Bridging Borders in the Global City: Negotiating Sameness and Difference in Hong Kong’s Skilled Immigrants from Mainland China

Abstract

Immigration labor in global cities is often framed in a dichotomy of skilled and nonskilled and explained from different perspective. Based on narratives of skilled immigrants from mainland China in postcolonial Hong Kong, this study shifts the focus of attention from generalized dissimilarities between migrant groups determined by the level of skills to commonalities of experience shaped by the broader social and cultural forces of their spatial, economic and political environments. It points to the importance of “border” in shaping the mode of incorporation of skilled migrants to localities in global city. It shows that skilled mainland immigrants in Hong Kong are deeply embedded in an overarching xin yimin (new immigrants) discourse according to which the Hong Kong–China border distinguishes all mainland immigrants from Hong Kong citizens regardless of the level of skills they possess. This discourse is associated with and defined by the cultural meaning of border between Hong Kong and China produced in the colonial past and reproduced in the postcolonial present. Despite being highly educated and skilled, mainland Chinese professionals experienced countless negotiation of sameness and difference in their everyday encountering localities and making place. The stories presented here ask us to rethink the assumptions informing the analytical distinctions between skilled and non-skilled and call for “unifying” skilled and non-skilled migration in global cities methodologically and theoretically.