Together separately? Young transmigrant professionals in “Asia’s World City” Hong Kong

Abstract

Young transmigrant professionals are at the forefront of skilled mobilities. Global cities within the Asia-Pacific, such as Hong Kong, are taking significant steps toward creating migration policies that offer enhanced schemes for situating this cadre of migrants’ skilled mobilities to meet domestic labor needs and gain a competitive advantage in the global race for talent. Yet, how do these preferential policies manifest in Hong Kong’s lived landscape? Young transmigrant professionals appear to live together separately with Hong Kong mainstream society through their sense of place enacted via mobilities-stillness practices in the territory. These practices, in turn, appear to lend to the elite production of place(s) in Hong Kong. This paper draws from research on sense of place with 25 British and American, mostly white, highly skilled young transmigrant professionals. A phenomenological qualitative approach is used to provide insights into informants’ lived experiences of residence, workplace, and leisure places in Hong Kong exploring the meaning and implications of this cadre of skilled mobilities on elite production of “expatriate” place(s).

Keywords:

• Highly skilled
• mobility-stillness practices
• global city
• sense of place