Hong Kong Migrants’ Divergent Experiences in Australia: A Multi-level Spatio-temporal Approach

Abstract

This study compares the social field for recent Hong Kong immigrants in the Australian cities of Melbourne, Sydney, and Darwin. We explore how migrants’ experience differs in terms of their capital, migration trajectories, and interactions with Australians and in the workplace. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews, this study features migrants’ precarious experience and (self-)selection to cities and regional areas which are shaped by the convertibility of migrants’ resources as well as state-based criteria of desirability. Compared to Melbourne and Sydney, the Northern Territory has a relatively more welcoming immigration policy. This lower bar offers a lower risk for Darwin’s immigrants seeking permanent residency. At the meso-level, Darwin’s transient population and its more multicultural ethnic composition facilitates opportunities for migrants from Hong Kong to both form social relationships outside their ethnic group and to enter standard employment. While the Australian government’s introduction of the “Hong Kong stream” migration could have attracted migrants whose permanent residency in Melbourne and Sydney would otherwise have been unobtainable, a sense of uncertainty mounted given the “incidental” nature and the paradigm of temporariness in migration policies. Our paper illuminates the interconnectedness of the macro, meso, and micro levels through a spatial-temporal understanding of divergent migration experience and strategies.