Middle-Class Hong Kong Migrants’ Negotiation of Migration Paradoxes: A Life-Course Perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Studies of affluent East Asian migrants often emphasise their pragmatism but overlook how they negotiate the challenges of settling or re-settling in host countries, particularly the paradoxes they encounter. This article addresses this gap through in-depth interviews with 57 middle-class migrants from Hong Kong at three distinct life stages – older parents (aged 60+), middle-aged returnee parents, and international students – in Australia and Canada. Our findings reveal that migrant experiences often reflect conflicting sentiments amid downward career paths, diminished social lives, and challenging family transitions. In response, these three groups construct a shared narrative of achievement that simultaneously acknowledges the limitations of their social mobility, difficulties in forming friendships, and the emotional strains of geographical separation from family. This narrative serves to mitigate distress while they navigate the pressures of fulfilling specific social roles and life-stage goals. We argue that understanding Hong Kong middle-class migration requires a broader perspective that encompasses not only economic factors but also intricate social, family, and lifestyle ramifications. Importantly, we emphasise the significance of a life-course perspective to understand how middle-class migrants navigate and construct their migration experiences, which can lead to more comprehensive support systems that recognise the multifaceted experiences of ‘privileged’ migrants.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".