LettersTo stay in Hong Kong or leave? Why those who brave it out may have the last laugh

Name: Britain’s Chinese community faces racism over coronavirus outbreak
Uploaded: 2020-09-29T22:30:18.000Z
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Apart from economic and material needs, migrants also have emotional and cultural needs that are harder to meet. Those that choose to stay have the benefit of family warmth, intergenerational support, and embeddedness in the community

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A couple sitting in a cafe looks out over the Hong Kong skyline on September 20. Photo: AFP

Letters

Published: 6:30am, 30 Sep 2020Updated: 6:30am, 30 Sep 2020

Not a week passes by when I do not read news or op-ed columns about Hongkongers thinking of leaving the city, not for the first time either, for a sizeable number of them. Peter Kammerer shed light on “why some Hongkongers who ‘don’t like it here’ are staying” (September 8). He wrote of a friend who, when told by someone with fewer connections to the city than she had that she should leave, followed her natural instinct to fight back, which is to stay to protect whatever freedoms were left in the city where she was born and bred.

As I discuss in my new co-authored book on return migrants in Hong Kong, Singapore and Israel, migrants typically strive to have two types of needs gratified: instrumental and expressive. The former refers to economic or material needs, which involve one’s livelihood and economic well being. I call these tangibles “hard needs”, also known as “primary” or Type 1 needs.

The second category comprises emotional, cultural, sentimental, or socio-psychological needs, related to compatibility, kinship, community, nationhood or even peoplehood. I call these intangibles “soft” needs, also considered “secondary” or Type 2 needs. “Soft” or “secondary” they might be, but these needs are powerful and more lingering, perhaps belonging more to the heart than the mind.

The two types of needs represent two contrasting motives for migration. When both are satisfied, the individual is content. When only one type is met, the individual remains dissatisfied, restless, in limbo – thinking of moving one more time, and then again and again. The drift continues.

The emotional cost of migration, therefore, can be prohibitive. The governments of the countries or cities receiving these migrants may welcome them when they bring economic benefits to the host society – yet seldom come up with any concrete policies or measures to address their psychological, non-material needs.

Britain’s Chinese community faces racism over coronavirus outbreak

Indeed, one wonders if such “emotional labour” is best undertaken by informal, voluntary groups in civil society – communities, professional, religious or leisure organisations, family networks, even the workplace.