Residential Space Poverty and the Spatial Solutions for Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Residential space poverty has been a recurring urban phenomenon. This study shows how new migrants in Hong Kong navigate residential space poverty. We used Q-method to understand the subjective experiences of new migrants living in poor informal housing units. These migrants indicate mixed subjective experiences in using public and openly accessible spaces. Some of these spaces act as a “third place” that improves migrants’ quality of life, but some socio-economic factors have undermined their role as a spatial solution. Although these spaces can contribute to social vulnerability reduction and social integration, their benefits for the most disadvantaged groups are unclear.

摘要

居住空间贫困一直是一个反复出现的城市现象。这项研究显示了香港的新移民如何驾驭居住空间贫困。我们使用Q方法来了解居住在贫困的非正式住房单位的新移民的主观经验。这些移民表示在使用公共和公开的空间方面有不同的主观体验。其中一些空间作为 “第三场所”，改善了移民的生活质量，但一些社会经济因素削弱了它们作为空间解决方案的作用。尽管这些空间可以为减少社会脆弱性和社会融合做出贡献，但它们对最弱势的群体的好处还不清楚。

KEYWORDS:

• Migrant
• informal housing
• open space
• social vulnerability
• Hong Kong
• Q-method

Acknowledgements

We are also indebted to Dr Lewis Cheung, Professor CY Jim and Mr Paul Cheung who provided support to the data collection process.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Despite being a Chinese city, Hong Kong has its own immigration policies that are formulated separately and operate largely independent of its Chinese counterparts. Mainland Chinese citizens are not born with the right of abode in Hong Kong.

2 Only 0.9% of all domestic households in Hong Kong lived in SDUs and had at least one new-migrant member (Census and Statistics Department 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Hong Kong under a postgraduate scholarship awarded to the first author, and by the Victoria University of Wellington under the Research Establishment Grant [grant number 223087] awarded to the second author.