visa‐free circulation, transportation developments, commercialized migration services, and social networks. In this article, I attempt to extend the contemporary analysis of unauthorized migration by moving away from the prevailing focus on incorporation and settlement and towards an examination of the logics and mechanics of migration flows that occur outside state‐sanctioned channels.     

A middle‐class global mobility? The working lives of Indian men in a west London hotel

In this article we examine the working lives of young, single, middle‐class Indian men employed in the increasingly global hospitality sector in London, UK. Using a case study of a single hotel, we investigate a particular form of Indian middle‐class global mobility that differs from both the well‐documented ‘low status’, unskilled migrant as well as the highly‐skilled, science oriented migrants. We explore how their jobs both reinforce and challenge middle‐class Indian notions of masculinity, as well as how the recruitment process is both gendered and economically selective. We suggest that the transnational formation of Indian middle‐class identity is drawn from four main categories: a middle‐class lifestyle in India, class‐based motivations, the gendered and class based recruitment process of the UK hospitality industry, and the performance of class‐based gender identities.     

Long distance intimacy: class,gender and intergenerational relations between mothers and children in Filipino transnational families

Abstract In this article I address transnational intergenerational relations between Filipino migrant mothers and their young adult children and examine how families achieve intimacy across great distances. I do this by identifying and examining the transnational communication methods Filipino migrant families use to develop intimacy, in other words familiarity, across borders. In my analysis, I address how political economy and gender shape the dynamics of transnational communication. By showing how economic conditions and gender shape transnational family communication, I provide a socially thick lens through which to understand the formation of transnational intimacy and emphasize how larger systems of inequality shape the lives of the children left behind by the global migration of women.     

Privileged Japanese transnational families in Hawaii as lifestyle migrants

This study of privileged Japanese families in Hawaii revisits the claim that East Asian transnational families relocate overseas either to improve their well‐being or to enhance their status through their children's international education. Existing scholarship has focused mainly on the second pattern of status‐seeking migration, conceptualized as ‘education migration’. By employing Benson and O'Reilly's concept of ‘lifestyle migration’, I consider the less widely studied case of migration strategies designed to increase well‐being. The central difference between the two types of migrants lies in the way that migrant women construct their gendered identity through their transnational split‐household arrangement – a freer self (lifestyle migrants) or a sacrificial self (education migrants). In conclusion, I call for further research on this neglected topic and propose an important dimension to facilitate lifestyle migration, gender.