Search

The present work purports to draw the links between two strands of literature: the vast literature on homeownership access across ethnic/migratory groups, and the emerging literature on inter-generational differences in ownership and their implications for wealth inequalities. It examines the case of Hong Kong, where homes are unbelievably expensive irrespective of the large public housing sector, and where recent immigrants from mainland China constitute a quasi-ethnic group even though the great majority of the local populations are Chinese nationals. The study draws upon the micro-data files of the 1996, 2001, 2006, 2010 and 2016 population censuses, and situates the analysis on the changing housing market dynamics and immigration scenes since the eve of the 1997 handover. The findings reveal a significant drop in homeownership among younger generations in recent years, and the drop is more pronounced for recent migrants from the mainland. The latter also suffer from increasing inaccessibility to public housing, rented or owned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong has experienced rounds of property bubble inflation and burst, underscoring heightened market volatility amidst the financialization of the world economy. Irrespective of its fame as an exemplar of laissez faire capitalism, the city's massive public housing programme consisting of public rental housing (PRH) and the Homeownership Scheme (HOS) places the Hong Kong government among the world's biggest landlords and developers. It is within such varying and heavily manipulated choice sets that residential decisions in Hong Kong are exercised. Employing the past five population censuses (by‐censuses), this paper studies the city's changing scenes of residential mobility over the period 1991–2016, juxtaposing against changes in housing and land policies and the broader socioeconomic environment. The results reveal relatively frequent moves in the 1990s, but drastic and consistent declines in the mobility rates thereafter, especially for HOS and PRH residents. Private renters, however, stayed mobile throughout the 25‐year period. Such variations in trend point towards the recent dismantling of the housing ladder with PRH and HOS being major steps in the transition from private renting to owner‐occupation. Particularly affected are the younger generations. Expectedly, recent immigrants from mainland China fare less well in the housing realm. Nevertheless, with the attainment of the permanent resident status in Hong Kong, mainlanders and local born increasingly exhibit similar patterns of residential movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Momentous events have characterized the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region since its founding in 1997. Among these were drastic and repeated changes in housing and policies, shifting from one emphasizing the role of the state to one purportedly relying primarily on market forces, and then back to a more proactive stance of the state. Associated with these changes were roller-coaster movements in residential prices and housing completions. These developments took place in the context of phenomenal upheavals within and beyond Hong Kong: the Asian financial crisis and the burst of Hong Kong’s property bubble; the contestation of Hong Kong’s autonomy under “one country, two systems”; and the flooding of “hot money” consequent upon repeated rounds of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve of the United States to counteract the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession that followed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This paper investigates the residential mobility patterns among Hong Kong’s various ethnic groups, grounded on the Spatial Assimilation Theory. The results first show that immigrants in general have contributed the most to the residential movement of Hong Kong’s populace. Nonetheless, disparities in residential mobility patterns have been observed among these immigrants. Wealthier immigrants, for instance westerners, by relocating to non-new town areas of the New Territories, show no signs of acculturation to local Hong Kong community. Also, while public rental housing has managed to relocate and gather ethnical groups, such as new arrivals from the Chinese Mainland and South Asians with permanent residence status, to new town areas in the New Territories (N.T.), the out-migration of private-sector residents from new towns to the outskirt areas of the N.T. has turned these new towns to multiethnic enclaves. For South Asians whom have yet to obtain permanent residence, they appear to have segregated themselves from the locals in urban areas and formed their own ethnic concentrations (i.e. Chungking Mansions in Kowloon). Lastly, the home-moving pattern of long-term Chinese immigrants is very similar to that of local Hong Kong residents, which can be regarded as a sign of assimilation. Policy implications derived from these findings are then discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper aims to test if traditional literature on both internal residential mobility and international migration hold up in explaining the driving forces behind the home-moving behaviours of Hong Kong residents to the Chinese Mainland, under a mixture of economic integrations, past connections along with present structural and identity differences. The multi-dimensionality of this behaviour, in comparison to other forms of residential movements in the literature, is shown as there is no single attribute, albeit all necessary conditions, sufficient enough to encourage such movement on its own. Instead, the cross-border residence is primarily a middle-class, middle-aged phenomenon, due to one’s past connections with Mainland China throughout his/her life course and the possession of financial resources insufficient to afford larger living space in Hong Kong yet enough to benefit from the remarkable living cost advantages on the other side of the border. It provides some directions for studying similar forms of residential mobility in the era of globalization when the functions of national borders have become more obscure than before. Implications from this residential behaviour are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]