Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines (RGS-IBG Book Series)

Millionaire Migrants

Published

Putting Workfare in Place Peter Sunley, Ron Martin and Corinne Nativel

Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines David Ley

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Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines David Ley

A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

This edition first published 2010 © 2010 David Ley Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of David Ley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ley, David. Millionaire migrants: trans-Pacific life lines/David Ley. p. cm. – (RBS-IBG book series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-9291-0 (hardcover: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-9292-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. East Asia–Emigration and immigration. 2. Canada–Emigration and immigration. 3. Elite (Social sciences)–East Asia. 4. Elite (Social sciences)–Canada. 5. International business enterprises–East Asia. 6. International business enterprises–Canada. 7. Transnationalism. I. Title. JV8756.5.L49 2010 304.8095–dc22 2009036205 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 10/12pt Plantin by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Malaysia 1

2010

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Trans-Pacific Mobility and the New Immigration Paradigm 2 Transition: From the Orient to the Pacific Rim 3 Calculating Agents: Millionaire Migrants Meet the Canadian State 4 Geography (still) Matters: Homo Economicus and the Business Immigration Programme 5 Embodied Real Estate: The Cultural Mobility of Property 6 Immigrant Reception: Contesting Globalization… or Resistant Racism? 7 Establishing Roots: From the Nuclear Family to Substantive Citizenship 8 Roots and Routes: The Myth of Return or Transnational Circulation? 9 Conclusion: Immigrants in Space Notes References Index

vi viii ix x

1 32 66 98 126 162 196 225 250 260 278 309

List of Figures

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1

4.2

5.1 5.2 5.3

Pender Street, Chinatown, 2008 Concord Pacific Place (left to right), fronting Vancouver’s downtown peninsula, 2008 Distribution of self-designated ethnic Chinese, City of Vancouver, 1971 Restoring Chinatown, 1970s Exports from British Columbia, 1992–2006 Imports to British Columbia, 1992–2006 Air passenger traffic through YVR on selected routes, 1984–2000 Canadian economic indicators, 1961–95 Hong Kong, Taiwanese and South Korean landings in Canada, 1980–2001 Remembering Tiananmen Square: The Goddess of Democracy memorial in Vancouver Hong Kong and Taiwanese landings in Greater Vancouver, 1980–2001 Homeownership in 1996 among 1986–96 landings of self-designated ethnic Chinese households, Vancouver CMA Households below the poverty line in 1996 among 1986–1996 landings of self-designated ethnic Chinese households, Vancouver CMA Selling the Palisades: marketing downtown Vancouver condominiums in Hong Kong, 1996 Major development projects and downtown neighbourhoods Million dollar house listings for two agents, Westside Vancouver, 1996–98

18 18 36 39 43 44 45 47 74 75 76

116

117 134 137 141

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

5.4 Asian-themed malls in part of north-central Richmond 5.5 Distribution of self-designated ethnic Chinese, City of Vancouver, 1981 5.6 Distribution in 1996 of self-designated ethnic Chinese, landing in Canada 1986–96, Vancouver CMA 5.7 MLS real house prices in eight Canadian CMAs, 1971–96 5.8 House prices, immigration and domestic migration, Greater Vancouver, 1977–2002 6.1 Essential Shaughnessy 6.2 ‘Style wars’: a large modern house in Westside Vancouver, built c 1990, comprehensively renovated to a traditional vernacular style, c 2000 6.3 Westside neighbourhoods and zoning interventions, early 1990s 6.4 The compromise landscape: a large new house with revival elements including gables, turret, cedar shakes, ornate brick chimney, wood mouldings and stone wall, marketed by Manyee Lui 7.1 Provincial ranks of Westside secondary schools, 2002–06 8.1 Chek Lap Kok airport, Hong Kong

145 147 149 151 153 167

182 184

193 210 227

List of Tables

2.1 2.2

3.1 5.1 5.2 6.1 8.1 8.2

Immigrant landings in Canada by destination and class of entry, 1980–2001 Business class landings by type in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, by country of last permanent address, 1980–2001 Reasons cited by business immigrants for migration to Canada/Vancouver Correlates of annual nominal house prices in Vancouver, 1971–96 Selected correlates of changing dwelling values in Vancouver CMA by census tract, 1986–96 Resident preferences for downzoning changes, Westside neighbourhoods, 1992 Estimation of the loss of Hong Kong and Taiwanese immigrants from Canada Contrasting attributes, among Hong Kong-born, of returnees to Hong Kong and, stayers in Canada

60

63 77 154 155 186 233 235

Series Editors’ Preface

The RGS-IBG Book Series only publishes work of the highest international standing. Its emphasis is on distinctive new developments in human and physical geography, although it is also open to contributions from cognate disciplines whose interests overlap with those of geographers. The Series places strong emphasis on theoretically-informed and empirically-strong texts. Reflecting the vibrant and diverse theoretical and empirical agendas that characterize the contemporary discipline, contributions are expected to inform, challenge and stimulate the reader. Overall, the RGS-IBG Book Series seeks to promote scholarly publications that leave an intellectual mark and change the way readers think about particular issues, methods or theories. For details on how to submit a proposal please visit: www.rgsbookseries.com Kevin Ward University of Manchester, UK Joanna Bullard Loughborough University, UK RGS-IBG Book Series Editors

Acknowledgements

Whether authors are aware of it or not, book writing is a social project. The characters backstage do much more than act as a supporting cast to enable the front stage actions of the alternately inspired and anguished author. In ways that are never quite evident to anyone they provide the social environment in which projects are born and develop. So I gladly acknowledge my colleagues in Geography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. As a ‘lifer’ at UBC I have benefitted enormously from the high academic standards and collegial environment sustained by faculty – an all too rare combination – that provided the milieu from which this book emerged. Past and present graduate and post-doctoral students I have mentored in Geography within the field of immigration and urbanization have also made a huge contribution through their own thesis work, as research assistants, or as commentators on all or part of the manuscript. I gratefully acknowledge the diverse contributions of Kay Anderson, Lachlan Barber, Harald Bauder, Laura Beattie, Jon Clifton, Heather Frost, Will Harvey, Elaine Ho, Sarah Jackson, Pablo Mendez, Markus Moos, Alison Mountz, Nick Lynch, Kris Olds, John Rose, Lawrence Santiago, Heather Smith, Dan Swanton, Sin Yih Teo, Justin Tse, Judy Tutchener, Luna Vives, Jo Waters and Graham Webber. Priscilla Wei was an exemplary administrator and also a resourceful project manager and key informant. At an institutional level the Metropolis Project has continuously funded this research through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. ‘Metropolis’ created a valuable network of researchers, community practitioners and government policy managers. In particular I wish to thank Don DeVoretz, my co-Director at the Vancouver Metropolis Centre from 1996–2003, Dan Hiebert, my able successor and long-time ally, and Meyer Burstein and Howard Duncan at Citizenship and Immigration Canada who created and shepherded the Metropolis experiment with insight and

xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

broad-mindedness. Invaluable to my own work was the co-operation of SUCCESS and its impressive CEOs, Tung Chan and the late Lilian To, a leader who brought an extraordinary blend of professional energy and pastoral care to immigrant settlement. For fieldwork in Hong Kong I am grateful to George Lin at the University of Hong Kong for his generosity and direction, to John Ma (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) for valuable exchanges both on and off the tennis court, and to Chung Him (Hong Kong Baptist University). In Taipei I enjoyed the hospitality and local knowledge of Nora Chiang and her students and colleagues at the National Taiwan University. Through presentations and conversations through the Metropolis international network and other venues I learned from a talented multidisciplinary crew including Dick Bedford, Jock Collins, Kevin Dunn, Dan Hiebert, Audrey Kobayashi, Wei Li, Katharyne Mitchell, Ceri Peach, Valerie Preston, Jan Rath, Paul Spoonley, Steve Vertovec and Brenda Yeoh, who held me accountable in a spirit of supportive criticism. In the final stages of the project I am very grateful for Kevin Ward’s careful stewardship as Editor of the valuable RGS-IBG research series, and for the publishing expertise of Jacqueline Scott, Liz Cremona and their teams at Wiley-Blackwell. Once again I acknowledge Eric Leinberger’s skilled hand in cartography. A book project is never left behind in the office or the field, and I thank my family - Sandy, Katy, Mike, Susie and Chris - for their own special contributions and for allowing too many intrusions on family time. Finally, I am deeply grateful to the creative migrants from East Asia who shared their stories with a cultural interloper and made this project not only possible but also rewarding. In addition, I acknowledge the remarkable city of Vancouver, the other half of the fusion of people and place, which has provided such a compelling laboratory for a study of transnational migration. David Ley, July 2009

Chapter One

Introduction: Trans-Pacific Mobility and the New Immigration Paradigm

The Commission concludes that the old paradigm of permanent migrant settlement is giving way to temporary and circular migration Global Commission on International Migration 2005: 31 Following two years of consultation and analysis, the Global Commission on International Migration reported back to the Secretary-General of the United Nations in October 2005 (Martin and Martin 2006). Its report sought to organize and, through its own influence, disseminate to a governance and policy audience a new understanding of international migration that departed from an established paradigm. Conventional understanding, familiar to the administrators and theorists of new world settler societies, has spun a linear narrative of immigrant departure from the homeland, followed by the serial processes of arrival, settlement, citizenship and assimilation within the enveloping arms of a single nation state. But it has become apparent that this tidy arrangement has decreasing purchase in an era of unprecedented global mobility, labour flexibility and household dispersal. Transnationalism has become an umbrella term to describe the contemporary hyper-mobility of migrants across national borders, both those who are poor, sometimes undocumented, and merely tolerated or worse, and also those who are skilled or wealthy and eagerly solicited by nation states. Transnational migrants maintain connections in both their nations of origin and destination by e-mail, internet and telephone, through travel, economic ties and remittances, and in continuing social and cultural relationships. For a minority, political activity sustains contacts and commitments, especially when facilitated by the enfranchisement of dual citizenship. Alternating periods of residence in origin and destination countries are variable, in some instances seasonal or short-term, while others again are part of a careful life plan of repeated movement that coincides with significant

2

INTRODUCTION

status passages. The prospect of movement is always latent, ready to be triggered by a family decision or an external event. So migration as described in the UN Commission’s text becomes more temporary, more circular, more flexible, than the conventional paradigm imagined. Mobility is not only shaped by immediate economic gradients, but also by other household projects that may well require the family itself to be globalized, dispersed among at least two nations, with periodic departures and reunions of family members. A fraught illustration of such transnationalism became evident during the war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. As nations speedily assembled an armada to rescue their expatriates in Lebanon, transnational citizens of Canada and Australia proved unexpectedly numerous. Canada discovered 40–50,000 citizens living in Lebanon in July 2006, almost double the number of American nationals, while Australia, with 25,000, enumerated more citizens in this formerly francophone nation than France (Saunders et al. 2006). Both states had small missions in Lebanon and were surprised and administratively overwhelmed by the scale of their populations. In appeals for a speedy registration prior to evacuation, and in a context of difficult communications, close to 40,000 Lebanese residents contacted the Canadian embassy in Beirut claiming citizenship. Some were on holiday with family members, but others were living more continuously in Lebanon and many were employed there. The Canadian state discovered an unanticipated transnational colony that it had obligations to rescue in precarious war conditions.1 Meanwhile in Hong Kong there are repeated estimates of more than 200,000 Canadian citizens among the former colony’s population of some seven million.2 They have travelled to Canada, lived temporarily, and have chosen to return, at least for now, but have not eliminated the prospect of a further trans-Pacific move in the future.3 Returnees are primarily middleclass and upper middle-class; some are affluent business people, or less commonly, professionals. Their numbers include well-educated 1.5-generation4 and second-generation young adults from Canada who have re-located to Hong Kong to begin their working careers. Hong Kong returnees share their transnational behaviour with similar if less numerous elites in Taiwan and smaller groups from South Korea. This cohort, some of them wealthy millionaire migrants who live, for now, either in Canada or East Asia, are the subject of this book and exemplify to a tee the new paradigm of temporary and circular migration.

Geographies of Transnational Migration The literature on transnational migration is now large, interdisciplinary, and becoming global,5 as migration itself links ever more national origins in the global south with primarily metropolitan destinations in the global

INTRODUCTION

3

north, creating what Steven Vertovec (2006) calls a condition of ‘superdiversity’ in the gateway cities of Europe, North America and Australasia.6 The earliest research, by anthropologists, identified repeated international movement and frequent communication by Mexican and Caribbean migrants between their home countries and the United States (Rouse 1992; Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Basch et al. 1994). Cross-border social networks were also economic channels as significant flows of remittances from savings were sent home by migrants to their families, priming local economic development; contacts might also become political networks as Caribbean and Central American politicians carried their election campaigns to expatriate populations in American cities. These social networks, projected onto space, shape the important concept of a transnational social field, where ‘migrants, through their life ways and daily practices, reconfigure space so that their lives are lived simultaneously within two or more nation-states’ (Basch et al. 1994: 28). The porosity of national borders and the repeated mobility of migrants passing through them, documented and undocumented, give rise to a sense of a changing spatiality: nations have become ‘unbound’, migrants ‘deterritorialized’ and ‘ungrounded’, citizenship itself is conditional and flexibly incorporated into migrant biographies. The coherent profile of a world (and subjective identities) tightly organized around nation states as containers of national citizens seems to be unravelling. Some argue that this is nothing new; the great European migration to the ‘new world’ between 1880 and 1930 had also included much coming and going, with a significant fraction of immigrants returning to their homeland (Foner 2000). But this interpretation, while respected, has not prevailed; the scale of cross-border transactions permitted by cheap travel and electronic communications together with various innovations (including the status of dual citizenship) define a substantially novel phenomenon. Early ethnographic interpretations of transnationalism were challenged in a damaging criticism for including a sampling bias (Portes et al. 2002). By highlighting only observations of transnational behaviour from small samples, and disregarding migrant cases where such linkages were not sustained, researchers were ‘sampling on the dependent variable’, thereby inflating the scale of transnational activity. In contrast, Portes suggested, and implemented, standardized measurement across large samples, to demonstrate the extent of transnationalism and permit comparative surveys across world regions. With these stringent requirements, transnationalism remained a significant feature, though the incidence of political and economic activities was shown to be less extensive than social transactions. This literature demonstrates the advantage of both extensive and intensive methods, adding the discipline of large samples that ease validity concerns to the interpretive depth of ethnographic study, a model that I will attempt to follow in my own mixed-methods approach.

4

INTRODUCTION

In contrast to transnational corporate capitalism, migrant transnationalism is regarded as ‘transnationalism from below’ (Portes et al. 1999), a term disclosing two emphases. First, it implies a level of active agency among migrants, in contrast to the economistic language of labour flows that has prevailed in the globalisation and world cities literature (Smith 2001). Second, there is also a sense of migrants as transgressors, undercutting the authority of the state in their movements and flexible use of citizenship (Ong 1999), or their participation in cross-border non-governmental organisations that operate as transnational advocacy groups (Smith 2001). Indeed some cultural theorists have romanticized the hybrid identities of migrants for providing a cosmopolitan in-betweenness with a superior position for adapting to a globalizing world, though Mitchell (1997a) has deflated some of the excess from this discourse on hybridity. While transnationalism presents a fundamentally geographical imagination of here, there, across, and between, the use of spatial terms, such as social field or social space, transnational circuits or cross-border spatialities, has often been metaphorical and loosely defined. An important theoretical objective of this book is to carry forward the beginnings made by geographers in burrowing more fully into the concrete places and imagined spaces of transnationalism.7 This specificity is all the more necessary because globalization theory, in presenting an alternate ‘transnationalism from above’, commonly evokes abstract spaces of flows and networks that comprise ‘a system of variable geometry and dematerialized geography’ (Castells 1996: 359). Such abstract spaces, in Castells’ influential thinking, have prevailed over the empirical ‘spaces of places’ that include particular nations, cities and neighbourhoods (Murray 2006). Transnationalism from above alludes to electronic communications and dramatic real decreases in transportation costs that have achieved time-space compression in a shrinking world, minimizing it seems the effects of distance and the play of geography for global economic actors. The footloose transnational corporation has also benefited from the growth of free trade and the reduction of national protectionism to rove globally. The transgression of borders means the weakening of the nation state, encouraging a post-national argument wishing ‘to make a decisive break with state-centrism’ (Sklair 2001:16). All of this leads to a distinctive conceptual geography. As Michelle Huang (2004: 2) has observed, ‘The utopia of globalization is a flexible, fluid and mobile space, an open space that knows no boundaries.’ She cites Henri Lefebvre’s (1979: 293) characterization of space under capitalism: ‘Capitalist and neocapitalist space is a space of quantification and growing homogeneity, a merchandized space where all the elements are exchangeable and thus interchangeable… Economic space and political space thus converge toward the elimination of all differences.’ In this scenario we approach political economy’s international level playing field, the ‘flat world’ thesis popularized

INTRODUCTION

5

by Thomas Friedman (2005). This strong view of globalization sees the growing homogeneity of global culture and the rising substitutability of locations in the undifferentiated sameness of global economic space. The global has become a surface of sameness, while it is the local that contains some residual differentiation (Appadurai 1996; Abu-Lughod 1999: 417–8). In contrast to this line of thinking, my interpretation will emphasize the continuing importance of geography in transnational migration in several important respects. First, the social field stretching from East Asia to Canada is not a uniform surface of sameness but acutely differentiated. Indeed geographical variation becomes a significant problem for immigrants to address. Contra Lefebvre’s space ‘of growing homogeneity’, distinctive political regimes, varying economic regulation and diverse cultural traditions among national jurisdictions create challenging spatial differentiation. Moreover the separate Canadian and East Asian staging posts in the social field offer variable attractions at distinct stages in the life cycle encouraging the circulation of households at well-defined status passages, including the phase of career development, the period of children’s education, and the time of approaching retirement. The characteristics of the two shores of the social field also impact family members in separate ways, for while men tend to follow a gravitational pull back to Asia, women prefer the opportunities available in Canada, and young adults may differentiate the field according to the gradient of fast and slow, often preferring the buzz of Hong Kong to the ‘laid back’ character of Vancouver. While the social field is unified by movement and purpose, it is a unity of dissimilar parts, expressed in a slogan circulating among the Chinese-Canadian population of Vancouver in the 1990s, ‘Hong Kong for making money, Canada for quality of life’. Second, time-space compression has not exhausted the role of distance even for the typically well-heeled migrants we shall be meeting. If distance measured in time or cost is less of a barrier than it once was, there are new metrics where separation exerts significant costs. The transnational family is often the fragmented family, with members dispersed on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean. In its purest form, the astronaut family8 includes a husband and father working in East Asia while his wife and children are living in Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco or Sydney. Visits occur, two to four times a year for a few weeks on each visit, but the abiding relationship is long-distance. The emotional distance of separation becomes a major bone of contention, and often triggers a crisis point in family life. Women are left as single parents in an unfamiliar environment, children are freed from patriarchal direction, and men face the loneliness and temptations of isolation in East Asia. The meaning of distance moves to a new register, and one that is vital for family well-being. Third, place matters as migrants embody the cultural traits of their regions of origin in moving across the social field. Regional or national

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INTRODUCTION

attributes and dispositions are embedded in migrant lives and carried with them to new settings. Besides such obvious cultural traits as language or food, there are others that are borne from East Asia to Canada. Important in the story of millionaire migrants will be the fundamental significance of the meaning of property and property relations. The over-determined centrality of real estate in capital accumulation in Hong Kong in particular would become a major – and conflictual – part of the meeting of newcomers and long-established residents in Vancouver. A distinctive feature of the cultural geography of East Asian immigration has been the fashioning of a distinctive urban landscape reflecting an Asian modernity, sometimes conflicting with nostalgic white settler preferences for Euro-Canadian heritage. Landscape interpretation is a sophisticated part of the geographer’s art (Duncan and Duncan 2004) and landscape would become a significant source of friction between new arrivals and the long-settled. These three themes underscore some of the pervasive and substantial geographical dimensions of transnationalism that we shall frequently encounter in the following pages. Far from a mere metaphorical presence, geography is an abiding – and not always welcome – constituent member of any transnational social field.

The Globalizing State, the Business Migrant and the Neo-Liberal Stage Two principal players will occupy the transnational spatial stage in this account, the nation state and the enterprising migrant. The stage itself has been significantly re-set by national and international neo-liberal policy regimes since the 1980s. Neo-liberalism has been defined as ‘a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade’ (Harvey 2005: 2). The institutional framework of neo-liberalism has been assembled by nation states that are either willing directors of a globalizing enterprise policy or else believe that there is no alternative to its imperatives. Such an ideology lauds individual entrepreneurial skills and we will see that in immigration policy this fixation has extolled that imagined mover and shaker, homo economicus or rational economic man (sic),9 incarnate as the business immigrant, an exemplary figure with a long and successful résumé played out in various global settings. Policy in many states has steadily moved toward prioritizing economic migrants, and Canada has refined its talent hunt not only for skilled workers but also business people with entrepreneurial skills and discretionary financial capital.

INTRODUCTION

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By and large globalization theory has not been kind to the nation state. The state’s fixed borders appear as limitations, an indication of immobility on a mobile globe, arbitrary barriers in a world that strives to be barrierfree. The current neo-liberal regime with its elevation of free markets is often portrayed as requiring a general rolling back of the power and reach of the state. In migration research, as elsewhere, the nation state focus has come under attack at a time when transnationalism has made every geographic border and many legal impediments disputable (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). Yet the nation state shows itself to be more enterprising than it is often given credit for, and one of the theoretical aims of the study is to challenge its eviscerated condition in much globalization theory. Its reach extends beyond national borders, while rapidly evolving policy tries to engage the gyrations of global economic and social processes. The state’s active participation in controversial trade liberalization or social policy restructuring facilitated the globalization project from the start. Its sponsorship of neo-liberal policies in the 1980s reinforced market disciplines, weakened national borders, and consolidated a system of valuation emphasising the price mechanism (Harvey 2005). As the welfare state withdrew its universal safety nets, so it prioritized the self-sufficient citizen who can go it alone. In a market-saturated governance regime, consumption becomes the major citizenship virtue, the act reproducing the system; the 2007–09 credit crisis provided a devastating lesson of how the loss of purchasing power can drive the system into recession and dysfunction. Neo-liberalism is an abiding conceptual and empirical presence in the account that follows, a force field in which subjects act (Peck and Tickell 2002; Mitchell 2004; Harvey 2005; Peck 2006). It is no accident that transnationalism across the Pacific has arisen during the neo-liberal period that has so powerfully directed Canada’s Asia-Pacific strategy over the past quarter-century. A transparent economism shaped the official construction of the Pacific Rim in the North American imagination, naked boosterism characterized government trade missions there in the 1980s and 1990s, increasingly preferential treatment was offered immigrants with class advantage and citizenship itself was commodified – all confirming the power of the market as the unit of understanding and practice, and therefore as an important component of the conceptual scaffolding of this study. But as the literature on the governmentality of the modern state reveals, neo-liberalism up close is as much an ambition as an achievement, and its policies and procedures may have discursive cohesion in political declarations and bureaucratic manuals but are far murkier and corrupted when it comes to daily implementation. The calculations of the state are both more contingent and less transparent than their pronouncements proclaim. So the state while ultimately preoccupied by what lies within its borders, is fully capable to reach beyond its borders and play if imperfectly the

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INTRODUCTION

globalization game. For in its attempts to recruit millionaire migrants, the state has acted as if the world is borderless. It has assumed the end of geography, that Thomas Friedman’s (2005) ‘flat world’ is an adequate description of global space. But as geographers know from the earlier adventures of spatial analysis with its own level playing field, the idealized isotropic plain with its substitutability of locations is only a theoretical assumption, not an empirical actuality. So when the state assumes the existence of capitalists sans frontières, that skill sets are perfectly portable, allowing a successful businessman in Hong Kong or Taiwan to become ipso facto a successful businessman in Canada, it is overlooking geographical differentiation, the fundamental spatial breaks in culture, politics and society that intervene and provide barriers, most obviously in the disabling complexity of different languages. Neo-liberal ideology has worked its way into all policy fields, including immigration (Arat-Koc 1999; Ong 2003). In an era of dwindling birth rates, and with the spectre of a declining labour force, immigration bureaucracies are pro-actively recruiting migrants who can be self-sufficient and require little in return from the state. The rapid escalation of temporary migration in Australia, Canada and other countries represents a flexible response to seasonal and short-term labour needs. The nation state bears minimal responsibility for those who toil transiently within its borders, limiting the citizenship rights of temporary workers (Bauder 2006). While the intake of permanent residents landing in Canada has been relatively stable at 200,000–250,000 for over a decade, temporary migration is rising rapidly and in 2007 for the first time temporary foreign workers plus foreign students exceeded the numbers of new permanent residents (CIC 2008). Temporary migration is part of the UN’s new immigration paradigm, and as we shall see later, a number of business immigrants landing as permanent residents in fact hold much shorter time horizons for their Canadian sojourn. In another sign of the growing preference for self-sufficient citizens, Canada’s tripartite commitment to humanitarian protection, family reunion, and labour force replenishment in immigration selection has moved steadily toward economic migrants (Arat-Koc 1999). The share of all immigrants and refugees landing in Canada through the economic streams rose from 39 percent in the 1980s to 58 percent in 2000–06, while proportions in the family and humanitarian categories fell. Careful selection processes screen out economic migrants unless they are well educated and adaptive skilled workers, for assessments confirm that skilled migrants speedily make net economic contributions to their ‘host’ societies.10 Canada is part of a competitive global marketplace for skilled workers (Wong 2003), or as they are disarmingly called in Singapore, ‘foreign talent’ (Yeoh 2006). While immigrantreceiving countries like Canada, Australia and the United States have historically been successful in recruiting skilled workers, other competitors are now making their pitch (Mahroum 2000; Salt and Millar 2006). The European Union promises to harmonize its recruitment of skilled workers

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through a ‘blue card’ programme that will position it more advantageously in ‘the global war for talent’ (Collett 2008), while India and China are leading other Asian countries in repatriating their skilled workers from North America and Europe (Iredale et al. 2002). Even closer to the core of neo-liberal ideology than the talent hunt for skilled workers is the recruitment of business immigrants, those who not only have human capital derived from successful entrepreneurial experience, but also abundant financial capital to replicate their successes elsewhere. Some 30 nations around the world have business immigration programmes, intending to entice footloose entrepreneurs and investors to re-locate their transformative energies to a new national project of economic development (Tseng 2000).11 The carrot inducing their migration is the promise of citizenship and the enhanced quality of life of advanced societies, assets that may well be inaccessible for these migrants through other immigration entry classes. The neo-liberal commodification of citizenship implied by Canada’s business immigration programme (BIP) has not escaped attention (Harrison 1996), achieving one version of the contemporary ‘capitalization of citizenship’ (Rose 1999). With abundant capital, personal funds of more than a million dollars, as well as a history of successful entrepreneurial activity in their homelands, the business immigrant as homo economicus is a trophy acquisition in a neo-liberal policy regime, top prize in the skilled immigrant stakes (Ley 2003). Not merely self-supporting, the business immigrant has both the skill and the wealth to add value, to create jobs for others, and provide tax revenues for the state. The extravagant economic development in turn of Japan, the four tiger economies, and China has focussed attention on Asia Pacific as the primary contemporary incubator of homo economicus. Largely unregulated regional economies have seen dramatic rates of growth, and spectacular examples of entrepreneurial success. Acumen in capital accumulation has been associated with the ‘bamboo networks’ of overseas Chinese business families. These families are globally networked (Yeung and Olds 2000), cosmopolitan capitalists (Hamilton 1999), territorially ungrounded (Ong and Nonini 1997). Among Canada’s business immigrants from 1980 to 2001, 30.6 percent originated in Hong Kong and 14.4 percent in Taiwan – with a far higher share of both groups in Vancouver.12 The encounter of the overseas Chinese business immigrant and the neo-liberal immigrant-receiving state is seemingly a meeting of minds and interests, with prospects for spiralling mutual advantage.

Conceptual Themes and Variations There are other theoretical fields besides the neo-liberal stage and its two principal players that contextualize the spatiality of state and immigrant projects. Precisely because the homunculus of homo economicus presents an

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all too partial sense of the complex identities of millionaire migrants, we have to engage other conceptual categories. Inevitably in the broad canvas of this narrative, such conceptual fields as the global city, cosmopolitanism, citizenship and multiculturalism appear, but other than summary statements I resist the temptation to move down the alluring view corridors to engage them fully; in part I have done so elsewhere, and do not want to pursue undue diversions from the principal narrative. Other fields cannot be sidelined. Family embeddedness is an additional key quality of identity, and it is important to disentangle the differential status of husband, wife and child in transnational space (Waters 2002). Geographic separation introduces strains on the family unit as the astronaut husband in East Asia and the ‘left behind’ family members in Canada are significantly uncoupled, with their occasional meetings bearing the weight of lives lived in different places. Moreover, even when the family remains intact in a single place, de-skilled males feel the dislocation accompanying migration differentially, and more painfully. Nor do immigrant families ever arrive in an empty land. Canada is still widely regarded as a European settler society even if that description is less quantitatively accurate with each passing census. Migrants from Asia encounter not only a geography but also a history, and up to the 1940s Canada’s history was that of a colonial plural society with a racialized hierarchy and separation between its constituent units. The Chinese in particular suffered virulent racist marginalization, containment and exclusion (Anderson 1991). Some authors fail to see significant breaks between past and present, and the dimension of race and the literature of critical race studies is an important area of theoretical engagement in the discussion that follows, particularly in Chapter 6. So insights from theories of the globalising neo-liberal state and its exemplary actor, homo economicus, gender and family studies, and critical race studies are each part of the scaffolding upon which this interpretation of transnational relations across an expansive geography will unfold. Perhaps framing is a better metaphor, for while scaffolding is removed from a completed building, the frame remains though it is concealed beneath the final construction. So too in this narrative the theoretical and conceptual armature, while shaping the account, will serve as backdrop, guiding the discussion but not dominating it.

China Moves If the twenty-first century is indeed to be the Chinese century,13 then the awakening of the ancient empire is emblematized by the dynamic of people on the move, people remaking the human geography of the national territory

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(Fan 2007). Internal migration in the People’s Republic of China represents the largest flow of households in the contemporary world. The extraordinary pace of urbanization in major cities like Shanghai, surely the poster child of present mega-city growth in the developing world (Olds 2001), is matched by the creation, from almost nothing, of new urban centres in the special economic zones along the coast. Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong Province, adjacent to Hong Kong, was a small town in the 1980s but by 2005 claimed to be the centre of an urbanizing region of 10 million people. Over four million had been resident for less than a year while over eight million did not have a hukou, or household residency permit, a legal definition of residential rootedness (Shenzhen Data Communication Bureau 2005; also Lin 1997; Wang and Meng 2004). Travelling in urbanizing China, one can understand Aihwa Ong’s awed reaction that visiting these explosive cities was ‘like being caught up in the eye of the greatest typhoon in the history of capitalism’ (Ong 1999: 43). The rapid modernization of China and its growing ambitions have created opportunities but also anxieties in nearby satellite territories. Capitalists and the rising middle class in Hong Kong and Taiwan, while huge investors in the Mainland (Hsing 1998; Olds 2001), have also been apprehensive of the scale of Chinese aspirations. A resolution to the middle-class dilemma of simultaneous eagerness and wariness in engaging China commercially has been to seek safe havens around the Pacific Rim, should circumstances require a sudden strategic retreat. Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, amongst others, have provided accessible sanctuaries through student visas and immigration programmes welcoming skilled workers and business people, while a portion of the Hong Kong middle-class was permitted to take advantage of ex-colonial linkages to Britain. Some of these trans-Pacific migrants were temporary movers from the start: Mak (1997) writes of some Hong Kong employers holding positions open for valued staff during the two year residency in Australia required for citizenship eligibility. But other migrants drawn by quality of life, educational assets, and personal freedoms in the West are prepared to move beyond the sojourner model with plans for permanent residence… perhaps. The Mainland itself has also become a source of trans-Pacific migrants with the onset of liberalizing tendencies leading to the 1985 emigration law. Canada has benefited from these reforms with the arrival of large numbers of skilled Chinese engineers and IT workers, though many have experienced difficulty in securing appropriate employment and some are considering return migration (Teo 2007). As well as these regular movements, unknown numbers of undocumented migrants have departed Fujian Province in particular for hazardous journeys to the United States, the famed ‘Beautiful Country’ (Chin 1999), or even Europe (Pieke et al. 2004).

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Occasionally, smugglers’ itineraries are routed through Canada. In summer 1999, four decrepit vessels landed 599 bemused migrants on the remote British Columbia coast (Mountz 2004). Twenty years earlier, equally impoverished arrivals, Vietnamese boat people, many of them ethnic Chinese, completed a publicly-funded journey from refugee camps by air to Canada after their own desperate escapes on the South China Sea (Beiser 1999). These distinctions among ethnic Chinese are complemented by a huge range of past experiences and future life plans, so that any view of a unitary Chinese diaspora as either an objective phenomenon (Wang 1999) or an internalized source of identity (Ang 2001) is compromised by deep ambivalence. Aihwa Ong (1999:111) adds, ‘Sometimes we forget we are talking about one-quarter of the world’s population’, while Wang Gungwu (1999:123) writes that place and practice introduce so many variations that ‘being Chinese is not simple’. Among overseas Chinese, local conditions will create many regional traditions of ‘Chineseness’, and great uncertainty whether these could be trumped by an over-arching diasporic identity. Instead, Ien Ang proposes a more hybrid position, an identity shaped both by here and there, past and present, in effect ‘an unsettling of identities’ (Ang 2001: 16). Ethnic essentialism – not merely specifying authentic or unvarying cultural tropes, but also homogenizing (including mapping) populations on the basis of language or place of birth – is always contingent, a classificatory act that is both demonstrable fact and convenient fiction. Consequently the self-designated Chinese-Canadian population of 1.22 million enumerated in 2006,14 some 3.9 percent of all Canadians, is highly diverse in length of residence, in immigrant or Canadian-born status, in country of origin, in socio-economic status, immigrant class, capacity to speak English or French and homeland experience. The total is perhaps modest in a global diaspora recently estimated at 33 million, but significant as part of the seven million listed outside Asia (Ma 2003). The varied national backgrounds of ethnic Chinese in Toronto in 2001, over 80 percent of them foreign-born, include 43 percent born in Hong Kong, 34 percent in China, 7.5 percent in Vietnam and 4 percent in Taiwan, with the remainder coming from all corners of the world (Lo 2006). Hong Kongers and Taiwanese are more suburbanized, with modest spatial overlap, while Vietnamese- and Mainland-born (some of the latter former residents of Hong Kong) are more heavily located in Toronto’s central city. Among the immigrants who claim Chinese ethnicity and moved to Canada between 1980 and 2001, the distribution of schooling is bi-modal; 39 percent had nine years of education or less, while 43 percent had post-secondary education. Their citizenship was diverse. Over 70 percent originated in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan, but in all they ‘were citizens of 132 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe’ (Guo and DeVoretz 2006: 283).

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So to speak of a Chinese-Canadian population – let alone community – is to speak conventionally, engaging in a practice that is as much purposeful as it is true. It is in this sense that we employ official statistics, that tell us a good deal, but less than we may infer. Census data disclose considerable spatial concentration in the residential pattern of Chinese-Canadians; in 2001, 73 percent lived in the census metropolitan areas (CMAs) of Toronto (410,000) and Vancouver (343,000) that housed in contrast just 22 percent of all Canadians.15 Split almost equally between the two CMAs, more than 280,000 members of this population comprised Chinese-speaking immigrants who landed during the 1990s (Statistics Canada 2003). These recent arrivals were even more spatially concentrated, with Toronto and Vancouver assembling 82 percent of the national total. Imputing intentionality, it is perhaps understandable for a mobile transnational population to be highly clustered in Canada’s two most cosmopolitan cities, with excellent air connections to East Asia. This book is about the encounter of people and place, wealthy overseas Chinese, originating mainly in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and transnational residents or sojourners in Canada’s two major gateway cities. While noting events in Toronto, the primary focus is Vancouver, the preferred destination of wealthy migrants. However, with their diffuse diasporic identity, both here and there, our attention cannot be confined to static statistical and cartographic displays of two cities, for this is a story about life lines, a broader pan-Pacific field including not only East Asia, but also similar places in Australia, New Zealand and the United States that will be referenced comparatively throughout. We now move to four vignettes that introduce and distil some of the themes to be developed in greater complexity in the following chapters. The first episode confirmed the strength of transnational linkages between distant sites, displaying, in this case brutally, the effective geographical proximity of two world cities, Toronto and Hong Kong, within a pan-Pacific socio-spatial field.

SARS: Toronto Goes Global In large cities today a number of candidates present themselves for iconic status as harbinger of globalization. Not for want of trying, Toronto has never snagged one of the global spectacles, the Olympics or a World’s Fair, events that provide a defining moment in the evolution of a metropolitan identity, a breaking out from the regional and national to universal visibility. Instead, salient events for Toronto might include the proliferation of international banks arriving in the 1980s, the escalating world-wide immigration the same decade, or in popular culture perhaps the success of the Toronto Blue Jays as baseball’s ‘World Series’ champions in 1992 and

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again in 1993. More sombre, but for my purposes more pertinent, was the highly contagious outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that immobilized the city for several months in 2003 and brought it unwelcome global attention (Ali and Keil 2006, 2007; Duffin and Sweetman 2006). Transmitted by a Toronto victim who returned from a visit to Hong Kong in February that year, SARS caused 44 deaths and between 375 and 438 infections over the next several months (Naylor 2003). Estimated losses to the city of close to $1 billion ensued, principally from impeded travel. Like never before, Toronto became captive to global scrutiny, subject to travel advisories and effective quarantine from the World Health Organization, and stigmatized as the North American epicentre of the disease in widely disseminated media and global internet maps. It took a sensational event supplying an equivalently loud world signal, a vast benefit concert at the end of July headlined by global masters of spin, the Rolling Stones, to declare the all clear and bring back Toronto from its pariah status into the network of hyperlinked world cities. A medical doctor introduced SARS, a virulently infectious disease, to the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong on a family visit from nearby Guangdong Province in February 2003 (Leung et al. 2004). Highly contagious, the disease was transmitted to 12 other hotel residents who acted as carriers during the next few days in travel to Vietnam, Singapore, Ireland, Germany and Canada. The returnee to Toronto, an elderly woman, became ill and died just over a week later. By then family members were contaminated and the infection circulated among patients and health care staff, many of them immigrants, at Scarborough’s Grace Hospital in suburban Toronto. An infected cluster formed around a diasporic Filipino religious community in Toronto; earlier a nurse’s aid carried the virus in a family visit to the Philippines. A second outbreak erupted at North York General Hospital, as Toronto’s north and northeastern suburbs, home to Canadians originating in East and Southeast Asia, formed the regional epicentre of the disease. The SARS outbreak highlighted several important themes in the redefinition of time and place in the global city. The first is the expansion of experienced space for many to a unified social field that transcends national political borders. Guangdong, Hong Kong and Toronto became effectively next-door neighbours, with medical professionals anxiously seeking the interactions among the three places that shaped the incidence of SARS infections. Cross-border routes joining scattered hubs, as well as sedentary place-based roots, define the social geography of the world city (Clifford 1992, 1997). So the fixed and sometimes segregated maps of urban ethnic groups are only the first approximation of life-worlds equally characterized by movement and discontinuity, by loyalties and materialities commonly in flux, by identities lived there as well as here. A transnational household

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continually re-values the advantages of home and away, not just in memory but also in ongoing planning; it is constantly connected. Second, accompanying the expansion of networked space is the compression of time through the instantaneous electronic transmission of information and capital between nodes across this interlocking field. Virtual simultaneity in the movement of goods and people by air travel (Dodge and Kitchin 2004) permitted SARS to travel from East Asia to central Canada in less than a day. The proximity of places has been enhanced by greater transportation affordability as well as by savings in time. The large reduction in transaction costs, lowering the barrier of distance, has extended mobility to larger numbers of travellers, while thickening the network connectivity of formerly isolated places (Kasper 2000). Among a sample of some 1500 immigrants in Vancouver, most from Asia, over 40 percent maintain contact with their country of origin at least weekly, primarily by telephone and e-mail, a quarter fly home once a year or more often, over one-fifth own a home or other property in their native land (Hiebert and Ley 2006). Third, in contrast to the frequently celebratory discussion of the networked globe, SARS was a reminder that to be globally connected means exposure not only to life lines but also to less welcome networks, including disease, drug cartels, and terrorist cells. Fourth, new spaces are being incorporated into the networked globe. The Toronto SARS outbreaks were concentrated in suburban hospitals, the metropolitan setting of growing proportions of recent immigrants. The older model of inner city sites of arrival and residence, adjacent to the downtown railway station or the docks, is being bypassed. Today many immigrants enter and leave a city repeatedly by air, and for some of them proximity to the suburban airport is desirable. But the suburbs have other assets. Downtown and inner city neighbourhoods in gateway cities have been increasingly claimed as the employment and housing markets of global rangers engaged in private and public corporate activity, so that poorer immigrants are commonly displaced to the housing stock of cheaper suburbs, the new location of industry, warehousing and routine service activities that have themselves re-located from the expensive post-industrial core. Middle-class migrants also find advantages in suburban homeownership, so that in many gateway cities, including Toronto and Vancouver as well as Los Angeles, New York and Washington, the ethnoburb, a district of concentrated immigrant settlement, has become a new feature of suburban life (Li 2006). Finally, SARS implicated issues of spatial scale and shifting jurisdictions. The disease was presented in the Naylor report (2003) as typical of contemporary ‘Viruses without borders’. Invoking Marshall McLuhan, the report expressed the inevitability of contact in a global village where time-space

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INTRODUCTION

compression facilitated the fast transmission of disease as well as information. Explicit here is a global scale of interaction that overrides local places. But a global innovation never lands in empty space. The arrival of SARS in Toronto was challenged, resisted and eventually overcome by the co-ordination of medical professionals working for public agencies and three levels of government.16 There were false starts as the disease, difficult to diagnose, was initially mistaken for flu or tuberculosis; the certified cause of death of the first victim was misdiagnosed as heart failure. Misrecognized, the disease was also initially underestimated, with less than adequate precautions drawn up to protect health workers and the at-risk public. But after a turbulent spring SARS was vanquished, and the Rolling Stones came to town. SARS was a global threat, locally resisted, and the terms of engagement were themselves geographically variable. Two SARS carriers from the infection at Hong Kong’s Metropole Hotel also landed in Vancouver, scarcely surprising as the city is Canada’s principal gateway to Asia, receiving four times as many air passengers daily from Hong Kong and China as Toronto (Skowronski et al. 2006). But disease outcomes were very different. A highly infectious ‘super-spreader’ did not aggravate Vancouver’s outbreak, while public health professionals, more familiar with contagious diseases from East Asia, made a faster assessment of the gravity of the outbreak and contained it. There were only five cases, four of them carried directly from Hong Kong, and no deaths. The uneven geographies of SARS in Toronto and Vancouver exemplify variable scale effects contributing to quite different outcomes. Local contingencies still matter.

Re-directing Orientalism In contrast to the hypermobility within transnational fields illustrated by the diffusion of SARS is the seemingly exaggerated stasis of ethnic settlement, fixed on the map, rooted in the urban landscape. Vancouver’s Chinatown is among the oldest in North America (Lai 1988). Scarcely ever welcome before 1950, tolerated only at the margins of society, controlled through an invidious Head Tax from 1885, and excluded altogether by the Chinese Immigration Act from 1923 to 1947, the story of the Chinese in Canada has followed a well-told new world genre of racialized outcasts in a white settler society (Ward 1978; Anderson 1991; Li 1998; Roy 2003). Such a narrative has provided an almost ideal type for critical race studies, for Chinatown and the Chinese formed a seamless and mutually constitutive fusion of a marginalized place and a crudely stigmatized identity. The Vancouver enclave endured two white riots in 1887 and 1907, the second from a mob who poured out of a meeting of the Asiatic Exclusion League (sic), smashing property and roughing up residents. Chinatown the place consolidated,

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sharpened and reproduced the representation of a people apart, a people of minimal entitlement in Kay Anderson’s (1991) aptly chosen words. ChineseCanadian literature has also pursued this spatial genre (Khoo 2003), in autobiographical and historical novels like Jade Peony (Choy 1995) in which a Chinese life-world, though vibrant, is internalized and contained in a claustrophobic space of a few blocks.17 While some authors have properly challenged the sense of disempowerment and victim status often evident in these representations, few have broken loose of the magnetic, rooted and static allure of Chinatown itself. And yet… walk today down Pender Street, the spine of Vancouver’s Old Chinatown, past buildings like the home of the Chinese Benevolent Association (1909), the long-time workshop of the now-departed Chinese Times (1902), and its neighbour, the Chinese Freemasons’ Building (1901), temporary home of Dr. Sun Yat–sen (Figure 1.1). Moving beneath the selfconscious new Chinatown Gate, we pass the Dr. Dorothy Lam Building, a legacy to a remarkable family, and head office of the resourceful immigrant settlement agency, SUCCESS. The Lam Building fronts the site of a one-time warren of former shacks and bunk houses in Canton and Shanghai Alleys, on land originally scavenged from False Creek’s tidal marshes. Pender Street today is an outdoor museum, meticulously orientalized by a well-meaning multiculturalism where design, colour and landscape texture are prescribed by a planner’s rule-book. But suddenly critical race studies confront the material and seemingly colour-blind articulation of global capitalism.18 Continuing a short distance west on Pender, leaving behind the mummified landscape of Old Chinatown, we observe an altogether different district, the confident new build of condominiums in International Village – España was branded and marketed in the most recent buildings on offer. We are on the edge of the vast Concord Pacific Place (Figure 1.2), orchestrated by Hong Kong’s billionaire Li family, a fleet of high rise towers lying at anchor on the two-kilometre long waterfront site of the former world’s fair, Expo 86, and more recently joined by a younger and smaller Toronto sibling, Concord CityPlace, under construction on former downtown railway lands.19 Pacific Place is a popular landing strip for empty nesters, professional singles and a new cohort of wealthy East Asian immigrants. The landscape contrasts of this district and its other are profoundly ironic. Behind us, to the east, in a Chinatown landscape of slowly decaying ethnic stuff, some might identify the last gesture of Orientalism, sustained and promoted by three levels of government in the designated Chinatown Historic Area. Ahead of us to the west the massive economic power of contemporary East Asia takes its cues if not from a concocted Occidentalism, then from an alternate Asian modernity (Ong 1999). International Village strikes exactly the right chord: the horizon here is expansive not claustrophobic, the mobile

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Figure 1.1 Pender Street, Chinatown, 2008

Image not available in this electronic edition

Figure 1.2 Part of Concord Pacific Place (left to right), fronting Vancouver’s downtown peninsula, 2008 (Photo by Mark van Manen, reproduced by permission of the Vancouver Sun)

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liberal internationalism that is at the heart of modernity, the market, even democracy itself. The juxtaposition with the contained parish of Old Chinatown is striking, for Concord Pacific Place – note the peaceful hands across the Pacific allusions in its name – is fully cosmopolitan, outward looking, the world its investment oyster, its very first towers in the early 1990s advertising high-speed internet linkages as a prominent sales feature. For such capitalists sans frontières routes seemingly trump roots. They, perhaps more than anyone else, live out in their daily lives a ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006). The oppressed victims of critical race studies meet freewheeling homo economicus, agent of a globalizing Chinese modernity. As old Chinatown expresses Canada’s exclusionary past and essentializing multicultural present, Pacific Place and CityPlace manifest one face of the nation’s future. Concord Pacific and the Li family are here by invitation, as part of Canada’s own aspiration to be a full partner of the Pacific Rim economy. Recently arrived Chinese-Canadians cannot convincingly repeat the post-colonial aphorism that ‘we are here because you were there’. Their entitlement is even stronger: ‘we are here because you invited us’. They are not merely tolerated by the state, but welcomed, valued as the harbingers of global enterprise (Ong 2006). As early as the 1960s, British Columbia politicians were casting an eye to the economic potential of the Pacific Rim nations. Federally, the liberal internationalism of the Pearson and Trudeau years assembled the legislative and diplomatic infrastructure to establish a trans-Pacific network. Subsequent trade missions by municipal, provincial and federal delegations to East and Southeast Asia, hopped between Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo, putting out the message that Canada, and especially its Pacific province of British Columbia, were open for business. Meanwhile, an ideologically driven British Columbia government assembled an investment-friendly environment, provoking tough labour struggles through the recessionary years of the early 1980s. A familiar ingredient in this neo-liberal economic agenda was Expo 86, a six-month long world fair sponsored by the provincial government with federal and corporate aid. Expo was a transparent and successful culmination of an extended foray into the Pacific arena, an appetizer to entice trade, investment, tourists and potential settlers (Ley and Olds 1988). Sale of the entire property by the provincial government to the billionaire Li family at the close of the fair, in preference to a local bidder, was a logical conclusion to a decade of courting East Asian capital. The entente cordiale across the Pacific was further cemented by the appointment of David Lam (husband of Dorothy Lam), an early immigrant from Hong Kong in 1967 and subsequently a successful real estate millionaire and generous philanthropist, as LieutenantGovernor of British Columbia, the Queen’s official representative in the province.20 The same year, 1988, Li Ka-shing purchased the Expo site.

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Geopolitical events in East Asia aided Canada’s Pacific Rim strategy. The Chinese in Southeast Asia were wealthy, but often threatened, minorities (Ang 2001; Rigg 2003). Successful entrepreneurs in Hong Kong included bourgeois families that had fled Shanghai ahead of the Communist army and were worried in light of the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 that planned for the repatriation of the British colony to the Mainland in 1997. Their anxieties were much aggravated by the harsh suppression of student reformers in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Periodic sabre-rattling by the Mainland government in the Taiwan Strait, including provocative exercises in 1995 and 1996, unsettled wealthy Taiwanese households who could see the benefits of portfolio diversification and passport insurance. And in South Korea the instability of living with the wild card of North Korea as nearest neighbour encouraged the same global scanning for safer havens. In this uncertainty the attentions of Canadian trade missions were of considerable interest, and not only for investment purposes. Canadian immigration had expanded away from its European-preference origins, as reforms in 1962 and 1967 welcomed global arrivals and the announcement of multiculturalism in 1971 emphasized that all were welcome. Moreover, further immigration revisions in 1978 and 1986 appeared tailored to the needs of anxious ethnic Chinese capitalists in East and Southeast Asia. The Government of Canada assembled a Business Immigration Programme (BIP) whose express intent was to recruit wealthy immigrants to advance economic development in Canada either through active entrepreneurialism or more passive investment (Ley 2003). In the neo-liberal commodification of everything during the globalizing 1980s, financial capital with entrepreneurial experience offered a passage to Canadian citizenship. Between 1980 and 2001, almost 330,000 immigrants landed in Canada through the BIP, making the Canadian programme the most successful in the global immigration marketplace, far ahead of competing programmes in Australia, New Zealand and the United States (Wong 2003). Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea accounted for over half the business immigrants landing in Canada, and three-quarters in British Columbia. This cohort of economically privileged newcomers, some of them fabulously wealthy, contributed a new genre of millionaire migrants.

Travelling Agents If Wayson Choy’s Jade Peony provides the novelist’s reconstruction of a Chinatown-bound past, then Clara Law’s film Floating Life (1996) is a much fuller representation of a diasporic and cosmopolitan present. Australianmade, the film is synchronous with Law’s own departure from Hong Kong to Australia the year before. As the title suggests, Floating Life presents the

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antithesis of the settled parochialism of old Chinatown. It is about the unsettled nature of living between cultures, of re-location as an often traumatic adventure, as a family switches roles from insider to outsider, from host to stranger (Mitchell 2003). In the film, while a family friend moves to Vancouver, the Chen family selects Australia, the earlier destination of a daughter, while the oldest son remains in Hong Kong and a second daughter migrates to Germany. Scattered between three continents the family exemplifies the ‘bamboo network’ of the contemporary Chinese diaspora. Family dispersal achieves the spreading of risk and the maximizing of overall opportunity. It is this same spatial strategy that is often associated with the expansion of Chinese family firms, as sons are despatched to potential markets to develop a new outpost for the family business. Hamilton’s (2000: 72) observation that ‘the personal quality of many [overseas] investments reflects the combination of centralized patriarchal control … and of the entrepreneurial importance of external guanxi networks … for creating economic opportunity’ was perfected in Li Ka-shing’s decision to groom the business acumen of his son, Victor, fresh out of Stanford University, by placing him in charge of Vancouver’s Concord Pacific project with an entourage of tested managers and business allies to add local knowledge, while his other son, Richard, was despatched to Toronto to test his own business mettle (Mitchell and Olds 2000; Olds 2001). Such Canadian episodes are part of a broader narrative of travel and entrepreneurship. Canada’s Business Immigration Programme is matched by competing schemes in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and other island states, by countries in Latin America, and by a more half-hearted initiative in the United States – all told, close to 30 nations have been trawling for homo economicus (Tseng 2000). Aided by the new profession of immigration consultants, briefs on the details of immigration policy in different countries are carefully reviewed as middle-class families from East Asia scan the international immigrant market. If Canada, with the largest number of BIP landings, seems to have played its hand with some finesse, it is in considerable measure because Canadian entry requirements have been liberal and its proximity to the United States made eventual onward migration to ‘the beautiful country’ an accessible option. The story I shall tell then is not simply a Canadian story; the migrants could have moved elsewhere, some of them will, others will return to their place of origin. A comparative eye sees migration to Canada as one realized link in a network of locational possibilities and not necessarily the only or final outcome. Michael Peter Smith (2001) has properly challenged the inert role of human actors in globalization theory, their reduction before the master narrative of global political economy. His position is abundantly substantiated in the global scanning of wealthy and middle-class migrants leaving the

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cities of East and Southeast Asia. Their motives for migration are frequently complex, even contradictory. For many, geopolitical anxiety prescribes the desirability of a second passport as ‘insurance policy’, a term widely used by this population (Wong 1999). For others, the placement of a child in a western school or university provides a toehold that may draw other family members (Waters 2006, 2008). In Vancouver, San Francisco, Sydney and Auckland in particular, the celebrated scenery and quality of life are significant attractions for those near retirement. In all of this, the role of economic opportunity, as we shall see later, can be more ephemeral in selection of a destination than host states expected or wanted. The networked family has well-researched strategies toward space and time, stations and seasons. Citizenship entails two years of residence in Australia,21 three in Canada; business-class entrepreneur immigration to the United States has required an investment of at least $500,000 and the creation of 10 jobs, while its Canadian competitor has usually involved an outlay of about $150,000 with the necessity of only one employee. Compared to the Canadian programme, its American equivalent has been heavily under-subscribed. Life cycle timing also matters greatly. There is a point in a child’s schooling when movement to a western education is regarded as more favourable; for career development, young people are commonly drawn back to East Asia; as retirement years approach the Canadian quality of life becomes more attractive. In this synchronization of stations and seasons one can see the careful weighing of options by the travelling family, the deployment of human agency to optimize family objectives, negotiating and where necessary evading containment by national governments. In a neo-liberal era homo economicus is cast as a heroic figure and the Chinese business family is highly regarded. Ong (1999: 133–4) has noted how Chinese-American businessmen in California are well aware of their resourceful reputation, with a special skill in trans-Pacific deal making, and are not embarrassed to take advantage of their calling. But Ong also deconstructs the benevolent myth of the Chinese family as a business corporation, laying bare the incivilities of guanxi and the bamboo network. It is a regime predicated upon a patriarchy that can be very demanding of the emotional resources of spouses and children. Employees and kin do not necessarily share the freedom of the master, as Ong (1999: 116) detects ‘the violence and exploitation’ that narrow the agency of others. As immigrant women learn new gender roles in the West, challenges to patriarchy can lead to awkward family relations (Waters 2002). Nor is the role of an absentee husband inevitably one of dominance. Within the fragmented family, particularly the so-called astronaut household with paterfamilias working in East Asia while his family is domiciled overseas, vulnerability rather than victory is an abiding trope. Electronic contact is always virtual contact and does not

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allow important forms of effective action and affective understanding to be articulated. For a family’s emotional security, the pursuit of economic agency can be a Faustian bargain for all its members.

Murder and the Media In a circumscribed village society news is shared interpersonally. In a global society interpersonal interests still shape the selection and interpretation of information but sources from distant places are invariably the media, for mediascapes provide one of the constitutive elements of the global order (Appadurai 1996). Although Appadurai’s theses on cultural globalization have been challenged, he is surely right to emphasize the role of media in shaping the identity of peoples and places. In an electronic age, mediascapes mould the imagination of other places as potential migration destinations (Teo 2003). Yet the media are never innocent, and consciously and unconsciously project the intentionality of the society (and government) in which they are embedded. The Mainland Chinese television series, Goodbye Vancouver, filmed on location in the city beneath grey skies, composed a deliberately lugubrious future in Canada for university graduates and potential emigrants in China who had become obsessed by the city’s emancipatory potential. The media both reflect and reproduce the social interests that they explicitly and implicitly represent. The social construction of the news has been an abiding issue in examinations of immigration, for ‘mainstream media’ are typically embedded in mainstream interests. They under-report immigrant-specific news, while coverage is often shaped by unsympathetic categories such as immigrant crime (Dunn and Mahtani 2001). The real estate investment in Vancouver accompanying the arrival of wealthy immigrants from East Asia from the mid-1980s attracted concerted media attention, repeatedly highlighting the ‘monster house’, a large new property constructed for wealthy new Canadians to the maximum permitted size and typically unresponsive to pre-existing neighbourhood design tastes (Ley 1995; Mitchell 2004). While there were real differences of opinion about house styles, the adoption of the vernacular term, the ‘monster house’, by seemingly authoritative media cast the discussion in an unflattering idiom for new residents. What does one make of such headlines as ‘How we saved Shaughnessy from monsters’ (Ohannesian 1990), or ‘A monster problem in Shaughnessy’ (Griffin 1992), with their capacity to entangle place and identity as tightly as the stigmatizing caricatures of Old Chinatown? Sun (1998: 147) deconstructs the metaphor as a ‘concrete dimension to the traditionalist Orientalist image of the Asian as an inscrutable, mysterious and ugly ethnicity’. But Sun is not writing as a neutral observer either, and has perhaps over-interpreted historical

24

INTRODUCTION

continuity in the monster house idiom with earlier more pernicious categories, a flattening of mainstream imagery revealing the author’s own positionality (Sun 2002). The viewpoint and interests of the immigrant are effectively embedded in the ethnic press. With an ethnic Chinese population of 380,000 in Greater Vancouver in 2006, there is considerable competition among local editions of the Hong Kong dailies Sing Tao and Ming Pao and the Taiwanese-based World Journal (Leung 2006). The significant national television and radio empire of the Fairchild Media Group, based in the Vancouver ethnoburb of Richmond, offers Cantonese and Mandarin coverage to a Vancouver television audience of over 240,000 daily. These are only the largest players in a mediascape with its own capacity to sustain and reproduce distinctive social realities. Immigration stories featured prominently in both the English- and Chinese-language press in the 1990s, reflecting distinctive community interests. In a celebrated case they offered their own very divergent accounts of the mysterious figure homo economicus, so divergent that their conflicting accounts led to mutual recrimination. An unsolved murder occurred in a high status westside neighbourhood of Vancouver in 1997. The victim was an entrepreneur who had entered Canada from Hong Kong through the BIP. Living in a wealthy district, apparently with a Mercedes in his garage, he had been shot in his own driveway before dawn one morning while leaving for work at one of the Chinese-language newspapers where he had a job as an early morning delivery boy. The status incompatibilities of the case were incomprehensible to Canadian-born readers who were not ethnic Chinese. Why would a wealthy entrepreneur be delivering newspapers? Familiar caricatures speedily occupied the information gap. The English-language press extrapolated from the premeditated murder by someone who clearly knew the victim’s pre-dawn movements. Was he indeed a victim or was he also a member of a criminal subculture, whose posture as a simple deliveryman was in fact a cover for more sinister activities? Journalist Kim Pemberton’s (1997) scare quotes around ‘paperboy’ in the title of her page one story in the Vancouver Sun threw doubt on this job status, while the remainder of the second part of the title, ‘paid cash for $1 million home’, pressed home the incongruity and raised suspicions of undisclosed money sources. So too Moira Farrow’s (1997) subsequent story picked up the thread of pursuing this mysterious ‘money trail’ while challenging the Chinese-language press for ‘bullying’ the mainstream media. For the Chinese-language media responded to these innuendos with unusual robustness, pointing to an altogether different interpretation of events. In a flurry of some 20 stories, they rejected the ‘phobic reporting’ in the Vancouver Sun and the factual error that the house had been paid for by cash (Ming Pao 1997a). They lamented the effects of the tone of the Sun’s

INTRODUCTION

25

stories on the victim’s widow. An emergent Chinese-Canadian civil society, including the broadcast and print media, the Director of the Coalition of Chinese Canadian Associations, and Lilian To, leader of SUCCESS, the large Chinese-Canadian settlement agency, formed a protective circle around the family demanding a full apology from the Sun newspaper. They presented their own account of the family’s circumstances. The victim had sold a taxi licence in Hong Kong to finance the family’s move to Canada. As a business immigrant he ran a part-time ginseng business, but also delivered newspapers to make friends. Because of his poor English he could not find a good job for ‘it is not unusual for a rich immigrant to hold a minimal job and maintain a high standard of living’ (Ming Pao 1997a). Integration problems often include downward mobility and the need to take on menial jobs. Apparently extravagant consumer wealth can veil miserable Canadian income, for an immigrant whose entry to Canada depends on his wealth may be asset rich but earnings poor. In the limited intersection of the two language solitudes few non-Chinese speakers heard this riposte. For news collection, selection and reception were all conducted in a fully social context where facts and fictions coalesced and were sheltered behind familiar story lines. This is unfortunate, for, as we shall see, there is much to learn from Ming Pao’s account.

Millionaire Migrants: The Journey Ahead The confusion of Anglo-Canadian reporters was understandable in light of the events they were investigating. For a decade they had been socialized to the fabulous wealth leaving East Asia and landing in Canada. The very high profile sale of the Expo site was common knowledge and had raised the visibility of the billionaire Li family to a North American audience. The rapid inflation in the regional housing market coincided with the Expo deal and the substantial growth of immigration from Hong Kong and Taiwan, carrying Vancouver house prices to a position above Toronto’s as the most expensive in Canada. In the midst of all this, suggestion that there was no immigrant ‘money trail’, indeed not even much money, was too big a mindbender to contemplate. Of course the profile of the millionaire migrant is an unfamiliar one. The typical immigrant story is one of initial relative poverty, hard work and slow but steady upward mobility culminating in the purchase of a home in the suburbs – an assimilation narrative that still exercises considerable sway in the United States and elsewhere (Clark 1998). The only capital that such immigrants can initially assemble is the social capital of the extended family or ethnic community. The contrast of immigrants with substantial financial capital overturns conventional categories. It has certainly caused some

26

INTRODUCTION

re-examination of national policy expectations. For the assimilation paradigm also anticipates the containment of the immigrant by the nation state and his/her reconstitution as a national citizen. But the transnational migrant with mobile identities who eludes the possessive arms of the state has undercut this traditional assimilation model. For transnational migrants, cross-border networks provide access to assets and resources not restricted to the territory of a single nation state; in our case they comprise connections and flows between the nodes of a social field that criss-crosses the Pacific Ocean. In Chapter 2 the establishment of that field is discussed with the rise in the 1960s and 1970s of the concept of the Pacific Rim in the imagination of Canadian politicians and business elites. In a notable reversal of geographical mythologies, the ‘Gold Mountain’ projected onto North America by nineteenth-century Chinese migrants was relocated to a supposed El Dorado in East and Southeast Asia sought by late twentieth-century North Americans. Expecting to find new trade and investment opportunities in the context of post-1973 recessions and growing federal deficits that disabled the welfare state, Canadian missions crossed the Pacific to drum up business, while governments made legislative and institutional adjustments in Canada so that investors and immigrants would have a soft landing. British Columbia and its principal entrepôt, Vancouver, became increasingly incorporated into a Pacific Basin system of flows as growing tonnages of raw materials moved westward, while imports and foreign direct investment, at first principally from Japan, entered the province. These economic linkages were accompanied by rising numbers of people from East Asia, with many arrivals, particularly from Hong Kong and Taiwan, landing as business immigrants and seemingly sustaining the neo-liberal developmental paradigm. Chapter 3 moves from aggregate flows to intersubjective meanings, the intentionality of business immigrants as active agents. Transnational networks are not limited to the much-discussed circuitry of flows, measurable movements of capital, people, information and commodities. They also reflect and shape lines of meaning, the experience of lives lived; they invoke memories, hopes and social relationships across a distended social field. Business immigrants brought with them impressive resources of human and financial capital. Nonetheless they approached the economic development agenda flourished by Canadian governments with considerable ambivalence and some anxiety. Departure from the bull markets of East Asia to the slow if steady returns and high taxation of Canada was a dubious economic proposition, and migration was seen much more as a project to maximize family objectives: geopolitical security, educational options for children, quality of life for the nuclear family and often ageing parents. Canada was one of several possible destinations, and with the advice of immigration consultants, the international market was scanned with care. So began an

INTRODUCTION

27

intricate two-step between the state and the immigrants as the state sought to control and contain the immigrants as national citizens, while newcomers sought to maintain their circular motion between their money-generating station in East Asia and their consumption station in Canada. Business immigrants were required to place passive investments in venture-capital funds for a fixed period, or else to engage in active entrepreneurial activity. Chapter 4 traces the economic success of this group who qualified for landing in Canada on the basis of their homeland business achievements. Relations with the state again move to centre stage, for the federal department, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, monitored the economic activity of business migrants as a condition of their entry. Field research indicates surprising lapses among these business households, out of character with their public persona and past performance as homo economicus. One conclusion is that the economic otherness of Canada presented serious barriers to immigrant business success. There is no explanatory alternative here but to retain aspects of methodological nationalism, for despite the flattening out claims of globalization theorists, local geographies continue to matter profoundly. The economic culture of Canada was unfamiliar, even without the additional barrier of the English language. Many saw the investment required as the necessary cost of citizenship; like the Canadian state they regarded the business programme as above all a business transaction. Common to all insurance, passport insurance was also measured in the hard currency of the market. Hong Kong residents in particular have been embedded in an economic culture where property has loomed large in wealth acquisition. Early arrivals in Canada like David Lam had made their fortunes in real estate, and if any reinforcement was needed of the potential of the Vancouver property market there was the lesson of Li Ka-shing’s twenty-year commitment to build out the Expo site. Chapter 5 reviews the embodied meaning of property transported from Hong Kong to the Vancouver land market. The historic enclave of old Chinatown was unattractive to the cosmopolitan and quintessentially modern sensibilities of the new immigrants, and has been avoided. New large houses, luxury downtown condominium units and suburban malls more adequately integrate the relationship between place and identity today for affluent Chinese-Canadian families. The buying and selling of Vancouver property was also a transnational enterprise with sales occurring at weekend marts held at top-end hotels in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei. Real estate agents and companies with bi-national connections lubricated sales with international buyers. The net effect of capital seeking property from the super-charged land markets of East Asia was the marked inflation of house and condominium prices in Vancouver and its inner suburbs, a causal connection that was vigorously contested in the real estate conflicts to follow.

28

INTRODUCTION

Immigrants and investment never touch down in empty space, and the property market takes new arrivals to neighbourhoods whose land use planning is managed by municipal governments responsive to local citizens and their priorities. Chapter 6 deals with the vexed question of the reception of wealthy immigrants by the Canadian-born, for the deployment of their wealth in the urban land market caused some controversy. Both in Vancouver and Toronto there was concern at the creation of ethnoburbs where Asian-themed malls offered an unfamiliar presence not necessarily perceived as welcoming to long-settled residents. Moving into long-stable elite neighbourhoods, the preference of East Asian immigrants for large new houses led to widespread demolition of older properties, a steep upward price movement, and resentment at the disruption of an existing elite sense of place. The adjudication process by local government stretched the conciliatory capacity of multiculturalism to the limit. An important issue here is the motivation of local resistance. While critical race theory has identified racism among the long-settled as the primary motive, my own emphasis incorporates also the intersection of class and status dimensions, offering a more intricate construction of whiteness than often appears in anti-racist literature. Immigration involves an uneasy tension between there and here, between routes and roots. Chapter 7 examines the early development of a civil society within the new Chinese-origin enclaves of Vancouver and Toronto. The family remains the basic ontological unit, but family life is agitated by the unsettling of traditional certainties. Floating Life, expounds a critic of Clara Law’s film about a Hong Kong family in Australia, ‘is fraught with anxiety and a sense of trepidation if not outright dread’ (Teo 2001). The role of paterfamilias is confused by the difficulty of achieving economic success in Canada and by subsequent absence associated with astronaut status. The wife’s position as child carer brought her into a broader Canadian context particularly in school relations, but some vulnerability with the absence of her partner. Children typically acculturate faster, and their superior language facility to their parents brings uncomfortable role reversal. Beyond the family unit, Chinese-Canadian organizations help to salve the anxieties of newcomer status. Though the older clan and hometown associations are in decline, the new supports of business and cultural organizations, immigrant churches and other places of worship, and immigrant service organizations, notably SUCCESS, with its dozen offices and national reputation, offer significant balm to the injuries of transnational life. These associations provide avenues to integration, a growing sense of belonging, participation, and identity re-configuration, and for a minority to philanthropy and esteem inside Canada. But for many others, notably millionaire migrants and their children, the lines across the Pacific remain open. Chapter 8 examines not the conventional myth of return but rather its repeated enactment in the eight or nine daily scheduled passenger flights

INTRODUCTION

29

that depart from Vancouver International Airport for Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.22 Different families vary in their deployment of routes vs. roots as household strategies, but many have returned to their place of origin; estimates in Hong Kong repeatedly cite in excess of 200,000 residents who hold Canadian passports. What can we say about the meaning of citizenship associated with these movements? Is citizenship indeed pragmatic and flexible (Ong 1999) or is there a sense of belonging that complicates transnational flows? Certainly, field research in Hong Kong indicates that the closure implied by return is as limited a concept as a linear model of assimilation (Ley and Kobayashi 2005). More accurate is ‘return for now’, as there is always the prospect of moving back from East Asia to Canada, as opportunities variously defined at different points in the life cycle favour first one side and then the other of the trans-Pacific social field. The millionaire migrant articulates par excellence the Global Commission’s new paradigm of international mobility characterized by temporary and circular movement. The chapters that follow aim to give flesh to this paradigm in charting the trans-Pacific life lines of wealthy migrants originating in East Asia. They act within, against, and through such global contexts as economic neo-liberalism, continental geopolitics, and the long-range interdependence presumed by globalization. The politics they engage remain primarily national, as nation states seek to project themselves onto a global stage, scanning for new sources of capital and skilled labour in an era when economic and demographic energy is no longer limited to the historic North Atlantic axis. But as we shall see, this expanded trans-continental reach promises rewards but often incurs penalties. Global ambitions can run aground without local knowledge. Cosmopolitanism can imperil social relations that require proximity and rootedness.

A Note on Origins and Methods Today authors often come clean with an outline of the back stage preparations that led to a front stage text. Research for this volume began sporadically around 1990. My primary research concern then was a comparative study of inner city gentrification, which continued until book publication in 1996. But as a social geographer with an interest in older inner city neighbourhoods, I could not escape the extraordinary developments in the Vancouver housing market. Taking several months off from gentrification research in the early 1990s, I followed the conflict associated with the remaking of the City’s older elite neighbourhoods, not far distant from my own, as wealthy immigrants from East Asia bought property, usually large new mansions built following the demolition of an older

30

INTRODUCTION

European-style house and the clearance of its trees and mature plantings. The destruction of a venerable landscape destabilized the relationship of place and identity for the old elite, leading to the so-called battle over monster houses re-told with their own spin by media in several countries. My interpretation of these events (Ley 1995), required attendance at public hearings, reading hundreds of letters sent to the City Council and Planning Department and some interviews. Soon after, I became co-director of a large research initiative, the Metropolis Project, a long-term, federally funded, interdisciplinary study of immigration and urbanization.23 For more than a decade my principal research focus has been the wealthy families from East Asia who confound so many caricatures about immigrants. A series of projects on housing markets, labour markets, the role of education in migration, transnational behaviour and family pressures, immigrant churches as service hubs and apparent return to East Asia followed over the next decade, some conducted with students and colleagues. From start to finish the project that unfolds in this book has been carried out over a period of some 15 years. Methodology has ranged widely and included participant observation in public hearings, school events, meetings and the encounters of neighbourhood and city life, together with structured and unstructured interviews (including focus groups) with some 250 immigrant households. Added tools have been landscape observation and interpretation and cartographic analysis. Selective use is made of a telephone survey of some 1,500 immigrants in Vancouver undertaken in 2001–02 for a project in which I participated. Interviews and focus group meetings were undertaken with some 60 returnees in Hong Kong with my colleague at Queen’s University, Audrey Kobayashi. Newspaper files have been kept for a dozen years, including translations of Vancouver’s three Chinese-language dailies. Several federal databases on immigration have been valuable, including detailed material available from small area analysis in the Census of Canada, published every five years. Also essential have been the Landed Immigrant Data System (LIDS), compiled from a landing card completed by all immigrant households, and the longitudinal Immigrant Data Base (IMDB) that links landing cards with tax files for all immigrants landing in Canada since 1980 who submitted a tax return. Other sources such as planning documents, consultants’ reports and house price data have been used where relevant. I have benefited from an outstanding literature on the earlier history of the Chinese in Canada, and incisive research on the diaspora around the Pacific Basin, as well as from additional interviews and results reported in several probing student dissertations – all to be acknowledged in turn. The intended outcome is a triangulation of methods, with intensive qualitative research providing understanding while framed by the extensive bounds of quantitative sources that offer a wider validity to findings.

INTRODUCTION

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Most scholarly publications have covered the experience of ChineseCanadians to 1947 with the repeal of the exclusionary Chinese Immigration Act, while a smaller literature assesses the period up to 1980. Since then primary emphasis has understandably been given to the extraordinary gyrations in the regional housing market in the late 1980s and early 1990s accompanying extensive migration of wealthy migrants from East Asia and substantial movements of off-shore capital into local property investment, events detailed and theorized in Katharyne Mitchell’s (2004) sophisticated treatment, Crossing the Neoliberal Line. These events merited the attention given them, but this book reviews a longer period, the quarter century after 1980. This extended duration permits a more measured historical interpretation over the longer term – for example moving beyond the animated ‘monster house crisis’ to a discussion of its eventual resolution, leading to a new status quo in the city’s wealthy older neighbourhoods. A longer time horizon also permits the important issue of life cycle transition to be followed through distinctive milestones and status passages, together with migrants’ shifting positions in the transnational social space that comprises their geographically extended lifeworld. A second departure from current literature is that while including the precipitous events in the land market, my attention also includes the entry of immigrants into the labour market and the surprising outcomes of their business ventures. The book considers the shaping of a civil society, particularly the evolution of family life and the role of such institutions as schools, immigrant churches and non-government organizations. The issue of reception, ‘the warmth of the welcome’, is clearly important and relations with the different levels of the Canadian state, as well as Canadian citizens, are significant issues to review. Above all the mobility of millionaire migrants needs to be emphasized, both in the painful separation of astronaut families, and then in the often vexed transnational question of re-location, back to East Asia, and perhaps back again to Canada. Transnational research needs understanding at multiple sites, and this project included two field visits to Hong Kong (and a short trip to Taipei) as well as familiarity with Canadian events. I am not a Chinese-speaker, and while I agree with Ien Ang (2001) that this failure does not paralyze research, it does lead to a distinctive authorial position outside the innermost reaches of a language group. Attempts to remedy this arms-length status have included using key informants, Chinese-language newspapers in translation24 and home-language interviewing by bilingual research assistants. Of course many recent middle-class migrants from Hong Kong are themselves English-speakers, but among Taiwanese this facility is less common. My hope is that these efforts together produce a study with enough empirical dexterity and conceptual depth to interpret the dynamism of an enterprising transnational population in the places they shape, and are shaped by.

Chapter Two

Transition: From the Orient to the Pacific Rim

The ascension of Chinese immigrants from a position of marginality and disentitlement to an incorporated ‘model minority’ of resourceful citizens is one of the more remarkable stories of twentieth century nation-building in Canada and the United States. Needed, but not wanted, in the late nineteenth century, ‘Orientals’ on the West Coast of North America were recruited and harshly treated in the dangerous work of railway-building through the Rocky Mountains; 600 are said to have died during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway between 1881 and 1885. With characteristic insensitivity, the same year the railway was completed the first of a series of disciplinary immigration laws was enacted, introducing a head tax upon Chinese landing in Canada.1 Legislation became increasingly restrictive until in 1923 the Chinese Immigration Act blocked virtually all legal entry to Canada until its repeal in 1947. Yet forty years later in 1988, British Columbia, the region most aggressive in anti-Chinese sentiment and punitive provincial legislation, appointed a Hong Kong immigrant, David Lam, as its Lieutenant Governor, the highranking official representative of the Queen, while in 1999, Adrienne Clarkson (née Poy), also born in Hong Kong, became Governor General of Canada, de facto Head of State as the Crown’s representative in Ottawa. In 2006 Prime Minister Stephen Harper made an official apology in Parliament to survivors of the head tax legislation and their descendents and offered a limited cash settlement as restitution. Canada was a more cosmopolitan and egalitarian nation by 2006, while the Orient had become Asia Pacific, and instead of closed doors to Asia, government was pouring money into Vancouver transportation infrastructure to extend its open door gateway strategy to the trade of the Pacific Rim. Where trade led, investment and migration followed. This chapter will show how and why such spaces of global flows dislodged earlier spaces of closed national containment.

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Orientalism Unleashed Chinese migrants began to enter British Columbia from California and direct from China during the 1858 Gold Rush. Many remained in the region and some were later recruited by syndicates as railway labourers. David Lai (1988) has shown that the majority of migrants originated in four Cantonese-speaking counties in Guangdong Province in South China, where they had eked out a precarious existence as peasants and the sons of peasants. Their movement to North America was through the well-defined channels of family networks; Lai (1988: 58–9) estimates that from the early decades of settlement into the 1940s, the Li, Huang and Ma clans alone contributed 30 percent of Chinese in British Columbia. Among those who landed toward the end of the nineteenth century almost three-quarters declared their intended occupation as ‘labourer’ with much smaller numbers listing themselves as farmer, cook, laundryman or merchant (Lai 1988). By 1901, 17,300 Chinese were recorded in the Dominion census, 86 percent of them living in British Columbia, primarily in Vancouver and Victoria. The cold reception these immigrants received and the undiluted racism they confronted – north and south of the 49th parallel – have been thoroughly recounted on the Canadian side (Ward 1978; Roy 1989, 2003, 2007; Anderson 1991; Li 1998; Ng 1999; Yee 2006). The social and ideological presuppositions of a white settler society would not allow any position for Chinese migrants other than on the margins – even better, out of the territory altogether. In the last decades of the nineteenth century the screws were fastidiously tightened on the freedoms and civil rights of Chinese in British Columbia as they were systematically excluded from the franchise, from ownership of Crown land, from professions and other employment including the civil service and through restrictive covenants from choice in residential settlement. Their market wage was habitually below the going rate – half or less of the white wage on the building of the railway, and for the most dangerous work – thereby antagonizing a white working-class who feared the undercutting of their own modest incomes. Kay Anderson (1991) has well described this wretched status as one of minimal entitlement. Injustice was inevitable before an unrelenting racist ideology that regarded the ‘Orient’ and ‘Orientals’ as not only inferior but as the source of contamination to European morals, values and civilization. Therefore it was an imperative that numbers be contained, that breeding be controlled. The punitive head tax on entry to Canada, imposed upon Chinese alone, rising successively from $50 in 1885, to $100 in 1900, and to the astonishing level of $500 in 1903, had the effect of limiting legal entry not only for poor single men but even more so for their dependents.

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In addition the fear for personal security in light of racist hostility and the employment-driven need for labour mobility made settled family life difficult. By 1911, there were 28 times more men than women of Chinese origin in Canada, and in 1931 the differential remained twelve-fold (Li 1998). The common migrant experience was that of a lonely bachelor life in a confined Chinatown, separated by a vast ocean from a femaleheaded village family in Guangdong province dependent on trans-Pacific remittances. Family members were often not re-united for years, even decades, for wives could not immigrate in any numbers until the more liberal era after the repeal of Chinese exclusion in 1947.

The Spectre of Chinatown Geographical containment was part of the colonial strategy of management and control. Segregated ‘Chinatowns’ emerged not only in larger centres like Vancouver and Victoria but also in smaller mining and resource settlements. In part segregation facilitated, as it does for all immigrants, the pursuit of shared cultural practices and rudimentary mutual aid. In Vancouver aid was formalized in networks of some 80 clan, home town and other benevolent societies (Willmott 1970; Wickberg et al. 1982; Ng 1999). In part too segregation was motivated through the desire for security through co-ethnic proximity, for in a frontier society random violence was always possible; anti-Chinese rioters swept through Vancouver’s Chinatown in 1887 and 1907, smashing property and beating up racialized victims. But segregation was also enforced by the disciplinary power of the state. Anderson (1991) chronicles the intricate and merciless network of surveillance and incursions into Vancouver’s Chinatown by the functionaries of local government: the police, the medical officer, housing and sanitary inspectors, and later, land use planners. All were concerned with a strategy of containment: to establish boundaries and to reproduce both spatial and social order according to the authority delegated to them. If spatial boundaries would not hold and Chinese migrants spilled out of their Chinatown ghetto, there would be no other alternative Alderman Hoskins told the Province newspaper in 1919 than ‘to take up arms to drive them into the sea’ (Anderson 1991: 123). The re-territorialization in Chinatown of de-territorialized migrants was driven by an uncompromising Orientalism that shaped the Chinese through a defiling set of absences: neither white, nor civilized, nor Christian. Anderson has expertly documented how Chinatown ‘was a concept that belonged to Vancouver’s white European community’ (1991: 104). Stereotyped and essentialized by the media, by popular discourse, and by public rhetoric, the idea of Chinatown was a solid edifice of the colonial mind at the margins of empire, with portentous effects in the everyday lives of its residents and

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the ongoing construction of their territory. Chinatown and the Chinese, place and identity, were it seemed in transparent collusion; what was concealed was the European idea, instituted through power, that quarantined a population with little capacity for resistance among the desolate shacks and bunk-houses of Canton and Shanghai Alleys and Dupont (later Pender) Street, huddled against the tidal marshes, rail yards and polluting industries along the ocean inlet of False Creek. The manipulation of space in the interests of power has been a repetitive strategy of white settler societies. The native land reserve was predicated upon the goal of containment (Harris 2002), and so was the even more invasive and aggressive regime of apartheid in South Africa, which conjoined law, segregation and racism in a desperate and ultimately futile expression of exclusion (Western 1997). Critical race studies have sought to denaturalize the often opaque but always present and commonly malfeasant union of race and space in colonial societies (Stasiulis and Davis 1995; Razack 2002; Kobayashi 2004). If ‘the constitution of spaces reproduces racial hierarchies’ (Razack 2002:1), then Chinatown was surely an ideal type of race/space manipulation. It was monitored, regulated, disciplined and harassed by successive politicians and state officials for interests that were rarely its own. They castigated its culture of poverty, but failed to observe or at least acknowledge the wider structures that impinged upon such a culture. To see Chinatown, as many did (and do), simply as an exotic landscape of difference, shaped by ethnic particularity, is to miss a reading of the external forces that formed it, and in some measure continue to do so. Wing Chung Ng (1999) has offered a gentle rebuke to this argument, for critical race studies can impose their own intellectual vice upon social relations, over-interpreting the reach of power, neglecting the contradictions and contingencies within the practice of hegemony, overlooking internal acts of agency and resistance.2 So when an amnesty on illegal immigration was declared in 1960, over 11,000 Chinese Canadians, or 20 percent of the 1961 national population, made use of it to regularize their status over the next decade (Hawkins 1988: 133). Evasion of surveillance is a primary weapon of the disempowered. Ng (1999: 6) questions interpretations where ‘Chinese people are often portrayed as no more than hapless victims of racial prejudice and discrimination’. Anderson would most likely agree, for in a later self-critique of her book she is less sure of its ‘tidy totalities’ (1998), in particular its painting over the divisions of gender and class within overseas Chinese society. Ng (1999) goes on to chronicle the internal daily life of Chinatown in the post-1945 period which he views through the optimistic lens of the cultural politics of voluntary organizations and identity formation. While he locates internal conflicts, this theme could reach much further, for as Aihwa Ong (2006: 128) has dramatically observed there has been a more exploitative side to the internal working life of Chinatowns as a site of ‘indentured servitude for poor and disenfranchised co-ethnics’.

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0 0

2 miles

Chinatown-Strathcona

2 kilometers

Downtown

Percent Chinese 50–100 30–50 15–30 5–15 0–5 0 (includes suppressed data)

Oakridge

Figure 2.1 Distribution of self-designated ethnic Chinese, City of Vancouver, 1971 Exploitation of labourers with limited power to object sustained the class advantage of a merchant elite within the district’s boundaries. While external impositions began to be lifted after 1945, it took decades before Vancouver’s Chinese were separated from the spectre of Chinatown. Peter Li (1998: 72) has suggested that of the 17,000 Chinese-origin families in Canada in 1951, almost 13,000 comprised lone males living separate from their overseas wives. Even in 1971 Chinese-Canadians remained geographically clustered around the Pender Street axis. The metropolitan population had by then reached 30,600, but the vast majority lived within the City of Vancouver and almost a fifth in the two poverty-stricken census tracts covering old Chinatown. The detailed distribution by enumeration areas (Figure 2.1), each area including only a few hundred people, shows that even among these small districts only a handful contained a majority of ethnic Chinese and these were all located in Chinatown, or immediately adjacent to it. Beyond this core there was slow eastward diffusion of the population into working-class East Vancouver, pushed in part by urban renewal, and also southwards into middle-class Oakridge, where ten enumeration areas recorded 15–30 percent Chinese-Canadians, demarcating a beach head that would later become the home of wealthy immigrants arriving from East Asia.

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Advances in Chinatown The 1971 map, indeed the period from 1965–80, represented a transitional period for Chinatown; both Anderson’s and Ng’s books end in 1980, the completion of a distinctive era of Chinese settlement. This transition was repeated in Canada’s national evolution as aspects of its internal and external self-understanding were reshaped, creating a much more favourable environment for Chinese-Canadians. The social liberalism of the Pearson-Trudeau years in the 1960s and 1970s; the celebratory coming of age of the centenary of Canadian confederation in 1967, including the world exposition in Montreal; significant revisions to the Immigration Act in 1962 and 1967; the diplomatic recognition of China in 1970 at Trudeau’s prompting; and his declaration of multiculturalism in 1971 – all evoked a new national selfconfidence, maturity and inclusiveness that were to have significant consequences for the large-scale migration from Hong Kong,Taiwan and China after 1980. There was also a more immediate effect upon Vancouver’s Chinatown. The first signs of change emerged in the 1960s following the most recent of a long line of disciplinary orders from the City. This decree was of a new scale of magnitude, requiring residents to evacuate Chinatown altogether. The district’s level of deterioration in the eyes of municipal government allowed only one response, wholesale destruction and redevelopment. Vancouver was not unique, for similar decisions led to significant demolition and re-location of smaller Chinatowns in Toronto and Montreal (Lai 1988). Such outcomes gave an eloquent message in the built environment about the continuing marginal status of the impacted population, and early events in Vancouver suggested not much had changed (Anderson 1991; Ley, Anderson and Konrad 1994). An urban renewal report in 1950 condescendingly described Chinatown, including its residential district of Strathcona, as a ‘revenue sink… its state of deterioration a menace’ (Marsh 1950). From such an uncompromising assessment the only conclusion was massive surgery, and in time-honoured tradition City Council made the citizens of Chinatown and its adjacent residential district of Strathcona once again objects for the projects of others by declaring the district an urban renewal redevelopment area. Public works were suspended, property prices frozen and further building permits disallowed for private owners. Displacement and clearance began and 3,300 owners and tenants were moved by 1965 through compulsory relocation – aiding the dispersal of Chinatown residents east and south (Figure 2.1). Opposition voiced by traditional benevolent associations was ignored. A second indignity burst upon everyday life in 1967 with Council’s announcement, without consultation, of the first leg of a regional freeway network. Its projected eight-lane alignment would demolish part of Chinatown and 12 residential blocks at the southern edge of

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Strathcona.3 A furore erupted as Chinatown residents found new allies in liberal middle-class professionals, and with mounting opposition and the freeway plan discredited, Council reluctantly backed down. This unlikely victory was soon joined by a second (Kim and Lai 1982; Ley et al. 1994). In 1968, the third and most sweeping phase of urban renewal was announced, involving clearance of 15 blocks and displacement of another 3,000 people. In response Chinatown residents and their small but energetic group of white allies – who included Michael Harcourt, a young lawyer later to be Mayor of Vancouver and Premier of British Columbia – abandoned the ineffectual benevolent associations and formed their own protest organization, the Strathcona Property Owners’ and Tenants’ Association (SPOTA), an organization in which immigrant and second generation women played key leadership roles (Lee 2007). In light of the historic social and political marginalization of Chinatown the events that followed were extraordinary. A federal task force investigating urban renewal, reporting to the recently elected Trudeau administration in Ottawa, visited Vancouver and led by the minister met with Chinatown residents protesting the City’s urban renewal plan (Ley et al. 1994). With unprecedented speed, just over a week later City Council was informed that the federal government would withdraw or severely curtail funds for urban renewal; indeed a formal moratorium on urban renewal across Canada followed a few months after. While the City struggled to re-enact its urban renewal activities, SPOTA was advised by federal government officials how to develop a strategy to negotiate with intransigent members of the Vancouver Council. This plan included development of an earlier SPOTA brief outlining an experimental rehabilitation programme with government grant and loan subsidies. SPOTA invited the three levels of government to meet to discuss the recommendations. The newly appointed federal minister, Robert Andras, suggested a private meeting with the president of SPOTA in August 1969 where he made a commitment to the plan in advance of the tri-level government session. There, he rejected the City’s counter-proposal to re-establish urban renewal. Finagling and bad faith by the City – that included springing a new freeway plan on Chinatown-Strathcona later in 1969 – delayed progress, but plans moved ahead constructively with the election of a reform city council in 1972 that included Harcourt and other SPOTA supporters, and was itself an incarnation of the liberal spirit of the times (Ley 1980). The same year, 1971, as the federal declaration of multiculturalism, protection, not destruction, was enunciated with the designation of the Chinatown Historic Area by the provincial government. Completing the redirection of the three levels of government, the city’s participatory planning process configured a new neighbourhood landscape, emphasizing renovation and enrichment in contrast to the demolition-displacement model of 1960s urban renewal (Figure 2.2). An unprecedented joint community-city working committee

Figure 2.2

nue

Gore Ave

100

Metres 200

East Georgia Street

phase II

Urban renewal

Keefer Street

STRATHCONA SCHOOL

Restoring Chinatown, 1970s (Source: Hasson and Ley 1994)

0

Urban renewal, phase III, proposed and defeated, 1969

Freeway alignments, proposed and defeated, 1967 and 1969

housing

Public

phases I and II

Urban renewal

Dunlevy Avenue

East Pender Street

Avenue Atlantic Street

Prior Street

Union Street

Princes

Mau Dan Spota Coop Jackson Avenue

Hastings Street

Hawks Avenue The linear park, including street closures

SPOTA housing projects, 1974–82

A house renovated under the Strathcona Rehabilitation Project, 1972–75

McLEAN PARK Urban renewal phase I

Campbell Avenue

Heatley Avenue

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oversaw the rehabilitation of nearly 400 housing units, road and sidewalk repaving, installation of new lighting and sewer lines and construction of linear parks to check disruptive through traffic. In 1982 the final element in the plan was completed, SPOTA’s 120-unit Mau Dan housing co-op, testimony to an extended process of collaborative community-building. This unexpected conjunction of race and space suggested a startlingly new phase in the status of Chinatown and Chinese-Canadians as participants in the welfare state. ‘Racialization’, as Audrey Kobayashi (2004: 241) has observed, ‘is always a historical geography’.

Charting the Pacific Rim, Assembling a Network Neighbourhood changes in Chinatown matched larger national movements as Canada entered its second century. The 1970s represented the high watermark of the welfare state, before growing national deficits led to cost-saving strategies and toward a neo-liberal regime in the 1980s and since. While it is unwise to over-identify national change with a single public figure, the Trudeau administrations from 1968 onwards embodied contemporary liberal currents and set in motion significant redirection in social and economic policy. An intriguing new overseas horizon lay west across the Pacific, towards China, a land and society that fascinated Trudeau. In 1949 he made his first visit in the dangerous months preceding the founding of the People’s Republic and returned a decade later as a labour lawyer with journalist Jacques Hébert, the two publishing a book of their impressions (Hébert and Trudeau (1961) 1968). As Prime Minister he ordered a review of Canadian foreign policy, and launched a mission for diplomatic recognition of China, displacing Taiwan, an initiative achieved in 1970. Three years later Trudeau became the first Canadian Prime Minister to undertake an official visit of the Chinese Mainland. The economic as well as diplomatic advantages of closer trans-Pacific relations were already becoming evident in the 1960s with the beginning of wheat sales and the opening of a balance of trade surplus with China. But far more dramatic was the surge of the Japanese economy, growing by 10 percent a year that decade, five percent a year in the 1970s and during the 1980s becoming the second largest global economy. Japan’s rise was followed by the buoyant if smaller economies of the four tigers: Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan recorded average annual GDP growth rates through the 1970s and 1980s of 9–10 percent and South Korea around eight percent. After 1980 China’s annual growth was invariably close to 10 percent. People noticed. New Pacific markets beckoned for Canadian raw materials notably wood products, minerals (especially coal and copper) and wheat shipped through British Columbia ports (Barnes et al. 1992; Edgington and Goldberg 1992; Hutton 1998).

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The Toronto-based Globe and Mail archive indicates that the newspaper’s first reference to the term ‘Pacific Rim’ occurred in the text of a business story in 1964. The pace of citation quickened during the decade and by the end of the 1960s the Pacific Rim was a fairly common entry to columns on the trade and economic development of British Columbia. Some 30 references in the 1964–69 period were almost all trade-related, and invariably positioned in the newspaper’s business section. Among the half-dozen stories where the concept had graduated to headline status, the emphasis was self-evident if unimaginative: ‘Japan: Will the Pacific Rim enclose a new market?’ (March 25, 1967); ‘Pacific Rim free trade is urged’ (September 12, 1968); ‘Trade opportunity cited in Pacific Rim’ (June 10, 1969); ‘Pacific Rim marketing opportunity cited’ (July 22, 1969). However, despite a promising opening to the next decade – ‘Canada trade with Pacific Rim continues to rise at fast rate’ (March 6, 1970) – the citation rate in story titles during the 1970s fell to less than one a year. The bold sightings of a new continent in the 1960s seemed to have slipped behind an off-shore Pacific fog bank. With the 1980s the Pacific Rim dramatically entered public consciousness less chimerically, as an idea that now had substance. Headlines in the Globe and Mail declared the salience of economic linkages across the Pacific. A substantial report in 1984 announced ‘Pacific Rim replacing European markets’ (March 19, 1984). A few months later a special report in the business section led with the headline ‘Pacific Rim new focus for trade’ (25 January, 1985). From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, headlines lauded the growth of trade and the interest of Canadian mining, energy, banking and property companies in the burgeoning economies of first Japan, then the four tigers of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, and finally China. There remained, however, a good deal of exhortation to Canadian firms with projections of the benefits of enhanced trade, suggesting that take-up was lagging behind predicted opportunities. Interest remained focussed in the business pages. The articulation of new trading networks was formalized with the establishment of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) network in 1989, an annual forum for first ministers to discuss trade issues. Notable and consistent with the Globe and Mail’s long-standing coverage is the strong economic emphasis of APEC, unlike Atlantic networks which include also military, social and cultural relationships. Canadian trade across the Pacific did indeed grow substantially.4 Merchandise exports to Asia cleared through British Columbia (BC) ports rose from $1 billion (CDN)5 in current dollars in 1971 to $7.5 billion in 1984; as a share of all exports they grew from 36 percent in 1971 to 41 percent in 1984. Japan as leader of the rapid economic development in Asia Pacific was by far the most significant buyer of Canadian products, principally raw materials, taking over 60 percent of exports to Asia by value

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in 1984 (and a quarter of all global exports). Imports from Asia lagged behind in total value but showed a similar pattern, increasing from $400 million in 1971 to $3.6 billion in 1984, and as a share of all imports through BC from 30 percent to 46 percent. Japan dominated the market throughout, source of 75 percent of Asian imports and 34 percent of all imports through British Columbia ports in 1984. In an important symbolic event in the late 1960s Canadian trade with Japan exceeded trade with the United Kingdom and a further momentous statistical moment in 1988 saw imports from Japan through BC temporarily surpass the flow from the United States (Barnes et al. 1992). The vagaries of government statistical collection do not provide a consistent data set, and more recent trends are based on exports and imports that have origins or destinations in British Columbia alone (Government of Canada 2007). They do show, however, a significant re-distribution among Asia Pacific trading partners. Exports to Japan have been flat since the early 1990s, reflecting the deep recession that has limited demand for BC raw materials. Following the Free Trade Agreement with the United States in 1989 and the North American FTA in 1994, adding Mexico, a continental regime has returned to merchandise export flows, with the United States exceeding Japan as a customer by a ratio of over four to one by 2006 (Figure 2.3). China, behind Belgium in ninth rank in 1992, has moved forward to third rank by 2006, though it remains far behind Japan as an export destination. It is notable that the countries of South Korea and Taiwan follow China in fourth and fifth ranks so that Asia Pacific includes four of the top five destinations of BC exports. More substantial are the variations in imports (Figure 2.4). Reversing the pattern of the 1970s, BC is now a substantial net importer from Asia Pacific. While imports from Japan have stagnated and US imports not quite doubled, the value of merchandise entering BC from China has risen every year, and more than 20-fold from 1992 to 2006, raising it to second rank ahead of Japan. Next comes South Korea, though consistent with the continentalization of trade, Mexico in fifth place eclipsed Taiwan for the first time in 2006. A clear trade asymmetry has developed between Asia Pacific and British Columbia. Not only have export values fallen behind imports, but also while all but one of the top ten import sources in 2006 were countries in the Pacific Rim, Europe still accounted for four of the ten leading destinations for exports.6 Data assembled by the Asia Pacific Foundation (2007) indicate that investment patterns reveal a failure by Canadian business to reach deeply into Asia. Over a quarter (27 percent) of Canadian Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Asia and Australasia in 2005 was channelled to Australia, associated no doubt with compatible mining and other raw material enterprises, while FDI in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea

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25

Exports ($ billions CAN current)

20

15

10 United States Japan China Korea

5

Italy United Kingdom Germany

0 1992 1995

Taiwan

2000

2005

Figure 2.3 Exports from British Columbia, 1992–2006 (Source: Government of Canada 2007)

together amounted to less than a fifth (19 percent) of the total.7 In contrast in terms of inward FDI to Canada the four East Asian territories accounted for almost two-fifths (39 percent) and Japan over one-half (52 percent) of targeted Asian/Australasian investment in 2005.8 Hong Kong is particularly strategic, consistently in second rank behind Japan, a remarkably focussed capital outflow for a city state, and indicative of the investment/immigration linkages to be examined shortly. An additional indicator of the growing interaction between Canada, specifically British Columbia, and Asia Pacific is provided by air traffic through Vancouver’s international airport (YVR). The data employed here describe passenger numbers on selected routes derived from the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Onflight Origin and Destination (OFOD) files from 1984 to 2000. The data are collected from airlines only for direct

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Imports ($ billions CAN current)

44

United States Japan China Korea Taiwan Mexico

1992 1995

2000

2005

Figure 2.4 Imports to British Columbia, 1992–2006 (Source: Government of Canada 2007)

scheduled flights between origin and destination airports and published when numbers are available from at least two scheduled airlines for any one route. They show clearly the pre-eminence of Hong Kong as the principal Asian hub for air traffic from Vancouver, ahead of London, the principal European hub (Figure 2.5).

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800,000

Los Angeles Hong Kong Tokyo London

600,000 Passengers

45

400,000

200,000

0

1985

1990

1995

2000

Figure 2.5 Air passenger traffic through YVR on selected routes, 1984–2000 (Source: International Civil Aviation Organization, OFOD files)

Passenger numbers for Hong Kong and Tokyo connections may be compared to Los Angeles, the most important American destination for direct scheduled flights, and London, the most important European partner. Beijing only enters the registry in 1996 and while passengers increased rapidly, by 2000 totals were less than a quarter of traffic with Hong Kong. Los Angeles is the busiest connection throughout, indicative of the overall diversity and primacy of linkages with the United States. In light of Japan’s major significance as a trading partner, YVR-Tokyo passenger totals were the highest among Asian connections in the early 1980s and twice as high as Hong Kong’s and London’s. But while traffic on this route almost doubled to 2000, the growth rate was much lower than for other connections, and by the end of the period had been surpassed in absolute numbers by both Hong Kong-YVR and London-YVR routes. The prolonged economic recession in Japan during the 1990s and the stagnation in trading relations with Canada during this period coincide with the weaker traffic trends. The 1997 Asian financial crisis also checked Hong Kong numbers toward the end of the period. Hong Kong nonetheless showed the most dramatic expansion of these principal routes, with passenger growth of 363 percent during the 1984–2000 period. The threshold of half a million air passengers in both directions a year, first crossed in 1997 and sustained since, reveals a remarkably high number of people moving between metropolitan areas 12–14 hours apart with populations of only 6.7 million (Hong Kong) and 2.0 million (Vancouver) in 2001. We will return on several occasions to interrogate the meaning in everyday life of these numerous long journeys across the Pacific.

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Ideologies of Growth: Talking Up the Rim The economic interactions described by these Pacific Rim trade and travel indicators did not just happen in some foreordained manner, for the obstacles and inertia challenging a Pacific initiative were substantial. Canada’s economic linkages and social and cultural traditions in the 1960s pointed east to Europe and south to the United States. At that time immigration originated overwhelmingly in Europe and particularly in Britain; indeed, it was only in 1982 that Canada’s constitution was patriated from Westminster. Asia was far away geographically, politically and culturally; during the Cold War much of the continent was under Communist rule or threat, while the rest was semi-developed or underdeveloped with few functioning democracies. Relatively little English was spoken and religious traditions were unfamiliar to North Americans. Significant linkages, let alone the creation of a transnational social field, seemed implausible. But economic opportunities were compelling for public- and privatesector elites in Canada, notably in British Columbia. The meteoric development of Japan and the four tigers created huge trading opportunities to a nation where there was a growing discourse of decline in terms of economic performance (Figure 2.6). Data amassed by the federal government revealed an alarming failure of economic indicators from the 1960s onwards (Government of Canada 1996). Productivity gains had collapsed with the end of the post-war boom, real growth had halved and even turned slightly negative from 1989–95, while unemployment bounded from five percent in the 1960s to seven percent in 1973–79 and then to an average of over nine percent for the next 15 years. To maintain welfare state expenditures, taxation steadily rose to unsustainable levels (Figure 2.6). With such disturbing economic trends the Pacific Rim promised a veritable El Dorado. Business networks were assembled: the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong in 1977, with 700 members the largest Chamber outside Canada, the Canada-China Business Council (1978), the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada based in Vancouver (1984), and the Hong Kong-Canada Business Association (1984) with over 3,000 members in 10 cities across Canada. At the political and diplomatic level their work was raised to a new level by the inaugural meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation network (APEC) in Canberra in 1989, sired by an Australian government aware of the radical economic transformation in its own backyard. Following the Trudeau visit to China in 1973, a series of federal, provincial and even municipal trade missions plied the air routes across the Pacific. In 1985, shortly after sister city visits to Yokohama (Japan) and Guangzhou in South China, Michael Harcourt, by now Mayor ofVancouver, led an ‘Economic

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Average annual growth rate (percentage)

(a)

Total factor productivity growth business sector 4

Real per capita GDP growth 3.8

4

2.9

2.5 2 0.3

0.5

–0.2 1961–73 1973–79 1979–89 1989–95 Ratio of total taxes to GDP

40 27.4

30.6

31.9

0 –0.1 1961–73 1973–79 1979–89 1989–95 (d) 10

Unemployment rate 9.2

35.8 8

9.8

7.0 5.1

20

0

1.9

2

0

(c) Period averages (percentage)

(b)

47

4

1961–73 1973–79 1979–89 1989–95

0

1961–73 1973–79 1979–89 1989–95

Figure 2.6 Canadian economic indicators, 1961–95 (Source: Government of Canada 1996)

Mission’ to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong. Reflecting the relative significance of the three cities, twice as much time was spent in Hong Kong as in the other two centres combined. Reading the evaluation report of the mission’s achievements, its place marketing objectives were unambiguous: 1. To establish Vancouver’s commitment to fostering two-way trade and investment, as well as a full range of linkages and relationships with the Asian Pacific Rim. 2. To promote a broader awareness of business and investment opportunities in Vancouver and its regional hinterland; and to explore the possibilities of private investment and joint ventures in the Asian Pacific Rim. 3. To assist in the marketing of Vancouver’s specialized services and ‘invisible exports’ –financial services, business, trade and professional services and tourism (City of Vancouver 1985: 2.) Reviewing meetings with senior government and corporate decisionmakers, lunch addresses to business associations and hotel seminars with audiences of 60–70, the report observed that ‘Hong Kong was a “soft sell” for the Economic Mission: Vancouver is so well-known in Hong Kong that the Mission could concentrate on such functions as market updating, and establishing strong relationships with key individuals and associations, as

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opposed to a more basic laying of “groundwork”, as was the case in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur’ (ibid: 7). In each city an important agenda item was to advertise the Expo 86 World’s Fair to be held in Vancouver the following year; coinciding with the trade visit, the Singapore government announced sponsorship of a national pavilion. The City did not bring home big deals, nor did it expect to do so, but incremental networking and raising familiarity were significant in building relationships, so that when wealthy Pacific Rim families thought of investment and even emigration, Vancouver would be a welcoming destination about which they were already knowledgeable. In contrast, rampant boosterism and armfuls of business agreements became the signature of the federal Team Canada Trade Missions of the 1990s. Led by Prime Minister Chrétien, eight missions were undertaken by Liberal administrations between 1994 and 2002.9 With some braggadocio the Prime Minister reviewed recent accomplishments in a 1996 speech in Vancouver en route to the APEC summit in Manila: We said …we would strengthen Canada’s trading relationships with the nations of the Pacific Rim. And we set to doing it the day we were sworn in. We appointed the first-ever member of the ministry dedicated to Pacific issues, Raymond Chan,10 the Secretary of State for Asia Pacific … And we haven’t looked back since. I had the honour to lead two of the most successful trade missions in Canadian history – the two Team Canada Trade Missions to Asia. With an all-star team of provincial premiers and business people, we proved to the countries of the Pacific Rim that after years of false starts and half measures, Canada was serious about the Pacific region – and we were there to stay… That is why, our biggest-yet Pacific initiative lies ahead of us – 1997 – Canada’s Year of Asia Pacific. It will be a celebration of Canadian involvement and participation in the region. It will be an opportunity to take stock of our accomplishments and demonstrate our strong ties to the Asia-Pacific community. And a launching pad to catapult that relationship to an even higher level. The culmination of Canada’s Year of the Pacific will be the 1997 APEC Leaders Meeting – to be held here in Vancouver next November. Canada takes over as APEC chair following the Manila meeting. Our priority will be to help move APEC further along toward the goal of achieving free and open trade and investment in the region for developed countries by 2010 and for developing countries by 2020… When I witnessed the signing of those business deals during the Team Canada trips, I knew we had done the right thing. We were making powerful business connections and laying the groundwork for future growth. So it was a delight for me this summer to see the new orders coming in and the new jobs being created. It is clear that an aggressive Team Canada approach, with the cooperation of federal, provincial and municipal governments and the private sector, has succeeded in producing good jobs with good incomes in the growing economic sectors of today and tomorrow for Canadians.

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So I am not going to argue with success. In six weeks time, the premiers and I– along with business people from across the country – will leave for a new Team Canada mission to South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines (Chrétien 1996).

Five of the eight Team Canada Missions were to Asia with three other missions to regions of the United States: outside the US, China (alone) was visited twice. The Canadian caravan was not modest. In the 1994 China Mission, aside from the Prime Minister, provincial ministers and their entourages, almost 200 business people were among the official party. Sixty-five business deals were announced as a ‘result’ of the trip, valued at almost $9 billion (Government of Canada 2002).11 By the 2001 Mission, with almost 600 delegates including 18 media groups, the Team Canada growth machine had graduated from a caravan to a circus whose expansive tent was unfurled in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Some might think the mission had lost its focus. Trip notes for the second day in Beijing feature: Tara Birtwhistle, Principal Dancer for Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the oldest ballet company in North America, [who] prepares for the ‘pas de deux’ of Sleeping Beauty with Han Po, Principal Dancer of the National Ballet of China. Ms. Birtwhistle is an excellent example of Team Canada’s commitment to culture (Government of Canada 2005).

The following day Team Canada returned to basics as the Prime Minister announced 65 contracts worth $1.4 billion and 139 other forms of agreement worth $3.65 billion. No stone was left unturned in the inspection of China’s economy and ecology: among the unfinished business were negotiations opened by the Managing Director of the Pacific Rim Endangered Species Centre to purchase a group of pandas for Canada.

The Pacific Rim qua Political Economy Arif Dirlik has asked, ‘What is in a rim?’ Reviewing the development of the Pacific Rim as an idea he suggests that it was a Euro-American invention, its substance the pursuit of economic ends (Dirlik 1998). Granted that the construction of the Rim as a functional region is economically motivated, its purpose to lubricate commercial exchange between its parts, any advantage is shared also by elites in Asia-Pacific countries who have enjoyed large balance of trade surpluses with North America. In one respect, Dirlik’s book appears quickly dated in its emphasis on the rise of Japan as the Rim’s ‘one grand event’ (Cumings 1998: 69), for ten years on, the awakening of China appears even more portentous. But returning to his question, whether

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Japan or China is the ‘grand event’, the meaning and content of the Rim are measured squarely in units of economic exchange. Alexander Woodside (1998) makes this point incisively in his chapter when he observes that the Pacific Rim is organized for production, not as a transnational civil society. He astutely identifies the current putative region as an up-scaled version of a predecessor, the colonial societies of Southeast Asia. Their theorist, the colonial administrator J. S. Furnivall, famously interpreted such social formations as ‘plural societies’, comprising disparate ethnic groups who lived separate social and cultural lives and came together solely for market exchange. For, ‘In the plural society the highest common factor is the economic factor, and the only test that all apply in common is the test of cheapness’ (Furnivall 1956: 310). Consequently, ‘In a plural society… the community tends to be organized for production rather than for social life’ (Furnivall 1939: 459). Woodside latches onto this thesis, writing that Asia Pacific ‘is a factory-like “plural society” of the Furnivallian sort writ large’ (1998: 46). Its member states have serious internal class, ethnic and gender divisions, the exploited subaltern groups noted by Woodside and Ong (2006), as well as potentially de-stabilizing regional rivalries and unfinished geopolitical business. But what holds them together are market relations, a lowest common denominator familiar to neo-liberal administrations in North America. From the perspective of a Japanese or Chinese hegemony in Asia Pacific, Furnivall’s heuristic has much to commend it, for the lifeblood of the region is indeed measurable by flows of commodities, capital, labour and products. Canada conceived of the Pacific Rim the same way, as a fully economistic entity. We have seen the reporting in the Globe and Mail, invariably in the business pages, invariably with transparent story lines about economic opportunities, and, less commonly, economic achievements. This is the language too of Canadian boosters, like Michael Goldberg whose 1985 book, The Chinese Connection: Getting Plugged in to Pacific Rim Real Estate, Trade and Capital Markets, achieved wide circulation as a motivational guide to business and government. Finally, economism has been the trope of government missions to East Asia, whether the modest excursions of the social democratic Mayor of Vancouver, Michael Harcourt, or the more exaggerated performances of the colourful troupe who accompanied Prime Minister Chrétien on his Team Canada voyages in search of El Dorado. This calculating mentality is some distance from the wide-eyed innocents who had peered into Red China in 1959. It is an idée fixe that we will see shortly also describes Canada’s view of East Asian immigration and particularly trans-Pacific business immigrants, as the singular abstraction of homo economicus. But before discussing the response in immigration policy to transPacific economic opportunities, we first need to understand further the broader historic contexts that encouraged such one-dimensional thinking.

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The Pacific Rim and the Neo-Liberal Era The state’s active interventions in Chinatown, both during the urban renewal and freeway conflicts of the 1960s and also through the government-community partnerships of the 1970s, pointed to the rise of public objectives that could not be reduced to economic indicators alone. The 1970s reflected the high tide of the Canadian welfare state that had been swelling through the post-1945 economic boom (Lemon 1993). The number of social workers, for example, tripled in Canada during the 1960s and almost tripled again in the 1970s. But oil shocks, economic slowdown and a growing federal deficit brought that period to a close, and opened the door to a neo-liberal ascendancy in the 1980s which if less precipitous in its re-direction than that of the Reagan-Thatcher hegemony, led to a new emphasis on markets, and in particular to finding new markets. So in the 1980s the Pacific Rim assumed a high profile, men with a mission travelled there, and the Globe and Mail covered their hopes and exploits. The confident decade of new beginnings from the late 1960s to the late 1970s had seen new political alignments at all three levels of government in Vancouver. Federally, the Liberal Trudeau administrations maintained an activist and generally progressive regime. In British Columbia, Social Credit, the right wing governing party, was defeated in 1972 and for the first time a social democratic opposition, the New Democratic Party (NDP) was elected, while the same year at the municipal level a long-incumbent right wing pro-business alliance in Vancouver was also toppled and replaced by a new left-liberal party (Ley 1980). Government spending on social programmes rose significantly. But no sooner was the welfare state in full bloom than its radiance began to fade. Recessions following the OPEC oil shocks of the 1970s challenged revenue-expenditure balances. Substantial deficits appeared in the annual budget; the net federal debt rose by 25 percent in 1977–78 and another 25 percent the following year (Government of Canada 2006). Existing social and fiscal policy was no longer sustainable. A neoconservative sentiment began to call for state cutbacks and taxation relief. Surprisingly, the Conservative government in the 1980s under the leadership of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney moved much slower than President Reagan in initiating across the board cutbacks to the welfare state (Lightman and Irving 1991). So the federal debt continued to rise to a peak of over $600 billion in 1996–97, and it was left to the Liberal Chrétien administrations to slash social programmes, a full decade after ‘Reaganomics’ had undertaken the task in the United States. Growing social inequality in market income was evident through the 1980s and only a progressive model of taxation and wealth transfers kept the gap between rich and poor politically manageable (Yalnizyan 1998; Federation of Canadian Municipalities

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2003). Nonetheless the welfare state was bled by an insidious gnawing away of redistributive benefits through the loss of universality clauses, the rise of user-pay fee schedules, contracting out and privatization. Part of the federal strategy of cost management was to download service delivery to the provinces (which in turn downloaded what they could to the municipalities). Different provinces responded at different times to these challenges. Following a Liberal administration, Ontario even elected its first New Democratic government in 1990; by mid-decade however, Conservative Premier Mike Harris’ ‘common sense revolution’, rooted in the neoconservative hinterland of rural areas, small towns and new suburbs, brought swingeing cuts to social programmes and a strong neo-liberal regime of tax reduction and social benefit shrinkage. In British Columbia the same geographical base of hinterland politics sent the radical right-wing party, Social Credit, back to power twenty years earlier under Premier Bill Bennett, leader from 1975–86. Here too, however, ideological succession was not smooth, for following 15 years of Social Credit orthodoxy the electorate returned a decade of NDP administrations in the 1990s. Neo-liberalism is anything but a consistent strategy repeated simultaneously as an unvarying template upon different spaces (Harvey 2005; Ong 2006; Peck 2006). Nonetheless familiar themes include ‘rolling back’ the welfare state and ‘rolling out’ market-based reforms. In principle, though not necessarily in practice, a downsizing of the state is promised in everyday life, together with greater individual ‘freedoms’ – a key word – to rich and poor alike (Harvey 2005). For the rich this may mean tax cuts, for the poor benefit cuts and the ‘freedom’ to be self-dependent. In an urban context the typical array of policy innovation includes service cutbacks, privatization, contracting out, private-public partnerships and an entrepreneurial face to state policy that includes place-marketing, investment promotion, and the sponsoring of arts and leisure events as attention-grabbing ‘loss leaders’ (Harvey 1989; Leitner et al. 2007). The disciplining of expectations concerning public services is pervasive; some authors detect motivation moving beyond the spirit of competition and discipline to an aggressive attack on the poor that may include unforgiving harassment and high levels of incarceration (Smith 1998; Wacquant 2007). Neo-liberalism gained ground through the 1980s sustained by a rising neo-conservative culture, prolonged economic recession and the failure of the state to sustain its expensive menu of services in a period of revenue shortfalls. The Canadian economy, slowing down in the second half of the 1970s, lapsed to an annual growth rate of only 1.6 percent in the first half of the 1980s (Figure 2.6). The economic recession of the early 1980s was the deepest in fifty years; in 1982 the economy contracted three percent, while unemployment exceeded ten percent. Conditions were dire in British Columbia. A housing price bubble in 1980 collapsed the following year

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with a savage market correction of 40 percent under the weight of mortgage interest rates that had raced to 20 percent, leaving Vancouver homeowners confronting negative equity and, for some, property foreclosure (Skaburskis 1988). The bad news accumulated, as the provincial economy shrank eight percent in 1982 while unemployment approached 15 percent in 1984 and exceeded 10 percent for most of the decade, with jobs decimated in the staple export sectors of forestry and mining (Barnes et al. 1992; Government of BC 1998). Stiff medicine was required for so serious an ailment and it took the form of a wide-ranging and combative ‘restraint’ program introduced by the Social Credit government that included downsizing the civil service, antiunion legislation, privatization and contracting out and the compression of social services (Resnick 1987; Mitchell 2004). As successive interest groups became alienated by Social Credit policy, determined opposition emerged in the province’s traditionally polarized political arena, and in 1983 following marches and demonstrations by a ‘Solidarity Coalition’, BC came within a whisker of a general strike. In this economic meltdown and period of social turbulence, the stark contrast of rapid economic growth in the Asia Pacific region was plain for (almost) all to see (Goldberg 1985; Nemetz 1986). In British Columbia as a whole, tourism appeared to be one of the few bright lights on the economic horizon (Government of Canada 1984), and led to a sustained programme of place marketing nationally and overseas. The 1986 world fair in Vancouver featured a convergence of neoliberal policy, Pacific Rim aspirations and the new post-industrial service economy. It confirmed too that neo-liberalism does not mean the reduction of state power, but rather its energetic re-direction toward an entrepreneurial ethos.

Expo 86: The Circus Comes to Town The world fair held on the edge of downtown Vancouver over a six-month period represented a local version of neo-liberalism as a society of the spectacle (Debord 1970). The plan for the fair was hatched in 1979 by Bill Bennett, Premier of British Columbia, to celebrate the 1986 centenary of Vancouver’s founding and the arrival of the first trans-continental passenger train (Anderson and Wachtel 1986; Government of Canada 1986; Ley and Olds 1988). Expo was initially conceived as a transportation fair, in part to corral federal funds to aid development of a rapid transit system. But with economic conditions deteriorating, the fair’s objectives underwent transition, and job creation and economic development became prominent. As neo-liberalism and recession bit, the Cabinet declared, in the face of the highly-unionized and depressed construction industry, that Expo would be

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an open work site and the Expo Corporation provocatively awarded contracts to non-union firms. Symptomatic of public-private partnerships, the Board comprised a majority of businessmen, though the provincial Cabinet, and finally Premier Bennett, held ultimate authority. Holding the legislated powers of a Crown Corporation, the Expo Board had more discretion than a private corporation, including the capacity to override all Vancouver city bylaws and planning policy. Expo 86 was a loss-leading product devised by public and private sector entrepreneurs whose intent was to advertise the city and the province to global visitors and investors – among its jejune slogans were, ‘What your world is coming to’ and ‘Don’t miss it for the world’ – in a period when the British Columbia economy seemed in need of all the help it could get. In addition the fair would garner legacies in the built environment, with aid from the federal government to build the first line of a rapid transit system and a modern convention centre. At the same time it would rally support and a semblance of unity in a much divided province through the jouissance of carnival. As provincial social programmes were bled, Expo, a crown corporation, worked with a budget of $800 million and leveraged another $700 million from national and overseas private and public exhibitors. Exceeding expectations, 22 million visitors passed through the turnstiles. The fair made a loss of upwards of $300 million, yet in the enigmatic logic of market-based neo-liberalism was counted a great success. Located on the False Creek waterfront immediately west of Chinatown, Expo was built on a large, declining industrial site and railway yards on the edge of downtown acquired by the Province through land transfers. The Province’s redevelopment plan for its holdings included, besides the festival area, BC Place, a 60,000 seat sports stadium and after the fair perhaps 10,000 housing units and up to seven million square feet of office space. In a manner brazenly innocent of market accountability, the whole edifice was justified by a quickly compiled non-technical report of just 22 pages (Ley 1987). Market prudence was scarcely necessary, for democratic checks were averted by the exaggerated powers of the Expo Corporation, directed by the provincial Cabinet, specifically the Premier, illuminating what in the early days of neo-liberalism Elliott and McCrone (1982) identified as the ‘authoritarian centralism’ of the new right. Consequently, Expo 86 and the larger BC Place development sidelined both market accountability and democratic freedoms, charter principles of neo-liberalism, as inconvenient distractions to goal achievement. With the conclusion of the fair in October 1986, a fuller neo-liberal agenda was unfurled as land privatization succeeded place marketing. Although a design and planning process was already established for post-Expo redevelopment by a crown corporation, a dramatic political gesture by the new provincial government in 1987, enamoured by Thatcherite privatization

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schemes in Britain, placed the site on the market as a single entity, thereby restricting its sale to a few very large international corporations. In April 1988 a sale was announced to Concord Pacific Developments, whose largest share-holder was Li Ka-shing, patriarch of the wealthiest family in Hong Kong.12 Sale would be accomplished through his property company Cheung Kong Holdings, with key secondary shareholders two other Hong Kong property tycoons and their companies, Henderson Land and New World Development (Gutstein 1990; Olds 2001). The interest of the Li family in the Expo site shows the intricate interrelations of family affairs, property investment, education, and international migration. The Li’s had begun some small scale property investment in Vancouver and other Canadian cities in the late 1960s, and soon after began to spend holidays in Vancouver’s Oakridge neighbourhood, where a small Chinese-Canadian middle-class had gathered by 1971 (Olds 2001, Figure 2.1). This district would become a major reception area for the first wave of wealthy migrants from Hong Kong in the 1980s. The Concord Pacific project was to provide practical training for Li’s elder son, Victor, groomed for an international career when he took Canadian citizenship at the age of 18 (Olds 2001). After his Stanford engineering degree, Victor returned to Vancouver and in 1988 at the age of 23 he began serious business school when he was named Director and Senior Vice-President of the vast Concord Pacific site with its 25-year build-out horizon. Neither the move nor the investment was long term, however. Victor was recalled to Hong Kong in 1993 for a more senior task in the family business and the Li family began to sell off its Concord Pacific holdings as the land appreciated in value.13 The Li’s were significant models for many other migrant families. As I was told by a Chinese-Canadian real estate agent in 1998, ‘where the big fish swim, the smaller fish follow’. Investment in real estate, often, though not always, accompanied by immigration, itself frequently education-related, became commonly entwined themes in East Asian migration to Vancouver and Toronto. So too Victor Li’s abrupt return to Hong Kong revealed a mobile transnational model that would be imitated by many others. Shortly after the Expo sale to the Li family, the warmth of the welcome for capital and migrants from East Asia was reinforced by the swearing in of David Lam as Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia in September 1988 (Roy 1996). Lam, born in Hong Kong, was a successful property developer in Vancouver and a respected Christian philanthropist. His appointment was the symbolic counterpart to the economic presence of the Li family. The clear and intended message was that the doors to Pacific Rim investment and immigration in British Columbia were wide open. In the dismal years of the first half of the 1980s, an official report bewailed ‘a shortage of entrepreneurs’ in Greater Vancouver and a ‘misunderstanding of the Pacific Rim’s potential’ (GVRD 1985: 3). Five years later all this had changed.

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Immigration: Spreading the Net in Asia Pacific A lengthy evolution of immigration policy reflected the nation’s staged departure from its discriminatory history. The dissolution of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1947 did not mean an immediate ending to controls against non-Europeans. Significant barriers remained and only reunification of immediate family members of Asian-origin citizens was permitted (Hawkins 1988; Li 1998; Green and Green 2004), so that for another twenty years European flows continued to dominate arrivals. Some limited family reunification from Hong Kong occurred, while illegal entry provided a means around the controls for others. But in 1961 there were less than 60,000 ethnic Chinese in Canada, an increase of only 14,000 over the 1881 enumeration. However, significant revisions to immigration regulations in 1962 and 1967 substantially ended the long history of systematic discrimination in selection by ethnicity or country of origin. The circle of permitted family reunification was widened, while skilled immigrants (the independent or economic category) were admitted based on their human capital, not their ethnicity or country of origin. The third leg of entry for humanitarian reasons opened the doors to refugees. While this plurality of immigrant categories is noteworthy, revealing the diversity of underlying liberal values, such balancing of varied objectives has undergone revision under neo-liberal policy, with subsequent prioritizing of economic migrants (Arat-Koc 1999). The economic category comprised 39 percent of landings in the 1980s, rose to 49 percent in the 1990s and 58 percent in 2000–08; in contrast the family class has fallen from 38 percent to 35 percent and most recently to 27 percent, while the refugee category has diminished from 18 percent to 15 percent and finally to 12 percent (CIC 2009).14 The trend clearly shows the commitment to economic ends steadily surpassing the social goals of family reunification and the humanitarian response to refugee crises. Of particular interest for our purposes are subsequent provisions within the independent or economic class for an entry category of business immigrants, where rather than human capital, financial capital and entrepreneurial experience were credited in the selection process. The business option became popular with wealthy migrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and to a lesser degree, South Korea. These three sources accounted for 53 percent of business immigrants entering Canada from 1980–2001, with over 30 percent of them originating in Hong Kong alone. There are three streams to the business programme and selection characteristics have frequently been revised to plug existing loopholes and add new incentives. As of 2001 the programmes were outlined as follows: (CIC 2001).

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An entrepreneur must establish or buy a business in Canada… The entrepreneur is expected to participate actively in managing the business. The business must contribute to the Canadian economy and create one or more jobs in Canada in addition to the jobs created for the entrepreneur and his family. The entrepreneur is admitted on the condition that these requirements are met within two years of landing, and is expected to meet regularly with an immigration officer to monitor compliance with the terms and conditions.

Active business involvement and outputs that are measurable and monitored are clearly specified in this description. The ‘terms and conditions’ of entrepreneur status introduced unwelcome surveillance by, and accountability to, immigration authorities. Specifications for the investor stream have become more demanding in response to perceived and actual abuses since its introduction in 1986. Investors must invest a minimum amount in approved projects in Canada. CIC will act as an agent on behalf of the provinces and territories, which will decide where to invest the money. All investors must provide a minimum investment of $400,000 and have a minimum net worth of $800,000. Provinces and territories secure the investment against loss.

This revision raised the previous financial eligibility level for participation and also provided for greater security for investors and closer scrutiny of investments to check against cases of fraud. The third and smallest category of business entry is the self-employed stream that permits entry to a range of skilled individuals, including artists, professional athletes, and also very wealthy individuals.The specifications here are more general: ‘Self-employed applicants must be able to establish or buy a business in Canada which will provide employment for themselves and will make an economic or cultural contribution to Canada’ (CIC 2001). The Business Immigration Programme (BIP) was established in 1978 and expanded in 1986 with the clear aim of expediting the inflow of immigrant capital as well as entrepreneurial skill (Wong and Ng 1998; Ley 2003). The timing coincided with economic recession in Canada and the sighting and scouring of the Pacific Rim for trade and investment prospects. The addition of the investor category in 1986 to the earlier entrepreneur and self-employed streams was opportunistic. It was introduced in knowledge of the uncertainty that was rising among the middle class in Hong Kong following the Sino-British joint declaration in 1984 that set out the path to the end of colonial rule in 1997, entailing an unpredictable future with a Communist government controlling a class-stratified market economy. The BIP has been a pro-active policy to attract the economic energy of Asia Pacific and draw it within the nation state. It complements the trade

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missions, though rather than business deals or inert capital, the goal now is to secure embodied capital, appropriation of both the capital and the capitalist within the borders of the nation state. The objectives of the programme could not be clearer: ‘The Business Immigration Program seeks to attract experienced business people to Canada who will support the development of a strong and prosperous Canadian economy’ (CIC 2007b). Canada has transparently entered the global marketplace casting its net for that heroic animator of classical and now neo-liberal economic aspirations, homo economicus, the ‘most worthy citizen’ (Ong 2003: 9) of a market-driven age. Harrison (1996) saw the BIP as not only a morally tainted cash for citizenship swap, but also a transaction limited to high bidders, introducing a class barrier to immigration even as ethnic barriers have been lifted. Certainly the state is prepared to join the lingua franca of globalization, the language of commodification. Moreover, not only citizenship is commodified, for migrants too are regarded in market terms as prospects for which there is considerable international competition. Wong (2003) has identified ‘the global immigration marketplace’ for business immigrants, with Canada in a competitive struggle to attract candidates against rival business programmes in Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser degree, the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore. In this marketplace Canada’s trawling has filled the largest net. Between 1980 and 2008 over 400,000 immigrants entered Canada through the various business streams (CIC various years), outperforming the second-ranking Australian programme by a ratio of over three to one up to the early 2000s (Wong 2003). The BIP, like the pan-Pacific trade missions, reveals the role of the state as a global player actively reaching beyond national borders to enlist key contributors and contributions to incorporate into the national economy.15 In part Canada’s recruitment success is due to a low threshold for selection that has always been a feature of its business streams (Ley 2003). Potential business immigrants are scored on a range of selection criteria; out of a maximum of 100 points across seven criteria, a pass is currently secured by an entrepreneur or investor applicant who scores only 35 points (CIC 2007b). In contrast, applications for independent economic status (skilled workers) need to score a much more demanding 67 points out of 100 across five criteria. The low threshold means that entry in the business class can readily be assured even if an applicant has no post-secondary education, and speaks neither English nor French. Between 1995 and 1997, busy years for the BIP, almost half of the principal applicants granted business class status had no post-secondary education, while slightly over half did not speak either official language (CIC 1998). But at least 60 percent of this cohort planning to enter the work force stated the intent to be selfemployed, exactly the energetic, self-sufficient, entrepreneurial profile sought by the welcoming nation.

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So it is not the usual immigrant qualifications of human capital, defined in terms of education, language, or formal job credentials, which are sought by the BIP. Instead it is the holding of financial capital available for investment in Canada that matters, together with proven entrepreneurial skills to start and operate a business. Indeed the business track opened up a citizenship route for immigrants who would not have qualified otherwise as economic migrants because of modest educational levels and/or limited facility in English or French.

Emptying the Nets: East Asian Landings by the Number A government statistical source, the Longitudinal Immigration Database (LIDS), provides an overview of the numbers and characteristics of immigrant landings between 1980 and 2001. However – and not for the last time – it is important to qualify the apparent hard-edged certainty of these official statistics. The social construction of knowledge reminds us that official statistics are gathered in social contexts that shape their status and reliability. In this instance LIDS data, while valuable, are collected from immigrant landing cards and government officials caution that the data provided may not always be accurate. The question on an immigrant’s planned employment may elicit more a statement of aspiration than of likely achievement, while knowledge of the geography of Canada is typically minimal at the time of landing, and the specification of a destination may not always be correct. Moreover, changes may quickly occur, for example, through secondary migration, where Toronto and Vancouver typically gain at the cost of the rest of Canada. Consequently, the data that follow underestimate the actual concentration of business migrants in these two cities. Nor are the classes of immigrant entry hard and fast. Immigrants, particularly those who have been aided by immigration consultants, will apply for the entry class most likely to achieve success. I have spoken to business immigrants who subsequently learned that their human capital would have permitted entry as a skilled worker but were led to the business stream by a consultant who could earn a higher fee from this option. Some businessmen, though principal family providers, entered Canada as a dependent of their wife, the latter qualifying as a nurse or some other skilled worker.The selection of an immigrant class is essentially pragmatic.The choice is whatever avenue is most likely to be successful and least costly, subject to the filtering of immigration consultants with their own business interests. The LIDS data are drawn from a population of almost four million landing cards completed by immigrants upon entry to Canada between 1980 and 2001; close to 330,000 or 8.3 percent of newcomers fell into one of the three business streams. Among this population, 30.6 percent originated in Hong Kong, 14.4 percent in Taiwan, and 8.2 percent in South Korea.16

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Table 2.1 Immigrant landings in Canada by destination and class of entry, 1980–2001

Population, 2001 All immigrants Convention Refugees Family Class Independent (Skilled) Class Business Class

Toronto CMA*

% of Montreal Canada CMA*

% of Vancouver Canada CMA*

% of Canada

4,682,897

15.1

3,426,350

11.0

1,986,965

6.4

1,594,199 108,347

40.5 35.8

552,019 56,110

14.0 18.5

559,407 21,243

14.2 7.0

337,903 490,996

24.2 45.2

167,412 171,249

12.0 15.8

180,719 149,657

13.0 13.8

77,610

23.6

76,953

23.4

92,835

28.2

* Census Metropolitan Area Source: Government of Canada, Longitudinal Immigration Database (LIDS)

Table 2.1 confirms the big city, particularlyToronto, domination of immigrant destinations. Over the 1980–2001 period, close to 70 percent of all immigrants identified their destination at landing to be one of Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas; over 40 percent specified Toronto. This proportion of arrivals was more than double the three cities’ share of just under a third of the national population in 2001. Looking in more detail at four major immigration classes accounting for 80 percent of all immigrants to Canada over this period, the variable role of the large metropolitan areas is evident (Table 2.1).17 Each city is over-represented in all four of the principal classes relative to their share of the national population, though least of all in family class arrivals that locate through pre-existing social networks scattered across the country. Convention refugees18 are over-represented in Toronto and Montreal and under-represented in Vancouver relative to their overall immigrant profiles. Economic migrants are the most concentrated of the groups, with three out of four identifying destinations in the three metropolitan areas. Toronto dominates the flow of the independent class of skilled workers, receiving 45 percent of those landing in Canada over this period. Among business immigrants, 75 percent chose the three most cosmopolitan cities for settlement (Table 2.1), with almost 93,000 or 28.2 percent settling in Vancouver, the smallest of the top three cities with only 6.4 percent of the national population. With subsequent secondary migration after landing Vancouver’s share exceeded one-third of all business immigrants, for by 1995 British Columbia had experienced a net gain of close to 30 percent through domestic migration from other provinces of tax-filers in the business streams arriving between 1980 and 1995 (CIC 2000). Ontario

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(notably Toronto) was also a major beneficiary from secondary migration, adding 28 percent to its tax-filer list among business immigrants, while Quebec (and Montreal) was a major loser, with net out-migration of 44 percent of its business class tax-filers during the 1980–95 period.19 With business immigrants, as we have seen, heavily concentrated in the major metropolitan areas, this secondary re-distribution after landing would significantly add to the Vancouver and Toronto numbers while substantially reducing the Montreal total. Consequently some 35 percent of business immigrants landing in Canada have located in Vancouver allowing for the gains from secondary migration. We will see shortly that business arrivals in Vancouver were also the wealthiest. Evidently their arrival might be expected to introduce significant economic impacts of all kinds: in the property market, in consumer expenditures, and as agents of economic development, the role laid out for them by the Canadian state. LIDS enables us to disentangle a more detailed profile of each immigrant class, but our focus is now the business streams, the primary site of millionaire migrants. Business immigrants are typically older, with 25–30 percent aged 40–54 at landing, twice the share of all immigrants, but understandable in light of the requirement that they hold business experience and have accumulated significant mobile capital. Indicative of their status as nuclear families, 42 percent are less than 20 years old, compared to a figure under 30 percent for all immigrants. Families are at a mature stage in the life cycle, presenting different priorities than those of younger skilled immigrants. Business immigrants also have lower education levels than most newcomers, with under 18 percent of those over 19 years of age claiming a university degree, compared with 20 percent of all immigrants and 35 percent of the independent (skilled) category. Language points up a similar limitation. On their landing cards, a majority of business immigrants (57 percent) declared that they could speak neither English nor French, compared to 44 percent of all immigrants and 26 percent of skilled workers. Most of these wealthy migrants would not have qualified for immigration as skilled workers (the independent class) with such depleted human capital. But what was lacking in human capital they more than made up in financial capital and business experience. Wong and Ho (2006) have undertaken a customized analysis of unpublished financial information for the period 1986–2002, covering 3.65 million records in the LIDS data base. They determined that the average funds per capita immigrants held in their possession upon landing was $7,234. Their analysis highlights the Chinese diaspora from East and Southeast Asia, who contributed a fifth of the records. For all ethnic Chinese immigrants the mean money per capita in possession at landing was $20,205, much higher than other immigrant entries. But that figure varied substantially among entry classes. For the small refugee group of Chinese ethnic origin the total was only $438,

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for the family class, $13,844, for skilled workers, $14,068, and for business immigrants, $33,046. With a typical family size at entry of 3.6 (Ley 2003), this would mean that business immigrants had family assets of well over $100,000 at their disposal. In fact the actual numbers were often much larger than this, as Chapter 3 will reveal. But there is also a surprising paradox. Despite considerable capital at their disposal, relatively few business immigrants were planning to work. Excluding minors and other dependents, if we compare those intending to work against the standard for the population aged 20–64, the figure is only 62 percent, considerably lower than the level for all immigrants (76 percent), and especially for skilled workers (85 percent). This is an enigma to which we must return. The emphatic role of Chinese-origin groups in business immigration is evident from LIDS. The mother tongue of 53 percent of immigrants in the business streams was one of the Chinese dialects, led by Cantonese, the dominant dialect of Hong Kong and adjacent parts of South China, spoken by 32 percent. Mandarin, the dominant tongue in Taiwan and the official language of China, followed with 17 percent. Korean, nominated by less than 9 percent, was the fourth most common mother tongue, trailing Arabic speakers from different nations who account for almost 10 percent of the list. These national figures play out in significantly different ways in the three major metropolitan areas (Table 2.2). Four East Asian states – Hong Kong, Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and South Korea – accounted for 58 percent of all business immigrants for Toronto, 54 percent destined for Montreal and 80 percent for Vancouver. The concentration in Vancouver is not surprising with its Pacific Rim location, for air times to East Asia are several hours shorter than from Toronto, while Vancouver also offers more direct flights. The West Coast city’s pre-eminence is economically significant, for if we remove the Korean numbers, we find that 72 percent of Vancouver’s business immigrants are from just the three ethnic Chinese territories of Hong Kong, Taiwan and PRC; this contrasts with 51.5 percent in Toronto and 44.5 percent in Montreal. This primacy is relevant in light of Wong and Ho’s (2006) finding that Chinese-origin immigrants have five times more income on hand at arrival than their non-Chinese contemporaries, while Chinese business immigrants possess way above the Chinese average. Vancouver receives a disproportionate share of wealthy business immigrants from countries whose citizens have the highest available economic capital to deploy. Vancouver’s share of the wealthiest immigrants is skewed further by a second trend in the data. Typically households in the investor stream of the BIP have the highest level of personal wealth. By 2001 they were required to have personal assets of at least $800,000 to qualify and to stake at least $400,000 in an investment account; while no asset figure was placed upon entrepreneurs Vancouver managers did expect an investment of around

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Table 2.2 Business class landings by type in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, by country of last permanent address, 1980–2001 % of Toronto total Hong Kong

Entrepreneurs 17,612 Self-employed 3,603 Investors 7,989 Sub-total

% of Montreal total

% of Vancouver total

(22.7) 13,921 (4.6) 867 (10.3) 5,930 (37.6)

(18.1) (1.1) (7.7) (26.9)

18,213 3,090 14,207

(19.6) (3.3) (15.3) (38.2)

Taiwan Entrepreneurs Self-employed Investors Sub-total

3,506 1,094 3,209

(4.5) (1.4) (4.1) (10.0)

3,678 324 4,242

(4.8) (0.4) (5.5) (10.7)

8,554 2,382 12,502

(9.2) (2.6) (17.8) (29.6)

South Korea

Entrepreneurs Self-employed Investors Sub-total

4,337 567 434

(5.6) (0.7) (0.6) (6.9)

5,096 270 2,145

(6.6) (0.4) (2.8) (9.8)

5,413 430 1,659

(5.8) (0.5) (1.8) (8.1)

PRC

Entrepreneurs Self-employed Investors Sub-total

1,346 610 1,014

(1.7) (0.8) (1.3) (3.8)

565 145 4,536

(0.7) (0.2) (5.9) (6.8)

1,146 330 2,471

(1.2) (0.4) (2.7) (4.3)

All others

Entrepreneurs 18,705 Self-employed 10,346 Investors 3,238 Sub-total

(28.9) 10, 966 (12.4) 4,074 (4.5) 3,398 (45.8)

(11.8) (4.4) (3.7) (19.9)

Total

(24.1) 22,250 (13.3) 9,567 (4.2) 3,417 (41.6) (100)

(100)

(100)

Source: Government of Canada, Longitudinal Immigration Database (LIDS)

$150,000 in their business. A government official explained the distinction to me more colloquially: ‘The investors, they put in more, it’s like they’re flying business class. The entrepreneurs, they have less, it’s like they’re back in the hold’. As we will see in Chapter 3, the declared assets of investors are typically double those of entrepreneurs. In comparison with Toronto and Montreal, Vancouver has a much higher share of business immigrants in the wealthy investor stream; at 41.2 percent the total is double the Toronto level (Table 2.2). Taiwanese-origin business immigrants have had a strong preference for the investor category, especially in Vancouver, while those from Hong Kong have tended to prefer the entrepreneur stream, though in Vancouver both options have been popular. In all three cities Koreans have opted for entrepreneur status by a strong majority. So Vancouver has received the highest number of business immigrants – at least 15,000 more than Toronto in the 1980–2001 period – even though

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the metropolitan area has less than half its population. By 2001 business immigrant landings since 1980 were the equivalent of 4.7 percent of the metropolitan population, or 6 percent after secondary migration, with a much higher share in the City of Vancouver and several preferred suburbs. In contrast in metropolitan Toronto, business immigrants were thinner on the ground, the equivalent of less than 1.7 percent of the 2001 population, rising above 2 percent with secondary re-location. Moreover the West Coast city is the destination of by far the highest share of those in the investor stream, a wealthier cohort than the entrepreneurs, and its flow is dominated by ethnic Chinese, the group highly endowed with financial capital upon landing. Among many potential consequences, impacts on the housing market are substantial. A national panel study of more than 12,000 immigrants who landed during 2000–01 found that 37 percent of business immigrants were property owners within six months of landing, compared with 17 percent of other immigrants and refugees, while business arrivals in Vancouver substantially exceeded those in Toronto (Mendez, Hiebert and Wyly 2006). So although Vancouver has the nation’s most expensive housing, within six months of landing over one-third of immigrants were living in a single-family detached house primarily as owners, whereas in Toronto almost one-half lived in a high rise apartment, primarily as tenants.

Conclusion This chapter has placed immigration to Canada within its broader historical context. Over the course of the twentieth century a Weberian category shift has occurred from the caste status of colonial society to the class status of a globalizing era.20 As a dominion in the British Empire, and since 1931, the Commonwealth, the colonial mandate of Canada was the maintenance of British/French traditions and institutions in a white settler society. In phase with this hegemonic project, exclusion, containment and segregation of the racial other became the geographical strategies of a caste system, surveillance and discipline its taken-for-granted practices. The objective was to shut out entry from Pacific origins, devaluing its citizens, blocking the entry of sustained Indian, Japanese and especially Chinese settlement. For China, unlike India and Japan, enjoyed no protective imperial alignments that mitigated, if only at the margins, the deployment of race-framed exclusion and containment in a far colony (Roy and Thompson 2005). Under the present global space of flows, national barriers to the free movement of labour have if anything been strengthened, with more comprehensive and meticulous protection of borders. But a significant redefinition of entry categories has occurred as human and economic

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capital have become the privileged criteria for the valuing of immigrants while ethnic and racial status have been disqualified. The causes of this transition are complex but include the more expansive social liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the neo-liberalism accompanying economic recession and the fiscal crisis of the state in the 1980s that has privileged the self-sufficient economic migrant in selection. The effects have been dramatic, exemplified by the re-positioning of Chinatown from historic pariah to a neighbourhood in the 1960s that suddenly had an entitlement and a voice heard by government. It was the ideology of neo-liberalism rather than the welfare state that opened up the prospect of the Pacific Rim, and the prospecting that followed in the brazenly economistic Team Canada expeditions. The Pacific Rim as a putative region was shaped in the North American imagination as a business opportunity and little else. The chilling conditions in the factories and workers’ barracks of the free trade and special economic zones of Asia Pacific evoked the unequal relations of a plural society where Furnivall’s ‘test of cheapness’ harshly defined the meaning of life. The value-added nodes of this network were connected by the movement of container ships, the buzz through airport hubs, and the near instantaneous transmission of electronic capital and cyber-commands. National and international business associations were assembled as facilitators, with APEC as chief cheerleader and symbolic overseer. The business immigration programmes in Canada, Australia and elsewhere that took flight from around 1980 were launched by this prospecting imagination. The business immigrant was the embodiment of successful Pacific Rim enterprise – an entry prize indeed – enabling the successful recruiter to enlist both capital and the capitalist. In this flattening out of perspective, citizenship, a defining quality of the liberal state, also became marketable, quantified in precise dollar terms as a commodity to be bought and sold. The heroic animator of the Pacific Rim network was homo economicus, and as a mythology developed of the superior trading skills of the cosmopolitan Chinese businessman (Hamilton 1999), so business acumen became essentialized and embodied in an ethnic identity. Not surprisingly then, the senior immigration officer at the Canadian High Commission in Hong Kong was effusive in his assessment of the new recruits: ‘They are one of our best immigrant groups. They are used to standing on their own feet. They bring education, language skills, a good attitude and enough finances. They hit the ground running’ (Mickleburgh 1996). Here it seemed was the late twentieth century embodiment of what Engels, in awe of the single-minded obsession of the Manchester mill merchants he observed in the 1840s, once described as a walking – now perhaps a flying – political economy.

Chapter Three

Calculating Agents: Millionaire Migrants Meet the Canadian State

For several months in 1998–99, Titans, Peter Newman’s book on Canada’s corporate elite, was securely fixed at or near the top of the country’s bestselling non-fiction list. As the author turned his attention to his home city of Vancouver, he identified members of the Chinese diaspora as the most dynamic sector of the business community (Newman 1998a). This section of the book, highlighting the success of a new immigrant elite, was abridged for an extensive double-page feature in the Vancouver Sun, the city’s principal daily newspaper (Newman 1998b). The Sun, smarting from criticism of unflattering representations of the new immigration regime earlier in the decade (Sun 1998; Dunn and Mahtani 2001), had learned to pay more attention to heralding immigrant successes. Its story led off with a profile of Terry Hui, the business friend of Victor Li, and in his early thirties CEO of the vast Concord Pacific Place redevelopment on False Creek, the project initiated by the dramatic land purchase of the entire Expo site by the Li family a decade earlier. Shortly before Newman’s précis on the new elite appeared, a frontpage feature in the Sun’s business section had featured Kevin Wong, a 1992 immigrant from Hong Kong, who ran a children’s garment factory and retail business. Announcing another provincial trade tour to China, Glen Clark, the NDP Premier of British Columbia, held up Mr. Wong’s company as ‘a very good success story’, a prototype of trans-Pacific entrepreneurial endeavour (Aarsteinsen 1998).1 In the same vein a federal cabinet minister was on hand beside the Sun’s reporter and photographer a month earlier for another prominent story, a planned high technology business park in the Vancouver suburbs, to be funded largely by private Asian investors assembled by Steven Wu, a 1989 business class immigrant from Taiwan (Chow 1998a). Here is the weighty intervention in the provincial economy by members of a transnational capitalist class (Sklair 2001) with a foot on each side of the Pacific Ocean and financial, business and family resources that bind the

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Pacific Rim into an integrated economic region. These three high-profile accounts, appearing within a three-month window in the city’s main newspaper, presented a common narrative. Each included a photograph of a young, dynamic male entrepreneur, a recent immigrant from East Asia. All three businessmen had been sent to university in Canada or the United States, and in their dark business suits each conveyed a quintessential image of the enterprising self-made man, the cosmopolitan capitalist, homo economicus. The discourse of youth, energy and success was all the more potent in 1998 as British Columbia laboured through another economic slowdown; indeed, real income fell in Vancouver during the 1990s. The photographs and accompanying text projected a counter-trend, a fresh beginning, economic vigour to re-boot regional development. A City report had anticipated as much: ‘These new immigrants tend to be very entrepreneurial, and provide much of Vancouver’s contemporary economic dynamism’ (City of Vancouver 1988).2 Itemizing entrepreneurialism, networks in Asia and a large stock of human and financial capital, Asia-Pacific booster Michael Goldberg was equally upbeat about East Asian migration: ‘all the impact has been positive’ (cited in Siklos 1989). These are exactly the economic agents that the Business Immigration Programme was designed to deliver. In this chapter after an initial discussion of the scale of capital transfers accompanying the BIP, we move beyond the political economy of flows themselves to the calculations of the agents who shaped and populated them, to the network of meanings, the hopes and fears that coursed through transPacific life lines. Not only were immigrants trying to solve complex calculations as they compared apples and oranges on opposite sides of the Pacific, but the state was also shrewd, as it drew immigrants into the web of its own accountability and audit culture following a facilitated landing through the BIP. A position of accountability and containment presented an unfamiliar location for East Asian business households and turned some of them against Canadian apples, rekindling their taste for Mandarin oranges.

Cornucopia from Asia Pacific The Government of Canada publishes annual statistics on the impacts of the Business Immigration Programme as part of its process of public accountability. Data are readily accessible on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) web site, where they fortify press releases and thereby become the numerical grist for media stories. Consequently they comprise the public face of BIP impacts. Impressive outcomes are declared in the confident language of official statistics, a calculated message conveying the authority of numeracy, evoking precision and accuracy. As Nikolas Rose has observed in a more general discussion on quantification and the

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democratic state, ‘it is clear that such numbers do not merely inscribe a pre-existing reality. They constitute it’ (Rose 1991: 676). The CIC statistics for 2005 show the remarkable bounty emerging from the immigrant investor stream with almost a billion dollars (gross) of ‘fully paid subscriptions’ in Canada that year (CIC 2006). Quebec has always done best as a recipient of investments as it set up guarantees and safeguards for funds while in the rest of Canada there were substantial losses for some years as a result of questionable investment projects and practices. Over a 20-year period of the investor stream (1986–2005), $8.7 billion has been registered in subscriptions, over $5 billion in Quebec. British Columbia has received smaller benefits, something over $500 million, and Ontario even less (CIC 2006). But while their investments are parked in Quebec funds, the investors themselves much prefer to live in Vancouver.3 Turning to the more active entrepreneur stream, the numbers landing in Canada have declined substantially since their heyday in the 1990s. In 2005 only 505 entrepreneurs had their ‘terms and conditions lifted’ (i.e. their business ventures approved), opening up the path to citizenship; 31 percent of these were living in British Columbia. Entrepreneur ventures in BC represented investments of over $25 million in 2005, and created 171 full-time positions and 175 part-time jobs (CIC 2006). Numbers had been much higher in the 1990s during the peak years of arrivals. Data from the Vancouver CIC office for the period 1990–98 recorded over a billion dollars of business investment in BC from start-ups or companies acquired by immigrant entrepreneurs together with the creation or maintenance of over 25,000 jobs (CIC 1999). The magic of large numbers readily envelops such statistics. By any standard they represent a substantial infusion of working capital and knowledgeable capitalists into British Columbia. The Greater Vancouver economy has been the overwhelming beneficiary, for typically 90 percent of business class newcomers in the province have located in the metropolitan region.4 Faceless statistics were substantiated by detailed interviews in 2002 with immigrants who had landed through the entrepreneur stream and were living in Greater Vancouver. Among the 90 entrepreneurs we interviewed, a third each came from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, and they had lived in Canada an average of 8–9 years (Ley 2006).5 They reported a median investment of $125,000 in their initial business, with the overall total of $25 million inflated by a few very large capital outlays. They also met their employment objectives. Again a couple of successful outcomes raised the overall tally, so that 477 full or part-time jobs were created or retained by the 90 ventures; the median business employed two full-time workers and one part-time. From the state’s perspective these are very satisfactory numbers, confirming the success of the Business Immigration Programme.6 Nor did the business consume all of the available household finances of entrepreneurs. The 90 households reported median funds of $400,000

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available for use in Canada, usually with additional resources offshore.7 Most had purchased their own houses, typically valued at the time of interview at over $500,000 and sometimes over $1 million. These figures are considerably higher than Canada-wide data on business immigrant assets at the time of landing reported by Wong and Ho (2006), and give some sense of the wealth premium enjoyed by business immigrants in Vancouver. In an earlier round of interviews with a smaller sample from East Asia, respondents stated that they had brought funds with them that ranged from $500,000 to $5 million (Ley 1999), while Edward Woo’s estimate of household expenditures for business immigrants over a three-year period amounted to approximately $600,000 for a house, cars, and household expenditures (Woo 1998). The full scale of available capital for deployment is unknowable, but the best evidence comes from data in the possession of CIC, derived from interviews with business immigrants outside Canada during the visa application process. Part of the application requires potential business immigrants to prove the scale of their financial capital through verified documentation, a far more rigorous test than a research interview. The data, subsequently retrieved by the Province of British Columbia, show ‘total funds’ available to applicants, defined as ‘total money declared by the immigrants during the application process. They do not necessarily represent the net worth of the immigrants, or money to be brought into B.C. by the immigrants’ (Government of British Columbia 1997). Money of course provides an incomplete dossier of assets but it does offer some insight into the scale of available liquid assets. Records for the four years from 1994–97 show that during this period 70 percent of business applicants to BC had permanent residence in Hong Kong or Taiwan, with South Korea in third rank. Among applicants to the entrepreneur stream from all countries, the ‘total funds’ declared to overseas immigration officials ranged from an annual average of $1.62 million per household in 1994 to $1.20 million in 1997. For investors, numbers were considerably higher, fluctuating between a mean level of $2.47 million in 1994 and $2.22 million in 1996. The scale of this financial capital available for transfer from Hong Kong and Taiwan alone to British Columbia is extraordinary, reaching $3.49 billion for the entrepreneur stream and $5.77 billion for the investor track, or a total of over $9 billion over the four years. But this is only a fraction of the overall embodied wealth available to reach the shores of BC through the BIP since 1980. It does not include the smaller self-employed business stream, reserved for the wealthiest applicants, not does it represent the busy years of landings in the early 1990s. Nor of course does it include business migrants from other countries of origin. By using the 1994–97 data as a standard we can extrapolate over a longer period to gain a fuller approximation of ‘total funds’ available for use by business immigrants. Using a conservative measure, the smallest annual record during 1994–97 of average total funds, $1.20 million for entrepreneurs and $2.22 million for

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investors, is multiplied by the number of principal applicants (i.e. households) landing in BC as entrepreneurs or investors in the ten-year period from 1988, the year of the Expo land sale, to 1997, the year of Hong Kong’s repatriation to China, after which Hong Kong business arrivals in particular dropped substantially. The calculation leads to a total exceeding $30 billion for both immigrant streams over the decade from all countries. This data set covers the whole province, but as 90 percent of business immigrants make Vancouver their home, we can estimate that some $27 billion in ‘total funds’ is represented by business immigrants settling in Vancouver from 1988 to 1997. An addition of approximately 25 percent should be made for secondary migrants who re-located to Vancouver after landing in another province, plus an unknown amount for the wealthy self-employed stream. The grand total is most likely in the $35–$40 billion range at least in total liquid funds available to business immigrants entering Greater Vancouver over the decade.8 Stories going around Vancouver in the 1990s of a thousand millionaires holding accounts at a single Chinatown bank branch may not have been as mythical as they sounded. The Chinatown branch of HSBC opened in 1983, and in 1992 provided a private banking centre for clients investing at least $250,000. During the first three weeks of operation 50 millionaires opened personal accounts through the centre (Day 1992). One report even identified half the 20,000 clients at the Chinatown HSBC branch as multi-millionaires by 1994, with average deposits of $3 million (Le Corre 1994). Bank wire transfers from Hong Kong to personal accounts in British Columbia are estimated at $505 million in the 1995–96 fiscal year (Li 1998: 139).9 For one of the banks for which more detailed statistics were available, the average transfer from Hong Kong (there were 2,400 of them that year) to personal accounts in British Columbia amounted to over $90,000. The scale of such activity represents a spectacular avalanche of potential investment, and a colossal success for the Pacific Rim policy so transparently visible in the Team Canada trade and investment missions. Of course non-liquid assets, for example ongoing commercial holdings in East Asia, would add to the ‘total funds’ of immigrant households. The furore that arose in the 1995–98 period when the Canadian state sought information on such ‘global assets’ for taxation disclosure pointed to the widespread existence of these additional investments outside Canada.

Institutional Facilitators So far we have only considered embodied capital, the funds borne or available to the highly prized business immigrants. But this by no means exhausts the movement of capital between Canada and East Asia for other

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players entered the picture. Primed by Expo 86, the series of trade missions, and pre-existing networks – remember the remark by the 1985 trade mission that ‘Vancouver is so well-known in Hong Kong’ (City of Vancouver 1985) – British Columbia entered the information field of corporate and private investors in Asia. Japanese sources were a significant contributor in the late 1980s until the bursting of its bubble economy in the early 1990s. Foreign direct investment to Canada from Japanese sources peaked at over $300 million in 1989 and favoured real estate, with a strong focus in leisure and tourism (Edgington 1994, 1996). Geographically there was extreme concentration, with almost 60 percent of medium- or large-scale projects located in Vancouver or the nearby ski resort of Whistler. Tourist movements from Japan to Canada more than tripled in the last half of the 1980s, and investment flows to the Japanese visitor circuit in British Columbia aimed to develop vertical integration of tourist activities with Japanese ownership of hotels, resorts and golf courses favoured by co-nationals. The perception of leisure as a principal characteristic of British Columbia in general and Vancouver in particular is telling, and anticipated a broader East Asian view of the meaning of Canada’s West Coast. While Japanese capital flows were decimated as its bubble economy imploded, significant foreign direct investment was sustained from Hong Kong and Taiwan, which had been gathering momentum during the 1980s (Li 1993).10 Much journalistic ink has been poured trying to estimate the full scale of capital movements, flows that attracted global hyperbole in the most intense years of activity from about 1988 to the mid 1990s (Cannon 1989; Fennell and Demont 1989; Gutstein 1990). While the full magnitude of money transfers is not knowable – not least because with tax implications many were conducted discreetly – they certainly amounted to several billion dollars annually from Hong Kong alone during the peak years (Mitchell 2004); the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce estimated the inward flow from Hong Kong to Canada to be between $2 and $4 billion a year in the early 1990s (Symonds et al. 1991). Very large sums also were transmitted from Taiwan after the relaxation of overseas exchange controls in 1987, releasing a huge pent-up flow of personal savings that were running at the remarkable level of 40 percent of gross national product (Bradbury 1989). A senior banker in Vancouver told me in the early 1990s, ‘The banks have so much Asian money coming in, they don’t know what to do with it.’ In mid-decade a second senior Vancouver banker confided that US$100 million had entered his bank via a Taiwanese branch in a single month, following provocative Chinese naval exercises off the coast of Taiwan. The same year a feature in the Taiwanese-oriented newspaper, World Journal, announced, ‘Taiwan’s top ten moguls have already settled down in Vancouver and started their investment.’ A representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vancouver added, ‘Taiwanese immigrants are usually so rich they do not have to rush to

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get a job. If they need a job they can easily get one in Toronto. However, most of them just want to go to a place with nice weather and a nice environment with a good education system’ (World Journal 1996). Institutional adjustment to this frothy supply of capital was rapid. Mitchell (2004) provides an excellent account of financial instruments and funds assembled by the banks to facilitate capital transfers. North American banks opened or expanded Hong Kong offices soon after the establishment of the business investor stream in 1986. The Bank of Montreal in Hong Kong offered a suite of services, including opening Canadian accounts, advancing loans for Canadian real estate acquisition, as well as brokerage and emigration services (Mitchell 2004: 63). Through its American subsidiary, Harris Trust and Savings Bank, it offered US trusts that avoided Canadian taxes for a period of five years following emigration. The bank’s international network also permitted capital deposits in its Singapore branch where they would be preserved from Canadian taxes and possible seizure in Hong Kong following 1997. Wealthy families were diversifying their investments in varied international portfolios. This dispersal of assets was most visible in the case of the largest families like the Li’s who not only entered the Vancouver and Toronto property markets but also acquired a 95 percent share in Husky Oil and 10 percent in the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.11 Smaller fortunes also sought varied safe havens. A survey of 3600 ethnic Chinese business immigrants in Canada declared that over 40 per cent of their off-shore capital at the time of landing was not located in their country of origin (Wong and Ho 2006).12 One of the more influential conduits of investment funds has been the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Established by a Scot, Thomas Sutherland, in 1865, the bank left its headquarters in Hong Kong in 1991 during the run up to 1997, re-branded itself as HSBC, and returned to its British roots with a London head office. As part of its own global diversification, the bank entered British Columbia in 1981 and expanded with the takeover of the troubled Bank of British Columbia in 1986, thereby gaining a retail presence through acquiring BBC’s 41 existing branches. With an active programme of further acquisitions, by 2007 HSBC was the seventh largest bank in Canada with its head office in Vancouver and a retail presence in every province except Prince Edward Island. Its deep Hong Kong networks leave it perfectly positioned to serve the expanding transPacific market and the Bank has facilitated trade missions to East and Southeast Asia. The colourful Vice-President of its Canadian operations in the early 1990s, David Bond, was widely cited for advice he offered immigration authorities concerning the desirability of Hong Kong’s wealthy families: ‘If I was the czar of immigration, I’d send a fleet of Boeing 747s to Hong Kong to pick them up. This is a unique chance to engage in a transfer of human and financial capital that is unprecedented anywhere in the world’

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(Claiborne 1991). By 2006 HSBC had 40 branches in Vancouver and 25 in Toronto and its largest customer base continued to be immigrants from Hong Kong, including returnees to Asia who were maintaining a Canadian account, in the words of a manager, ‘as a safe haven or for their retirement funds’ (Li et al. 2007). Branch locations matched the geographical distribution of ethnic Chinese residents; in the ethnoburb of Richmond one branch announced that ‘we can speak Cantonese; we can speak Mandarin; we can speak Fuzhounese; we can speak Minnan’, while at a second outlet, the Mandarin Centre branch, each staff member speaks at least one Chinese dialect (Li et al. 2007).

Calculations in Hong Kong and Taiwan Transnational banking and, as we shall see later, transnational property marketing facilitated the transfer of economic resources across the Pacific. But while necessary they were not sufficient inducements for the re-location of millionaire migrants. Nor did eager suitors in North America and Australasia provide adequate reasons for movement through their business immigration programmes. Rather, local anxieties at the origin joined inducements at the destination to motivate wealthy households to join the exodus from East Asia. These motivations were strong enough that for a decade from the late 1980s, Hong Kong was the leading source of immigrants to Canada. The annual flow of migrants leaving Hong Kong shows break points that may be correlated against key events in Hong Kong as well as in Canada (Figure 3.1). Synchronicity is not perfect because there is a delay between application for a visa, its granting, and a household’s eventual arrival in Canada after settling their affairs in Hong Kong. Visa processing times are also of variable length; in 2004–05 it was still taking the Hong Kong Consulate General almost 24 months to adjudicate just half of current business immigrant applications, and it is probable that during much busier periods in the 1990s the delay would have been at least as great.13 Marked increases in Canadian landings from Hong Kong occurred in 1987, 1988 and 1990, with a broad plateau of sustained landings of 30,000 or above for each year between 1992 and 1996. After 1997, numbers tail off dramatically and since 2001 have not exceeded 2,000 in any year. Certain important events may be related to these trends. In 1984 the signing of the SinoBritish Joint Declaration confirmed the territory’s post-colonial destiny in 1997 and unsettled some wealthy households. In 1986 welcoming signals from Canada included the establishment of the investor stream of the BIP and the launch of Expo 86 as a promotional loss leader in Vancouver. With these motivational aids, applications for immigration filed in 1987 at Canada’s Hong Kong Consulate General had risen to almost 40,000, and

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50,000 Hong Kong Taiwan

Immigrants

40,000

Republic of Korea

30,000

20,000

10,000

0 1980

Figure 3.1 data base)

1985

1990

1995

2000

Hong Kong, Taiwanese and South Korean landings in Canada, 1980–2001 (Source: LIDS

for the next decade Hong Kong was the leading source of immigrants. But 1989 was a decisive year with the terror of Tiananmen Square being a major source of de-stabilisation amongst Hong Kong’s middle class (Figure 3.2); applications to Canada reached a pinnacle of over 50,000, a level that was almost sustained for the next two years, before falling substantially. The peak of applications was delayed for three years before showing up in Canadian landings that reached their own maximum between 1992 and 1994. It is clear that most of the middle class who had wanted to leave had already done so by the mid 1990s and numbers fell off dramatically after 1997. The disclosure of foreign assets that became a controversial part of Canadian income tax law discouraged new migrants and sent others home, while the devastating Asian financial crisis that began in late 1997 severely depreciated liquid assets for a decade. In the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s many middle class families leaving Hong Kong had bankrolled their move by property sales, benefiting from the huge real estate inflation of the 1980s. But land values tumbled at the end of the decade, and late in 2006 apartment prices in Hong Kong, while recovering from the SARS-induced trough in 2003, still remained almost 50 percent below the mid-1997 peak, leaving many middle class owners mired in negative equity and in no position to emigrate (Government of Hong Kong 2007).14 In contrast to Hong Kong flows, Taiwanese migration picked up later and declined more gradually, so that by the turn of the millennium Taiwanese

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Figure 3.2 Remembering Tiananmen Square: The Goddess of Democracy memorial in Vancouver, a replica of the ten metre statue assembled by Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in 1989

landings exceeded the dwindling arrivals from Hong Kong (Figure 3.1). Migrant arrivals from South Korea have risen, like Taiwan, from a small base at the beginning of the 1980s, but have grown steadily so that by 2001 they exceeded the total from Hong Kong and Taiwan combined. Focussing our attention upon the Vancouver metropolitan area, arrivals from Hong Kong and Taiwan, the two principal sending countries of business immigrants, appear in Figure 3.3. The powerful migration wave from 1987–97 for Hong Kong arrivals is apparent. Taiwanese numbers are lower overall, except at the end of the period when their rate of decline is gentler than the case of Hong Kong. Excluding secondary migration, which would lift both totals appreciably, close to 112,000 Hong Kong landings occurred and some 58,000 from Taiwan. Of particular interest is the very high share of business immigrants among these totals, almost a third of arrivals from Hong Kong, and almost a half of those from Taiwan; in contrast business

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16,000

Immigrants

12,000

8,000

Hong Kong Immigrants Hong Kong Business Immigrants Taiwan Immigrants Taiwan Business Immigrants

4,000

0 1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Figure 3.3 Hong Kong and Taiwanese landings in Greater Vancouver, 1980–2001 (Source: LIDS data base) immigration amounted to only a little over eight percent of all immigration to Canada during this period. Not only were the business streams important for migrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also, with 45 percent of all BIP landings in Canada, these countries gave the programme its legs and, to a significant degree, its political justification. A fuller account of reasons for emigration came from the survey of 90 business entrepreneurs in Greater Vancouver who originated in equal number from Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, and who had lived in Canada for 8–9 years at the time of interview.15 In response to the open question, ‘Why did you apply to immigrate to Canada?’ answers were classified into five groups (Table 3.1). The most common response referred to the country’s quality of life, mentioned by almost half the entrepreneurs.16 Quality of life was as much a mental as an empirical category, and included a perception of pristine and unpolluted nature, a ‘more relaxed’ environment with attractive leisure options, and a welfare state that provided a range of services. I came here in 1997. I just wanted to change the environment. As you all know, Hong Kong is so crowded. I came to visit Canada and found these words, ‘Beautiful British Columbia’, on the licence plate of vehicles on the street. It was September, summertime, very hot in Hong Kong but Vancouver’s weather was very good…We also wanted to come for our children. We have

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Table 3.1 Reasons cited by business immigrants for migration to Canada/Vancouver (multiple responses) a) Why did you apply to immigrate to Canada?

Quality of life Children’s education Geopolitics Family unification Economic prospects Other reasons

Hong Kong n = 30 % of respondents

Taiwan n = 30 % of respondents

South Korea n = 30 % of respondents

All n = 90 % of respondents

31 38 38 17 17 10

60 50 27 20 7 10

50 40 3 10 17 17

47 43 22 16 13 12

Hong Kong % of respondents

Taiwan % of respondents

South Korea % of respondents

All % of respondents

48 55

42 50

47 27

46 44

27 7 7 7

50 9 4 12

27 13 13 10

40 10 8 10

b) Why did you select Vancouver?

Quality of life Presence of family/ friends Climate Near Asia Economic prospects Other Source: Field work

two children, when they came one was in grade 4, the other one was still in kindergarten. We found this place suitable for our children’s growth.

Close behind quality of life was education, with the expectation that western schooling would be highly valued and teach skills to one’s children missing from the highly pressured, rote-learning model of East Asia.17 A Taiwanese entrepreneur and his family arrived in Canada three years after their son had begun his education: ‘My son came to study as an international student. He has been here for five years. I came to visit him. He liked Canada very much so we decided to apply for entry.’ But besides an enhanced education, Canada also offered remedial education options for children unable to gain entry to the very competitive academic and professional programmes in East Asia.

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‘My son was not doing too well in school in Taiwan. He came [here] to study in a college.’ Likewise, ‘My son was studying in form 7 at the time, taking the college entrance examination. He wanted to major in Pharmaceutical Science, and the best college was Chinese University of Hong Kong, but he was not accepted by CUHK… If he could not get into the programme he wanted then maybe he could further his study in Canada… He came here a year before the family moved here’

Political motives were prominent for Hong Kong and Taiwanese respondents and comprised primarily uneasiness about the future policies of Mainland China. The businessman above, who landed in Vancouver in 1997 and described himself as ‘catching the last train’, also had uncomfortable political memories which reinforced the family’s desire to move: Yes, I came for my children. The other reason was our parents belonged to the Republican Party in China. They were capitalists. My mother had suffered a lot from the Communist Party in China. She as parent would like us to leave the control of Communist China. I did not want my son to study in the States, so eventually decided to move to Canada.

Of course many respondents identified more than a single motive for migration. Paul,18 a businessman who had run a firm in Taiwan importing auto parts, reviewed in 2002 his family’s move to Vancouver: There were many reasons. First, immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan often suggested that Canada has a very good environment. Such stories were often in the newspapers. I’ve also confirmed that from relatives that have immigrated to Canada. The second reason was the political instability in Taiwan, particularly the problem [with China] over the Straits.

One of Lam’s respondents in 1990, who had landed in Toronto in 1988, put the issue concisely, revealing the uneasy blend of motives, contradictions, and resolutions that pervaded family calculations: We decided to leave Hong Kong for Toronto because we like to have the option and assurance that, if needed, we have a place to go. For sure, we don’t want to become refugees like the Vietnamese boat people. We came to Toronto in February 1988 and my husband went back to Hong Kong in June 1988 to continue running his business. Our children are now in university and in one more year we are going to apply for Canadian citizenship. Once we obtain this, the children will remain here, and I will probably be going back to Hong Kong. If the takeover of Hong Kong by China becomes intolerable, as Canadian citizens we will have the protection of Canada (Lam 1994: 167).

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In this lucid account, the intersecting play of economics, politics and education lead to a sequence of geographical decisions: emigration, return by the principal wage-earner, full return by both parents with the option of future re-migration, while leaving unresolved the location of the children following university graduation. With a more specific question about the choice of Vancouver, given the decision to move to Canada, quality of life remained as the most common response, followed by the presence of a pre-existing network of friends and relatives, and even the Vancouver climate, more temperate than the rest of Canada (Table 3.1). These interviews were consistent with results from the federal government’s Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) conducted at the same time (2001–02). The relevant LSIC sample comprised economic migrants from all countries, including business immigrants and also the much larger class of skilled workers. Among the most important reasons for selecting their place of residence in Canada, the presence of family or friends was an abiding first choice, confirming the important role of social networks (and social capital) in steering immigrant site selection (Statistics Canada 2003b). In Toronto (and most other places) job prospects were in second rank, but in Vancouver the second attraction was climate and the third was lifestyle. Educational opportunities followed, while job prospects in Vancouver were mentioned by only six percent of this sample of economic migrants, whom we would have expected to be highly attentive to the regional labour market. Returning to Table 3.1 we see the same demotion of economic factors in the motives to move to Canada among the 90 Vancouver area entrepreneurs.19 On the surface, this is an extraordinary outcome. Economic migrants in general, and the business class in particular, are selected to generate economic development. This has been the transparent objective of the BIP and the Asia Pacific offensive by Canadian politicians over the past thirty years. The competition among different nations to attract the business class was a contest to entice the energetic and well-resourced skills of homo economicus. But some of the entrepreneurs have different objectives. Paul, introduced above, explained why his family had selected Canada over Australia or New Zealand as their destination: Our objectives aren’t fixated on which country or which market would allow us to make a lot of money. Rather, we were looking for a country where we could lead a relatively stable life. After we settle down, then we can start thinking about making money and make more concrete plans for the future.

Paul has a more relaxed view of accumulation than the market obsession of the heroic homunculus of neo-liberal theory. But then, arriving in Canada

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at the age of 44, he could afford to bide his time. In another part of the interview he mentioned that he was in a position to draw $250,000 a year from interest payments on low-risk investments. His fortune had already been made elsewhere. Indeed, for some economically successful immigrants, the ‘quality of life’ in Canada meant a deliberate reversal of the frantic lifestyle of East Asian capitalist development. Business immigrants arrived by definition with an entrepreneurial track record. Like Paul they were frequently in their forties, had achieved economic success and were wealthy, sometimes very wealthy. They typically had two young children, and for some the move to Canada represented a status passage, a decision about ‘quality of life’ that meant a fundamental rearrangement of life’s priorities. Janine, unusual in that she was the principal applicant in her family’s acceptance as entrepreneur migrants, sought out Canada following a traumatic event that caused a lifestyle re-appraisal: One day my mum suddenly passed away and realizing that I had aged, I had this feeling of the transience of life. Life in Korea, if you are submerged in it, it is really busy every day. I had worked in the fashion business for about twenty years, I majored in Fashion. But after my mum’s death, I visited Canada in May and toured around the Rockies. I just vaguely thought that Canada would be a nice place to live when I got old and to educate my children…

Mr. and Mrs. Yip also fitted this profile (Ley and Waters 2004). They had each held senior management positions in Hong Kong but, landing as entrepreneurs in the business class, had opted for a relatively undemanding venture in Vancouver, acquiring a fast food business in a suburban mall. This was part of an intentional relegation of economic pursuits in order to promote other family priorities. Mr. Yip: When we were in Hong Kong, we both felt very busy for life, and we both wanted some life changes. And so we travelled a lot around the world to Australia, States, Canada. We went to Toronto and Vancouver. One morning in the summer in Vancouver, I stepped out of the door of my distant relative’s house. I felt the air so fresh, and the sun so bright and everything so beautiful. And then I said to my wife that’s the place that we want to go. So when after travelling we went back to Hong Kong and then we made application to immigrate to Canada, Vancouver is the place that we chose. Mrs. Yip: [In Hong Kong] it’s the pressure you can hardly face because the whole society is so rushed, you know, and life is so busy that you can hardly slow down a little bit to enjoy life… It’s both too busy for adults and the kids. So we want to slow down our pace a little bit so we came… the first year we came here we just enjoy life. We didn’t bother to find a job for at least one year. That’s what we decided. We’ve been working for twenty years, so busy… And

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we actually had one year to do nothing, just travelling in this country. After one year we felt that we had to find a job. Mr. Yip: Yes, so we decided to change our lifestyle, to do some business of our own. We’d get a business and we’d provide some jobs for people. So we have a better lifestyle and we can take care of the house and the kids. And we can go to church, worship our Lord. We were not, like, having any religion when we were in Hong Kong…

This family biography portrays vividly the geographically contingent character of entrepreneurialism. Homo economicus evidently does not travel well. The ‘quality of life’ sought in Canada becomes a marker for a status passage, for the migrants become different people with the move, in the case of the Yip family with revised attitudes and priorities reinforced by a new-found religious conviction which they had no time for in Hong Kong. We will see in Chapter 7 the significant rise of religious life among Vancouver’s Chinese population as part of the creation of a settled civil society. For the Yips, ‘quality of life’ is shorthand for a re-direction of priorities as career and business activities are demoted while family, leisure and religious activities appreciate in value. In some respects we might say that they are becoming Canadian, adjusting to the laid-back lifestyle of the West Coast. But in becoming Canadian, are they also subverting the expectations of the BIP that enlisted them precisely for their entrepreneurial difference? The Yips have fulfilled their share of the contract they made with the state; indeed their fast food franchise employed more than the mandated number of full-time employees. But their appetite for flat-out pursuit of economic goals had weakened substantially.

The Geographical Conundrum The capacity to qualify for Canadian skilled worker or business class designation was aided by the rapid economic growth of Asia Pacific. By the first half of the 1990s, the torrid growth had slowed but economic expansion in Hong Kong still compared favourably with the recession-impaired economy in Canada. Indeed, on the eve of 1997, Hong Kong’s Annual Report allowed itself a celebratory air, announcing pointedly that per capita GDP had ‘surpassed some of the OECD economies, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia’ (Government of Hong Kong 1998). Property prices, the source of much domestic wealth, continued to soar. Though crisis was to follow, up to 1997 the economic fundamentals were buoyant and unconstrained. Hong Kong owes its strength to sound economic fundamentals, a large fiscal surplus and strong foreign exchange reserves, business-friendly government policies, a competent workforce complemented by a pool of efficient and

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enterprising entrepreneurs, a superb network of transport and communications infrastructure, a high degree of internationalisation and open financial markets. Adding to these are a low taxation system, free and fair market competition, a fully convertible and stable currency, tight fiscal discipline, a wellsupervised banking sector, sound monetary policy and a comprehensive legal framework. The World Economic Forum ranks Hong Kong as the world’s second most competitive economy, while the US Heritage Foundation and Fraser Institute of Canada rank it the freest economy in the world (Government of Hong Kong 1998).

Even allowing for a measure of hyperbole, this boosterist narrative that Hong Kong told itself about itself was a fair approximation of economic life in the colony over the previous 20 years. But these assets were rooted in place. So why would any entrepreneur worth his salt want to leave them behind? Confronting the comparative evidence on the ranking of the Canadian and Hong Kong economies set out by the right wing, Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, why would any aspiring homo economicus move to a land of inferior opportunities? There was a palpable fear that a move could make one a ‘second-class citizen’ (Li et al. 1995), economically and culturally. Theoretical categories owe their careers to simplification of the real social processes they seek to model, and the characterisation of the Chinese entrepreneur as homo economicus is no different. The identities of economic migrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan or South Korea cannot be reduced to economics alone. The package of amenities offered by Canada was attractive: political stability, a versatile passport, a higher quality of life, a better family environment including a perceived higher standard of education. Of course an economic reductionist might respond that if market transactions ultimately decompose to alternating motives of greed and fear, the move by a bourgeois class to Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the United States represented an attempt to reduce the fear-inducing proximity of communist Mainland China by securing a base camp in safe territory, a strategic withdrawal to facilitate a renewed capitalist advance. There is something to this argument, but it is less than a full account, as we are learning from family biographies. A more accurate interpretation would see instead a profoundly split personality among many members of the middle-class as they faced a geographical conundrum of conflicting economic and social wellbeing. Transnationalism brought resolution to this fragmented geographical impasse. To bring coherence to a dispersed social and spatial field across the Pacific, to incorporate the capital-generating station of East Asia with the family-nurturing station of Canada into a single life-world, would require continuing transnational connections, constant travel, welllubricated channels for the transfer of information, people and money. With surprising candour, the Taiwanese-oriented World Journal told its Vancouver readers at an early date its own assessment of their settlement

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objectives: ‘A wave of immigration fever has once again swept through Taiwan due to political instability. Taiwanese are buying immigrant status as “political insurance”. Most of them have no plan to live in Canada permanently’ (World Journal 1994).20 The general manager of the 21st Century Immigration Consulting Company in Taipei observed that the ‘whole political situation’ was the major stimulus for departure, but it was compounded by ‘the poor quality of life and the rigid education system’. A manager in a second Taipei immigration consultancy went further, noting that his clients ‘do not actually want to live in the countries they have applied to. Many of them, when they have obtained their immigrant visa, appeal to stay in Taiwan for as long as permitted. They are treating that right to live abroad as an “insurance policy”. Limited employment and business opportunities in the host countries is another reason for Taiwanese immigrants to stay in Taiwan as long as possible’ (ibid). The view from Hong Kong was no different. Migration offered ‘political insurance’, but most likely would be economically draining; a survey in Hong Kong in 1991 revealed that a substantial minority expected income loss of over 30 percent following their move (Lam et al. 1995). It was not surprising then that potential emigrants in Hong Kong were marked by uncertainty, even equivocation, as they contemplated departure. So was born the condition of the ‘reluctant exile’ so well captured by Hong Kong social scientists in the mid-1990s (Skeldon 1994, 1995b). ‘Most are in conflict. They may wish to exit for political reasons, but to remain for economic reasons. This is the affluent middle-class story’ (Salaff and Wong 1995: 196–7). This diffidence was apparent to immigration staff at the Hong Kong Consulate General who told us that to their surprise they realized in the early 1990s they were servicing well-qualified applicants for immigrant status who had no real desire to live in Canada. From their own interviews at the time Lary and Luk (1994) deduced that Hong Kong departees were arriving in Canada ‘with deep anxiety rather than great expectations; … many of them anticipated the worst’. But as has so often been the case with channelled migration – as indeed had been true of the four Guangdong counties who sent nineteenth century migrants to North America, or the set of Fujianese counties that send undocumented migrants today – migration became a social process, and peer pressures leading to imitation undercut a more reflective caution against leaving: In the beginning, we had no intention to leave. We had well-paid jobs and a happy family. We knew life in Canada wouldn’t be the same. However, when you saw so many of your friends and colleagues were leaving, you couldn’t help asking yourself the question: were they wrong in leaving? Particularly, when we’re told that we should consider the future of our children. We then reluctantly decided to leave (cited in Lam 1994: 167).

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The idea of emigration, reinforced by peers, became contagious, even providing a market niche for a new magazine, Emigrant, launched in Hong Kong in 1988, reinforcing the normality of departure. Middle-class professionals and business families were the principal leavers; in 1987 the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank lost almost 10 percent of its executives to emigration, and the following year the colonial government estimated that 45,000 residents had moved overseas, ‘the cream of the work force’ (Scott 1989). In the 1991 survey, 13 percent of respondents stated they would definitely or probably apply to emigrate (Lam et al. 1995). This group was of higher socio-economic status, with 10–20 years of work experience; among them Canada was the most popular destination. While 13 percent anticipated emigration, only six percent expected to be abroad in 1997. Moreover, almost 20 percent of respondents stated that they would be in Hong Kong in 1997 but with a foreign passport. As Lam et al. (1995: 122) wryly interpreted these results, ‘Most were clearly planning to move in order to stay’. Return migration was planned by these respondents from the very beginning. It was not an unwelcome reaction to economic or other disappointments overseas. Indeed by the early 1990s return was already occurring. Interviews with 36 professionals and spouses in Hong Kong revealed that 22 of them had earlier secured citizenship in Canada, Australia or Britain (Li et al. 1995; Findlay et al. 1994). Skeldon (1995a) estimated that ‘at least 30 percent’ of 1990–91 emigrants to Australia were back in Hong Kong within three years. The transnational movement of ‘astronaut households’ was already substantial enough that it was showing up in national censuses early in the 1990s, with an excess of female-headed households reported among the Hong Kong-born in the gateway cities of Sydney, Auckland and Vancouver (Skeldon 1995a). Among a small sample of families who had landed as economic migrants from Hong Kong in 1988 and were living in Toronto, Lam (1994) observed that half were astronauts, with one parent absent, while in addition 10–15 percent of families had both parents absent and were headed by university students. The attractions, for different reasons, of both the Canadian and East Asian sites in a transnational social field would lead to a sequence of movements at particular periods in the life cycle, as the advantages of first one site and then the other would be differentially valued at distinctive life stages.

Seeking Information Incomplete information compromises rational economic action in both theory and practice. Significant behavioural revisions to theories of the firm and entrepreneurial activity were prompted in part by the reality of missing or inaccurate information that jeopardized rational decision-making before

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economic opportunities.21 So it was logical in the face of uncertainty, and worse, anxiety, that East Asian entrepreneurs began their application process by securing information. In the Vancouver survey, the 90 entrepreneurs on average knew only ‘a little’ about business opportunities in Canada at the time of their visa application. Two-thirds had collected information from reconnaissance visits, half from friends and relatives already in Canada, while 42 percent had depended upon immigration consultants. The interviews identified serious gaps in basic information. One extreme, but scarcely unique case, involved an entrepreneur who scoured Richmond, on the flat delta of the Fraser River in suburban Vancouver, looking for an address in Richmond Hill, a suburb north of Toronto, where he had made an investment. After a further week of fruitless searching in the Toronto region, he discovered that the address was fictitious and that the business, in which he had sunk a considerable investment on the advice of his immigration consultant, did not exist. Generalizing, another business immigrant told me, ‘Only the tycoons, like Li Ka-shing, come here with a committee of experts. The middle-class ask their friends, and often it’s a case of the blind leading the blind. There have been disasters’. Immigration consultants have become a significant intermediary in the movement of economic migrants; in Taiwan there were almost 200 immigration consultancies in 1996, a three-fold increase in a decade (Tseng 1997, 2000). In principle, they have scanned global venues and can suggest to clients the best package in the migration market. In practice their knowledge is considerably more impaired: one consultant specializing in Canadian BIP options declared ‘We really do not know that much about Canada. It is after all a foreign country to us’ (Tseng 2000: 152). Even barring fraudulent intent, the capacity for poor advice from such a consultant is evident. The possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, of misleading information from consultants in Canada as well as overseas has been apparent to legislators for over 25 years. An early report was issued with the unusually direct title, The Exploitation of Potential Immigrants by Unscrupulous Consultants (Government of Canada 1981); ten years later a Parliamentary Standing Committee decreed Immigration Consultants: It’s Time to Act (Parliament of Canada 1995). But it was not until 2004 that Ottawa required that immigration consultants be organized into a self-regulating association. Of the 90 entrepreneurs interviewed in Vancouver, over 80 percent had used a consultant in applying for a business visa. Some immigrants acknowledged that the consultant provided important guidance concerning where to live in Canada (36 percent) and the type of business to establish upon arrival (28 percent). Rarely, however, did the consultant comment on potential problems the entrepreneur would face in the Canadian business environment. In general entrepreneurs were sceptical about the services of their consultant. One Mandarin-speaking applicant

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who had been a college instructor for 20 years had his application sent to the entrepreneur stream without his knowledge. I had a lot of problems with the immigration consultants. Needless to say, I spent a lot of unnecessary money. The application took a full year. Since none of us spoke a word of English, the consultants wrote the proposal. However, what we didn’t know at the time was that the consultants put us into the entrepreneur class. Since they were the experts, we left it up to them to write the proposal. Moreover, we were never told about the conditions that we had to meet. Essentially, we were forced into doing business.

Additional problems emerged with the application. The English-language version submitted to Canadian authorities was different from the Chinese version the family read. After a year, the immigration papers came down so I decided not to press forward with the issue. However, this corrupt and dishonest business practice left me really disappointed. Needless to say, many people also suffered the same fate. Many like me were gouged a large sum of money.

But at least this applicant’s file moved smoothly through the review process. This was the typical experience of the entrepreneurs, who found immigration assessment lengthy but not difficult. If they did nothing else, the consultants did expedite passage to Canada.

The Calculating State Once business migrants were on the ground in Canada they became, in a sense, wards of the state. Though they showed considerable reticence about economic prospects, their chosen route to citizenship required business activity soon after landing. They entered a path mapped out for them by the protocols of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Those in the investor stream were obligated to invest a considerable sum – $400,000 by 2001 – in a five-year Canadian fund, with outcomes for much of the period after 1986 depending on the vicissitudes of the market and not infrequently predatory business partnerships. The entrepreneurs faced a more rigorous regimen of governmentality. They were required to establish a business that employed at least one Canadian and undergo continuing performance assessment by immigration authorities. As such, the programme represents a symptomatic form of the ‘rights plus responsibilities’ model of contemporary self-sufficient citizenship (Kymlicka and Norman 1994; Rose 1999). Expectations were set by officials that immigrants in Vancouver would invest around $150,000 in the business and they were encouraged toward manufacturing and away from real estate,

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retail or import-export activities. Monitoring included periodic reports, perhaps a site visit, and a final evaluation within two years to determine whether the success of the business justified lifting ‘the terms and conditions’ of the visa, freeing the entrepreneur from constant monitoring and permitting advance toward citizenship. CIC officials responsible for monitoring told me that four routine letters would be sent to business immigrants at sixmonthly intervals. Entrepreneurs were advised to update their files, and to present their report requesting removal of terms and conditions within a year of launching their business. Telephone contact and site visits would be conducted as necessary, though at that time CIC estimated that less than ten percent of files received visits. Business immigrants were encouraged to attend orientation seminars organized by the provincial government, to maintain contact with federal officials who monitored their file, and with the provincial office that provided counselling aid; the immigrant organization, SUCCESS, also offered an advisory programme. Attendance at the seminars and an active file were regarded positively in the final assessment. While entrepreneurs made some use of these services, the business performance expected by their visa was an abiding burden, generating stress and uncertainty. Sometimes frustrations were freely rendered: When you look at the [initial] letter that comes from Citizenship and Immigration Canada it always says for the immigrant entrepreneurs who come here that they have to make a significant contribution to the Canadian economy, right? Without fail it says that, but what have they done for the immigrants? To give you a one-page visa that contains conditions and tell you that you have to comply with them, I think it’s a tyrannical attitude.

At a focus group of Taiwanese entrepreneur immigrants conducted in Mandarin in 2002, a newcomer was actually advised by others to avoid the entrepreneur stream in favour of the investor class: If you wanted you could contact the immigration [authorities] and tell them you wanted to change your status to investor immigrant. Don’t push yourself into this entrepreneur immigrant, it’s really tiring and there are problems that follow. Entrepreneurs have to follow a lot of regulations, a lot of restrictions, there are many problems. First you have to hire an employee, run the business yourself and you have to live here for at least two years.You have to find a business, when you have found it, one year has already passed. When you start your business, it’s almost time to file in your application [to have terms and conditions lifted]. Your case would not be processed until 12 months later, not removing conditions… If your business in Taiwan is good, why don’t you stay in Taiwan? If you were an investor immigrant you only have to live here for six months. Then you could stay in Taiwan to make more money… If you compare the business in Vancouver with the business in Taiwan you would not come here.

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Later in the focus group, attention turned to the tense process of gaining approval from immigration officers, thereby lifting the dreaded terms and conditions of the visa. We started our business in September 2000, a few months after we landed. We submitted our first report in November 2000; the second report was sent in June 2001. When they received the second report, they wrote us telling us to wait 11–15 months for the reply to our application for conditions removal… November 2001 we sent them our year-end report, and they called us. They asked us for further information and we did send the information over immediately… The information they required was the capital in and out of the company. They asked us for the record of cheques for capital we put into the company. I told them we had not issued a cheque, the money we put in was straight from our savings account. They were asking for my returned cheques to prove that the money I put into the company was actually my own money. They called again yesterday…

The surveillant state, monitoring, expecting, judging, established a stressful audit culture that entrepreneurs had not confronted before. Performance standards that exceeded the normal disciplines of the market were unprecedented and unwelcome.22 In addition there were the unpredictable responses of the street-level bureaucrats whose discretionary powers added an additional layer of uncertainty to entrepreneurs. These decisions broke both ways, as became clear in sequential accounts from a focus group of business immigrants from Hong Kong. Maurice received unexpected good news: [The terms and conditions] were removed in one and a half years. I was surprised to receive the letter that my conditions were removed. I did not apply, maybe the accountant did that for me, but I did not know. I received the letter one day telling me that my conditions were removed. Many people told me that I was lucky.

In contrast, Claude’s CIC letter included an unpleasant sting in the tail: The immigration officer did come to look at our shop from outside. He did not come in. There were very few Caucasians shopping in our mall, so I could tell he was from the government. He also called me, asked for the person responsible and after exchanging conversation, said he was pleased. But when the letter arrived, I was not so pleased. He said my gross revenues were too little… not what they were expecting. Secondly, I had only hired one employee. Of course, why did I have to hire more than one when there was no business? He said, ‘I am ignoring your file, you could apply for your citizenship, but the conditions are not removed.’

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This was not an isolated case, for a second member of the focus group confirmed that, like Claude, his file had been closed but his conditions had not been removed, seemingly with no prejudice in his progression to citizenship. His consultant’s view was that the decision marked displeasure with the business, notably the single employee hired, but also an overarching desire to close the file in light of a large backlog.23 In a Sing Tao story the ‘no further action’ decision was described to Chinese-Canadian readers by an immigration lawyer as a humanitarian adjudication for deserving cases, opening a route to gaining citizenship equivalent to the removal of terms and conditions (Sing Tao 2001). Interviews with CIC officials in 2002 confirmed that at least half the files were closed in this manner, without removal of conditions but with ‘no further action’ conveying ‘a slap on the hand’, while not impeding entrepreneurs from applying for citizenship. Such decisions pointed to an unpredictable power of interpretation among immigration officers that seemed to contradict the apparently plain language posted on the government website. There the relationship between the lifting of terms and conditions and progression to citizenship appeared necessary. So too the advertised requirement was for a single employee, not more. But in fact provincial government seminars recommended a threshold of five employees in sectors where investment was discouraged, including retail and the restaurant industry, and this ‘recommendation’ it seemed had re-appeared as an assessment criterion.

Beneath the Radar: Locating the Neo-Liberal Subject The road to citizenship also required a minimum period of residency in Canada, an unwelcome constraint on highly mobile migrants, particularly those travelling as astronauts to East Asia. Social control and a degree of territorial containment were part and parcel of the state’s efforts to localize the enterprise and the bodily presence of millionaire migrants within Canadian jurisdiction. Aihwa Ong (1999) has written eloquently of the evasive tactics of East Asian ‘flexible citizens’ on the ‘Pacific shuttle’ as they seek to circumvent such limiting actions practised by the state. ‘For many overseas Chinese,’ she observes, ‘there is no obvious continuity between family interests and political loyalty’ (1999: 116). The habitus of mobility, environmental scanning for new business opportunities, and temporary liaisons with particular places, what one respondent described to me as the ‘restless creativity’ of Chinese business people, does not co-exist comfortably with the close and immobilising attentions of the state. Consequently families have developed strategies ‘adept at subverting the political regimes of localization and control’ (1999: 119).

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Two examples fill out on the one hand the Canadian state’s attempt at containment and control and on the other the striving of the entrepreneur to evade such an unwelcome regimen. The residence requirement within Canada as a necessity for citizenship eligibility – part of the state’s ‘regime of localization’ – has proven a barrier to astronauts absent for long periods to manage a business in East Asia. If a permanent resident does not maintain residency in Canada for at least 183 days in a 12-month period, there is a risk, under the Immigration Act, of losing permanent resident status, and a greater risk of an unwelcome interrogation by airport immigration officers. Astronaut businessmen of course would normally be outside Canada longer than this time period each year running their overseas enterprises, and therefore would be at risk of losing status.24 Loss of status would terminate progression to citizenship, the goal of the large majority of millionaire migrants. A Sing Tao story in 2000 suggested that comparatively longer residency requirements were contributing to declining immigration from Hong Kong, with Canada falling into an unfamiliar third rank that year behind numbers entering the United States and Australia. The World Journal’s Taiwanese-Canadian audience were informed that extended residency would cramp the highly mobile lifestyle of business immigrants, particularly those in the investor stream. An immigration lawyer opined that ‘they might not choose Canada’ as a result (World Journal 1999). An end run around this limitation for some astronauts has been to enter the United States from Canada as a visitor and use an American airport as a point of trans-Pacific departure and re-entry, so that immigration authorities do not record absence from Canada. This practice became familiar enough that it caught the attentive eye of Ming Pao, whose report documented the existence of drivers who would collect astronauts from the Seattle airport for $150–$200 and bring then across the border as if they had been short-term visitors to the United States, thereby concealing an absence of 3–4 months outside Canada on business ventures (Cheung 1999). A second point of resistance to bureaucratic surveillance has occurred in acquiring the necessary business for those in the entrepreneur stream. Establishing a business soon after landing and subsequently reaching a stage of commercial maturity so that terms and conditions can be removed less than two years later imposes a huge burden. In our interviews with entrepreneurs it soon came to light that some of them were cutting corners. The informal economy offers a refuge for ethnic entrepreneurs to evade the regulatory arm of the state (Kloosterman et al. 1998), but with the additional expectations and monitoring schedule of the BIP, evasion was more challenging. The expected investment in a business was $150,000 for entrepreneurs, but through informal means and at some risk of disclosure it was possible to reduce that cost and establish a more predictable route to business success and the lifting of terms and conditions.

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An immigration lawyer described the ruse to a conference arranged by the Asia-Pacific Foundation in 2006. ‘Suppose you have someone with a business doing not so well. $30,000 looks good to give over temporary ownership. There are accountants who will write up fraudulent papers to get conditions lifted.’ Such ‘ghost’ ownership of a business was known to many of the entrepreneurs we interviewed; a few admitted to using it themselves. ‘English is very important… Many [immigrants] who don’t know the language, they pay someone else to remove the conditions for them’. One respondent even saw this strategy as a norm among his own national group: ‘Ninety percent of … entrepreneurs are paying someone to get their terms removed’. For a fee that ranged from around $20,000 to as much as $100,000, nominal ownership of an existing company could be signed over to an immigrant entrepreneur to meet the obligatory terms and conditions of immigrant status. With that hurdle passed, ownership would revert to the original owner. Government officials are familiar with these shenanigans, and regard them as widespread.25 One jaundiced manager told me there was a high level of creativity in terms and conditions submissions and added jokingly, ‘people here really sit up when an honest one comes in’. A few years earlier CIC’s Director of Business Immigration had announced that in recent years the unit was aware of ‘hundreds’ of cases of false documents being submitted claiming ownership of a ‘ghost’ business (Sing Tao 1999).26 This irregular path, by-passing formal state expectations, was usually arranged ahead of time by consultants but could readily be found by newcomers themselves.The advertising pages of the three daily Chinese-language newspapers commonly included opportunities, some posted by consultants, others privately. For example, a listing in one of the newspapers identified a service that would find a business for immigrant entrepreneurs costing about $100,000 and requiring a signed agreement between the ‘new’ and the ‘old owner’. Telephone calls in Cantonese or Mandarin to similar advertised options led to the suspicion that under the table ventures were on offer. Neo-liberal emphasis upon the self-regulating household has readily led to such practices of workplace informality (Biles 2008). But as Jonakin (2006) has observed, informality may be portrayed as either virtue or vice. The entrepreneur operating ‘beneath the radar’ of bureaucratic monitoring is displaying creative self-sufficiency, if at the cost of the policies and procedures of the less than surveillant state.

The Controversy over the Disclosure of Global Assets Business immigrants commonly retained significant offshore funds in addition to income derived in Canada from entrepreneurial and investment activity. For some there was an incentive to be less than forthright about the

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scale of these funds in interviews, and more reliable sources were financial institutions that managed offshore deposits. A Citibank official in Hong Kong told Mitchell (2004) that only 10 percent of funds were typically transferred to Canada at the point of emigration but other globally diversified assets could follow business families later as needed. These overseas deposits were active, for business immigrants often maintained economic interests in Asia Pacific after they had landed in Canada. A significant share of the funds generated by these business activities is deposited offshore, although family members in Canada also benefit from them. The extent of astronaut travel to offshore business ventures is one indicator of the volume of such overseas financial resources. A study by the Chinese-Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia includes the startling estimate that two-thirds of males of Hong-Kong origin, and between the ages of 25 and 44, live and work outside Canada (Cernetig 2007). An earlier survey conducted by SUCCESS in 1991 in the ethnoburb of Richmond, adjacent to the Vancouver International Airport, revealed that 40 percent of Hong Kong Chinese lived in transnational family arrangements (Man 2007). The political economy underlying Canada’s Asia Pacific strategy presupposed incorporation of the wealth of immigrants within the nation’s borders. To ascertain the size of this wealth and confirm the tax payable from it, the state showed a willingness to play the globalization game, extending its reach beyond conventional jurisdictional territory. For undeclared overseas income belonging to Canadian residents could be illegally shielded from national taxation. Tax evasion and avoidance are not of course limited to immigrants from East Asia but are widely practised by wealthy residents who have transferred funds to overseas tax havens. Indeed tax avoidance by Canadians in Ontario (in particular), employing Caribbean refuges, was the primary irritant that prompted attempts by the state to enforce its jurisdiction to the global assets of residents. Public resistance to this globalising sortie by government revenue-seekers was not, however, concentrated among Bay Street lawyers representing WASP executives in Ontario, but instead was led by the advocates of millionaire migrants in Vancouver. Foreign assets disclosure legislation was announced in the 1995 federal budget as a means of identifying more completely the global income of Canadian residents, but implementation was repeatedly postponed until 1999 due to persistent public opposition. The new rules required Canadian residents to declare in their annual tax return offshore assets including shares, trusts, real estate and other holdings whose original cost exceeded $100,000. Details of foreign bank accounts must be disclosed, but personal use and business property are exempted (McCarthy and Gibbon 1998). Announcement of the tax changes stimulated a barrage of protests, a prolonged round of ‘citizenship games’,27 and clearly revealed the interests benefiting from existing non-disclosure. In the judgement of CIC officials it is

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the provincial governments who have been the abiding champions of the BIP, with its promise of in-flows of financial and human capital, and the Premier of British Columbia, Glen Clark, leader of the left-of-centre New Democratic Party, was an early and persistent opponent of the disclosure rules, warning they would ‘chase away wealthy immigrant investors’ (McCarthy and Gibbon 1998). His Finance Minister, Andrew Petter, wrote to the federal government asking for the withdrawal of the legislation, which ‘has led to fears of increased taxation and appears to have weakened Canada’s international reputation as an attractive place for individuals to reside and invest. This is of particular concern to British Columbia because the recent influx of new residents has been a major source of economic growth in the province… We have fears that people will not come or will leave’ (Chow 1997a). The Vancouver Board of Trade held hearings on the proposed global assets legislation, and was forthright in opposition, fearing the erosion of foreign investment and declining property prices as wealthy immigrants, unsettled by the disclosure rules, returned to East Asia (Gibbon and McCarthy 1997). Revealing the vulnerable economic sectors, the Board’s chief economist observed critically that ‘People of high personal worth are leaving, taking investment funds to other places, and leaving [behind] the trickle-down effects in real estate, construction, architecture, consumer goods and services… [The law] is applauded by those who oppose Chinese immigration’ (Chow 1997b). Organizations supporting the Board of Trade included the BC Business Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, all beneficiaries of the BIP. This lobby was nothing if not persistent, with Patrick Wong, an accountant and leader of the Vancouver activists, even pursuing and cornering Paul Martin, then federal Minister of Finance, in the men’s washroom of a Vancouver hotel. In September 1997, the federal government’s chief campaign organizer in British Columbia joined other Liberal politicians in urging for the assets legislation to be scrapped. Ted McWhinney, Liberal MP for Vancouver-Quadra (covering Westside neighbourhoods) noted, ‘While our policies were designed originally for general application and without regard to particular communities, they have come to be seen as having particular impact on the ChineseCanadian community, and especially on those recent immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong who came to Canada under the entrepreneurial immigrant program’ (Chow 1997d). To political and economic elites in British Columbia foreign assets disclosure would upset the Asia-Pacific strategy of the previous 15 years. Too much asset transparency was not helpful when it came to expanding the global space of flows. By 1998 opponents had some statistics to work with. Business immigration in the investor and entrepreneur streams from Hong Kong and Taiwan

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had fallen 94 percent and 78 percent respectively. Mason Loh, a Vancouver lawyer and a leader of the movement against overseas asset disclosure, claimed that the new rules were the culprit, for they were regarded by mobile business people as ‘discriminatory, invasive, inconvenient, costly to comply with and oppressive’ (Chow 1998b).28 He was joined by David Choi, President of Royal Pacific Real Estate, who wrote to Premier Clark expressing his ‘strongest opposition’ to the new law. Gearing up the lobbying effort, Loh wrote a full-page op-ed in the Vancouver Sun with an analytical critique of the disclosure rules. He laid out the fears inflamed by the law including the perception of an oppressive encroachment upon private property rights and the establishment of a wealth tax. ‘Are we prepared,’ he asked rhetorically, ‘to scrap our business immigration program and the significant economic and employment opportunities it generates…? Are we prepared to forego the investments that would help to return our province from the verge of recession that it now occupies?’ (Loh 1998). However, the die was cast when a detailed report by the federal AuditorGeneral concluded that tax avoidance and evasion through non-disclosure of overseas financial assets was a growing problem that required a federal response because of ‘potentially serious erosion’ of Canada’s tax base (Chow 1998c). Patrick Wong identified the costs that would ensue in the global market-place for immigrants: ‘In light of the global competitive environment that Canada faces, the government should be finding new ways to attract investor immigrants – not driving them away by burdening them with compliance costs and regulations that they would not be faced with in other countries’ (ibid). In response the Auditor-General denied any special targeting of new immigrants, pointing out that offshore trusts legally protected new immigrants from taxation on income accrued but not brought into Canada for a five-year period – time enough to gain citizenship (Desautels 1998). Federal authorities clearly recognized the source of discomfort about new taxation. In 1997 Revenue Canada tax officials travelled to Hong Kong to speak with returned migrants, and following final concessions but with a determination to move ahead with the rules, Cabinet Ministers were despatched to Hong Kong and Taiwan in late summer 1998 to try to alleviate anxieties. The furore over overseas assets disclosure undoubtedly galvanized the wealthy immigrant population. A formerly unknown group, Vancouver Westside Neighbourhood Association, circulated a flier in English and Chinese calling for a town hall meeting at the Oakridge Community Centre to discuss foreign assets disclosure legislation. The Chinese media in Vancouver were animated, not least on Hanson Lau’s popular call-in radio programme: ‘We’ve had more calls on this issue than any other. The mood is very unhappy, very ugly’ (Fennell and Thomas 1996). Talk was rife about departing households assuming non-resident status to avoid Canadian taxation, about price declines in the high-end residential

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market, and about business failures as immigrant customers had left the country.29 In real estate circles the disclosure legislation was seen as a serious deflator in the ‘carriage trade’ neighbourhoods. In 1997 an agent identified a price discount of $500,000 on a Kerrisdale house sale so that the owner could return to Hong Kong ‘because of the overseas assets law. Everybody’s scared’. Even the doyenne of Vancouver’s Westside sales, Manyee Lui admitted, ‘It’s terrible. A good number of people are moving back to Hong Kong. For those who want to get out, they will accept a lower price’ (Chow 1997e). In a 1998 conversation, Michelle, a Hong Kong-born agent, saw … Desperation for prices in the Westside [Vancouver] housing market. Prices are below the assessed values and there are no takers. I have friends with 15 listings and nothing is selling…The Taiwanese are not buying big houses, Hong Kong people are not coming over. I have no clients from Hong Kong any more. Many sold and went back last year. It looked like the Chinese government was being more reasonable than expected. The assets tax was a big killer and caused a big exodus last year.

Six months earlier I had heard a similar account from Sam, an AngloCanadian agent who worked the same Westside territory: You should have seen the change with that asset declaration law. In ’94, ’95, first part of ’96 it was all high-end sales. Our office is 50 percent Chinese agents and there was nothing for us. Then in came the law, and bang! It’s a total reverse. All that’s selling now is low end, 300, 400 thousand, and mainly to Caucasians. The Chinese agents have lots of listings, 800 thousand, 1.2 million, but they’re making no sales. I read recently that Hong Kong money is moving into London where they don’t have disclosure rules.30 You know the Chinese won’t put up with that sort of thing. They don’t want the taxman to know they’ve got a factory with good cash flow in Taiwan. Mind you, it’s the same here. [Someone I know well] has millions of dollars of property in Washington State. As far as he’s concerned it’s none of the government’s business. Apparently this law was intended to get at offshore trusts set up by people in Toronto, but it’s getting at the immigrants here as well.

The overlap in Michelle and Sam’s observations carry us into the controversial area of the metropolitan housing market, its stratified sub-markets, and the effects of immigrant investment, issues to be analysed in detail in Chapter 5. That will lead in Chapter 6 to the ethnically determined categories that are apparent in both testimonies, and which have led to charges of racism, both from critical race theorists and from business elites. A theoretical question to examine there is, when do empirically justifiable generalisations become racist categorizations?

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Conclusion Amidst the claims and counter-claims of the foreign assets issue, there was surprisingly little denial that such unreported and potentially taxable assets existed in significant volume. Indeed such an understanding was taken for granted even among the opponents of the legislation. In a joint presentation to the federal Finance Minister in 1996 opposing the regulations, the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants stated that ‘many well-heeled Asians are less likely to tolerate them since they came from countries where it is not necessary to disclose assets, or be taxed on income derived from assets… [People] don’t mind disclosing income, but they don’t want to disclose assets to any government’ (cited in Lee 1998: 70). The point of the disclosure law of course was that without knowledge of assets it was impossible to judge the accuracy of income statements. Jenny Kwan, NDP member of the BC Legislature, made explicit the argument that non-disclosure was a cultural disposition: ‘The Chinese are very private about their money. This law goes against our culture’ (Walkom 1997). Patrick Wong, chief animator of the Vancouver-based opposition to assets disclosure, concurred: ‘(The law) unfairly targets individuals who wish to keep offshore assets private, for reasons ranging from cultural sensitivities, to a well-recognized right to privacy’ (Chow 1997d). These spokespersons had learned the carrying capacity of a ‘cultural turn’ in public discussion in the era of multiculturalism. Native-born elites were less diplomatic, but also more transparent in their exposure of the simple logic of flows that lay behind Canada’s AsiaPacific initiative. Stephen Kukucha, the federal Liberal election campaign director in British Columbia, protested, ‘The policy runs contrary to what the government is trying to do by strengthening the country’s economy. This weakens the economy because, if people don’t come to invest, you lose jobs instead of gaining them’ (Chow 1997d). A Vancouver real estate lawyer with deep connections into the immigrant population, and who had lobbied against the assets legislation, candidly explained the scale of resistance to me in 1999: The Chinese have spent a lifetime concealing assets from their own governments and are not about to reveal them to the Canadian government. I have been over the books of hundreds of firms in Taiwan, and have never seen one that did not have concealed assets. It is the norm to run two sets of books… It’s a different institutional culture.

If this statement is correct, and it was repeated to me more than once by millionaire migrants and their consultants, then practices learned in East

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Asia are being carried to Canada where they fit less comfortably. We will see in the next chapter that the reality of geographical difference between the two shores of the Pacific also introduced severe challenges to the operational side of immigrant economic activity. Theorists of a ‘flat earth’ do not inhabit the same world as the grounded practitioners from East Asia who run up against the pervasive spatial variation across the Pacific every time they open their mouths, let alone open a business. But this is to run ahead of the argument. In this chapter I have documented the fruit of Canada’s Asia-Pacific mission, the delivery of vast resources of financial and human capital from the mid-1980s accompanying the Business Immigration Programme, resources enumerated in the calculations of the neo-liberal state. For the ‘cosmopolitan capitalists’ (Hamilton 1999), the decision to move to Canada was a fine balance, easily unsettled by perceived or actual conditions in origin or destination. Their own calculations led to discomfort, for fresh from the economic triumphs of East Asian development, the Canadian economy was much less attractive. But Canada had palpable advantages too: civil rights, relatively unpolluted environments, educational opportunities, leisure amenities, the welfare state and the promise of citizenship. Weighing and comparing was never easy. Some families made immediate adjustments moving into the circular motion of astronaut households, others waited out the period to citizenship before returning, others again made a decision to become settlers. But whatever strategy they employed they ran into the presence of the state as an active and usually unwelcome presence. On occasion, notably the foreign assets disclosure legislation, the state’s regulation could tip the balance and send households back on another trans-Pacific crossing. But the immigrants were far from passive victims. They actively engaged undesirable policies with political lobbying and, for some, quieter subversion. Beneath an abstract space of economic flows of migrants and capital lay a profoundly human topography of persuasion and improvisation.

Chapter Four

Geography (still) Matters: Homo Economicus and the Business Immigration Programme

The last chapter revealed the substantial wealth associated with the movements of financial and human capital from East Asia over the past 25 years, flows invited by Canada’s cavalier Asia-Pacific strategy. Ethnic Chinese immigrants in general reported available funds at landing five times greater per capita than immigrants from the rest of the world (Wong and Ho 2006). On average entrepreneurs headed for British Columbia demonstrated to the satisfaction of immigration officers that their ‘total money’ in the mid-1990s amounted to over $1 million, while investors raised the stake to a mean of over $2 million. Vancouver is home to the wealthiest immigrants, is the most popular location for newcomers landing with business visas and so has been the principal beneficiary of these movements of people and capital. It was widely believed that British Columbia escaped the deep recession in the early 1990s in part because of the spending power of its wealthy immigrants. The affluence of new immigrants from East Asia has been an abiding stereotype in the media and popular culture and has led to recognition by advertising and sales departments of a new consumer sub-market. The consumer enthusiasm of the Hong Kong population has been identified in the former colony (Cheng 2001; Lui 2001; Mathews 2001), and this predisposition has carried over into the Canadian market. Home purchase has been preferred to renting, even in the nation’s most expensive housing market. Within only five years of settlement, the probability of ownership among Asian immigrants in Vancouver was already as high as 0.70, well above the probability of 0.57 for Canadian-born (Laryea 1999). Luxury car dealers have been moving European and Japanese imports, especially Mercedes, Audi, BMW and Lexus models, from their lots with commendable speed with Chinese immigrants their favoured clients.1 Media and marketing consultancies have profiled the distinctive configuration of the Chinese immigrant consumer (Ng 1996). According to Aida Liang, Chair of the

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Vancouver Chinese Advertising Marketing Media Association, in contrast to the Toronto Chinese community, ‘People will spend more disposable income here, like in restaurant and retail or entertainment or real estate. They have more money, cash’ (Fong 1997). DJC Consultants (1995) noted that the new immigrants ‘have great spending power’ and ‘have a taste for luxury durable goods’. Home electronics are popular purchases, and an entertainment room that includes wide-screen television and surround sound is a widely available desideratum of the million dollar homes constructed for the new market. A marketing survey of Vancouver residents was summarized by a local columnist as follows: ‘A typical Chinese-Canadian consumer in Greater Vancouver is an affluent, educated person under 40 who pays cash for a BMW or Mercedes, owns a [detached] residence, enjoys dining out and is a frequent traveller’ (Chow 1995). In this chapter we investigate this stereotype and its geography of wealth creation. To what extent is this inventory of wealth being reproduced through business activity in Canada? Is there an even trans-Pacific playing field, so that the abundant skills and business experience of millionaire migrants prove readily portable across a global isotropic plain barely distorted by national borders? This was the government view in establishing the Business Immigration Programme as a means to leaven entrepreneurial skills and raise the pace of economic development in Canada. Just how successful then are the ‘cosmopolitan capitalists’ as they enter the Canadian business market? Is the notion of entrepreneurs sans frontières verifiable in their commercial ventures?

‘Many People Here Are Only Working for their Pocket Money’2 When I began my first round of interviews with wealthy migrants from East Asia in 1997 I shared the common view of government, the media and popular opinion concerning not only the wealth of the millionaire migrants, but also the portability of their economic acumen to Canada. These 24 exploratory interviews were held in the homes – mostly new houses – of economic migrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan living primarily in Vancouver’s upscale westside neighbourhoods of Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale, Oakridge and Arbutus/Mackenzie Heights. The interviews were accessed through several entry points into the community: an ‘English as a second language’ class, some clients of a professional working with immigrants, church contacts, a list from an immigrant-serving NGO, and referrals from friends and neighbours. What they revealed confirmed once again how cherished preconceptions can be overturned by the insubordinate practice of fieldwork, how field research is so stimulating because its outcomes are so frequently unexpected and subversive to armchair theory.

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The demographic profile of the respondents in these exploratory interviews was not exceptional. Among the 30 people interviewed, seven interviews were with a man, eleven with a woman, five with a husband and wife jointly, and one interview included two men who came to my house together. The group’s median length of residence in Canada was six years, and 40 the median age at landing. Seven of the women were part of astronaut families with their husbands away, while two couples had recently terminated such an arrangement. Eight household heads had landed through the investor category, eight arrived through the entrepreneur class, two were in the self-employed stream, and six were admitted as independent skilled workers. These categories proved to be somewhat porous, as respondents acknowledged they selected whatever entry class they were advised, usually by a consultant, would be the most likely route to gain entry. Respondents were given their choice of language for our semi-directed conversation; I conducted 14 interviews in English, while the remaining ten were completed by research assistants in Cantonese or Mandarin. What we heard scrambled our expectations. Although these were not new arrivals – remember, the median time since landing was six years – the first six interviews I conducted, located via three separate entry points into the immigrant population, revealed that neither the household head nor any immediate family members was working in Canada. For sure, the investors had made their financial commitments, and others had passive stakes in real estate or the stock market, but none was gainfully employed. Some had taken early retirement, some were astronaut households with active careers and ventures in East Asia, others again were waiting for a business opportunity that was yet to materialize. Later interviews were deliberately weighted towards economic immigrants who were employed or self-employed, but nonetheless of the 24 households, only one-half contained a member working in Canada. Five respondents owned a store or fast-food outlet, three others were in a trans-Pacific import-export business, three had part-time jobs, and one was an office manager. This performance level fell so far below the expectations of business immigration scenarios that some time was taken in the interviews trying to understand the decision-making and circumstances that had contributed to such modest outcomes. Confirming pre-migration anxieties, there was unanimous sentiment among all respondents that economic success in Canada, even limited success, was extremely difficult to achieve. One of my first interviews was with Mr. Chow, who lived at a prestigious address in the elite Shaughnessy neighbourhood.3 Highly qualified with a British advanced degree, he had owned a very successful business in Hong Kong and moved to Canada with self-employed immigrant status – reserved for the wealthiest applicants – in his mid-forties. He has not been involved in economic activity in Vancouver, other than passive real estate investment, though he

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was undertaking some volunteer Christian ministry with new immigrants. He saw an uninviting business culture with significant barriers to entry: What really surprised me and is still surprising me is the tax situation. Not surprising, it’s shocking compared to Hong Kong… Be prepared not to be too optimistic regarding finding a job or making money or building a new business venture or enterprises. [Immigrants] should not be too optimistic and be prepared to eat up your capital. I think that’s pretty serious… In Hong Kong when we invest, we look at three, five, seven years at most. But here you have to look long term. If you fail in one business, we say ‘Well, let’s do it again, maybe one of these days I can strike the jackpot’. But in Hong Kong if you don’t hit the jackpot once or twice then forget it because time was short before 1997. So the mentality is that we cannot look at things long term, keep on paying tax and keep on trying, trying… And the rate of return, if we have less than 10 percent, then [in Hong Kong] we say ‘Forget it, it’s a waste of time’. But here if you have 10 percent return a year, ‘Wow, that’s great!’ So it is a different mentality.

High levels of taxation, regulatory impediments and low returns have discouraged or delayed entrepreneurial activity by potential business people. Mr. Chow told me the story of a very wealthy acquaintance, a billionaire, who had planned to construct a large factory producing batteries outside Vancouver, but who relocated his investment to Mexico in the face of what he regarded as interminable environmental studies. Two of the interviewees had themselves been manufacturers prior to moving to Vancouver – exactly the types of entrepreneurs sought by the Business Immigration Programme – but had been deterred by the regulatory environment they encountered. Mr. So had been in the dyeing and finishing sector of the textile industry in Hong Kong with a factory employing a hundred people. He had concluded that pollution laws, labour regulations, and start-up costs made the business not feasible in British Columbia. Upon his arrival, Mr. So took early retirement. In contrast Mr. Wu had been co-owner of a garment manufacturing business in Hong Kong and had tried to enter the same sector in Canada. But the business had failed due to a combination of problems with unreliable suppliers and buyers as well as tough labour relationships. Mr. Wu had made a career change and become a greengrocer in a primarily white suburb; after 14 years of persistent financial loss in Canada he was finally making money, a net profit of some $3,000 a month, for a work week of 70–80 hours: For me the best thing is, yeah, because I lost a lot of money in Canada, it’s the first time I make money in Canada. This is very, very pleasant, because we really make a profit. This is the best thing in my life (laughs). Because, since the day I came, before I start this job I always lost money.

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As a long-term resident (he was the earliest arrival among the 30, landing in 1980) who had tried a number of career paths before opening his shop, Mr. Wu’s reflections on the business options open to immigrants like himself are illuminating: Yes, I change, a 360 degree change… To make a living either it’s being employed or being self-employed… Self-employed there’s only a certain kind of business you can make a living. There’s a café, small restaurant, and produce. So I choose produce because, you know, it generates more people and more cash flow.

A significant career change in a society where the business culture and language are unfamiliar is, as Josephine Smart (1994) has suggested, a prescription for failure, and both the experience and the fear of failure weighed heavily on the respondents. John Kim, the only Korean in the sample, had been in Canada only three months at the time of the interview. Landing through the entrepreneur stream, he felt the pressure to establish a business. But there were significant barriers. Like Mr. Wu he had realized that a career change was necessary; enquiries had shown there were no openings in Vancouver in merchant shipping, where he had risen to a senior management position in South Korea. A friend, also in the entrepreneur stream, had opened a shipping agency three years earlier, but was now losing substantial money from it. Prospects were daunting: [We] have much concern because I see other Korean immigrants are gloomy. They are idling, they are eating only… I heard of, from some of the Koreans, who were successful in business. But only a few, that we can count very easily with one hand. Only a few. Most Koreans lose money. I visit one Korean grocery yesterday who immigrated here about nine years ago. He was my senior in the same department in our company… He’s now doing his own business as grocery in New Westminster. I visit there and hear about their family’s last nine years from his wife. They also when they land, landed here, they made some contracts, buy some small business here from some other people. But later on they realize that… it was not honest. He broke the contract. So he lost some money… Not making money. Only getting money for his labour. They cannot hire somebody. If they hire, no money. My friend is working 365 days a year… They go to the store 8 o’clock, close 11 pm. I think they cannot make any profit, any money, only their living costs.

For Mr. Kim pressures are intense. Both the Korean and the British Columbian economy were in recession at the time of interview, his fellow countrymen in Vancouver were losing money in their businesses, despite more experience and better English than his own. His wife was becoming impatient and family feuds had broken out. The clock was ticking toward

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the two-year deadline for meeting his terms and conditions to establish a business employing a Canadian, but he had no idea of which way to turn. Inactivity, becomes one response to perceived weak business opportunities, and for wealthier families, typically in the investor class, can eventually lead to early retirement. The Mak family owned a land use consultancy in Hong Kong and in their mid-40s are well off, with their four children in private school in Vancouver. In the three years since they landed in Canada neither parent has worked. The children are told that their father has a home office. In fact behind the closed door he is playing computer games much of the day, and is phasing into retirement. Early retirement is a common status passage for the investor class, for respondents all agreed that if British Columbia’s economy could not compete with Taiwan or Hong Kong, its quality of life was unequalled. Typically, investors are a little older than the entrepreneurs and the model of passive investment does not demand active economic activity from them. Jack Leung had been a senior manager in a multinational corporation in Hong Kong. He and his wife had lived briefly in Toronto and, back in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, were at a dinner party. Of the dozen ethnic Chinese at the table, ten held Canadian passports, and the Leungs, who did not, were persuaded to return to Canada. They have four other family members living in Canada, and two in Hong Kong, all of them bearing a Canadian passport. At the age of 52 Jack and his wife had moved to Vancouver to retire, with a five-year investment in a Quebec-based fund qualifying them in the investor stream of the BIP. They have a busy social life with friends from Hong Kong, and return to their apartment in the former colony for three months each year. Life is good, adjustment has been easy. Mr. Leung has a clear sense of what living in Vancouver allows: You can’t earn any money here. If you have enough money, you can come. Just stay here and relax. You cannot earn good money here because the tax here is so high. So you must have earned enough money to come. And then if they come they must expect their lives to be totally different especially when they are working. Even though they have money in Hong Kong, they earn a very good salary in Hong Kong, when they come here they may not be able to find a job, or the salary would be about one-third or even less that of Hong Kong. I would never think of doing business here. Actually, most of my friends, they retire, because they are all my similar age. All my good friends are retired, I mean those who come recently, we are all retired people.

Jack continued that he knew only one person who was actually thinking of starting a business: breeding pigeons. But jokingly he added, it was only an idea. His friend would not follow through with the plan. The contribution of these investor class newcomers to the regional economy will be through

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their consumption expenditures; their investment, typically to a five-year Quebec plan, summarizes their productive economic activity. The economic apprehensions of immigrants, hesitant outside business participation, are repeated and thereby confirmed by respondents who are doing business in Vancouver. Almost every one of them found the going very difficult. Mrs. Ko, who entered Canada from Taipei with her husband as an investor, has an import-export business. She is disillusioned as a result of the conditions she has encountered: When we first came here, we were told this country is open for us in terms of business. When we got here we found that we were not needed… Our 20–30 years’ working experience are not needed here, they are not recognized.

She claimed she has advised relatives not to migrate to Canada, and ‘they threw away the application form’. We had to adjust to the situation of being unemployed. We had to start our business from scratch. We could hardly face it… We just tried to make enough to cover our expenses… It’s more stressful here… We really don’t know what to do, we are kind of, at a loss, we are confused.

Because of language difficulties and their own business experience, the couple is working within an ethnic enclave economy. But this economy is overcrowded, and they find the competition to be fierce (cf. Wong and Ng 1998; Ley 2006). With an unprofitable business, they continue to live on savings six years after landing. Repeating an experience James (1999) discovered in his interviews with traders, entry to the broader economy faces resistance from buyers and sellers alike: ‘they seem only to trust those who have grown up, those educated here locally’. Mrs. Chuang had also been in Canada for six years at the time of the interview. Entering through the entrepreneur stream, she and her husband opened a health food store. A teacher in accounting at a business school in Taipei, like Mrs. Ko she had high hopes initially for economic success. Inability to speak English has been a greater problem than they expected, and adjustment has been difficult and has led to family arguments. The Chuangs also find that heavy competition in the ethnic enclave economy is crippling their business: ‘Here people have to ‘steal’ customers from each other. We are not able to make a reasonable profit’. They are clearing only a little over a thousand dollars a month, business is getting worse, and Mr. Chuang is trying out real estate. Mrs. Wang is even less satisfied. Her family studied immigration options carefully, checking the United States, Singapore and Western Europe, and visited Vancouver three times before submitting their application. Perhaps it

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is this care in the application process that has accentuated her current unease. In Taiwan the Wangs were successful entrepreneurs, owners of a company manufacturing telephone components. Qualifying in the entrepreneur stream, they brought $2 million with them, and clearly have access to much more. The family owns two homes in British Columbia and their son is in boarding school there. They set up a business as required by the terms and conditions of their visa, but it did not bring in sufficient income. Importing products from their Taiwanese company for the North American market, they could not make their prices competitive and the business has become inactive. Mrs. Wang’s husband was unable to find an alternative and returned to Taiwan. Her disappointment has been aggravated by the failure of a second initiative, an investment in a local printing company, which subsequently declared bankruptcy. These reverses are hard to take for a family that has amply proven its entrepreneurial skills in Taiwan. Like virtually every respondent, Mrs. Wang appreciates the quality of life in Vancouver. But the economic liabilities are substantial. To survive, a new immigrant needs ‘enough huge money, because the expenses are high, the tax is very high. And everything you have to spend money on, you cannot make money here.’ Within two or three years even that ‘huge money’ would be seriously depreciated. The prospects for finding work are limited. In Taiwan Mrs. Wang, a university graduate, was a successful business woman: I think I’m still young, and have enough energy and have very good work experience to find a job here, but they don’t agree with your previous work experience. So we’re just wasting our experience. We have more than twenty years’ experience. I think I’m a really good businesswoman but I cannot do anything here.

Understandably, once the probationary terms and conditions for entrepreneur status were lifted, the Vancouver business, already struggling, was allowed to languish and out of necessity her husband became an astronaut, working in Taiwan and returning every three months to see his family. A similar transition has occurred in the Lin family who entered Canada in 1991 as investors. Initially unemployed, Mr. Lin subsequently rekindled business interests in Taiwan. But the astronaut option is a difficult one. Women can get lonely and depressed at the burden of managing a family in an unfamiliar culture. Men can become disconnected from their families. Affairs occur; marriages break up; children become unruly.4 With family anguish the unwelcome outcome, just as readily as families fall into the astronaut option, they also climb out of it. This was true of two reunited married couples. But both families were demoralized with no clear strategy for economic improvement. One was surviving through rentals on two Vancouver houses they owned and some stock market investment; the

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husband was fearful of starting a business that he knew to be a high-risk option. The second family was spending its way through its dwindling savings fund and Taiwanese investments. They estimated their savings would last a total of three to four years. In these distressing conditions, immigrants describe their status in the telling metaphor of imprisonment or immigrant jail (cf. Findlay and Li 1997; Teo 2007). One respondent described the length of his term in Canada as ‘three years, eight months’, vernacular shorthand for the length of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.5 After securing citizenship, such families are candidates for return migration (Mak 1997). Inevitably business immigrants who have left Canada have fallen outside the sampling net of CIC statistics and are absent from consultants’ and academic surveys. But their numbers are substantial though imprecisely known. Estimates in the early 1990s located some 25,000 Canadian passport holders in Hong Kong, but in the wake of 1997 these figures were revised upwards to 150,000 and more recently to over 200,000. Undoubtedly, immigrants in the business programme who have experienced unsatisfactory economic returns in Canada would be strongly represented in this group. Everyone I interviewed had friends who had made the return move: I have quite a number of friends that have already returned to Hong Kong in 1997 and this year. It’s about six or seven families that are already gone for different reasons. The most common reason is that they cannot find a job.

A few years later, once her children had graduated from university, this woman also returned to Hong Kong, to reunite with her husband whose professional status had not permitted him to find an equivalent position in Canada. Of the 24 families interviewed only three had made a successful economic transition to life in Vancouver. The Yip family decided to leave Hong Kong because of its intense business culture that crowded out family life. After visiting a number of nations in the late 1980s, Mr. and Mrs. Yip selected Vancouver. He left behind a senior position as a civil engineer in project management, while his wife was a health care administrator. The family spent their first year in Canada on an extended vacation. Employment, however, proved a problem and Mr.Yip ran through several positions before he accepted the challenge of owning a fast food franchise. The business seems to be doing quite well, and the family employed five to six staff. While the position represents a considerable social demotion from their former careers, they are well satisfied with the additional time it offers for family and community opportunities. Mr. Chen represents the success story among the sample. An investor, he has established a flourishing ginseng store at a high rent location within two years of landing. At the time of interview the store was generating an income

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of $6,000 a month. Undoubtedly a previous business selling herbal remedies in Hong Kong had prepared the Chens for this market niche, aimed at the mainstream as well as the ethnic market. The So family has also made a relatively easy transition. Mr. So is Vice-President of a Taiwanese development company. He entered Canada as an entrepreneur and established an import-export business sending hot tubs to construction companies in Taiwan. This carefully planned venture, employing one or two other people, will allow the terms and conditions of his visa to be met. But he is also preparing the ground for his Taiwanese company to enter the development sector in Canada.When interviewed he was commanding a modest Canadian income of some $50,000 a year. Across all 24 interviews, family biographies were surprising, in some cases shocking, in most cases including tragic moments. For the wives of absent astronauts, for men phasing into retirement, for families living on savings until their residency period for citizenship is complete, small parttime jobs as painters, gardeners, even as we saw in Chapter 1, newspaper delivery boys, pay a few bills and provide an interest. I was told at the time of the interviews that child-care had become a popular part-time position. The short course on child-care at the local regional college was said to be filled by immigrants. One respondent told me about her next-door neighbour in a 3000 square foot house, with a swimming pool and a three-car garage. The husband had run a business with limited success until its terms and conditions had been lifted. He then returned to Hong Kong to work and his wife began a child-care service for three children in her home. Asking $650 a month for each child the business would pay enough to get by as a secondary income, as pocket money. Nothing we were to hear in much wider subsequent research challenged the results of this exploratory survey. A focus group with members of a dozen households held at the same time as the interviews produced similar personal stories. A leader in the Taiwanese business community spoke for his compatriots: I think business is so hard for us to do. That is so surprising the first time we lose our invested money. All gone! That’s why we are surprised and disappointed. The people there they are like, they cheat me. My investment money, all gone… We still have money but we are afraid, afraid to invest…

Another businessman, this one an entrepreneur not an investor, chipped in: ‘But what I mean is the first experience to us about business is loss of money. We are afraid of… There are, we have $150,000. I mean most of us lost this kind of money, 80 percent. That’s our first experience.’ A Chinese-Canadian pastor told me about an incident in an English language programme held at his church in a wealthy district. In one class economic

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experience in Canada was the topic of discussion. When a teacher asked how many in the class had lost significant sums of money since landing, all 30 adults raised their hands. In 2003 a tax accountant told me his experience preparing the files of wealthy immigrants: ‘We have completed returns for hundreds of business immigrants. Very, very few of them make good money here. You could count them on the fingers of one hand’. Another respondent from Hong Kong summed up the situation: ‘It doesn’t matter how many more interviews you are doing, you will still get the same story’.

Disciplining the Author: More Interviews It is an irony of the bureaucratic world that although much of the water-cooler interaction of civil servants involves story-telling, sharing anecdotes about bosses and clients and, above all the foibles of the Minister and his/her Cabinet colleagues – who may later seek to secure their retirement years through memoirs recounting their own stories – nonetheless in their bureaucratic role policy-makers want numbers not narratives, even though these may offer precision but not necessarily accuracy. For the accountability culture places a premium above all on quantification (Rose 1991). Neo-liberal practice privileges benchmarks, performance standards, measured outcomes, the authority of seemingly dispassionate calculation.6 Among valued numerical outputs none has higher currency concerning economic migration to Canada than the annual report of jobs created and investments secured through the BIP, what I shall call the annual scorecard, truly the first line of defence at question time and the last word, the authoritative Q.E.D.,7 in any press release. Consequently the narrative emerging from the 24 interviews, good enough to warrant publication and thus a judgement of validity for academic readers, was not good enough to influence decision-making for a government audience. Government clearly requires a higher level of evidence than the academic world, or at least a higher level of numeracy –which is not necessarily the same thing. For official statistics are not as they appear to be innocent numbers on display, inertly declaring an unproblematic truth ‘out there’. As often they are purposefully crafted entries to promote, or conceal, an intention or outcome ‘in here’. How else to explain the lament of a senior manager who had seen the annual scorecard for many years, but knows its limitations as an assessment of the BIP? ‘We have no evidence if it [the BIP] works or doesn’t work, and it’s been 15 long years’. Consequently, ‘statistics must always be political due to the way in which they make some things visible while consigning others to obscurity…’ (Legg 2007: 715). So it was that I was invited by a public agency to expand the assessment of the business programme with a larger sample and a more structured methodology.8 Ninety interviews were undertaken in 2002 with entrepre-

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neur class immigrants, with equal numbers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea living in Greater Vancouver; three focus groups were also held, each with 7–8 entrepreneurs originating from one of the countries. Respondents were contacted through snowball sampling and interviews were conducted in the language of their choice; they were given small cash payments to cover their costs. The mandate of the survey was to discover indicators of entrepreneurial success; its terms of reference also produced explanations of business failure. The survey instrument was a lengthy questionnaire with 106 items. While most questions were closed, permitting an assessment of mean and median responses, respondents were encouraged to expand short answers and many did so. Interviews were tape-recorded, translated where necessary, and transcribed. The mean age of the 90 household heads was 41 at the time of landing, and the typical four-person nuclear family included two children. It was a requirement of the survey that the terms and conditions of the entrepreneur’s business had already been lifted, and on average families had been resident in Canada for eight to nine years, time enough to be well settled. A mature age at arrival is common in the business class and follows from the necessity for significant overseas business practice, and indeed respondents had on average 14 years of experience in their home country, and expressed satisfaction with their economic achievements there. Human capital at landing was bi-modal, with 42 percent having completed a university bachelor’s degree, though a smaller proportion (33 percent) had attained a high school diploma or less. English-language use prior to migration was limited, with only a quarter of respondents in a work place that used some English. Indeed minimal or no use of English was one of the key factors that had led families to apply for immigration through the BIP, for they well knew that poor language skills would compromise an application as a skilled worker with its more demanding selection criteria.9 Part of the survey examined the entrepreneurs’ experiences with their first business, the venture accredited by immigration officials, permitting them to move toward citizenship. Half the entrepreneurs had sold their business just after its approval by officials.10 The reason for sale was invariably weak economic performance. For many this decision came from a comparative assessment, knowing that higher returns were available in East Asia. This is a common life transition for families, as the Canadian business is run down and astronaut status is taken up, with the male household head returning to economic ventures in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China or South Korea to generate a cash flow while his family remains in Canada.11 We saw in Chapter 3 that from their own testimony entrepreneurs met the state’s expectations in terms of investment and job creation. But the pattern of success was not symmetrical. Business immigrants gave a much more jaded assessment of performance on the basis of very weak revenue

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streams. Half the sample reported the gross revenue of their business the year terms and conditions were lifted; the median figure was only $180,000, while net revenues were of course much lower. The mean net revenue for an enterprise was only $20,000 and the median level was zero, with many entrepreneurs unable even to extract a full salary for themselves from the business.12 They removed as much of a partial salary, in some instances nothing at all, as the business would bear before losing money. A simpler question asked them whether their business made money, lost money or broke even. Almost all of the entrepreneurs were able to give an answer: 42 percent reported a positive net balance, 31 percent a negative balance, while 27 percent broke even.13

Accounting for Success and Failure Explanation for the selection and success of immigrant self-employment has moved through several stages, and different theoretical traditions. Neoclassical economists have stressed the human capital of entrepreneurs themselves, while sociologists identified the social contexts of ethnic and class resources with the latter becoming increasingly salient with attempts to recruit business immigrants (Marger 1989, 2001; Li 1992). At the same time immigrants enter broader institutional and economic contexts, and an interpretation that has emerged from the welfare states of Western Europe stresses mixed-embeddedness, involving both an immigrant’s position relative to the marketplace and also the presence of the interventionist arm of the state (Kloosterman 2000; Rath 2000). With CIC officials monitoring their immigrant entry routes, business immigrants in Canada are well aware of the double discipline of both the market and the state. Clearly the information gathering discussed in Chapter 3 was not adequate, for entrepreneurs held far from satisfactory knowledge about the economy they were entering and 70 percent did not find conditions in Vancouver as they had expected them to be. In every case unexpected conditions were prejudicial to business outcomes; in no cases were they beneficial. Complaints repeated issues raised by other entrepreneurs in the family histories presented earlier: a small regional market and high business costs were private market obstacles, while high taxation and wide-ranging regulations reflected the interventionist public sector.14 Entrepreneurs sensed a double jeopardy as they battled against these two demanding disciplinarians. Adjustments occurred. Over 40 percent tore up their business plan and looked at other sectors: there was a movement out of anticipated investment in manufacturing, construction and the import-export trade, and a movement into retailing and restaurants, sectors discouraged by provincial managers.15 A graphic artist became a retailer of children’s clothes, a garment manufac-

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turer opened a restaurant, a chemical engineer bought a flower shop, the owner of a piano academy established a pet food store; at opening almost 60 percent of entrepreneurs were working in a business unrelated to their area of expertise in their home countries. The advantage of these consumer sectors was an immediate cash flow demonstrating to monitors that economic activity was underway. In contrast the regulatory maze of environmental, labour and product codes, inspections and licensing in order to establish manufacturing and construction companies, and then the need to produce revenues, would cut too deeply into the two-year probation entrepreneurs faced in having something tangible to present to immigration authorities. Retailing and the restaurant sector had other advantages. There were stores for sale – half the entrepreneurs bought an existing business rather than launch a new one – requiring minimal refurbishing before opening day, and there were many opportunities to work within the large ethnic Chinese enclave, where mother-tongue usage was possible. Of the three national groups, overall the Korean-origin entrepreneurs were the most successful, even though in most cases revenue streams and their own satisfaction remained modest.16 Indeed country of origin was the single best predictor of commercial success, followed by university education and with weaker effects from English-fluency (Ley 2006).17 Interestingly, the level of capital investment made no difference to economic outcomes. Nor was there evidence of discrimination as an important barrier, supporting other studies suggesting that in the current phase of immigrant entrepreneurialism, this form of blocked mobility is of dwindling significance (Li 1992; Glover and Sim 2002; Hiebert 2003; but contrast Wong and Ng 2002). The relative success of the Korean entrepreneurs had much to do with their geographical marketing strategy. With a Korean population of under 20,000 in the Vancouver region in the 1990s, they had a much smaller and fairly dispersed co-ethnic market, and as a result selected business locations throughout the region, including areas with a high share of white, Canadian-born residents. This spatial strategy of serving the non-immigrant mainstream, true of Korean merchants elsewhere (Lo et al. 2002), involved language challenges but was rewarded by positive revenue streams. In addition, the Korean respondents had cut adrift from home country transnational economic ties to a greater degree, while Hong Kong and Taiwanese entrepreneurs were much more likely to maintain trans-Pacific business linkages (cf. Tseng 1995; Wong and Ng 2002). As the most fully embedded in the Canadian economy, Korean-Canadians had the most to gain (and lose) from their investment and were motivated to succeed. The spatial strategy of Taiwanese and Hong Kong entrepreneurs in contrast made heavy use of the ethnic enclave. Relatively high proportions of their customers fell within the enclave, and Cantonese and Mandarin were often used, seemingly minimizing the barrier of language. More familiar product

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lines and, where necessary, trans-Pacific product sourcing, could also ease the conduct of business. But these gains came at a heavy price, for while reducing business uncertainty these merchants exposed themselves to considerable economic risk. The enclave became saturated with too many Chinese restaurants and Taiwanese travel agents. When entrepreneurs complained about the small size of the regional economy it was the highly competitive ethnic enclave economy they primarily had in mind. Recall Mrs. Chuang’s bitter experience with her health-food store, located within the Chinese ethnic enclave: ‘Here people have to ‘steal’ customers from each other. We are not able to make a reasonable profit’. Vancouver and suburban Richmond, the municipalities with the highest concentration of Chinese-Canadians, recorded also the weakest business performances in the metropolitan region. Evidently participation in the ethnic enclave economy exerts a serious penalty on its members, in line with a sceptical European literature that, rather than celebrating the opportunities of the enclave, sees it instead as offering only ‘sectoral imprisonment’ (Barrett et al. 2003), with ‘appallingly high individual failure rates’ (Jones et al. 2000). The Korean entrepreneurs also seem to confirm a European sentiment that only through ‘breaking out’ from the enclave is there a higher probability of economic success (Engelen 2001). A lower achievement orientation also occurred among some ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs whose primary economic interests were elsewhere. This reduced level of motivation is also emphasized in two other studies with small samples of business immigrants. In Calgary, Josephine Smart (1994) noted the existence of ‘many business proposals that are created more to please and appease immigration officials than to reflect realistically the expertise and commitment of the applicant’. In Vancouver, Edward Woo (1998) also noted the conditional motivation of members of the ethnic Chinese business class. Obligated to set up a business, ‘It is not a secret that some of them do so merely to fulfil this requirement. Many of these businesses are set up in haste and are not profitable… Once the immigration condition is removed, these entrepreneurs would either move into some other business or return to Hong Kong’. To animate these conclusions I end this section with two case studies that reveal how immigrants struggled with the constraints and possibilities they encountered, vignettes that underscore the emotionally charged process of entrepreneurship. Mr. Park was one of the five most successful entrepreneurs we interviewed. He had been the Accounts Manager for a large construction company in Korea, and brought significant human capital, including a university education, some limited on the job English proficiency, and 17 years of business knowledge. In addition he held $700,000 to start a new life with his family in Canada. But they approached immigration tentatively, and when they landed seeking better education for their children and an

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enhanced quality of life, they were unsure how long they would remain in Canada. Ten years later Mr. Park still owned his initial business, a video store located in a largely white suburb where business is conducted in English. Especially in the early years language presented difficulties in answering customers’ questions. But he employed one full-time and four part-time English-speaking staff, and persevering with the business reported net revenues of $400,000 in his last tax year. The store continues to show growth and Mr. Park is well satisfied with its progress. He has moved on to a second initiative, establishing a parking site for recreational vehicles as he aspires to ‘move up to bigger business’. His own circumstances lead to some optimism – ‘here are many opportunities’ – while at the same time he is well aware of the challenges to small business: ‘it’s very hard to make money here… There are many Koreans who are getting a lot of stress because of terms [and conditions]’. One of the sadder accounts of opportunities lost came from Mrs. Chan, who moved to Vancouver from Hong Kong with her husband and three children in 1995. She had less than high school education, but as opportunities opened up on the Mainland her family started a garment factory, and at the time of their move to Canada were on a wave of success, operating three factories with almost a thousand workers. They felt strong social pressures to leave Hong Kong’s political uncertainty even as their business was thriving: We moved to Canada at the best time of our business. I consider that a sacrifice, a painful sacrifice. We did not know much about Canada, we only found it very beautiful and our friends told us the education system here is very good… except taxation which is very high. We did not have a full picture of Canada. We were scared of 1997. Everybody wanted to leave Hong Kong. We did not know English and our children were still very young. We did not really want to come but everyone was leaving.

We have seen that limited education in particular and also the lack of English skills are correlated with business failure in Vancouver. These limitations would also preclude landing as an independent economic migrant, so the family were pressed into the business class where their strong manufacturing record and cash assets would ensure easy entry. Their initial plan was a sojourn of at most five years, time enough to guarantee the ‘insurance policy’ of a Canadian passport. But life in Vancouver has proven an unmitigated disaster. I have been very depressed since we came here… We failed in whatever we tried. We could not control our business in China from here. We bought a commercial property, a retail store, but we were deceived. When we invested in a restaurant we lost the money. We did not know much about Canada, we had never thought of being cheated in Canada, but we found a bigger trap here.

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Not only was the family uninformed but they also received overly optimistic advice from their immigration consultant. They brought half a million dollars to settle and set up a business. Not speaking any English at all, they moved to the Chinese-Canadian ethnoburb of Richmond. Withdrawal from their operations in China took some time, and although they had planned to establish a garment factory in Canada, they ran out of time in terms of their two-year visa deadline, and started a simpler business. ‘The two years were too short. We had to rush into something. We had no time to plan, how to start, no time. How could we run a successful business in two years? The business failed, we lost all of our money. I invested $100,000 but we lost it all in two years.’ The working language of the restaurant was Cantonese, and it depended on the co-ethnic enclave community for its customers. But the sector was saturated, competition was fierce, failures were commonplace. Mrs. Chan is bitter as well as depressed: No one would want to invest here. Who cares how good your benefits are when they have no chance to make money? Many of my friends do not want to come after hearing our experience. They would choose to pay for their children’s education [here] instead of bringing the whole family over. The foreign assets disclosure law is a killing policy. A lot of people have run away from Canada after getting their citizenship.

Mrs. Chan and her family are now living from their Hong Kong derived savings. Her husband works part-time at a friend’s restaurant. Not only are they disillusioned, but also ‘Among my friends, none is successful’. While they once considered building a life in Canada, their experience has soured them. ‘I don’t like this place.’ The terms and conditions of the BIP do appear unduly disciplinary, if not punitive. The two-year condition is unrealistic; BIP managers I spoke to had pressed for a longer probationary period or indeed no time limit at all.18 A high failure rate exists in non-immigrant small business even without many of the barriers confronted by business immigrants. For immigrant entrepreneurs, with poor or no English, unfamiliar with the regulatory economic culture of Canada, the expectations of the BIP trigger a financial, and sometimes a human disaster, waiting to happen (Smart 1994).

From Ethnography to Data Bases Using other sources it is possible to extend these findings from ethnographic samples to broader populations. Larger statistical samples confirm the outcomes observed so far and expand the validity of the results, adding the authority of large data bases to the interpretations derived from more intensive ethnographic fieldwork.

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Cross-tabulations from the 1996 Census raised preliminary concerns about economic achievement. In metropolitan Toronto, ethnic Chinese immigrants appeared as negative outliers in economic performance (Lo and Wang 2004).19 While 30 percent of all working-age adults in Toronto, immigrant and non-immigrant, were not working, this figure rose to 40 percent for ethnic Chinese immigrants. The four largest sub-groups, born in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam, all registered levels above the metropolitan average of adults not at work, numbers ranging from 32 percent of Vietnamese to a remarkable 52 percent of Taiwanese adults. Lo and Wang (2004: 115) find the very high Taiwanese proportion outside the workforce ‘puzzling’. Among all Chinese sub-groups, the Taiwanese are the most fully contained within the BIP, and the substantial lack of economic participation recorded in the family histories in this chapter points to the role of the Business Immigration Programme in contributing to this anomalous underachievement among Taiwanese-Canadians.20 Personal income data from the Census also reveal that in 1996 all overseas-born Chinese were receiving an average income of $21,200, or 73 percent of the income of all Torontonians. However, those who had immigrated in the previous five years shared the general income penalty faced by new Canadians, reporting only 44 percent of the metropolitan income average. While this modest achievement represents the under-utilisation of human capital endured by most recent immigrants, marking the most significant failure of Canada’s immigration policy (Pendakur and Pendakur 1998; Li 2000; Reitz 2001), further probing suggests more specific factors are also at work. Micro-data analysis from the 2001 Census revealed continuing weak economic performance for recent immigrants to Canada from Hong Kong and China with wages and salaries ‘extraordinarily low’ in light of the human capital of newcomers (Guo and DeVoretz 2006: 290). Unexpectedly, highest wages coincided with younger cohorts, 26–30 year-olds from Hong Kong and the 36–40 year-old age group from China. Thereafter, wages and salaries dropped for recent immigrants in their forties and fifties, decades which would normally coincide with peak years of earning. This profile is consistent with the differential economic achievements of skilled workers and the business class in Canada. Higher earnings are attributable to younger immigrants who land as independent skilled workers, a class normally more successful in the labour market. It is the business class who are typically in their forties or early fifties upon arrival and whose weaker economic performance would drag downwards the slope of earnings with increasing age. The Census also provides a striking contrast between accumulated wealth and current cash flow among wealthy migrants from East Asia. A special tabulation of the 1996 Census for Vancouver separated out immigrant households of self-declared Chinese ethnic origin who had landed in Canada during the previous decade. In a first run this population was disaggregated

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WEST VANCOUVER

NORTH VANCOUVER NORTH VANCOUVER CITY

VANCOUVER

PORT MOODY BURNABY

COQUITLAM PORT COQUITLAM

PITT MEADOWS

MAPLE RIDGE

Airport

RICHMOND

Percentage tenure = own 0–68.1 68.2–83.3 83.4 – 93.7 93.8 – 98.5 98.6 – 100.0 No data

SURREY LANGLEY

DELTA

CBD

0

2 miles

0

2 kilometers

WHITE ROCK

Figure 4.1 Homeownership in 1996 among 1986–96 landings of self-designated ethnic Chinese households, Vancouver CMA

by housing tenure. Metropolitan Vancouver’s average house price of just over $300,000 in 1996 was by far the highest in Canada, presenting formidable barriers to home purchase. Nonetheless, consistent with public perception, the map of homeownership shows remarkable levels of attainment by these immigrants (Figure 4.1).21 With census tracts divided by quintile, the middle quintile of homeownership for these recent arrivals reached the astonishing range of 83 to 94 percent. The most expensive districts, with a mean value in the $700,000–$800,000 range in 1996, included Vancouver’s westside neighbourhoods,22 the British Properties in the suburb of West Vancouver, and, just behind in value, the new mansions of the Westwood Plateau in suburban Coquitlam, all of them popular with wealthy immigrants. In these districts the homeownership rate commonly exceeded 90 percent. Here then is the realized stereotype with which we began: assetrich millionaire migrants in their substantial homes. But Figure 4.2, displaying for the same population the percentage of households below the low-income cut-off (LICO), a poverty threshold, presents an extraordinary contrast. It reveals a disarmingly contradictory measure of the miniscule cash flow disclosed to the census enumerators by exactly the same group of 1986–96 arrivals. With census tracts again partitioned by quintile, the same middle quintile includes tracts where between 48 and 54 percent of these same households declared incomes below the

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NORTH VANCOUVER

NORTH VANCOUVER CITY

VANCOUVER

PORT MOODY BURNABY

COQUITLAM COQ PORT COQUITLAM PITT MEADOWS

MAPLE RIDGE

Airport

RICHMOND

Percentage below LICO 0–39.8 39.9–48.2 48.3–53.9 54.0–62.5 62.6–100.0 No data

SURREY LANGLEY

DELTA

CBD

0

2 miles

0

2 kilometers

WHITE ROCK

Figure 4.2 Households below the poverty line in 1996 among 1986–96 landings of self-designated ethnic Chinese households, Vancouver CMA

poverty line.23 In Vancouver’s expensive westside neighbourhoods, the British Properties and the Westwood Plateau, all tracts disclosed poverty rates in excess of 40 percent, often over 50 percent, for ethnic Chinese households landing between 1986 and 1996. There is a stunning incongruity between high levels of consumption and the most meagre income flows. But this is the same story, now multiplied across the map of the city, that business migrants told me as we sat in their expensive homes concerning low incomes, business failure and limited economic participation. Ethnographic details are confirmed by census generalities, and offer an interpretation of what is otherwise a profound census anomaly. Census materials do not provide information on the landing class of immigrants, and a sharper interpretation emerges from the Government of Canada’s Immigration Data Base (IMDB), a unique compilation of immigrant characteristics derived from landing cards, including class of entry, that are linked with subsequent income tax returns. Individual data of course are confidential and tabulations are made available to researchers in highly aggregated form. Nonetheless they provide a valuable analytic grid inaccessible from other sources. In an important study, Wang and Lo (2005) examined IMDB files that reported income tax returns completed in 2000 (for the 1999 tax year) submitted by members of the almost 800,000 immigrants between 1980 and 2000 who listed a Chinese mother

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tongue on their landing card.24 Just over 20 percent of this group entered Canada through the three business classes. The average total personal income of all Chinese immigrants who filed returns in 2000 was just under $15,000, about half the income for the entire population.25 Major distinctions emerged when total income was decomposed by class of entry. The independent class of skilled workers proved the most successful with personal incomes of $25,000, while the business class trailed far behind. Both the small self-employed category and the much larger group of Chinese entrepreneurs and investors declared a total income of only $13,000, not only lower than skilled workers but also behind immigrants who landed as sponsored family members and even less than refugees, half of whom entered Canada as the multiply disadvantaged boat people from Vietnam. A final reconfiguration of the data by destination city reveals that total income for the Chinese immigrants who settled in Toronto is 30 percent higher than for the wealthier households who live in Vancouver. Without ethnographic insight, these results pile paradox upon paradox. In Vancouver where the wealthiest ethnic Chinese immigrants landed, incomes in 1999 were much weaker than in Toronto, the preferred destination of those with more modest financial resources. The investor stream has been the dominant entry channel for wealthy Taiwanese, yet Taiwanese landing through the 1990s reported lower employment income in 1999 than even the multiply disadvantaged Chinese arriving at the same time from Vietnam. Those who brought the most in terms of economic capital and business experience achieved the least; those who brought the least have done better. The personal histories told by business class immigrants in Vancouver earlier in the chapter show how ethnographic material makes sense of these convoluted outcomes. The investor class often retired after arrival – hence their landing card status of ‘not working’ – and more generally were passive economic players; their primary objective was to enjoy the fruits of their earlier offshore labours, move to citizenship and perhaps manage assets. The entrepreneurs faced huge challenges in running a successful business; returns were modest, business failures were common, and after the extraction of state approval to dismiss terms and conditions, the business was commonly sold, and energetic economic activity in East Asia renewed. With this transnational modus vivendi in place, the Foreign Assets Disclosure legislation was exceedingly unwelcome; it is notable that resistance was centred among Vancouver’s wealthy ethnic Chinese population, sustained by offshore life-lines rather than Canadian earnings. Analysis of an earlier IMDB release, for the 1995 tax year, considered data for British Columbia alone, although the cost for this level of geographical specificity was the aggregation of all national origins (Ley 2003). However, due to the overwhelming role of Hong Kong and Taiwanese migrants in the business class of British Columbia during this period, we

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can be confident that the data refer primarily to these groups. Even though employing very conservative procedures, the results showed not only meagre levels of income,26 but also that in the landing years from 1980 to 1995 a median number of at least 32 percent of business class tax-filers in British Columbia declared no earnings at all from either employment or selfemployment, a figure that contrasted unfavourably with the lower median value of 22 percent for all immigrants and refugees. Again we see that those immigrants with the greatest level of economic capital reported the lowest level of economic activity. The analysis revealed a second point of slippage in the record of business immigration, taking it far from the official goal of accelerating economic development. Tax-filer returns tabulate a total national population of about 125,000 business immigrants and family members, landing between 1980 and 1995, who are represented in the 1995 tax returns. But landing cards indicate a very much larger number who entered Canada through this period, in the vicinity of 240,000 persons. What lies behind this substantial erosion of the tax-filer sample? Clearly large numbers of households who landed in the business class during this period did not file returns in 1995. A plausible interpretation considered further in Chapter 8 is that a significant number of them were no longer in Canada. Either they had moved on to a third country, most commonly the United States, or they had returned to their country of origin. Surveys of intentions undertaken in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, prior to emigration occurring, revealed a strong desire for a temporary departure that would quickly lead to return.27 The missing entries from tax-filer returns in Canada suggest that after briefly entering the accounting books in Canada, many migrants followed through on this plan. This whole regime of temporary and circular migration among the business class from East Asia is not particular to Canada. Australia and New Zealand, competitors for millionaire migrants from East Asia, have recorded a similar set of outcomes. In general, wealthy migrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan have achieved only modest economic success in both countries; in New Zealand, Ip (2003: 352) has described their status as ‘grim’ (also, Ho and Bedford 1998; Ip, Wu and Inglis 1998; Burrill 2000; Ip 2001; Chiang 2004). On the other hand it is quality of life and a western education for their children that has been prioritized over economic opportunities (Ip and Friesen 2001). As in Canada, astronaut commuting and temporary migration followed by return are integral to a transnational encounter with space (Mak 1997; Pe-Pua et al. 1998; Ho 2000; Ho, Ip and Bedford 2000). Anita Mak’s (2001) study of over 100 Hong Kong professionals and managers in several Australian cities revealed that over a third were considering return, joining colleagues who had already moved back. In an identical outcome to Canada’s, a small sample of Taiwanese had migrated to Australia for an enhanced quality of life and superior education for their children;

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career prospects lay behind their decision to return (Guo and Iredale 2002; also Ip and Friesen 2001). A similarity in circumstances of the smaller millionaire migrant populations in Australia and New Zealand indicates a more general set of motivations, strategies and outcomes. At the same time the imprint of Canada’s Business Immigration Programme in contributing to these outcomes cannot be overlooked.

Deconstructing the Business Immigration Programme Among the paradoxes of the BIP is how a programme so revered by senior governments has contributed so much anguish among its clients. The annual scorecard broadcasts triumphal success in the hard numbers of jobs created and investment secured. Undoubtedly there have been positive outcomes, perhaps many of them, for immigrants as well as governments. In a panel study beginning in the early 1990s with 70 entrepreneurs in southern Ontario who had arrived from many countries, Marger (2001, 2006) identified patterns of assimilation, naturalization and weak transnationalism. Business endeavours have been harnessed to local economic development just as the BIP anticipated. It is important to keep these positive counterexamples in mind. Yet at the same time Marger noted the contraction of his panel; in seven years half of its members disappeared and could not be traced. A majority of these originated in East Asia. There has been a persistent tendency to overlook such attrition in the BIP (Ley 2003). A detailed review of the entrepreneur and self-employed streams conducted by Price Waterhouse in 1989 provided detailed analysis on outcomes for a large sample of immigrants who had landed in the previous two to three years. But left implicit was the high level of non-response. Over half the respondent list could not be traced or were unwilling or unavailable for interview. Of those interviewed, only half were meeting the terms and conditions of the programme, while only 35 percent of these businesses were profitable (EIC 1990). Attrition was also a feature of a second evaluation, conducted by Ernst and Young on the investor stream (EIC 1992). In this study, 40 percent of investors in the sample who had landed in the preceding four years could not be traced; of those interviewed a third were not working. Perhaps piqued by this shrinking interview list and other significant failures, the consultants produced a highly critical report, including the charge that the annual scorecard of measurable benefits was significantly inflated. This is a substantial challenge for as we have seen the scorecard is the trump card when it comes to defence of the BIP. But there are significant grounds for challenging the robustness of its persuasively large numbers. Among many shortcomings Ernst and Young found in the Investor

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Programme was a three-fold exaggeration of its actual employment benefits: ‘its success is much more limited than is suggested by gross estimates of numbers of immigrant investors, or their gross investment’ (EIC 1992, ix). Worse was to follow, as in response to continuing complaints by investors and critics, CIC hired a senior forensic auditor from the World Bank. After reviewing a sample of investor statements and departmental documents, the auditor concluded that systemic corruption existed in the programme. The auditor did not mince his language, describing the investor programme to be ‘a massive sham. The middlemen made hundreds of millions of dollars… Claims about the benefits of the program in terms of job creation and investment have been widely inflated’ (Mitrovica 1999).28 The government contested the report as they had the earlier Ernst and Young assessment, and a significant overhaul of the investor programme followed. But a former CIC administrator concurred with the tone of the charges. I was told that the availability of large capital funds and weak supervision led to, ‘a feeding frenzy, driven by provincial competition and hungry lawyers, a very dirty programme that brought out the worst in our legal and business group. There was so much money around, the Department was swamped and every area was litigious. Former Departmental employees were leaving to become immigration consultants.’ One of the auditor’s criticisms was that the annual scorecard was largely derived from numbers supplied by the operators who benefited from the investment funds, creating an unaudited conflict of interest. The same selfreporting is also evident in the entrepreneur programme, for the annual scorecard has included a footnote in past years declaring that the statement of investments and job gains appear ‘as reported by entrepreneurs’ (e.g. CIC 1997).29 How reliable then are these statistics? Despite the appearance of close surveillance and regular monitoring of business activities, interviews with government managers in Ottawa and Vancouver revealed that resources were far too limited for anything but a superficial review process for most files.30 One manager told me ‘There was almost no monitoring. The provinces were opposed to it, the feds didn’t have the resources.’ The under-resourcing of monitoring led to a significant backlog and pressure for file closures. I learned that only seven percent of files received site visits. ‘We can’t go the whole distance to show fraud… there’s a high level of creativity’. In the lifting of terms and conditions, the level of sales was a criterion but not the profitability of the business. However, if the sales criterion was not met, the applicant was forgiven, with a ‘no further action’ judgement permitting the entrepreneur to proceed to citizenship. This has been a common outcome, ‘fifty percent or more for as long as I can remember’. Most important of all, managers told me that applicants were not usually asked for proof of their investment level or jobs created because of the cost to the client: ‘very rarely do CIC get audited statements’. A former federal

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administrator confirmed the failure of monitoring more generally: ‘Historically we’ve never done well as a Department in monitoring issues, for example terms and conditions. It’s just not worth the effort.’ As a result there is no real sanction to comply with the requirements of the BIP. In principle, deportation is a consequence of non-compliance but in fact virtually no deportations occur, despite the existence of non-compliance: It’s a failed policy. The sanctions don’t meet the needs. If a person says they can’t follow their business plan they are forgiven. This is a major difficulty. Monitoring is very labour-intensive and the government lacks the resources. There’s de facto forgiveness. Only two to three households in ten years have been asked to leave Canada.

In the few cases where non-compliance has led to a formal enquiry, charges have often been stayed on appeal, with the court tending to be liberal in its decisions (Duffy 1999). Managers are astute and well aware of the capacity for informal activities to achieve end runs around the requirements when the monitoring function is so loose. They know about the ‘paper’ or ‘shadow’ ownership of businesses, but do not have the resources to challenge the practice: ‘We’re not successful with paper ownership… we don’t have the ability to check it’. They know too about the ‘flipping’ of businesses, a chain of successive entrepreneurs buying and selling the same business to meet their own terms and conditions. They even cited a case to me of one business that had passed through six owners in a five-year period, with each owner advised by the same immigration consultant. As we saw from the interviews with entrepreneurs, typically close to half buy existing businesses and the same proportion sell them soon after terms and conditions are lifted. Flipping is not illegal, but it does not meet the spirit of economic development, and it contributes to significant double-counting (and more) of investment and jobs created that in fact are derived from the same business. As a result flipping introduces a systemic tendency through multiple counting to inflate programme benefits reported in the annual scorecard. I asked a group of managers familiar with the annual scorecard whether they were confident of its validity: We don’t think so… First, 30–40 percent of people never report. Second, the data are a snapshot on the day the conditions are cancelled. We can’t measure the day after that. We know an industry exists that creates and flips jobs and businesses.

Instead, another civil servant told me, ‘We’ve focussed on success stories. The rest of them we don’t see, we never see’.31 An event during field interviewing dramatically underscored the selective representation of the BIP for

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political purposes. During one of my conversations with government managers a newcomer to the room announced that the Minister wanted to meet with a successful business immigrant for promotional media purposes. This request diverted attention from our ongoing conversation and sent the officials into something of a tizzy. ‘Oh, no, we can’t use the same old one. Does anybody know of any successful recent cases?’ When a manager told me ‘Our data miss the street level’, he was reporting a truth that has several ramifications. First, he was acknowledging the capacity constraint on government that precludes anything but rudimentary programme monitoring. He was also acknowledging that there is an uncontrolled space, ‘the street’, filled with knowledgeable agents with their own purposes and practices, a space that was largely removed from the monitoring of a stretched, centralized authority. In this space of relative freedom other strategies could prevail, even those that subverted the intents of the state. There is also a deeper level to consider here. We have shown the BIP to be the outcome of a protracted neo-liberal political strategy to access the wealth of Asia Pacific and draw it within Canadian borders. Neo-liberalism generally has been discussed less as a policy than as an ideology and technology, a set of ideas and procedures that encourage a Foucauldian language of surveillance, (self) discipline and (self) control. But from that lofty theoretical prospect of the overachieving state, the street level may be lost from view. The oft-discussed governmentality of the neo-liberal state has significant points of rupture and failures of implementation when we move from theory to practice, from ideology to the hard work of implementing policy (Ong 2003). Indeed while attention to governmentality is helpful, its theoretical commitments may lead to foreclosure in interpretation. This seems to be Wendy Larner’s conclusion in her examination of the New Zealand government’s global search for the Kiwi diaspora, another international outreach to highly performing individuals by a neo-liberal state. Larner (2007: 343) helpfully concludes, taking a lead from Sharma and Gupta’s (2006) anthropology of the state, that rather than risking the over-emphases of the governmentality literature, What is really needed – and to some extent the theoretical starting-point may be irrelevant – are more theoretically informed, empirically grounded research projects that examine the geographies and sociologies of apparently mundane and taken-for-granted aspects of governing in the effort to understand how the world has come to be understood as global.

Conclusion: Roughing up the Isotropic Plain In what ways has the world come to be understood as global? One trope most certainly is the theme of the end of geography. The idea of migrant transnationalism is predicated on the falling real cost of communication

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and transportation that enables contact to occur with such facility across weakening borders. The conventional barrier of distance has seemingly been eroded, even eliminated in instantaneous electronic communication. The thesis of the level playing-field and the substitutability of locations may be translated in geographical jargon to the older idea of the isotropic plain, the undifferentiated regional surface populated by rational economic actors, where conditions are held constant in all directions. So has the isotropic plain up-scaled and gone global? In such a scenario boundaries are transcended, borders are transgressed. Nations as such are fading away, their border functions overridden by a larger logic. Occupying this space is a particular kind of cosmopolitan migrant, an emerging transnational capitalist class who seem to be the natural players in a flat world (Appadurai 1996; Sklair 2001). They include expatriates and sojourners, what I have called the capitalists sans frontières, networked across space and engaged in global scanning to optimize economic prospects. Residential decisions and national commitments are strategic and often short-term. Such actors might include British expatriates in Singapore, Japanese businessmen in New York or the ‘cosmopolitan capitalists’ among the Chinese diaspora (Hamilton 1999; Yeung and Olds 2000; Ma 2003). Neo-liberal economic theory has raised the spatial range of the rational entrepreneur from local hero to global champion. Economic rationality has jumped spatial scale from the more modest geographies of von Thünen’s isolated state (Chisholm 1962) or Christaller’s regional system of central places (Haggett 1965) to the transnational and even the global. Such a cosmopolitan capitalist is ‘at home’ in any setting. As an overseas Chinese businessman told Aihwa Ong in San Francisco: ‘I can live anywhere in the world, but it must be near an airport’ (1999: 135). Canada’s BIP, and its equivalents elsewhere, are based on the thesis of the substitutability of locations, that both capital and entrepreneurial acumen can be unproblematically transplanted from East Asia overseas. But in practice geography does matter, for entrepreneurial achievements in Hong Kong and Taiwan have not led to many rewards in Canada or Australasia. Language provides an unwelcome barrier sending formerly successful business people hurrying to the overcrowded Chinese enclave economy where fierce competition and business failure were a common outcome. A flat income tax in Hong Kong of 15 percent was no preparation for a graduated tax whose marginal rate approached 50 percent in Canada; as bad, the detailed business, environmental and labour codes and regulations, the various licensing requirements, were part and parcel of a different economic culture requiring mastery for survival. Business immigrants rarely possessed such mastery. Far from a thesis of cosmopolitan agility, they were often confused and disabled by geographical difference. Frequently respondents spoke of their surprise at how different

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economic conditions were in Canada (Ley 2004). Mr. and Mrs. Lee, for example, had followed a three-generation family tradition in Hong Kong operating a successful restaurant. Upon arrival in Vancouver, they opened a Cantonese-style noodle house in Chinatown. But ‘it’s very different from Hong Kong… I think that was a mistake we made. We just brought our Hong Kong thinking to do business here.’ Business failure resulting from inability to appreciate pervasive geographical variation aggravates social as well as economic costs. It can be very depressing. It’s been so hard for me and my family. I think maybe we need to take fault for rushing into our business at the beginning, but the business we tried really burned us out. We gave a lot for it, and it failed… My husband and I don’t know any English. We had few friends. Everything was foreign. We didn’t know what was where. My kids were still very young. The business took up all of our time. It really had a severe impact on our well-being and the life of our family.

Mr. and Mrs. Lee had no local knowledge; their information was too partial for success, their skill set situation-specific and not portable. Instead of displaying an easy cosmopolitan facility across lubricated space, their expertise was localized, space was sticky and confining. Amos Kwong in contrast is a factory-owner in Guangdong province living in an expensive downtown condominium in Vancouver. But this trans-Pacific high-flier anticipated ahead of time that he was ill-equipped to succeed in Canada: To have a business you must know many games. Lots of my friends started business here in a new environment. But they don’t know the rules of the game and use Hong Kong knowledge, and it doesn’t work in this place. They have no local knowledge and most of their investments are failures. I can find out anything in Hong Kong with one phone call. Here I don’t have connections, I don’t have local knowledge.

Globe talk, whether of a flat earth, a spatially extended isotropic plain or cosmopolitan consciousness misses the point of the continuing role of local knowledge to enable navigation through the profound differences from place to place. Because geography still matters, mobility brings with it uncertainty and significant capacity limitations, even in economic life. We shall see in Chapter 7 that in social life mobility generates other penalties.

Chapter Five

Embodied Real Estate: The Cultural Mobility of Property

In 2002 Ming Pao’s Saturday Magazine ran a human interest story about an astronaut businessman who had died suddenly while working in Hong Kong, leaving his family in Vancouver to confront the difficult task of arranging a funeral. Should burial be undertaken in Hong Kong or in Vancouver? Despite the Chinese idiom that dying leaves fall close to the tree, some transnational households have been arranging for burial of Hong Kong family members in Canada, site of the present family home, where burial plots are twenty times cheaper than in Hong Kong. A representative of a Vancouver area cemetery interviewed for the story noted that whereas Caucasians preferred cremation, Chinese prefer ground burial; indeed 80 percent of new burial plot purchases at her firm’s cemetery were by Chinese-Canadian families. In concluding the story, Ming Pao’s journalist drew a broader cultural lesson: ‘Chinese always believe in owning a piece of land. They own a house for their home and a piece of land for their body. Earth is important to the Chinese’ (Lam 2002). A distinctive cultural disposition concerning the privileged place of property was being reported. In this chapter I document the deep entanglement with property among members of the Chinese diaspora, notably among present and former residents of Hong Kong. That association has primed property investment overseas both by Hong Kong-based tycoons and smaller investors, and also by immigrants in the Canadian land market. The lesson learned in Hong Kong that real estate is the primary means for capital accumulation has been an integral part of a cultural repertoire carried overseas. Inevitably there have been substantial impacts on the Vancouver property market. The chapter will end, however, with a denial of those impacts by local business elites who feared that to acknowledge the consequences of a global real estate market would lead to countervailing checks and barriers impeding profitable trans-Pacific property investment.

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Embodied Property The centrality of land ownership among Chinese and the Chinese overseas was underscored in Michael Goldberg’s early manifesto, The Chinese Connection: Getting Plugged in to Pacific Rim Real Estate, Trade and Capital Markets. Goldberg (1985) identified family, land, and education as intersecting institutional building blocks in Chinese social organization. Interviews with 70 ethnic Chinese real estate investors and their agents, half of them in Hong Kong and the rest in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, showed that in the early 1980s western North America was already the most favoured investment destination as part of portfolio diversification in light of uncertain geopolitical futures. Smaller investors – though with $5–$10 million in assets in 1983 these were still wealthy players – emphasized secure and reliable, if low, returns over at least 10 years. Real estate was certainly the preferred form of investment, easy to manage, safe, and not requiring continuous supervision (Goldberg 1985). Investment locations were commonly where family or friends lived, particularly where children had studied at the university level; small, initial investments, such as housing during a child’s education, might be a toehold for more substantial investment later as visits increased information about opportunities. By the late 1980s 50,000–60,000 Canadian university graduates were working in Hong Kong and another 16,000–18,000 still studying in Canada, creating what an Ernst and Whinney senior manager in the colony described as ‘an umbilical cord’ connecting the two countries (Chinatown News 1988a). The overseas Chinese have an overdetermined disposition to real estate, conditioned both by cultural tradition and also by economic history. Like Singapore, Hong Kong is a ‘property state’ where land development plays a major role in constituting the local economy and society (Haila 2000). Hong Kong’s wealth in particular has been closely tied to property development in an inhospitable terrain where easily developed land is scarce. Only small land parcels are released by the government each year and a few huge companies dominate the market. As a result, inflation has been rampant and Hong Kong exemplifies a property-based regime of accumulation, ‘a society organized around real estate development’ (Tang 2008: 359). Property has been the largest sector by turnover among companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, accounting for between a quarter and a half of all market capitalization (Olds 2001; Smart and Lee 2003). The power of the largest property conglomerates is immense with economic concentration creating an oligopoly with high entry costs and high prizes. Even in the depressed land market in 2002 Li Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Holdings declared profits of HK$8.8 billion,1 Sun Hung Kai Properties profits of HK$8.52 billion, Henderson Land

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HK$2.15 billion and New World Development, HK$1.3 billion (Poon 2006).2 Each of these conglomerates has been involved in large projects in Vancouver. The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong contained a clause permitting the normal release of only 50 hectares of undeveloped land onto the private market each year, reinforcing a psychology of scarcity and price inflation, and guaranteeing the flow of government land revenues. Through the 1990s land sales and related taxes accounted for on average 30 percent of total government revenues.3 The modest annual land release also contributed to a 12-year bull market in property that continued until the bubble burst in 1997. This ‘land (re)development regime’ has significantly weighted economic and political hierarchies and priorities (Tang 2008). So pervasive are property sales to the Hong Kong way of life that half-page advertisements for new developments commonly displace world news on the front page of newspapers (Cheng 2001). Exaggerated land commodification means that ‘the exchange value of property has an absolute supremacy over the value of use’ (Tang 2008: 357). Property ownership in Hong Kong has contributed powerfully to rising social mobility and the making of a propertied middle-class. A doubling of property prices between 1985 and 1989, and a further tripling from 1989 to 1994 (Smart and Lee 2003), provided the basis of household wealth for many millionaire migrants to Vancouver. While Hong Kong incomes show marked inequality, the homeownership rate doubled from 25 to 50 percent between 1981 and 2001, spreading the benefits of real estate appreciation (Yip et al. 2007). The 130,000 households who owned flats larger than 70 square metres saw price gains of between 100 and 200 percent between 1991 and 1995, with larger flats gaining the most (Forrest and Lee 2004). Such property inflation would produce sales prices ranging from $CAD375,000 for smaller units to $CAD1.75 million for the largest in 1995, at a time when average house prices in Toronto were at around $200,000 and in Vancouver $300,000. However, the collapse of the Hang Seng stock market and the bursting of the property bubble at the end of 1997 led to a prolonged slump with huge casualties among the middleclass. In 2003, 130,000 households were estimated to be in a state of negative equity (Poon 2006: 52). Reflecting and reproducing local values, mortgages were not available for property more than 30 years old (Smart and Lee 2003). A cultural anthropology of property in Hong Kong leaves no room for sentimentality. Older structures were regarded as too obsolete to play a significant role in the land market; they amounted to an inconsequential backwater. This predisposition against the old and toward the new was to make a distinctive impress upon participation in Canadian urban real estate. Hong Kong architecture, writes Ackbar Abbas, is committed to profit and

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contemporaneity: ‘what are erased are cultural memories, what is rebuilt are more profitable buildings’ (1997: 80). This is the cultural meaning of property in which wealthy households from Hong Kong are embedded and which they carry to overseas markets. Moreover, while conditions may approach an ideal type in Hong Kong, they were replicated elsewhere in Asia Pacific. Taiwan has ‘one of the most speculative land and housing markets in Asia—not a modest boast’ (La Grange et al. 2006: 72). Between the early 1980s and the sharp downturn in 1997, ‘the pace of economic development has produced extraordinary rates of house price inflation in most of the major cities of east Asia’, while ‘The residential-property sector has been firmly embedded in the developmental strategies of the so-called tiger economies’ (Forrest and Lee 2004).4 It is of course these same tiger economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea that provided most of the millionaire business migrants who entered Vancouver and Toronto.

Bearing Property Overseas Chloe, a well-connected transnational immigrant, described to me how the instrumentality of property in advancing class mobility in Hong Kong permitted comfortable settlement in Vancouver: The source of wealth of many Hong Kong immigrants is the huge real estate boom of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. In some cases real estate prices went up ten times in less than a decade. Pre-buying of an apartment could lead to forgiveness of a 10 percent down payment. With a 90 percent bank mortgage, by the time the apartment was built a year later you’d already made money. So no personal money went into the purchase, and with low interest it was a very cheap investment and very lucrative. A small apartment of 500 square feet cost less than $HK100,000 in the 1980s and sold for $HK500,000-$1 million in 1993. With two of these it was very easy to bring money to Canada, and have savings of $HK500,000–$1 million after house, car and business immigration costs. You aim to pay off a big chunk of the housing cost, maybe a half in the down payment. Often you’d buy two [houses] to give rental income. Invest in property and the stock market.

With the idea of property so deeply embedded in East Asian culture, it is no surprise that overseas Chinese display very high levels of homeownership. In Los Angeles, ethnic Chinese, whether or not they were born in the United States, have homeownership levels well above non-Hispanic whites (Yu 2006). In Sydney, Hong Kong immigrants were the fastest of the larger minority groups to enter homeownership (Ley et al. 2001). The same pattern has been evident in Canada from the early years of recent Chinese

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immigration. The 1986 Census revealed that Chinese-Canadians had ownership rates almost 20 percent higher than the native-born and second only to Italians among larger immigrant groups (Balakrishnan and Wu 1992), while among 1996–2001 immigrants, 44 percent of ChineseCanadian households were already homeowners in 2001, way above the figure of 30.4 percent for all immigrant households (CMHC 2008). A further nuance to such analyses is the existence of distinctive intrametropolitan variations. In several studies Vancouver is an outlier, with unusually high rates of immigrant homeownership. After only five years of residence, immigrant owner-occupancy in Vancouver overtook the rate of the native-born, far faster than in Toronto or Montreal, despite Vancouver’s status as the most expensive housing market in the country.5 This anomaly is accounted for by the disproportionate role of business immigrants in the Vancouver market, for their homeownership rate was more than twice that of other immigrants (Mendez et al. 2006). A special tabulation of the 1996 Census separated out the 37,000 households in Vancouver who selfidentified as Chinese and had landed in Canada as immigrants between 1986 and 1996 (Figure 4.1). This period covered the most intense movement of migrants, including business migrants, from Hong Kong. Among this ten-year cohort, 81 percent were already homeowners in Vancouver’s expensive housing market in 1996; among the entire population of nativeborn and immigrants the level was much lower, 59 percent. It seems the more costly the district, the higher the homeownership level. In one tract on the city’s very expensive Westside, all 215 new overseas Chinese immigrant households were already owners by 1996. As Chloe’s comment above indicates, if buying a house was a good thing, buying two was much better. Real estate became the leading form of investment in Vancouver as it had been in Hong Kong. A business newsletter informed by interviews with bankers established the typical investment strategy: A house purchase is the leading purpose for borrowing for independent and entrepreneur immigrants. As they settle down, they begin to borrow for investment purposes. Rental properties rank among the top investments for these immigrants followed by new businesses usually related to retail or real estate (Pacific Business 1995).

A leading financial consultancy in Hong Kong identified the same preference among medium-sized investors for ‘residential apartment blocks, small shopping centres, businesses and land, mostly in Toronto and Vancouver… Almost all investment portfolios… comprise some sort of land acquisition coupled with a percentage of shares and government bonds’ (Chinatown News 1988a). Some Vancouver real estate managers referred to ‘Hong Kong

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starter kits’, safe residential properties, as the initial investment, with investors later branching out to commercial real estate and development properties (Claiborne 1991).6 The property emphasis of immigrants and investors from East Asia was confirmed by a third factor, reinforcing both cultural predilections and personal experience in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The public role models of economic success in Vancouver seem to be disproportionately associated with the property sector. Among the earlier arrivals, David Lam, appointed Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia in 1988, had been a banker when he left Hong Kong in 1967 but by his retirement in 1983 had amassed an estimated fortune of $100 million in diversified real estate holdings (Garber 1988). Stanley Kwok, a leading architect in Hong Kong, emigrated to Canada in 1968, the year after the serious pro-communist riots in the colony. He held senior positions with Canadian development companies, and was later recruited by Li Ka-shing as director and senior vice-president of Concord Pacific (Olds 2001). Another architect, Geoffrey Lau, with a family background in Malaysia, moved to Canada in 1974 and built a large treasure chest through property development (Gutstein 1988). Thomas Fung, from a well-heeled Hong Kong family, was educated in Vancouver and returned in 1984, establishing the Fairchild media empire, as well as building the high profile Aberdeen Centre in Richmond, the first of a series of ‘Asian malls’ (Eng 1994). Among real estate agents, Grace Kwok, topselling Multiple Listing Service agent in Greater Vancouver in 1995, landed in Vancouver to complete her education in 1968, and after a stint in banking and retailing, successfully pioneered condominium pre-sales and off-shore marketing in the mid-1980s (Risdon 1996). Manyee Lui arrived in Vancouver from Hong Kong the same year and also parlayed a period of banking into a highly lucrative real estate career. She has become the leading agent for the Westside carriage trade of expensive homes, and is consistently among the top one percent of all Vancouver realtors (Zacharias 2001). Patsy Hui, who also landed in Vancouver as a university student and began selling real estate in 1984, carved out a comparable role in Richmond (Mui 1997; Zacharias 2001). These celebrated public figures all pre-dated the arrival of Concord Pacific in 1988 and the large numbers of business immigrants that followed. They provided the later newcomers with a model of how to get ahead in Vancouver, regardless of personal achievements and training in Asia. Indeed it sometimes seemed from Sing Tao’s weekly Realty Digest as if all roads led to property and real estate careers for successful immigrants. One Hong Kong family profiled in the Digest included four members who had started out in four separate occupations (including music, forestry and demolition) –yet each became real estate agents in Vancouver (Mui 1996).

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Flighty Real Estate Capital As a settler society with a small, widely dispersed domestic market and an economy organized around a succession of staple goods, Canadian trade has always been a relatively open affair. The resource-rich economy has been highly responsive to international market signals, initially from Europe, more recently from the United States, and increasingly from East Asia. So too international buyers and sellers have always played a prominent role in Canada’s land and property markets, since the early days of government land agents who raised the allure of cheap land for homesteading to prospective and generally uninformed European immigrants. In the era of close imperial ties, land investment from the United Kingdom accompanied immigration, in the case of Vancouver with property development companies including Grosvenor International, and portfolio diversification by groups like the Guinness company, whose ventures included downtown offices, the expansive elite mountainside territory of the British Properties in suburban West Vancouver and the adjacent Park Royal shopping centre. British capital was soon joined by American investment displaying particular interest in the central business district, though it fell back after changes in US tax laws in the early 1960s (Gutstein 1988). For this earlier period, ‘those who speculated in Vancouver land left an enormous collective imprint on the face of the city’ (Wynn 1992: 93). Vancouver was far from unique with its land and landscapes shaped by imperial labour and capital from Europe. In Australia, Hajdu (1994) has shown the long-term imprint of British and to a lesser degree American property ownership on the downtown areas of Sydney and Melbourne. But more recently there has been a changing of the guard in the Australian land market as the Asian tigers of Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have succeeded the British lion. So the more channelled internationalism of past imperial property investment is being replaced by the more varied internationalism of globalization. But as in Canada, foreign land ownership is not a new phenomenon, and neither are its effects. Calculations of relative profit and risk underlie property investment across the Pacific. The vast capital accumulation of Japan, the tiger economies, and more recently, China, has led to global scanning for new investment opportunities to diversify existing portfolios. The late 1980s were a propitious period, with significant overtures from Canada coinciding with the desire for diversification in Hong Kong in light of the uncertainties of 1997 and the relaxation of overseas investment controls in Taiwan. Canadian property was comparatively cheap in international context and growth prospects in the major cities were good.7 Investment newsletters provided by the banks and international real estate companies set out the

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advantageous price gradient across the Pacific and the encouraging prospects for population growth in the major global gateways of Toronto and Vancouver. A business column in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post in 1988 noted ‘Canadian property has also long been recommended as a good investment by real estate experts here for people who do not necessarily intend to migrate to the country’ (Abbott 1988). An international property consultant was quoted stating that Canada was ‘the best place in the world to buy residential property’. Advantages included ‘a stable political, financial and tax structure, as well as a fast growing economy’ with average growth then exceeding that of the United States and Western Europe. At the same time ‘land in Canada is among the cheapest in the world and is about a fifth of what the same land would cost in most European cities’ (Abbott 1988). And it was cities that comprised the investment horizon, as the column directed readers to a two-day sales event in Hong Kong offering units in a downtown Vancouver condominium. While some investors were sceptical of the wisdom of buying at weekend exhibitions they turned over a good deal of property. Michelle, a Vancouver sales agent I spoke to in 1998, had sold Vancouver real estate for two years in Hong Kong working with a transnational agency earlier in the decade: I sold for Park Georgia in Hong Kong. It’s run by the three Hui brothers, a very ethical family. Dennis is in Hong Kong and the other two brothers are here. I sold a lot of property through exhibitions. We would hold exhibitions in 5-star hotels with a large room costing $20,000 for a weekend. We would be selling condos, single-family lots. I would sell half a dozen properties myself an average weekend. They would be lining up. The exhibition area would take 200, and the hotel security would have to turn people away. I also sold in Taiwan but didn’t do as well there.

But capital is both calculating and flighty, and within a few years economic slowdown in Canada took fast money to the rapid growth cities of China as well as London and Sydney, while slow, low-risk money remained in Canada. Activity in London was particularly brisk after 1992, with a 1997 report from Singapore suggesting that up to half of current residential development in London was being purchased by Asian buyers (Straits Times 1997). However by the mid 1990s, Vancouver was back in favour, with a story from Hong Kong announcing ‘Hong Kong still sees Vancouver as red-hot market for real estate’ (Chow 1996a; Craig 1996). Primarily this was a matter of value for money, for data disseminated by Colliers Jardine in Hong Kong priced a high-end condominium in Vancouver at CDN$333,333, compared with close to $2 million for a comparable unit in Hong Kong, and figures of $1–1.5 million in the competing centres of London, Singapore and Sydney. Under these favourable conditions plus low mortgage interest rates, capital

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Image not available in this electronic edition

Figure 5.1 Selling the Palisades: marketing downtown Vancouver condominiums in Hong Kong, 1996 (Photo by Ian Smith, reproduced by permission of the Vancouver Sun) was flowing back to Vancouver. Hong Kong sales of Vancouver downtown condominiums were moving smartly (Figure 5.1). Armed by photographs, a scale model and other marketing materials, Colliers’ Hong Kong office had recently sold 90 units of the Kuok Group’s luxury Residences on Georgia in two weekend sales events; also popular was a new building in Yaletown on the edge of the central business district by Bosa Brothers, a Vancouver developer, with 70 percent of the units sold in Hong Kong, while the most recent Concord Pacific condominium tower had sold out in Hong Kong after a slow launch in Vancouver (Chow 1996a). By the mid-1990s, Asian property investment in Canada was close to its peak. But the Asian financial crisis that broke in the final quarter of 1997 led to another round of capital switching. Just as Japanese capital had been

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repatriated with the bursting of the bubble economy around 1990, so the crisis in the tiger economies led to the retreat of investment to cover home bases. Spatial withdrawal of capital was already underway in the lead-up to the end of British rule in Hong Kong, propelled by the stick of Canada’s foreign assets disclosure law and the carrot of an upswing of confidence in Hong Kong’s future, but the flow intensified in the final months of 1997. Barely a year after filing a report from Hong Kong on the renewal of buying in Vancouver, the Vancouver Sun’s Asia-Pacific reporter wrote, ‘Offshore owners of Vancouver real estate are instructing their realtors to liquidate their holdings here to cover losses in failing Asian financial markets’ (Chow 1997g). Collapsed deals, price slashing, and forfeited down payments in Canada added up to a tactical withdrawal to meet immediate problems at home. Asian investors, notably from Singapore and Hong Kong, also cut back their buying in London, contributing to the end of the property boom there. The sales of London property at Hong Kong hotels, with four separate sales events each weekend, were bearing little fruit since the collapse of the Hang Seng stock exchange in October 1997 (Behrmann 1998). The 1997 ‘Asian flu’ brought to an end a decade of frenzied real estate trading between Hong Kong and Vancouver. With negative property equity continuing well into the next decade in Hong Kong, trans-Pacific investment declined, even when the Vancouver market took off once again in the cheap credit boom of the 2000s. Immigration from Hong Kong to Canada also fell away; from a peak of 44,000 in 1994 there was a rapid decline after 1996 to less than 2,000 in 2001 (Li 2005). Indeed by the end of the millennium return migration to Hong Kong might well have led to net outward movement. Canadian immigration entered a new period, with Mainland China becoming the leading source of newcomers, primarily professionals rich in human capital but much less privileged in financial capital than the Hong Kong and Taiwanese business migrants. The housing market in Vancouver sagged in phase with the lull in new demand from East Asia, and when it took off again in the new century it was driven by a fresh dynamic of local purchase plus overseas buyers from a range of origins, including the United States. The larger or more fortunate investors who were able to ride out the storm in East Asia sustained their Vancouver property as a hedge, integral to portfolio diversification. Indeed, one curious feature of this off-shore investment is that it was less speculative than that of earlier inflationary periods. While speculative marauders are commonly blamed for price surges, British Columbia data display an unexpected trend. Quick housing re-sales within six months of purchase, known as flipping, have declined over the past 30 years.8 Flipping as an indicator of speculative intent, already high in the 1970s, reached a peak of over 20 percent of sales in the 1980–81 price bubble. It then fell steadily, only briefly exceeding 10 percent in the price take-off in 1989, and

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fell back quickly to under five percent although prices continued to rise up to 1995. Clearly home-purchasers in the inflationary market of the late 1980s and early 1990s were buyers for at least the medium-term, as one would expect for investments intended to provide the security of asset diversification. It was the more home-grown inflationary cycles of the 1970s and early 1980s that drew greater short-term speculative activity.

Transnational Real Estate Nash’s (1991) estimate that 60–80 percent of Hong Kong capital bound for Canada in the 1980s was heading for property investment is readily reconciled with trends continuing into the 1990s. A study by the Vancouver Sun in 1995 examined ownership rates by nationality in the commercial property market in the central business district. In this downtown area of office towers and part of the central retail core, Canadian full- and joint-ownership still accounted for 70 percent of buildings, led by pension funds, while the Asian share was 20 percent, leaving a relatively small residual component for European and American interests (Constantineau 1995). But this depiction overlooked large residential and commercial projects on the edge of the financial district. Concord Pacific’s immense land purchase on the north shore of False Creek covered 82 hectares and envisaged an eventual build out of 10,000 units besides commercial property (Figure 5.2). For this massive project Hong Kong’s multi-billionaire, Li Ka-shing, owner of Cheung Kong Holdings and the Hutchison Whampoa companies, recruited fellow tycoons Lee Shau Kee (Henderson Land Development Company) and Cheng Yu-Tung (New World Development Company); between them these four top-15 listed companies on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange accounted for over 13 percent of the exchange’s total capitalization (Olds 2001). In 1993 Li and Lee’s companies still generated well over 90 percent of their earnings in Hong Kong; clearly in anticipation of 1997, diversification was in order.9 After its proven success, the tycoons have withdrawn profits from the project and in 2003 family friends, the Hui family,10 bought Concord Pacific and took it private. As the 20-year build out of False Creek enters its final years, the Concord Pacific site was valued at $5 billion in 2005 and its Toronto brownfield sibling, Concord CityPlace at $1.5 billion (Konotopetz 2005). The other downtown mega-project is on the Coal Harbour waterfront, on the northern edge of the financial district (Figure 5.2), where Canadian Pacific had long held railway and port property. Marathon Realty, its real estate arm, was jointly developing its sizable 17-hectare Coal Harbour holding with another major Hong Kong player keen to diversify, Sun Hung Kai Properties, number 4 on the Hang Seng exchange, immediately beneath

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Figure 5.2 Major development projects and downtown neighbourhoods Hutchison Whampoa in market capitalization (Olds 2001).11 This project envisaged 2240 residential units, mainly in condominium towers, with additional office, hotel and theatre development (Smith 1995). Marathon Realty’s property assets were bought in 1996 in a complex deal by the large Toronto-based company, Oxford Properties Group, itself recently under majority ownership by Burcon International Developments, owned by Hong Kong investors and linked with Concord Pacific through a land for shares exchange (Craig 1996; Constantineau 1996a). Concord’s president, Terry Hui, would become president of Burcon, bringing together Concord’s residential experience with Burcon’s extensive office and retail holdings across Canada acquired through Oxford. ‘Combining them just creates a lot of synergy,’ explained Hui (Constantineau 1996a). Control of

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first Marathon, and then Oxford, both large and long-established Canadian companies, provided access to a far larger book of national assets and expansion beyond the gateway cities of Vancouver and Toronto. Here we see the maturation from an initial real estate landing in Vancouver to spatial and sectoral diversification and growth into a large national company, albeit with a majority of offshore shareholders. The next permutation in this arrangement, however, was a formal merger of the companies in 1998, with the delisting of Burcon shares in favour of Oxford’s, whose larger property base was securing greater returns (Gibbon 1997). Adjacent to the Sun Hung Kai-Marathon project, and at the entrance to Stanley Park, the Bayshore Gardens development continues the line of luxury condominiums under construction along Coal Harbour (Figure 5.2). Owned by Tokyo’s Aoki Corporation, one of the world’s top 30 construction companies, Bayshore Gardens is a nine hectare ‘resort environment’ planned to include almost a thousand residential units and renovation of the prestigious Westin Bayshore Hotel (Chow 1997h).12 Across West Georgia Street from Bayshore Gardens, also facing directly onto Stanley Park is the whimsical and palatial residential property built by Stanley Ho, Macau gambling tycoon. The eccentric Ho owned a number of properties in Vancouver, and is said to have purchased the site adjacent to the park because it had the same name as his own. Moving back eastwards toward the financial district along the principal artery of West Georgia Street we arrive at The Residences on Georgia, two 37 story towers with linked townhouses and a restored heritage mansion amounting to some 500 units, constructed by the Hong Kong- and Singaporebased Kuok Group in a joint venture with a local developer, Westbank Projects (Chow 1996b). The Kuok family holds a vast conglomerate whose Asian property interests include the up-market Shangri-La Hotel chain. The Residences in the 1200 block West Georgia fall between the 1000 block owned entirely by Runvee Georgia Properties of Hong Kong and the 1400 block with large sites owned by the Hui family and their company Park Georgia Realty (Chinatown News 1988b). Sales of the Residences began in 1996 just as an adjacent earlier project by the same developer, The Palisades, was selling out (Figure 5.1). These twin oval condominium towers enjoyed luxury hotel services from the Kuoks’ Pacific Palisades Hotel next door. The five-star Shangri-La Hotel followed later on West Georgia, opening in 2009 in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics (Figure 5.2). The group’s first hotel in North America is a spectacular 62-storey structure, with the first 15 floors reserved for hotel use and the remainder for luxury condominium ‘estates’.13 While high-end condominium projects received the most attention, the Kuoks also had residential and retail development underway in the suburbs through their Canadian subsidiary, Abbey Woods Developments.

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These projects represented the impressive tip of the property iceberg, with many lower profile developments and acquisitions throughout Vancouver and into the suburbs (Gutstein 1988, 1990). In the West End, a high-density residential district on the downtown peninsula, offshore investors bought dozens of apartment buildings, many to be demolished and re-built as condominiums.14 By the end of the 1980s half the properties on the prime blocks of Robson Street (Figure 5.2), a fashionable downtown boutique district, was owned by Hong Kong investors (Gutstein 1988; Chinatown News 1988b).15 Outside the downtown peninsula, media surveys of land registry records led to estimates that in the mid-1990s half of all residential property sales in the City were to buyers with Asian, primarily Chinese, family names – twice as high a proportion as would be expected from their share of the population; in Richmond the Asian share rose to two-thirds, though in other suburbs figures were lower (Chow 1996c). For Vancouver houses priced above $1 million, Chinese-named buyers rose to 80–90 percent. Most properties were in wealthy Vancouver Westside neighbourhoods, or downtown condominium apartments, including penthouses. By the mid-1990s investment was arriving from a variety of East Asian sources. Encouraged no doubt by the Kuoks’ active presence in Singapore, 50 condominium units in their Residences on Georgia were bought en bloc by Singaporean investors through the Hong Kong sales office (Chow 1996d).16 Taiwanese capital was a growing force in the purchase of apartment buildings and small retail malls, aided by funds assembled by investor immigrants. During the 1992–95 period Taiwanese and Korean capital accounted for 45 percent of total Asian investment in commercial property in Greater Vancouver (Constantineau 1996b). Among individual players, Ken Liang, well known for luxury condominium development in Taiwan, built a series of high-end projects downtown and in favoured Westside neighbourhoods (McQuade 1996).

Marketing Intermediaries A large group of intermediaries served this new and substantial market. In 1995, the top three Greater Vancouver realtors by MLS sales were ChineseCanadians, led by Grace Kwok of Anson Realty, a firm she co-owned with her husband. Kwok’s sales were in downtown condominium and Westside detached homes, a majority of them bought by ethnic Chinese (Chow 1996c). A series of other companies were created and rose to prominence including Park Georgia Realty, Royal Pacific Realty, and Hallmark Properties. David Choi, president of Royal Pacific Realty covered Vancouver’s Westside districts from its Oakridge office. Its staff had grown to 240 real estate agents by

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1996, and according to Choi, ‘about 70 percent of our clientele are Asian’, almost all of these ethnic Chinese (Chow 1996d). Nine of Royal Pacific Realty’s leading agents (all Chinese Canadians) had been nominated to the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board’s Medallion Club, indicating they had been in the top ten percent of regional agents by sales for at least five years. A top seller has been Winnie Chung, whose web site announced in 2008 that she has been placed in the top one percent (the President’s Club) of regional MLS agents for 14 consecutive years. Although her extensive listings cover much of the expensive territory on Vancouver’s Westside she has only in recent years advertised in the Westside edition of the (English-language) Real Estate Weekly. She also lists her properties in the real estate sections of the Chinese-language Ming Pao, Sing Tao, the Taiwanese World Journal, and the China Journal, comprehensively covering ethnic Chinese immigrants and investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Mainland. It is notable that one of the region’s top agents has had such impressive long-term success working substantially in an immigrant non-English speaking sub-market. Undoubtedly there has been an ethnic division of labour in the marketing of real estate. Sam, a white Westside agent, told me, ‘The market is divided. I’ve had no luck getting Chinese listings; 99 percent of those listings go to Chinese agents. They always have a cousin or an uncle in the business.’ Keystone Realty, for example, established in 1987 as immigration from East Asia was beginning to surge, catered to immigrant and resident Chinese clients in about equal numbers. ‘At its peak, Keystone had 125 agents. We always had 5–6 Caucasian agents’. Michelle, a former Keystone sales agent who I interviewed in 1998, went on to describe the critical importance of ethnic social networks for her own client base: All my clients are friends because I give them so many services. I get most of my work through referral. Yesterday I sold a penthouse down by the water to a Taiwanese living in San Diego. With the Canadian dollar so low this month he knew he was on to a good deal. He still drove hard. The price had been reduced from $535,000 to $499,000 and he tried to get it with an offer of $450. Anyway he was referred to me by a [client] family I had helped eight years ago. They were from Taiwan, they knew nobody and couldn’t speak English. One night the wife had severe headache and the husband called me at 2am to take her to Emergency. He could not take her because he couldn’t speak English, so I stayed there with her until 6 am. Then I got their kid into a good school in Point Grey. Now yesterday I sold a penthouse to their friend.

The doyenne of Westside home sales agents has been Manyee Lui, specialist in the carriage trade to new immigrants, and successor to Collier’s realtor, Vancouver-born Andrea Eng – the ‘broker to billionaires’ (McLaughlin 1993) – after Eng moved to a senior position in Collier’s Hong Kong office. Lui established her own company, Hallmark Properties in 1990, and had

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Figure 5.3 Million dollar house listings for two agents, Westside Vancouver, 1996–98

soon assembled a team of 34 agents (Chinatown News 1992). In 1995 she sold 16 houses priced in excess of $1 million and in 1996 did even better. Lui’s turf and style of listed property are informative. Figure 5.3 shows listings priced at over $1 million by Lui and also by Lily Lam, a leading realtor at Park Georgia Realty, collected from a sample of 10 issues of Real Estate Weekly’s Westside edition between June 1996 and June 1998.17 Lui’s listings follow the north-south sector each side of Granville Street, through the prime residential districts of Shaughnessy, and Kerrisdale-Oakridge. Quite remarkable is her achievement in securing 14 listings in the compact area of

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First Shaughnessy, between 16th and King Edward Avenues, a district with the oldest and most valuable blue-chip properties in the metropolitan area, where Vancouver’s Anglo-Canadian elite has held court for several generations (Duncan 1994). There are also outliers of listings in other exclusive districts, South-West Marine Drive and North-West Point Grey, smaller areas of large properties with outstanding views. Lily Lam shares this territory though with a much more clearly defined core in the East KerrisdaleWest Oakridge region, renamed South Granville by the real estate industry. A ten-minute drive from Vancouver’s International Airport, South Granville has seen a dramatic level of settlement by Hong Kong and Taiwanese immigrants, and the replacement of 1950s ranch-style houses by large, two to three storey homes since 1986. The map of listings coincides spatially with neighbourhoods where there have been large increases in ethnic Chinese residents since 1980. A detailed study of a two-block section of one of the large lot streets in South Granville showed an increase of Asian family names from 10 percent to 55 percent between 1980 and 1990; the transition was associated with significant replacement of older properties (Majury 1990).18 The aesthetic of purchased houses reveals the cultural values held in high regard by this market. Transported from Hong Kong is the conviction that ‘a newer property is better than its older counterpart, and that the larger its size, the better its suitability and potential value to the owner’ (Tang 2008: 358). So newness is a primary characteristic, while size and a range of modern amenities are also profiled in advertisements, often including a double kitchen and an entertainment room. Numerology appears in addresses and asking prices, with lucky threes and eights prominent.19 For example, a newish Shaughnessy property was listed by Manyee Lui in 1996 for $3,368,000. It offered a floor area of 6,000 square feet and the advertisement mentioned a swimming pool, sauna, exercise room, home theatre, wok kitchen and circular driveway. In 1997 a one-year old house in South Granville, on the market for $1,680,000, listed the following amenities: ‘Grand entry with granite floor and skylight. Elegant living and dining rooms. Spectacular kitchen with sub-zero fridge, wok kitchen, attached family room, four bedrooms up with en-suites. Huge rec room, exercise room, whirlpool, sauna and bedroom down’. In contrast older properties hold fewer promises and are replaceable. ‘Over 6000 square foot old-timer on ¾ acre of First Shaughnessy land. Ample room to create an estate of your dreams.’ While size matters, the existing ‘old-timer’ is seen as having no features worth mentioning. A bit more sympathetic was an advertisement in the South Granville area, though ominously for the existing property, the by-line cites only ‘A prestigious address’. A prestigious home exists not on the ground but in the imagination of the purchaser: ‘Build your dream home on this beautiful

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land: 72 × 163. Bonus: a solid home with 3 bedrooms and a den…’ The existing property is, as it were, thrown in with the land, with the recognition it is unlikely to be serviceable or worthy to survive. An important aesthetic distinction emerges which had earlier been the source of land use conflict (to be discussed in Chapter 6). The pages of the Real Estate Weekly reveal that longer established real estate companies with agents of European ethnicities catered to a different sensibility when it came to older properties. For example on a street in South Granville where many sturdy older houses had been demolished, a $1.8 million house shown by a Caucasian agent was described in the Real Estate Weekly as ‘Dream family home: Masterpiece Georgian’. The ad continues: ‘Completely refurbished. All character has been preserved and yet it’s almost a new home. Five bedrooms, four baths, Nanny’s ensuite and accommodation. Family room off gourmet kitchen and den open to a fairy tale pool garden.’ While clearly an upper middle class home, the cultural cues lead in a different direction, with history, character, and an idyllic garden synthesized with contemporary amenities. The same week another million dollar house nearby, a craftsman home with exaggerated gables is described lovingly as ‘Touched by tradition, this exquisite home features cross hall living and dining room plus gorgeous hardwood oak floors. Kitchen and family room lead to a fabulous backyard with landscaped gardens.’ Again there is a distinctive cultural unity of age, character, and garden, the values of a separate aesthetic.

On to the Suburbs In identifying the ethnoburb as a distinctive urban form, Wei Li (2006) has drawn attention to the widespread settlement of immigrant minority groups in the suburbs. In New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver fully developed ethnoburbs contain large numbers of ethnic Chinese, usually living in modern detached houses. The number of census tracts in the Toronto and Vancouver regions where more than 30 percent of the population comprised a single visible minority group rose from six in 1981, and 74 in 1991, to 246 by 2001 (Hou 2004). Of the 246 tracts with such concentrations in 2001, Chinese-Canadians dominated 156, with IndoCanadians accounting for most of the rest. Some suburban municipalities now have higher proportions of the foreign-born than the central city. The suburb of Richmond, with a 2006 population of 173,000, is adjacent to the International Airport and immediately south of Vancouver. It has been substantially transformed by immigration from East Asia since the mid-1980s (Rose 2001). Richmond has excellent feng shui, facing the water with its back to the mountains. I was told (in Hong Kong) that the outline of its multi-channelled delta site resembled a dragon’s head with a pearl

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(Sea Island) in its mouth. The lucky Sea Island is occupied by Vancouver International Airport. The ethnoburb had a foreign-born proportion of 57 percent in 2006, the highest immigrant share of any municipality in Canada, with 44 percent of the population self-identified as of Chinese origin.20 There is a range of economic strata in the municipality. Poor recent immigrants from China are frequently huddled in overcrowded apartments and rented houses in the northern section of Richmond;21 elsewhere in the municipality Hong Kong, Taiwanese and other overseas Chinese are living in condominiums and detached houses. The demolition of houses in 1950s and 1960s subdivisions and their replacement by larger new single-family properties has caused some local agitation (Edgington et al. 2006). But by far the most striking phenomenon in this new landscape – and its counterpart in Markham, Richmond Hill and Scarborough, northern suburbs of Toronto (Lo 2006;Wang 1999) – has been the emergence of new Chinatowns, gathering around the distinctive cultural form of the Asian mall. While the Pacific Mall in Markham claims the rank of single largest Asian-themed indoor mall in North America, the concentration of so many retail centres in a tight cluster in Richmond is unequalled.22 David Lai counted 49 open shopping plazas or larger enclosed malls that he classified as Asian-themed malls in north-central Richmond (Figure 5.4) and 58 in a larger area of Toronto’s northern suburbs (Lai 2001). These facilities had Chinese signage, while store types and their customers were overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese. Developers were usually Chinese-Canadian or other East Asian immigrants, and the mall or plaza often drew its name from an East Asian (usually Hong Kong) site, while the names of some stores also evoked Asian origins. Most unusual in terms of western precedents is strata titling in many of the larger malls, with retail and even office uses divided into small self-owned units.23 By 1996 it was estimated that 30 percent of Richmond retailing was in self-owned stores, while in Vancouver the figure was less than one percent. A local Chinese-Canadian real estate consultant pointed out the difference between western and Chinese business outlooks: ‘The western business people strongly emphasize ‘floating capital’ while Chinese business people insist on ‘real capital’. Chinese traditionally believe real property is a safety net’ (Sing Tao 1996). Once again the mobility of cultural ideas about property is shaping a distinctive landscape text. The buying and selling of these strata units is often linked to immigration policy. The capital that builds the mall may be accumulated in part from syndicates of business immigrants making their mandatory investments. If the investor stream is implicated in mall construction, the entrepreneur class are often the retailers working off their requirement to develop a business in Canada. In Lai’s survey of 19 Richmond malls, three-quarters of merchants were immigrants who had been in Canada less than ten years, 77 percent from Hong Kong and 13 percent from Taiwan. Overwhelmingly

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Figure 5.4 Asian-themed malls in part of north-central Richmond (reproduced by permission of David Lai) they had entered Canada as economic migrants, almost half of them through the business immigration programme. Customers too were overwhelmingly immigrants, 70 percent of them from Hong Kong (Lai 2001). The first large mall was Aberdeen Centre completed by Thomas Fung (of Fairchild developments) in 1990. The mall’s name is taken from a maritime district in Hong Kong and the symbolism of home was further elaborated in a rooftop mast, an abstraction of a Chinese junk. To the 60 stores of Aberdeen Centre the group soon added Fairchild Square and Parker Place, the latter pioneering Asian-style strata-titling for its 140 stores. President

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Plaza was completed nearby in 1993, a joint hotel-retail-commercial complex funded in part by a syndicate of Taiwanese investor immigrants and including a community centre with a Buddhist temple (Wood et al. 1994). Its nearest neighbour is the Yaohan Centre that opened the same year, built by a Hong-Kong based Japanese property company, and anchored by the Japanese Yaohan supermarket, the first in Canada. By 1996, six years after construction, Aberdeen Centre was already planning to rebuild, doubling its volume and anticipating up to 400 stores. These five adjacent malls formed a joint marketing venture, Asia West, branding themselves as a tourist destination for Canadian and international airport travellers (Chow 1996f). With these major players, and other smaller plazas, a local realtor estimated that 70 percent of land in Richmond’s city centre was Asianowned in the early 1990s, while Asian investors were developing half of all new housing projects (Williamson 1992). The much-publicized successes of the major Richmond malls encouraged a queue of imitators nearby and further afield. The most expansive proposal was for ‘Asian Centre’ in Surrey, an outer municipality with a significant South Asian population, a smaller overseas Chinese population but with significant developable land and prospects for continuing growth. The ambitious scheme outlined in 1995 included a three-storey mall, a large hotel, a trade centre, exhibition halls and recreation facilities (World Journal 1995). It was projected to be a local, regional and international attraction. The idea was initiated by Taiwanese immigrants, but for a project priced at over a billion dollars, financial backers included not only three investment houses from Taiwan, but also Great Wall Developments from Beijing; the Asian Centre was reported to be the first Chinese-Taiwanese joint venture in Canada (Sing Tao 1997b). While planning and development progress was slow, the international significance of the project escalated, with the arrival in 1996 of the Mayor of Chu Hai City in China, sister city of Surrey, offering the gift of a ceremonial gate to the project; the Premier of British Columbia welcomed the Chinese delegation at a reception (Ming Pao 1996). Meanwhile a nearby 500-unit residential project had entered the picture, Great Wall Village, with an intended market ‘the middle class technical workers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China’ (Sing Tao 1997c). In this transnational scenario, a Chinese development company employing its own funds plus investment by Taiwanese venture capitalists were planning residential units in suburban Vancouver for Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong immigrants. Transnational participation and the role of dignatories made subsequent events of considerable embarrassment. Ground was broken in September 1997 but almost immediately the overseas crisis intervened. The sharp recession in Asia embroiled investment funds in Taiwan; partners withdrew, construction bills were not paid, the contractor

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stopped work. In October 2002 the bankruptcy case of Canada Asian Centre Developments Inc. was before the British Columbia Supreme Court. The perils of long-distance money in the property sector were apparent by the final quarter of 1997. With capital switching and return migration to East Asia – referred to simply as ‘the exodus’ in the local Chinese press – ethnic business of all types became more precarious. Several realty firms closed, including Cathay Realty and Midland Pacific, a Canadian franchise of a leading Hong Kong property company. By the end of the decade even Manyee Lui’s Hallmark Properties had faltered, and Vancouver’s most eminent transnational real estate agent formed a new alliance with the long-established firm, McDonald Realty. In 2000 no Chinese-Canadian realtor featured among the top ten agents in MLS sales by value in Greater Vancouver.

The New Spaces of Chinese-Canadians If the 1971 map of ethnic Chinese in Vancouver was still dominated by Chinatown (Figure 2.1), by 1981 changes were afoot. Dispersal eastwards into the working-class neighbourhoods of East Vancouver provided some upward mobility with the prospect of ownership of older homes (Figure 5.5).

2 miles

0 0

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Percent Chinese 50–100 30–50 15–30 5–15 0–5 0 (includes suppressed data)

Oakridge

Figure 5.5 Distribution of self-designated ethnic Chinese, City of Vancouver, 1981

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Weaker diffusion to the south led to the middle-class Oakridge neighbourhood, where an earlier Jewish and Central European population, a number of them former post-1945 refugees, were aging and withdrawing from a district of low-density, 1950s bungalows and ranch-style houses. It was in Oakridge that Li Ka-shing’s family had a holiday home in the 1970s, and several small enumeration areas in the area showed 30-50 percent ethnic Chinese by 1981. Some were long-established families, a few fourth-generation Canadians, but 1300 immigrants were also enumerated in one Oakridge tract, landing between 1965 and 1978, most from East Asia. This group represented the early Hong Kong migration, precipitated by the violent pro-China riots in 1967 that brought an early wave of mainly middle-class immigrants including David Lam. Westwards from Oakridge wealthier Chinese were beginning to enter several enumeration areas in Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy, with between 5 and 15 percent of the local population. Special tabulations permit the reconstruction of the overseas Chinese migration to metropolitan Vancouver at the census tract scale. The Census enumerates 37,000 households in the Vancouver metropolitan area who self-identified as ethnic Chinese and landed in Canada between 1986 and 1996, the peak years of Hong Kong arrivals and the major period of business immigration. This total amounts to close to half of all immigrants who entered Vancouver during this period.24 Their residential choices show highly favoured locations, but settlement overall occurred in over 85 percent of the metropolitan census tracts, indicating entry across a full range of submarkets. On average 5.4 percent of all 1996 households in a census tract consisted of this group and Figure 5.6 shows census tracts where concentrations exceeded this threshold. Some areas were clearly not popular. More affordable but distant eastern and southern suburbs were avoided. Nor was there much settlement in the North Shore suburbs of North Vancouver and West Vancouver, aside from the wealthy mountainside district of the British Properties. In contrast Vancouver and the closer suburbs of Richmond, Burnaby and Coquitlam (primarily the new large-house estates on the Westwood Plateau) were highly favoured. The marked preference for areas of detached singlefamily homes left a demand void in the major multi-family neighbourhoods of Vancouver’s downtown and inner city. In this area of primarily apartment units, with gentrification a key process, there was marked underrepresentation of new ethnic Chinese households aside from prime new condominium sites. The patterning of this population – for example the abrupt transition in numbers across the municipal boundaries between Vancouver and Burnaby and Burnaby and New Westminster – suggests some steering of home purchasers within a well-defined ethnic information field: ‘Burnaby yes, but New Westminster no, but best of all if you can afford it, Vancouver.’

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Figure 5.6 Distribution in 1996 of self-designated ethnic Chinese, landing in Canada 1986–96, Vancouver CMA

Old Chinatown-Strathcona has been largely by-passed by the new migrants, the destination of only 520 of the 37,000 new households. It is in fact quite peripheral to the new map of residential selection. Vancouver’s expensive Westside neighbourhoods are prominent on that map, especially the South Granville district straddling Kerrisdale and Oakridge, areas where Manyee Lui, Lily Lam and others have been busy selling million dollar properties.25 Another node was in southeast Vancouver in somewhat less expensive neighbourhoods, where there was an active replacement of older houses. Most striking of all is the ethnoburb of Richmond. New ethnic Chinese immigrants accounted for over 10 percent of households in 1996 in all but three Richmond census tracts; in one tract, next to the large Asia-themed malls, the level reached almost 35 percent, highest in the metropolitan area. This same tract is also adjacent to the Vancouver International Airport, and the overall geographical distribution of new Chinese-Canadians (Figure 5.6) strongly suggests that the airport is a decisive magnet, with a decline in immigrant numbers with increasing distance away from this gateway to and from Canada. Tobler’s (1970) first law of spatial analysis stated that the stronger the relationship between phenomena the closer they tend to locate to each other. So does the gravitational pull of the airport mean that the static map of ethnic segregation conceals a highly mobile transnational population, with much coming and going by air travel? We return to this question in Chapter 8.

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A Global Property Market: ‘Long Live the Global City’ Vancouver real estate has entered a global market, part of a ‘space of flows’ comprising capital, people, goods and information across the Pacific, flows actively promoted by Canada’s Asia-Pacific economic and immigration strategy articulated in the 1980s. Proponents of this policy have seen only the mutual advantages of open borders in these developments. In interviews and presentations, Michael Goldberg, for one, has effectively and tirelessly put the case for Vancouver’s integration in a global space of flows.26 To an OECD policy audience he forecast, ‘to prosper in the 21st century, a city will unavoidably have to be global in outlook, planning and outreach… Going with the flow (typically a capital and population flow) will be the order of the day, the decade, and the century. The helpless city is dead: long live the global city’ (Goldberg 1994). Globalization changes the terms of reference for urban property markets. As Goldberg (1994) correctly noted, ‘As economic and demographic pressures move around the world, global cities and their property markets can be expected to be particularly sensitive to these ebbs and flows because of their centrality in the international flow of people, capital and information’. In other words, volatility will accompany globalization in strategic nodes within global networks. So it has proved in Vancouver and Toronto. According to John Logan (1993), in the past ‘real estate has traditionally been a mostly local business’. Local or regional population growth, unemployment rates, domestic migration, and national credit policy affecting mortgage-lending rates – these formed the set of nationally contained variables that could be expected to shape price movements in urban housing and property markets. However, the de-regulation of Western economies in the neo-liberal policy regimes of the 1980s and 1990s aided a broader set of geographical scales to bear upon local real estate trajectories. In the housing markets of large Australian cities, Maher (1994) observed how ‘empirical results are complex amalgams of global trends, national policies and processes, and local factors, all interacting to bring about a highly differentiated set of outcomes at a variety of spatial scales’. A broader review concluded that in the post-1980 period, ‘the international dimension has major causal relevance’ in property market gyrations in globally connected metropolitan areas (Dehesh and Pugh 1999). The geographically differentiated behaviour of housing markets was displayed by price trends in Australia’s major cities in the 1980s (Maher 1994). Two conclusions are pertinent for our discussion: first, during this period, Sydney, Australia’s foremost window on the world, experienced price rises above other cities, and second, Sydney experienced exaggerated price oscillations, with rapid inflation accompanied by a sharp correction. Such gyrations

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250 Vancouver

Real house prices (1986$ thousands)

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200 Victoria

150 Hamilton Ottawa

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Montreal

Halifax

50

0 1971

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Figure 5.7 MLS real house prices in eight Canadian CMAs, 1971–96 (Ley and Tutchener 2001, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd) are unexpected, for the conventional view is that large cities have diversified economies that balance out trade cycles and avoid the exaggerated oscillations of less complex economies. Such frontier-style boom and bust episodes seem anomalies in the primate cities of mature economies – unless of course Australia’s primate city has the status of a one-dimensional town at the scale of global capital flows. The profiles of house price changes in eight major Canadian cities, measured from Multiple Listing Service (MLS) sources, have closely followed the Australian model (Ley and Tutchener 2001). Examining the trajectories of real prices over the 1971–96 period three principal trends are evident (Figure 5.7). First, whether graphed in real (1986) or nominal dollars, there is broadening variation among Canadian cities. A narrow range in average house prices in 1971 has widened considerably over the succeeding quarter century. In some cities, notably Montreal and Halifax, there was almost no change in real prices over this period after discounting general inflationary pressures. In contrast Vancouver and Toronto – and the nearby secondary cities of Victoria and Hamilton that recorded a spill-over effect from their larger neighbours – experienced substantial price increases between 1971 and 1996. Second, aside from a brief but dramatic

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boom and bust in Vancouver in 1980–82, divergence between the cities is magnified only after 1985, when Toronto and Vancouver prices show a dramatic take-off, with real prices doubling in Toronto between 1985 and 1990, and in Vancouver between 1985 and 1994. Third, the cities with the largest year-to-year gains were most likely to endure the sharpest corrections, notably Vancouver in 1981-82 and Toronto from 1989 to 1991. Overall, Vancouver and Toronto registered six of the ten most rapid annual percentage price gains among the eight cities, but also five of the ten most substantial annual losses. In Vancouver’s five strongest years, real estate appreciation averaged 36 percent, but in the five weakest years the residential market lost an average of almost eight percent a year, exemplifying all too well the ‘ebbs and flows’ that Goldberg (1994) associated with global real estate investment. There are of course significant human consequences of such a property roller coaster. During the upturn, there is a sense of both exhilaration and foreboding, windfall gains but also growing affordability burdens; during the downturn, in contrast, acute apprehension, the burden of negative equity and growing debt, mingle with opportunities for bargain hunters. In such a scenario outcomes become polarized; there are privileged winners and penalised losers. As an enticing opportunity and then, in short succession, a serious problem, real estate will become a public and thus a political question. In the Vancouver market, global variables prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s. A surge in net domestic migration coincided with a rise in international migration to fuel the 1980–81 boom, though net domestic migration fell rapidly once the boom was underway (Figure 5.8). Thereafter net domestic migration to metropolitan Vancouver fell to a low level, with a net outflow from 1997 to 2002. House prices surged from 1986 to 1995, closely following the upward trajectory of net immigration, and fell back as Hong Kong immigration waned after 1997. Correlations between the variables are unusually decisive: over the 25 years from 1977 to 2002, a positive correlation coefficient of 0.94 between Vancouver house prices and net international migration contrasts with a negative correlation of −0.57 with net domestic migration.27 This significant finding defies conventional wisdom, for international population flows are correlated with house price inflation, while net domestic migration comprised only a weak inflow or even an outflow although house prices advanced decisively. These relationships have more than theoretical interest, for as we shall see shortly, in an intricate politics of explanation advocates of global flows were suggesting that domestic migration not immigration was shaping the upward trend of Vancouver house prices. Nor were other regional indicators viable predictors of house price changes, as a fuller analysis made clear (Ley and Tutchenor 2001). A series of made-in-Canada variables – the national bank rate, the provincial unemployment rate, net domestic migration to Vancouver, rental vacancy rates in

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Figure 5.8 House prices, immigration and domestic migration, Greater Vancouver, 1977–2002

Vancouver – were all surprisingly ineffective predictors of house price trajectories over the 1971–96 period (Table 5.1). Instead house prices were being prised loose of these local, regional and national economic drivers and were lining up with global factors. The house price trend correlated predictably with measures of regional economic growth – provincial GDP, the size of Vancouver’s population, and the restructuring of the provincial labour force toward professional and managerial white-collar workers – but these in turn were tied to a larger constellation of global effects. Levels of foreign direct investment in Canada, overseas visitors to British Columbia, and several measures of net immigration to Vancouver, including the annual share of business immigrants, were all part of this larger constellation of growth stimuli that were tightly aligned with rising real estate prices.28 The role and variability of scale effects is an old shibboleth in geography. Factors prominent at one spatial scale may be much less robust at another, where their effects are masked by a number of contingencies specific to that scale of analysis. So it is that immigration as a global effect upon real estate prices at the metropolitan scale may be much less decisive when the scale collapses to ‘neighbourhoods’ (usually census tracts) within cities. In Sydney, a gateway metropolis where, like Vancouver and Toronto, immigration is

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Table 5.1

Correlates of annual nominal house prices in Vancouver, 1971–96

National bank rate BC unemployment rate Net domestic migration (Vancouver CMA) Rental vacancy rates (Vancouver CMA) Dwelling starts (Vancouver CMA) Population change as % of starts (Vancouver CMA) BC GDP Consumer price index (Vancouver CMA) Population count (Vancouver CMA) % BC labour force in quaternary jobs Net immigration (Vancouver CMA) Business immigrants as % of all immigrants (Vanc CMA) Immigration as % of dwelling starts (Vancouver CMA) Immigration as % of population growth (Vancouver CMA) Foreign direct investment in Canada Overseas visitors to BC Exchange rate $CAN to $US

−0.12 0.16 −0.32 −0.03 0.48 0.52 0.98 0.95 0.98 0.89 0.96 0.83 0.84 0.62 0.97 0.95 −0.62

Source: Ley and Tutchener 2001, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd

strongly linked to changing real estate prices, an important study showed that when decomposed to the census tract level, the effects of immigration were much less apparent (Burnley and Murphy 1994; Burnley, Murphy and Fagan 1997). The same is true in Toronto where robust relationships at the metropolitan scale become much more complex in a census tract analysis (Ley et al. 2002). In part this anomaly may be related to the range of influences operating in different housing submarkets. Any analysis looking for single effects would be muddied by gentrification in the inner city, social polarization in existing rich and poor districts, and the compositional effects of highly diverse immigrant cohorts in immigration reception areas. Dehesh and Pugh (1999) warn against looking for any single-factor explanations in the property markets of global cities, while Burnley and Murphy caution that in a metropolitan area with hundreds of census tracts, ‘correlation can mask such (diverse) influences’ (1994: 68). In this context of crosscutting and muddying influences at the intrametropolitan scale, the consistently clear signal in Vancouver across scales and across different price indicators is quite remarkable. Using the census definition of dwelling value, the correlates of changes in dwelling values in metropolitan Vancouver and Toronto were sought for the inter-censal periods 1971–86, and 1986–96 (Ley et al. 2002). The Toronto correlations are generally inconsistent between these time periods in part because of the

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Table 5.2 Selected correlates of changing dwelling values in Vancouver CMA by census tract, 1986–96 (N = 151) Immigrants as % of population, 1996 % Chinese ethnicity, 1996 % British ethnicity, 1996 Average household income, 1996 % professional-managerial occupations, 1996 % with university degree, 1996 Migrants from BC as % of population Migrants from other provinces as % of population, 1996

0.45 0.56 −0.37 0.33 −0.09 −0.08 −0.37 −0.66

Source: Derived from Ley, Tutchener and Cunningham (2002, Table 2)

difficulty of modelling not only the price surge in the 1980s but also the marked correction with declining year over year prices from 1990 to 1996. In Vancouver, with shorter oscillations over this period and an overall upward trajectory, linear correlation more adequately fits actual trends. The percentage of immigrants in a census tract shows positive and rising correlations with changes in dwelling value for each period, reaching r = 0.45 for Metro Vancouver in 1996 (Table 5.2). The role of Chinese ethnicity simultaneously rises steadily as a predictor of increasing dwelling values, and by 1996 has reached r = 0.56, substantially higher than any of the variables – income, occupation, education – describing socio-economic status, a factor that might normally be expected to be the leading predictor of changing dwelling values. In contrast, different measures of domestic migration showed negative correlations with rising dwelling values in both the 1971–86 and 1986–96 time periods. So statistical analysis using both MLS prices and census dwelling values amply confirms the qualitative accounts pieced together earlier in this chapter concerning the close relationship between globalization – of which immigration is a significant component – and responses in the Vancouver housing market. Results also agree with the view of informed members of the real estate industry. The principal of a large Chinese-Canadian real estate firm reflected on the Vancouver property market in a conversation in 2006. By then real estate capital flows had diversified beyond Asia-Pacific: Vancouver is a global destination. People compare it against San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, so it’s an international real estate market. I have a friend who was born in the Middle East, his children in Paris, he moved to London and now to Vancouver. Why? Because you can do anything here – this place is open to experimentation and a high quality of life, recreation, climate, etc. in a way not possible in London. Look at the Whistler29 and

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downtown condo market. The most expensive house in Whistler was bought by a Silicon Valley CEO. There’s lots of Americans in the market now, especially when $1US = $1.30 Canadian.

Inflation in the Housing Market: The Politics of Explanation We have amassed consistent and cumulative evidence for the relationship between immigration from East Asia and investment in Canadian real estate. First, incorporation into a trans-Pacific region bound by capital and immigration flows had been the purpose of Canada’s Asia-Pacific strategy, pressed by economic elites and implemented in policy and procedures by government at all three levels. Second, the wealth of the tiger economies and the geopolitical need to diversify the location of their investment portfolio made them attentive to Canadian overtures. Third, an orientation to real estate investment was over-determined among both investors and immigrants from East Asia, because of a widely-recognized cultural disposition toward property ownership, because of the critical role of property appreciation in private and public capital accumulation in the tiger economies, and because the lesson of economic success in Vancouver among early arrivals seemed to reinforce the continuing viability of real estate as a profitable and convenient investment choice. Fourth, property prices in Vancouver and Toronto were low in the context of competing international markets, while consultancies, lending institutions and transnational real estate agencies facilitated property investment with advice and sales offices in Hong Kong as well as Vancouver; weekend sales exhibitions in the principal cities of East and Southeast Asia overcame the penalty of distance for buyers. Fifth, the significant role of this offshore finance in the Vancouver land market was evident not just from visible individual projects – though several of these, including Pacific Place, Coal Harbour, and Bayshore Gardens were large initiatives by any measure – but also from the overall share of the market accounted for by East Asian immigrants and investors. This market, prominent downtown and in the expensive Westside neighbourhoods, held even greater sway in the ethnoburb of Richmond, and was a significant force in other suburban municipalities. Sixth, the evidence of statistical analysis shows the tight bonding between both annual immigration flows and MLS prices in Greater Vancouver, and also, through census micro-data, the close linkage of changes in dwelling values between census periods with immigration and Chinese ethnicity, relations that hold in an analysis across the entire Vancouver metropolitan area. Bringing all of these considerations together, the relationship between immigration from East Asia and Vancouver residential prices offers a very tight explanatory bundle.

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But in a fascinating illustration of the sociology of knowledge, robust social science outcomes ran against the contrary intentions of special interest groups, and by the late 1980s objections were already being raised contesting this explanation. The pace of property investment and house price inflation led to a public response fuelled by the media. A few nativist columnists and reporters on the right were joined by a small number on the left who decried the power of external capital in shaping local land markets. More prosaic and more abundant were media stories that raised issues of housing affordability and local jurisdiction. Popular book-length accounts of offshore investment by Cannon (1989), Fennell and DeMont (1989) and Gutstein (1990) attracted considerable attention. There was every promise that a left-wing majority less friendly to the free market would win the 1990 Vancouver civic election, opposing existing relatively open borders to real estate capital. In this turbulent context the Laurier Institution was formed in 1988 and came into legal existence in 1989 as a privately funded organisation seeking to promote multiculturalism and immigrant integration and ward off nativist tendencies (Ley 1995; Mitchell 2004). Laurier described itself as ‘a national non-profit, non-advocacy research and education organization dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of information concerning economic and social implications of cultural diversity. It has no political or business affiliations’ (Laurier 1989a, my emphasis). The desire to soothe frictions over immigration presented Laurier as a good citizen, but there were also strong commercial reasons to keep trans-Pacific flows at a high level. In this regard the claim to be free of business affiliations was ingenuous for Laurier’s corporate sponsors included major players in Pacific Rim finance, real estate, trade and transportation. Aware of the rising public unease with off-shore investment in the Vancouver property market – after all the Laurier’s backers included banks and developers – the Institution speedily commissioned a six-part research project to examine ‘factors affecting residential real estate prices in the Greater Vancouver area’. The task was to disabuse ‘controversial suggestions that a particular cultural group – the Chinese – were the cause of increased real estate prices’ (Laurier 1989b). The work was entrusted to land economists in the Canadian Real Estate Research Bureau at the University of British Columbia. Working among the same small group of academics at UBC as Michael Goldberg, promoter of trans-Pacific economic flows, the Bureau also had very close connections to regional and transnational real estate companies.30 The Bureau was at the very heart of the pro-business alliance favouring globalization. The neoclassical tradition in which the researchers worked and the social space to which they belonged seemingly allowed only one outcome. The midnight oil was also burning for the results of the first phase of the research were announced in 1989 only a month after the Laurier Institution

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was incorporated (Ley 1995). Clearly there was need to respond with some haste to public unrest that threatened to erect barriers and shut open borders. Findings were released at a breakfast meeting of invited political and business leaders; a press release promised a second round of results at another breakfast meeting a month later. In this series of reports investment capital from outside Canada was absolved as a special factor in the intense activity in the regional housing market. Instead ‘everyone’ was implicated especially middle-aged baby boomers.31 The perturbations in the market were normalized and thus defused politically as they were attributed to predictable national demographic trends and projections. Everything was as it should be. A later report extended some culpability to local government for its development fees, an irritant to free market analysis and practice. But as a contributor to price inflation this was a banal suggestion for the fees in different municipalities ranged from $1500 to a high of $12,000 in one jurisdiction; even the maximum fee would have amounted to less than 3 percent of the cost of a new house. Within the real estate industry itself the Laurier reports lacked credibility. Laughter greeted the presentation of one report to an audience of realtors, while a prominent realtor dismissed a second report as ‘naïve’ (Pettit 1992: 142, and personal communication). Nonetheless the reports did significant ideological work. Referring to the Laurier reports, Goldberg (1991) wrote in a popular magazine, ‘certain neighbourhoods have received the bulk of recent immigrants as well as Asian investment. There is no verifiable evidence, however, to show that this action has had any systematic effect on house prices’.32 Laurier press releases were widely reported by local and national media. Under the by-line, ‘Blame boomers for boom’, Vancouver’s Real Estate Weekly (1989) repeated the Laurier announcement to refute ‘complaints that high immigration to Greater Vancouver was the root cause of soaring home prices’.33 Some years later at a workshop on media reporting in Vancouver, a television news anchorman acknowledged that the Laurier studies and their coverage had transformed the editorial position of his newsroom in reporting stories on immigration and the property market: In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a lot of concern about immigration and its effects. Our news perpetuated this perception. The Laurier Institution quickly found out that house price increases have far more to do with interprovincial migrants than with immigration. Those are the facts and we revised our coverage in short order.34

Though the ‘facts’ lie elsewhere, Laurier had been successful in the battle for appearances. Despite the existence of a contradictory negative relationship between domestic migration and house prices through the 1977–2002 period, the myth of domestic, that is a made-in-Canada, source for the

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continuing rise of Vancouver house prices soon became entrenched. Interprovincial migration into British Columbia did occur as the province largely escaped a deep recession in much of the rest of Canada, a deliverance that was repeatedly attributed to inflows from the Pacific Rim. But what this assessment overlooked was that while provincial numbers were inflated by domestic migration, few of these gains were felt in Vancouver, for metropolitan numbers were scarcely impacted, with net domestic migration into the metropolitan area at a very low level or negative (Figure 5.8). Any gains from interprovincial migration into Vancouver were offset by intraprovincial migration, losses from the metropolitan area to other parts of the province (City of Vancouver 1995). But these cancelling out effects were lost to casual analysis that was able to gain the headlines and influence popular opinion.35 Just as house prices in Vancouver had moved upwards in 1987 with the rise of post-Expo immigration to Vancouver, so they fell back after 1995 with significant return migration, and a substantial drop in immigration numbers, the decline in both flows linked to the fear of the assets disclosure legislation, optimism about Hong Kong’s post-colonial status and, by the last quarter of 1997, the Asian financial crisis. The relationship between falling house prices and a reduction in net immigration, especially from Hong Kong, was crystal clear to realtors and even to the larger economic elite who might have gone along with the Laurier reports denying the role of East Asian investment in pushing up the market a few years earlier (Walkom 1997). In July 1997 the Wall Street Journal’s Property Report noted ‘For Vancouver the Party is Over: Hong Kong Money is No Longer Acting as Stimulus’ (Carlisle 1997). Price losses between the third quarters of 1996 and 1997 were led by drops of 26 percent and 16 percent respectively in the prime neighbourhoods of Shaughnessy and South Granville (Chow 1997i). It was evident that not only was ‘an exodus’ occurring but also that offshore investors were liquidating their Vancouver holdings to offset financial losses in Asia (Chow 1997g). By 1998 real estate agents were also pointing to the sharp drop in the Hong Kong residential market as another reason for withdrawal of investments from Canada, by providing opportunities for bargain hunters betting (wrongly as it turned out) that the market would recover faster in Hong Kong than in Vancouver. Arguing against the foreign assets disclosure law, the Vancouver Board of Trade cited the erosion of foreign investment and declining property prices as wealthy immigrants, unsettled by the disclosure rules, left the city and returned to East Asia (Gibbon and McCarthy 1997). Overall there was general agreement that the exodus of people and capital as the ‘China tide’ ebbed was leaving especially the top-end housing market high and dry. By the summer of 1998 prices in Vancouver’s Westside had fallen to the point that for the first time in a decade a family with two working professionals could afford a starter

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home, especially if it contained a basement suite as a mortgage helper (Chow 1998e). No one doubted that the withdrawal of East Asian investment was the principal cause.

Conclusion A final argument for setting aside made-in-Canada causes of real estate trends was the gaping mismatch between local incomes and house prices in Vancouver from the late 1980s onwards. Despite dramatically rising house prices, real median family income in metropolitan Vancouver actually fell by 3 percent between 1990 and 2000 (Heisz and McLeod 2004), creating an unbreachable affordability barrier for many families. The metropolitan labour market simply did not generate enough steam to raise house prices through the pressure of local demand alone. In 1990 and 1994 it would have taken over 60 percent of the median pre-tax income in Greater Vancouver to service a typical mortgage on a standard detached bungalow, including property tax and the cost of utilities; affordability would be yet more severe for a detached two-storey house.36 This figure had risen rapidly from under 40 percent as recently as 1986. By the end of the decade the index remained above 50 percent and rose again by 2006 to match the prohibitive levels of the early 1990s. Instead, the property price lid was raised by pressure from off-shore investment, some of it in absentee portfolios seeking asset diversification, much of it embodied in immigrant households eager to purchase property, including those landing in Vancouver through the business immigration streams – whose available ‘total money’ was estimated earlier at $35–$40 billion. The arrival of these flows of investment and immigration were palpable signs of the maturation of Canada’s Pacific Rim policy and the success of the nation’s struggle for inclusion within the Pacific Rim growth region. While the scale of this capital relative to city size might be specific to Vancouver, the research raises broader questions about the globalization of the property market in gateway cities, and the role of immigration as a driver of market trends (Ley 2007). Vancouver events also highlight the role of a power elite in actively facilitating globalization through boosterism and different forms of persuasion including the output of market-friendly research centres. Chapter 4 showed how trans-Pacific economic flows encountered substantial, often incapacitating, challenges in crossing national borders. The ability to move money from Asia to Canada was not the problem; for immigrant entrepreneurs the ability to make it profitable most certainly was, within a new national context where variations in economic culture presented barriers to entrepreneurial success. So too the arrival of real estate

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capital from Asia entered a property market already cultured and differentiated by rules, regulations, and political arrangements. This political culture was variously welcoming and resistant to new investment flows, with the idiosyncratic intervention of the Laurier studies an attempt by a power elite favouring globalisation to do an end run around local resistance. In the next chapter we examine that resistance more closely, and consider various interpretations of it.

Chapter Six

Immigrant Reception: Contesting Globalization… or Resistant Racism?

The federal government facilitated settlement for wealthy arrivals in Canada with business immigration streams tailored to fit their circumstances and with the welcoming blanket of multiculturalism as a comforter. But immigrants, and investment, never touch down in unclaimed land or unoccupied space, and participation in the real estate market brought new arrivals to districts whose land use planning is managed by municipal government responsive to local citizens and their priorities. Any ‘flat world’ promised to millionaire migrants as they entered Canada was complicated by the lumpiness of this pre-existing local political geography, by the vagaries of crossjurisdictional ‘political difference’ (Newendorp 2008). The deployment of off-shore wealth in the urban land market was causing some sharp local controversies by 1988 that threatened to jump scale to the international level. Several paths converged to contribute to that friction, and a broader historical analysis is required to recognize the role of each of them. Investment from East Asia arrived into a fractious national geography where Canadians had already resisted the sovereignty implications of the flat world of open borders in multiple forms and at all three levels of government. Federally, the Trudeau administrations of the 1970s had promoted a national project that encouraged a politics of suspicion in opening national borders too widely to foreign investment.1 Moreover, the anxiety of the Québecois, no longer maîtres chez nous, had rubbed off onto a larger national concern in the 1980s concerning vulnerabilities about cultural and economic domination by the United States. These anxieties came to a head during the negotiations that established the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA) in 1989, leaving the Canadian population sharply polarized.2 At a provincial scale, the neo-liberal initiatives of the Social Credit government in British Columbia were earnestly resisted by the deeprooted labour movement and its supporters; even the world-beckoning

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extravaganza of Expo 86 was at first opposed by Michael Harcourt, social democratic Mayor of Vancouver from 1980–86. Finally locally, in the neighbourhoods of Vancouver and its suburbs, rapid development spawned slow-growth and anti-development movements in the culturally and politically liberal 1970s, and did so again in the late 1980s, leading to a vigorous politics of turf. The important point to emphasize here is that at several geographical scales, and prompted by a variety of stressors, political mobilization against lowering the defences to expansion of the unfettered domain of the market already existed before the arrival of millionaire migrants in significant numbers after 1986. Just as these newcomers brought with them an embodied view of property, so they entered an arena where a pre-existing politics of development was an important regional context. In these entangled webs of meaning careful navigation was necessary and cultural and political disagreements might have been expected. In accounting for resistance to off-shore property investment, another set of contexts, the province’s deeply troubled racial past, has drawn much greater attention from the media, academics and partisan local interests. During most of British Columbia’s first century the actions and prejudices of government statutes and their implementation by street level bureaucrats institutionalized to a significant degree popular racist attitudes and practices (Anderson 1991).3 Some authors have extended this history with little apparent need for revision to the present.4 Certainly complaints about Asianthemed malls in Vancouver’s suburb of Richmond and Markham/Richmond Hill in suburban Toronto,5 and the tense atmosphere around the ‘monster house’ issue in Vancouver’s most exclusive neighbourhoods give such critics some material to work with. But while arguments from critical race theory have identified racism among the long-settled as the primary motive for land use conflict in the reception of wealthy immigrants from East Asia, my own emphasis will incorporate also class and status dimensions. I shall reveal a complex intersection of both anti-growth sentiment and also protection of an existing integration of place and elite identity acting separately and for some residents in conjunction with a reluctance to embrace cultural diversity. The argument in this chapter will suggest a more intricate construction of ‘whiteness’ than often appears in anti-racist literature. We begin with a closer examination of relevant historical contexts to land use conflicts during 1988–92, before moving to interpretation of the conflicts themselves.

Challenges to Open Borders While some critics have promoted Canada’s Pacific Rim strategy as an alternative to a dangerously close dependence upon the United States, the official position was to see them as complementary, particularly in the 1980s

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with the Mulroney-Reagan entente cordiale binding Ottawa and Washington. Freer trade was a basic plank of neo-liberal ‘Reaganomics’, and, following the recommendations of the Macdonald Royal Commission on the Canadian economy, Prime Minister Mulroney authorized free trade negotiations with the Americans to begin in 1986. The objectives were set out with transparent clarity in government information sources. In the late 1980s, there was a push to liberalize trade. Canada wanted improved and secure access to the US market. The goal was to promote productivity, full employment and to encourage foreign direct investment. Canada also wanted to strengthen the competitiveness of Canadian firms in global markets and to ensure the steady improvement of living standards (Government of Canada 2007).

Although a Liberal-appointed Royal Commission endorsed free trade, the Liberal Party, concerned about challenges to Canadian sovereignty, opposed the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiated by the Mulroney Government. Also opposed was the centre-left New Democratic Party (NDP), worried by implications of a level playing field for Canadian social policy, particularly universal health care, as well as potential job loss as manufacturers encountered lower-cost American competition. Matthew Sparke has confirmed that ‘the dominant critical commentaries around FTA and NAFTA6 at the time of their negotiation and ratification were most often focused on the question of national sovereignty’ (2005:114). The much used metaphor of a North American level playing field was anathema to many – in fact most – Canadians, who preferred the existing differentiated topography with a break of slope at the 49th parallel. The 1988 General Election in Canada was effectively fought as a referendum on the FTA. Anti-FTA parties were particularly successful in British Columbia, where the NDP emerged as the leading party, securing 19 of 32 provincial seats. John Turner, Leader of the Liberal Opposition and viscerally critical of the FTA, more than doubled his majority in Vancouver-Quadra, the constituency that included many of Vancouver’s Westside neighbourhoods. Dissent against open borders, the level playing field, in Vancouver was already galvanized by national debate around free trade. Meanwhile provincial government innovations in the 1980s featured the resolute adoption of a tough neo-liberal agenda. Political conflict and polarization deepened and in 1983, during a severe recession with unemployment close to 14 percent, an alliance of union workers and service organizations brought the province to the brink of a general strike. Elections that decade suggested a majority of voters in the City of Vancouver were not sympathetic to the Province’s right-wing agenda. In the 1979, 1983 and 1986 provincial elections, when the neo-liberal policy of the government was put to the test, a majority of Vancouver voters supported the opposition

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NDP. The vote was close in even the well-heeled Westside polling districts and in 1986 an NDP candidate defeated an incumbent Minister in a Westside riding. Then in 1991, Michael Harcourt led the NDP to victory in the provincial election, winning eight of ten Vancouver seats. Though Harcourt was not opposed to Asia-Pacific immigration and investment, and quickly visited East Asia to reassure economic elites, nonetheless the excesses of neo-liberal social and economic policy were reined in. At the senior levels of government, then, the promotion of neo-liberalism’s open borders through policies of free trade, the disciplining of labour, welfare state cutbacks and the removal of barriers to the anonymous forces of the market encountered significant resistance, independent of flows from Asia Pacific. This was the complex and prevailing political geography into which millionaire migrants moved.

Municipal Affairs: The Rise of the Neighbourhood But it was in municipal politics, the jurisdictions governing land use, that opposition to the unimpeded march of the market in land development was most clearly expressed. Two new municipal reform parties had emerged in Vancouver in 1968 during a period of rapid growth, one liberal, the other left wing. They were opposed to the one-dimensional preoccupation with growth and development that was the leitmotif of the long-established incumbent Non-Partisan Association (NPA), heavily influenced by real estate and business values (Tennant 1980). The reform parties proposed instead a more varied set of quality of life objectives that included environmentalism – not surprising in the city where Greenpeace and Canada’s first Green Party were established – and upholding the public household by supporting transit not freeways, pressing for substantial commitment to social housing, and enlisting public participation in decision-making (Ley 1980). The crucible in which these parties were born was a prolonged conflict over the imposition of an urban freeway system upon Vancouver, the first leg of which would dismember Chinatown-Strathcona, long a victim of social exclusion and political harassment (see Chapter 2). Success in the ‘great freeway debate’ and against a parallel urban renewal plan that would have razed Chinatown’s residential extension, Strathcona, sparked the desire for an urban politics more attentive to the needs of local residents and less controlled by urban boosterism. The saving of Chinatown, the weakest district in the city politically, was also an inspiring test case for emergent neighbourhood anti-development movements. In 1971 both Chinatown and Gastown, the city’s historic town site (also facing destruction from the freeway alignment), were designated protected Historic Areas by the provincial government. The same year multiculturalism with its defence of cultural diversity was declared in Ottawa. The protection offered

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to the Chinatown and Gastown Historic Areas introduced an official politics of recognition to territorial expressions of cultural difference in cities, thereby blocking property development not sympathetic to these spatialized identities. Multiculturalism, in adding cultural rights to the menu of citizenship rights, raised new possibilities for defence against intrusive change. So now neighbourhoods as territories of cultural difference provided a viable ontological category in citizenship claims. Urban politics could no longer be about just individual rights; collectivities in neighbourhoods could also claim protections and privileges based on their special character. The municipal reform parties gained power in Vancouver in 1972 and in various alliances retained control of City Hall for most of the next 15 years. A parallel development at the regional level saw the emergence of the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s Livable Region Plan, which also held plural objectives (GVRD 1975). The Plan was the outcome of a lengthy programme of community consultation and went far beyond a blueprint for economic development. Indeed under certain conditions, growth was a problem to be avoided, for the region’s planning director wrote in a federal report, ‘Planning can be against growth if that is society’s goal, rather than for it’ (Lash 1976). The breadth of planning objectives in the region was retained when a draft of a new regional plan was released in 1990 (GVRD 1990). Like its predecessor it followed a period of public consultation and promoted social rights over private rights. It attacked pollution of all kinds, discouraged use of the private car, backed the preservation of agricultural land, and aimed to minimize the journey-to-work by guiding employment growth to specified regional town centres with higher residential densities. The 1970s represented the high point of the Canadian welfare state: impressive targets were achieved in the production of social housing; in Vancouver freeways were not built and instead the first leg of a long-mooted rapid transit system was opened in 1986. A distinctive and generally successful model of urban planning was initiated featuring mixed land use, minimising the journey-to-work through emphasis on downtown housing development, and attention to urban design and landscaping (Punter 2004). Design priorities included promoting ‘neighbourliness’ in land use planning, a principle propounded by Ray Spaxman, the influential Director of Planning in Vancouver, appointed by a reform council in 1974 and in office until 1989.7 Upon his retirement, and reflecting back over this period, Spaxman (1989) wrote: ‘the more we identify and reward neighbourly behaviour the more successful we (as a city) will be’. The ethos of the public household was in the ascendancy, including the recognition of public entitlements to space. Institutionalizing this ethos, local area planning was initiated in the early 1970s with opportunities for neighbourhoods to consult with planners in establishing local land use priorities. Here was the recognition of neighbourhood

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Figure 6.1 Essential Shaughnessy

as an ontological unit in civic politics, part of a broader move in postmodern planning where the authority of the meta-narrative of ‘the master plan’ was demoted to make room for the micro-narratives of local plans. In 1976 it was Shaughnessy’s turn for local area planning.8 As Vancouver’s established elite district, the district had been vigorously defended at first by its developer, the Canadian Pacific Railway, and from the 1930s by the Shaughnessy Heights Property Owners’ Association (SHPOA), an astute, vigilant and effective ratepayers’ association (Duncan 1994). The Shaughnessy landscape expressed, particularly in the oldest section of First Shaughnessy, an elite English landscape taste with mansions on large lots half-concealed behind mature trees and shrubs (Figure 6.1). Houses were typically in a European revival style, with Tudor the most popular design. Architectural historians recognized in Shaughnessy a distinctive cultural landscape: ‘Its English ancestry and picturesque appearance made the half-timbered Tudor revival the favourite mode in Shaughnessy Heights’ (Kalman and Roaf 1974: 136). These descriptive terms were not selected idly. The landscape of houses and gardens did not just reflect some distant cultural memory but helped to reproduce a present dream world, a shared sub-culture of distinction among an anglophile class and status elite. Place and identity were joined in mutual

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confirmation, and SHPOA worked vigilantly to protect each through the 1970s. When the local area planning process took place, SHPOA continued to urge preservation and enhancement of its heritage landscape (Duncan 1994). If Chinatown could be preserved for its special cultural character, then so too could Shaughnessy. Its case was aided by a broader city-wide ideology favouring neighbourhood preservation. A ‘Goals for Vancouver’ survey by the City Planning Commission in 1979 found residents supporting the special character of neighbourhoods, heritage preservation and enhancing public green space (VCPC 1980). Here was a broader ‘livable city’ ideology (Ley 1980), adapted by City Council to shape planning goals, and it elided neatly with neighbourhood objectives. With astute steering of the planning process by SHPOA, City Council approved the local plan for First Shaughnessy in 1982. Besides endorsing preservation, the Plan introduced design controls forbidding new buildings that departed from an ‘English picturesque’ landscape tradition. Successful in the oldest one-third of its territory, SHPOA subsequently took its preservation campaign southwards into Second and Third, or South Shaughnessy. But in doing so by the late-1980s it encountered the first arrivals of millionaire migrants, leading to an altogether more public and contrary political process.

Assessing Growth: Public Debates and Dirty Tricks Concerns with growth and preservation movements returned to the city and region in the later 1980s; metropolitan population rose 16 percent from 1986–91 and another 14 percent in the next five years (Ley et al. 1992). Old arguments were re-opened. In a 1986 report, Vancouver’s Planning Department observed that residents were ‘of two minds about the way their city should change’ (City of Vancouver 1986). On the one hand they wanted ‘Vancouver to be a thriving urban centre, a world city. With more jobs and business opportunities and with a greater variety of things to see and do.’ But they also wished ‘to preserve Vancouver’s present small-city character: relatively low density housing, peaceful neighbourhoods and quiet streets.’ The debate was re-invigorated by a speech by the celebrated modern architect Arthur Erickson in October 1989 in which he provocatively urged his home town to plan for a population of 10 million, with the ringing double-edged exhortation ‘We have to grow up!’ (Bramham 1989a). The speech touched a raw nerve and was widely reported, generating an editorial in the Vancouver Sun, letters to the editor, and precipitating a public debate a few months later, where Erickson endorsed the question ‘Should Vancouver plan for a future population of ten million?’ Opposing the motion was Vancouver’s recently retired Director of Planning, Ray Spaxman. The debate moved across fundamentally contested terrain, exposing starkly

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contradictory visions of the city. Repeating the dualism of the City’s 1986 report, one side endorsed the collapsing of barriers to growth, while the other maintained a more complex quality of life through social and environmental objectives limiting wide-open economic liberalism. The issues were not felt in the City alone but also in the suburbs, for sharp conflicts opposing development had occurred in the large municipalities of Richmond, Delta and Surrey. Anti-growth movements contested the 1990 elections and made breakthroughs in Delta and Richmond, where a rightwing tradition in provincial and federal politics was jettisoned and a strong majority of eight out of nine New Democrats, affiliated with slow growth, were elected to office. In Vancouver, where the pro-growth party had returned to power in 1986, a difficult fight with the left was expected. Jim Green, the left’s candidate for Mayor was widely known and respected as a community organizer in the Downtown Eastside, the City’s poorest and most deeply troubled neighbourhood. An opponent of gentrification and displacement, he was the perfect representative for anti-development voters. His clever election slogan, ‘The Neighbourhood Green’, evoked two issues that had carried reform groups to electoral success in the 1970s: protection of the environment and a small is beautiful defence of neighbourhoods. Green’s attempts to bolster local defences against development threats ran counter to his competitor, the pro-growth incumbent, Gordon Campbell. A businessman, articulate, well educated and cosmopolitan, Campbell epitomized the free market internationalisation of the world city. The election campaign was framed around development and housing affordability, and momentum appeared to be running in Green’s favour. Then shortly before the election, a series of articles on development appeared in the daily newspaper, the Vancouver Sun. Edited by two Professors of Planning at the University of British Columbia, the full-page articles gave the impression of carrying forward the growth debate initiated by Erickson. With the eye-catching title, ‘Future Growth, Future Shock’ the series was presented as dispassionately pursuing a broad public interest. But a consistent editorial line became evident for seemingly well-informed spokespersons were clearly speaking from the same page, making the case for open borders, population growth and globalization while advocating rational planning approaches to manage inevitable growth and development. Resistance was refuted as self-interested NIMBY-ism and an immature failure to ride the tide of history. While not acknowledged nor apparent at the time, the series was a premeditated attempt to establish ideological supremacy and sway the election. In a later interview, Alan Artibise the Planning professor who directed the series, admitted that the two academics had been commissioned on a contract basis by the development industry (Mitchell 1996, 2004). The series, Artibise told Mitchell, was a ‘calculated attempt to change an ideology’ (Mitchell 2004: 134).

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The ‘Future Growth, Future Shock’ series came less than a year after the Laurier reports that had advanced a similar set of conclusions favouring unconstrained markets. In the 1990 Vancouver civic election the pro-growth NPA scraped through, just winning an election they had expected to lose. Once again academics had proved themselves useful contract workers in wresting hegemony for the globalization campaign. So this was the political geography into which millionaire migrants moved. Attempts by senior government to press a neo-liberal agenda rolling back national and local barriers to the free flow of capital had been resisted at the ballot and in informal protest, while a continuing public debate over the previous two decades had raised repeatedly the question of appropriate limits to local and regional growth. The recognition of the neighbourhood as an appropriate planning unit in the 1970s, and neighbourliness as a land use objective, highlighted the value of such public goods as social planning, public space, and cultural landscapes. Reform councils began to accommodate neighbourhood claims for preservation of landscapes of special character. In Vancouver, and some of its suburbs, there was a well-honed political culture protective of the local and committed to a multidimensional set of objectives, the mélange of economic, cultural, social and political ends often lumped together in that ambiguous sobriquet, the quality of life.

The Place of Race Opposition to free trade, open borders and unfettered development have not usually been acknowledged as relevant contexts in explaining opposition to the impacts of substantial overseas investment in the Vancouver land market. More common has been the charge of racism, a disposition all too evident in the anti-Asian and specifically anti-Chinese sentiment that pollutes Canadian (and American) social history. The cultural diversity of early Vancouver had led to quasi-apartheid living arrangements of Asian, European and Aboriginal populations; certainly Furnivall would have recognized characteristics of the colonial plural society in the place of race in early Vancouver. Xenophobic stereotyping, the monopoly on power held by white Canadians, and the resulting institutionalisation and enforcement of difference in asymmetric patterns of privilege and marginality led to what Cole Harris saw as a ‘particularly virulent racism… race became the preeminent symbol. It defined simply and effectively, with no need to go into details, who was acceptable and who was not’ (Harris 1997: 268). The spatialization of difference – in Chinatown, Japantown, the aboriginal reserve, European districts – gave a sharp edge to the contours of race. Here was the deployment of racism in ideal typical form: crude and sometimes hateful stereotyping, power asymmetries, the institutionalization of

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privilege and marginality in law and convention, and markedly divergent social, economic and political life chances. While there are some scholars who project this dismal environment into the present – with most traction in studies of Aboriginal racialization (Razack 2002) – the hard boundaries of a plural society have softened and merged, the tight control and surveillance keeping people in their place are bonds that have steadily been released. Legal rights, political enfranchisement, the accoutrements of a liberal democracy have progressively been expanded. The disappearance of enforced residential segregation and the growing incidence of intermarriage indicate more fluidity in inter-group relations. The Government of Canada has formally apologized in recent years to its citizens of Japanese, Chinese and South Asian ancestry for its cruel actions – dispossession and internment, legislated exclusion, ad hoc denial of landing rights – in the first half of the twentieth century, apologies that provide object lessons for appropriate relations in the present. Institutional reform has reached deeper into popular culture with anti-racist legislation and the powerful ideological message of multiculturalism inculcated through school curricula and civil society advancing recognition, respect and minority rights in a culturally diverse population (Taylor 1992; Kymlicka 1995).9 Racism in Canada has not disappeared but it is publicly disapproved and legally prohibited. Ien Ang (2001: 142) has observed that ‘we should recognize the difficulty of determining where racism begins and ends, and of establishing a clear dividing line between tolerance and intolerance in a selfdeclared multicultural nation’, and what is true for Australia is no less true in Canada. From large surveys, Kevin Dunn and his team conclude that about one Australian in eight holds racist attitudes (Forrest and Dunn 2006). But patterns are complex, sometimes well defined geographically, sometimes more fully associated with compositional socio-economic factors. Local variation and contingency seem to be dominant features. The authors acknowledge that surveys are incomplete tools, with considerable likelihood of some bias toward socially approved norms. In a fine-scaled analysis of racism in Sydney, they also discovered that Australian-born respondents scored more favourably than residents born in non-English speaking regions of the world on some key attitudinal indicators of tolerance (Forrest and Dunn 2007). Survey data suggest acceptance of immigration in Canada, with international surveys in 2002 and 2004 indicating much higher positive responses than in other countries; in the 2002 Pew Global Attitudes Project, 77 percent of Canadian respondents considered that immigration yielded more positive than negative outcomes, while no other nation recorded endorsement of over 50 percent (Hiebert 2006). Polling data add another level of contingency, for outcomes show fluctuating levels through time in the balance of welcoming or unwelcoming opinions. Results from annual polls asking whether the numbers of immigrants arriving in Canada are ‘too many’ or ‘about the right number’ have fluctuated markedly at different

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stages in the economic cycle (Stewart 1996; Jimenez 1999; Wilkes et al. 2007). The proportion judging that there are too many immigrant landings reached a high of 69 percent during economic recession in 1983, but fell to 57 percent with a stronger economy in 1990. Renewed recession inflated negative attitudes to a peak of 70 percent in 1993, but they fell back to 46 percent in 1996 and 38 percent in 1999 with an improving economy. There is no simple relationship between these attitudes and the number of new arrivals, for, despite high disapproval of the numbers, 1983 recorded the lowest level of landings and also the largest share of European immigrants. Closer to the intent of the Australian surveys, a question expected to give a sharper indication of racism (‘Non-whites should not be allowed to immigrate to Canada’) was asked in polls between 1989 and 1996. Overall the numbers in agreement with the statement averaged about 9 percent and fell during the period (Palmer 1998). In Vancouver the share of these hard-core exclusionists was 5 percent, the lowest in Canada. A later Vancouver survey showed that over 70 percent of respondents agreed that immigrants and refugees make a positive impact, and almost 80 percent concurred that immigration strengthens Canadian culture (Hiebert 2003). The large surveys show the complexity of the distribution of opinions unfavourable to immigration, and offer a rough estimate of racist attitudes. Negative attitudes vary by location and socio-economic status, while their frequency fluctuates according to external conditions, and in particular at different stages in the economic cycle. In addition the Australian analysis suggests that some immigrants bear racist tendencies no less than the nativeborn. What is clear from this research is the implausibility of reducing the character of any large segment of the population to an inherent and invariable racist personality (Satzewich 2007).

Multicultural Whitewash? Yet this is commonly the project of whiteness studies (Bonnett 2000; Rothenberg 2002; Shaw 2007). Surveys may disclose individual attitudes, more or less accurately, but they provide little insight into structural causes and effects. Whiteness studies move beyond individual attitudes to regard the institutional matrix of society where either hidden or taken-for-granted norms exist that offer moral, political, cultural or economic advantage to those defined as white. Two geographers have attempted to define whiteness as ‘the normative, ordinary power to enjoy social privilege by controlling dominant values and institutions, and, in particular, by occupying space within a segregated social landscape’ (Kobayashi and Peake 2000). The allusion to occupying space is a useful reference point for the neighbourhood events we shall consider shortly.

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Critics might respond that multiculturalism attempts to move beyond the built-in institutional advantages of particular elites, in Canada the British and French so-called charter groups, in Australia the descendents of AngloCeltic settlers. But Mitchell (2004) sees latent racism within the structure of the foundational British institutions in Canada that continues to play out in public norms and government practices. In addressing ‘multicultural whitewash’ (2004: 93), she endorses the view that multiculturalism patronizes minority cultures by reducing them to bundles of exoticized differences set out for contemplation and consumption from an elite (white) standpoint. Ghassan Hage (1999) has vigorously advanced a similar criticism, berating Australian multicultural policy as a strategy by a ‘white nation’ to preserve its hegemony. By (culturally) ‘caging’ immigrant groups, observes Hage, labelling them with a set of ethno-specific traits, elites set them at a distance, and carry on with the task of governance. In many respects Hage offers a more rhetorical version of Kay Anderson’s earlier critical race study of Vancouver’s Chinatown (Anderson 1991). Anderson did not only take on the easy target of early Vancouver in displaying the power of white, European race categories, enshrined in the practices of the state, in essentializing and marginalizing Chinatown. She also extended this interpretation up to 1980, arguing that while multiculturalism has traded pleasantries for the state’s earlier harassments, nonetheless under multiculturalism, Chinese-Canadians continue to be perceived generically. The meticulous preservation of Chinatown, with a detailed palette of statemanaged design controls, has created an outdoor museum, a landscape of chinoiserie that presents a repertoire of approved Chinese appearances, with the state reinforcing the imagined western version of Chinese difference. This argument that multiculturalism is an instrument of white privilege gains some traction but suffers from a dated view of multiculturalism as it currently exists. In Canada, as Kobayashi (1993) argued some time ago, multiculturalism has moved through three stages, from demographic multiculturalism, prior to any state acknowledgement, to a symbolic model, when the cultural traits of diverse groups were celebrated and funded. Finally with the present structural model cultural funding has all but disappeared, and multiculturalism has morphed into an anti-racist and human rights agenda that oversees equal treatment for ethno-cultural groups in the labour market, before the police and immigration tribunals, in access to public services, and in participation and representation in Canadian institutions. The cutting edge of contemporary policy no longer concerns the aestheticization of heritage cultures – of which the preservation of Chinatown provides an impressionable older example – but rather addresses barriers to immigrant integration (Ley 2010). This multiculturalism receives a high level of endorsement from all Canadians, and slightly more from immigrants who regard it as recognising their cultural difference and human rights.10

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Critics have challenged several untenable claims in the treatment of whiteness in critical race studies. Anderson (1998), looking back selfcritically on her own research in Vancouver’s Chinatown noted the limitations of the binary us/them categorization of Europe and not Europe, white and non-white. For one thing, such ‘grand systems and tidy totalities’ (1998: 205) are in danger of reifying culture, and ironically undermine social constructionism itself that argues for the dismantling of such monolithic entities into their constituent social processes. But even in its own terms whiteness is not a fixed and constant target, for as American social historians have shown, a nineteenth century Yankee essence of American whiteness consecutively absorbed the Irish, Jews, Southern Europeans and perhaps before too long the ‘model minorities’ of Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Filipinos (Ong 2003). The historical elasticity of the concept contradicts any allusion to some fixed race content. Then there is the significant danger of marginalizing other important lines of stratification such as class and gender in any account that fixes upon race as a total explanatory system, for alternate social locations then tend to be ‘uncritically assimilated into a hegemonic narrative whole’ (Anderson 1998: 205). The need for attention to the intersections of various subject positions – race, class, gender, age, religion, etc. – in understanding the actions and experiences of marginalized (or privileged) groups requires a complex and grounded methodology that most likely will avoid grand explanations (Winders 2003; Housel 2009). Dua (2007: 192) goes on to state that ‘since researchers continue to employ singular categories such as gender, race, ability, or sexual orientation to analyse questions of inequality, experiences, and identity, our current ways of conceptualizing inequality, lived experience and identity are significantly limited’. A third limitation of critical race studies is the compression of human subjectivity that follows from the privileging of race in identity formation, a failing that has both conceptual and moral difficulties. The ‘complexly differentiated and positioned subject’ (Anderson 1998: 220) disappears entirely from view, to be replaced by a flimsy mannequin sustaining a binary view of society, populated by vulnerable victims and demonized oppressors. So the anti-racist is in danger of inverting the categories of the racist while retaining their logical structure. It is precisely this inversion that retains the dualisms it rejects that has attracted criticism from Alastair Bonnett: ‘antiracists have often placed a myth of whiteness at the centre of their discourse. The myth views ‘being white’ as an immutable condition with clear and distinct moral attributes. These attributes often include: being racist; not experiencing racism; being an oppressor; not experiencing oppression; silencing; not being silenced’ (Bonnett 1996). Accusations of racism are not only conceptual but also establish moral and political advantage. Particularly in a society valuing multicultural

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openness to diversity, the charge of racism trumps most others. It is a charge that demeans, that identifies a deficient standard of citizenship. As such it establishes a moral and political high ground, superiority in citizenship practice that disqualifies competing discourses and their claims for political endorsement, thereby favouring one’s own. Accusations of racism may be employed as a potent tool in political rhetoric. At the same time one must avoid the dangerous risk of dismissing racism altogether. There was no ambiguity about the existence of racism in the case of attempted arson at a building site in the Westside district of Arbutus Ridge in 1996 when a home under construction for a Hong Kong family was damaged and spray-painted with highly offensive graffiti; nor was there any lack of clarity of intent in the daubing of racist graffiti on parked cars the previous summer (Bolan 1996). Surveys of immigrants in Canada have thrown some additional light on their experience of disadvantage, with evidence from the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey (Government of Canada 2003; Reitz and Banerjee 2007). Some 20 percent of ‘visible minorities’ reported that they had ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in the previous five years because of some ethno-cultural characteristic. Another 15 percent had endured such treatment, but ‘rarely’. Chinese-Canadians fell just below the average for all visible minorities.11 ‘Race’ or skin colour was by far the most common distinction attributed by them for such treatment, and typically the incidents occurred in the work place. In contrast ten percent of other Canadians reported such an experience. The inclusiveness of the broad category of perceived ‘unfair treatment’ might inflate responses but nonetheless they underscore the existence of discrimination proceeding from ethnic and racial difference experienced by over a third of visible minorities. We heard enough stories among returnees from Canada in Hong Kong to substantiate these findings.12 Typically, negative episodes in Canada were concentrated at work or at school, though no one suggested they were persistent or profound enough to motivate emigration. In response to a question about feeling ‘a full and equal member of Canadian society’, some focus group members reviewed unsettling events: So during the first two years, I had a strong impression that the excuse of everyone who wouldn’t hire me was that I had no Canadian experience. It was a big bias.

Once in the workforce, some respondents felt there was a ceiling to career achievement. I think there is still discrimination, especially if ethnic minorities want to obtain higher positions… I have experienced this and have heard similar stories, so I definitely believe discrimination exists.

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Others sensed lack of respect even with a high position: ‘I was a manager at the hospital with 700 staff under me, making good money. But I still did not feel respected by the local staff.’ While at school, some children felt ostracized if they could not speak English, or were picked on by a hostile teacher. A number of respondents interpreted the issue as a failure of respect, ‘being looked down on’. In their view this was a class response, and the wealth of more recent immigrants from East Asia had turned the tables. Yet others had not run the racist gauntlet: ‘having lived in Vancouver, I didn’t feel much discrimination. I do, however, understand that it is difficult to have closer relationships with other people’. Respondents did not regard negative experiences as systemic, for they were often accompanied by appreciation of government policy, and differentiation of more and less discriminatory citizens among other Canadians – ‘Canadians are very nice, I can say 80 percent or even 90 percent’. They recognized too that discrimination could be (and was) practised by immigrants as well as by the native-born.

Grieving for a Lost Home A third context to opposition to residential redevelopment emerged from a much more local neighbourhood subjectivity. In 1963 psychiatrist Mark Fried reported the results of forced displacement from an urban renewal programme in Boston’s West End, an Italian inner city district. A range of psychosomatic, stress-related conditions accompanied the prising apart of residents from a familiar and much-loved setting. Earlier, Walter Firey (1945) had noted the bonding power of ‘sentiment and symbolism’ in the preservation of several old districts in the same city, including the adjacent Italian North End as well as the elite in-town area of Beacon Hill. In each case, land uses predicted from ‘highest and best use’ theories of the urban land market were blocked by competing values associated with the meaningfulness of local environments in sustaining landscapes and social life that were integral to a shared local identity. Inner Boston in the 1960s became an important laboratory for this type of analysis. Just before Fried’s celebrated article, Herbert Gans (1962) had published his seminal ethnography, The Urban Villagers, of the same West End district, documenting the dense social networks and social capital, in fact the pervasively social basis of everyday life. This tightly intertwined bonding of society and space, place and identity, the private and the public, created neighbourhood as a larger communal home. And so when, against their will, families had to leave the West End before a ‘slum clearance’ order, when the village was disrupted by external change agents, measurable physical and mental health reactions occurred. Residents were, as Fried (1963) put it, grieving for a lost home.

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The research of Fried, Gans, and Jane Jacobs (1961), who presented a broader rejection of rational, centralized planning, contributed to the recognition of neighbourhood as a significant ontological unit, a public resource sustaining the daily life of residents. Such research encouraged the emergence of the neighbourhood movement in the 1960s to resist urban renewal and population dispersal. We documented such resistance earlier in Vancouver’s Chinatown-Strathcona against urban renewal and freeway construction. Multiculturalism offered an additional argument for preserving districts against unwanted disruption. In legitimating protection for collective cultural rights in cities, what government had granted to Chinatown, others, including the elite Anglo-Canadian district of Shaughnessy, might also claim. Shaughnessy, like Beacon Hill in Boston, is an in-town elite district evoking sentiment and symbolism. An anglophile landscape of large character homes and mature trees and shrubs has supported an elite identity of wellbeing and privilege. The setting and the location are not readily substitutable. Together they confer the status of distinction and the comfort of belonging in a neighbourhood with an institutionally complete entourage of elite social clubs, nearby private schools, parks and mainstream churches, generating interlocking social networks and a supportive sub-culture. To lose all of this might well generate feelings of grief. The intersubjective fusion of place and identity provides a third significant interpretive theme in understanding the land use conflicts in Shaughnessy and other Westside districts with the entry of overseas capital.

Off-shore Regattas We saw in Chapter 5 how Vancouver property was marketed in Hong Kong and other global centres in East and Southeast Asia. Companies were preselling property in Hong Kong before releasing it for sale in Canada; indeed with eager purchasers in Asia Pacific, some Vancouver projects were not marketed in Canada at all. Here was the well-lubricated flat world in operation, with properties overflying the local market and coming to ground for purchase by distant buyers. The attraction for the developer was brand recognition by keen investors in Asia Pacific who were willing to pay higher prices than Vancouver purchasers could or would bear. The president of the Hong Kong-Canada Business Association estimated that about 30 Vancouver building projects had been marketed entirely in Asia Pacific without any public sales in British Columbia (Hamilton 1988).13 This transnational business practice became general knowledge with the marketing of the Regatta condominiums in December 1988. Developed by Grand Adex, with Victor Li (Li Ka-shing’s son) and Terry Hui as principals, the Regatta is adjacent to the Concord Pacific (Expo 86) site. Li Ka-shing’s real estate company marketed

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the Regatta exclusively in Hong Kong, and all 216 units were sold in three hours. To the Vancouver public the proximity of the Regatta to the Concord Pacific site, and the centrality of the Li family, owners of Concord Pacific, in the sale, suggested a precedent that would be repeated with the marketing of the Expo site itself. There was an angry perception that new units from the vast Concord Pacific project in the heart of Vancouver would not be available for local purchase. This smacked of the worst features of the branch plant economy that opponents of the FTA had just fought against so vigorously. For the timing of the Regatta sales could not have been worse in terms of public impact, with marketing in early December 1988, just two weeks after the hard fought General Election over the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. While Grand Adex had not committed any crime, the company’s timing and overall decision-making were certainly undiplomatic. The majority of Vancouver voters rejected the FTA, yet still lost the election, and was acutely sensitive to foreign trade domination. From their perspective the off-shore sale of the Regatta units to distant buyers largely for investment purposes, and with no opportunity for local purchase, was an unacceptable example of commercial imperialism. In response to public furore, within a week of the Regatta sales, Victor Li was summoned to a meeting with the acting Mayor of Vancouver. In an unusual position of public accountability for a member of the Li family, he apologized for the insensitive sale of the Regatta in Hong Kong alone, promised that Vancouver buyers would have first option on Concord Pacific projects when they were ready to sell, that pricing would reflect local conditions not the Hong Kong demand premium, and expressed the desire that purchasers/investors not buy multiple units (Hamilton 1988). This sense of contrition was somewhat undercut as it became clear that a first option for Vancouver buyers would not be a binding condition on any land parcels on the site that Concord might sell to other Hong Kong developers (Lee 1988). Moreover, a year later discontent was again raised when it was learned that local buyers would have an edge of only 24 hours over Hong Kong sales (Bramham 1989b). Only when Terry Hui took charge of Concord Pacific were Vancouver buyers given a two-week window for advance purchase before general sales release in Asia Pacific (Le Corre 1994). The Regatta affair brought to a head both anxieties and anger about the impact of foreign investment in the local land market. The off-shore sale of the entire Expo site in spring 1988 by the right-wing provincial government for what was widely regarded as a bargain basement price had frustrated many citizens. The prospect that the site, one-sixth of the area of downtown Vancouver, could be marketed exclusively overseas rubbed salt deep into the wound. Meanwhile apartment demolitions for condominium construction were displacing local residents in middle class districts like Kerrisdale,14 while house prices were inflating rapidly and stranding local buyers who could not match an international pricing structure. The Regatta affair made it clear that the Vancouver land market was being treated with neither

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sentiment nor symbolism, but as an entry in a distant investment portfolio. Harry Rankin, senior left-wing member of Vancouver Council, blustered, ‘We have to stop foreign ownership of land, be it residential, commercial, hotels or whatever’ (Collins 1989a), a position echoed to the media by some provincial politicians. Donald Gutstein, a local author and housing activist, and a familiar player in anti-development and pro-neighbourhood fights in the 1970s, entered the fray, arguing publicly as he had a decade earlier against insensitive development that breached neighbourhood defences. His book, The New Landlords: Asian Investment in Canadian Real Estate (Gutstein 1990), itemizing causes and consequences of Vancouver’s absorption into a global real estate market, sold like hot cakes.15 The traditional political geography of local development was being transgressed as neo-liberal market freedoms exposed land development to new calculations and priorities. These realities were quite evident to expatriates in Hong Kong. Writing in the South China Morning Post, Rick Gossen (1989), a real estate developer, observed: The Regatta issue is not one of race, but focuses on a perceived slight of Canadians who have little input to property development in their own backyard…From a commercial standpoint, the units were marketed where they could be sold most efficiently (in Hong Kong) with the most high profile company (Cheung Kong). In Vancouver, government officials offer noncommercial reasons saying that the units should be offered locally.

In a ‘level playing field’ or a ‘flat world’ across the Pacific, the imposition of ‘non-commercial reasons’ to complicate economic transactions introduced some confusion. Canada had repeatedly sought investment from Asia Pacific, but once it arrived wanted to assimilate capital to a local political culture unfamiliar to Hong Kong investors. Indeed rather than causing offence, ‘by Hong Kong standards [Grand Adex] were to be congratulated for commercial prowess’ (Gossen 1989). A second observer in Hong Kong highlighted the political differences across the transnational social field between a Canadian character that ‘treasures matters of social policy – ideas like concern for the environment, quality of life, affordable housing, or whether or not someone gets his view of the mountains blocked by another development’ and the ‘bottom-line-first ways for which Hong Kong business is famous’ (Collins 1989a). Moreover, there is a fear in Vancouver that a secondary market for property is rapidly being developed – one market for high-paying outsiders and one for the locals with whatever’s left…16 When a [Vancouver] property can be bought, sold, leased and even managed from offices in Hong Kong, it is bound to create a backlash, which it has. And many are now coming to view that sort of ‘investment’ in Vancouver as colonization (Collins 1989a).

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Yet was there a touch of hypocrisy here, for hadn’t Vancouver, British Columbia, and Canada been courting Asia Pacific investment for the past decade? In a later column, Collins (1989b) reminded his Hong Kong readers that the BC Finance Minister had led three trade tours to Asia in the past two and a half years. But, Vancouver was caught off guard by the magnitude of interest by Asians in the town’s residential real estate; enough interest – some would call it a feeding frenzy – to create a property boom divorced from the generally unimpressive BC economy… A recent survey by the [Vancouver] Sun placed the amount of Asian buying of total property sales at 30 percent in October [1988]; 25 percent of total property sales [were] by Hong Kong residents (Collins 1989b).

How to talk about these developments, indeed whether to talk about them at all, became a significant challenge in cross-cultural communication. The Regatta issue exposed the different political cultures surrounding wealth and property development on each side of the Pacific. In Hong Kong, what counted as ‘commercial prowess’, economic optimization in buying and selling, was an offence in the more plural society of Vancouver if it undercut other values. A transnational realtor like Andrea Eng (1989) could speak glowingly of Hong Kong as ‘a city motivated by profit’, but when the Vancouver Sun’s reporter made similar suggestions the same year,17 and when the media highlighted the impacts of off-shore capital on the Vancouver housing market, their comments were received through a local cultural filter that saw not prowess but predation. Canadian-born and long-settled ethnic Chinese understood this variable geography of meaning, and realized its implications. Unfavourable generalizations – whether true or not – about the actions of any overseas group might kindle nativist if not racist conclusions. The editorial page of the Chinatown News (1989a) warned against ‘demagoguery and hysteria that would pin the blame on foreigners’, and, with more urgency (1989b), ‘we fear there is an element of xenophobia in these complaints that is tinged with racism when it comes to foreign investment’. Bill Yee, former City Councillor and president of the Chinese Benevolent Society, alluded to past indignities: ‘Once again, we are being reminded we don’t belong here. We have been fighting this bloody thing for years’ (Witt 1989). The fuss became noisy enough to reach the grounds of Government House where Lieutenant Governor David Lam added his own authority to the debate by taking the side of long-established Canadians, despite his own Hong Kong roots: ‘When a Canadian is concerned about his own way of living this concern is not racism’ (Lam 1989a).18 But in some quarters, particularly it seems among some elderly white residents, the race card prevailed. ‘There is racism in Vancouver,’ declared Councillor Libby Davies, ‘When there are pressures on people, they look for scapegoats’ (Mitchell 1989).

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This debate created complex issues of positionality. Left-wing critics like Gutstein or Councillors Harry Rankin and Libby Davies had argued for years for controls against outside profiteering that overruled local jurisdiction and neighbourhood use-values. This had been the face of the city’s reform politics in the 1970s against local developers obsessed with the bottom-line, and it continued through the 1990 electoral campaign of progressive Mayoralty candidate Jim Green, neighbourhood activist, whose election slogan ‘the Neighbourhood Green’ evoked communitarian values and not the individual ambitions of open borders.Their federal NDP counterparts had led the charge against the FTA with the United States, so it was consistent that these politicians would respond vigorously to the Regatta incident and what it stood for. But in doing so they opened themselves up to charges of racism. As Libby Davies acknowledged in an interview with Katharyne Mitchell in 1991, ‘The whole racism thing became very much the scapegoat and it kind of worked both ways. Progressive people also got caught by it. Because we got characterized that way as well’ (Mitchell 2004: 83). Mitchell’s own authorial position is also politically progressive, mindful and critical of the social effects of outside investment including house price inflation and displacement of elderly tenants. Does that make her account racist? And if she would understandably differentiate her own position, should we not allow the same opportunity to those on the ground who challenged the rapid pace of change?19 For, as we shall see, neighbourhood residents ‘also got caught by it’.

The ‘Monster House’ Saga A middle-class concentration of ethnic Chinese had gathered in the Oakridge area by 1981, including both Canadian-born and recent immigrants. Over the next 15 years new immigrants collected around this cluster and, by 1996, 20 percent of the population in four adjacent census tracts comprised Chinese-Canadians who had landed in the previous decade (Figure 5.6). This was an area of ageing European households, living in modest 1950s bungalows and ranch-style houses, much of it in need of some updating. Small speculative builders, initially with European, South Asian or, later, Chinese principals, bought these properties one by one, demolished them, cleared the site and built much larger houses, usually to the maximum permitted by the lot size. With abundant demand from wealthy immigrants there was no need for design subtlety or compatibility with the existing neighbourhood and builders duplicated simple styles in serial reproduction. The properties were typically two and a half or three stories, with over 4000 square feet of liveable space, square or rectangular with minimal façade articulation, and lightly sloping roofs (Figure 6.2a). Symbols of success often included classical columns, a massive double front door, a towering

(a)

(b)

Figure 6.2 ‘Style wars’: a large modern house in Westside Vancouver, built c 1990, comprehensively renovated to a traditional vernacular style, c 2000 : a) the house as built, before renovation b) the same house after renovation (Photos reproduced by permission of architect Karen Kallweit)

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entrance hall and a spiral staircase. There would be four to six bedrooms and bathrooms, often a separate wok kitchen and an entertainment room. Builders quickly learned the importance of incorporating traditional feng shui elements in the alignment of doors, access to light through large windows unimpeded by plantings and other details of interior design. In parts of Oakridge almost entire blocks have been rebuilt and on east-west streets many houses now have an address ending with a lucky eight, the old number having been changed if necessary by the builder to include this cultural desideratum.20 New houses overshadow existing smaller dwellings, often reducing privacy and sunlight. On a visit to a lawyer’s home, I was shown their abandoned vegetable garden, no longer viable after the construction of a much larger house next door had removed sunlight from their vegetable plot for much of the day. Around such disruptions to everyday ‘neighbourliness’, resentments may form. While celebrating feng shui and the nuclear, sometimes the extended family, a landscape of modernity not tradition is evoked by these houses. Modernity’s fascination with the new is celebrated as simultaneously progressive and good real estate practice. It became clear during the conflicts that ensued that older housing forms held no attraction. In 1992 letters to Council, two Chinese-Canadian homeowners in South Shaughnessy asserted their commitment to new, not old, urban forms.21 ‘We must grow out of the toys and clothing of our youth. We must allow some things to die before we can have a new life… We are undergoing change and change itself will provide the new forms and new concepts of beauty in the future’. Less obliquely, a second homeowner wrote condemning ‘antique’ ideas, for ‘Vancouver is a modern, progressive city. The world is changing all the time, so will this city’. New forms were progressive, modern, and a sound investment; values learned in Hong Kong and Taiwan were transferred to Canada. Meanwhile, secure in its achievement of establishing First Shaughnessy as a character district in the preservation-oriented Plan approved by Council in 1982, the Shaughnessy Heights Property Owners Association (SHPOA) attempted to replicate their success in Second and Third, or South, Shaughnessy, a slightly newer district of mainly upper middle-class homes, including some mansions, that stretched 16 blocks south and up to 12 blocks east-west (Figure 6.3).22 Following its practice in First Shaughnessy, SHPOA first commissioned a design study from a consultant. When the report was presented in 1985, it made the first reference to new ‘oversize’ houses that were not compatible with the existing landscape. The report spoke critically of the ‘squandering’ of heritage and the ‘unravelling’ of the design harmony in the district occasioned by these large properties (French 1985). By 1987 a steady stream of letters was reaching Council about the new large houses, 90 percent of them critical of their incompatibility with an established landscape. The letters came from different parts of the city

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Figure 6.3 Westside neighbourhoods and zoning interventions, early 1990s (source: Ley 1995)

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but were heavily concentrated in South Shaughnessy and adjacent parts of Kerrisdale. Of 184 letters received up to the summer of 1992, all but four bore European, primarily ethnic British, family names. Other mobilization was occurring. In Kerrisdale, a preservationist group, the Kerrisdale/ Granville Homeowners’ Association was formed in 1988, while in part of Third Shaughnessy a 15-block district of mansions audaciously hired its own architect and lawyer under the leadership of a resident, John Pitts, and wrote its own preservation bylaw, which it forced through an embarrassed Council who had failed to come up with adequate guidelines themselves (Ohannesian 1990). The City made three efforts to revise the design of new houses between 1986 and 1990 but none was successful in stemming the tide of protest, and by 1990 it was undertaking a much larger review with an intent to introduce area-specific design and zoning revisions for a large swath of 4600 singlefamily dwellings in Shaughnessy and significant parts of Kerrisdale and Oakridge confronting rapid landscape (and ethnic) change (Figure 6.3). Planning Department questionnaires offered three downzoning solutions to residents, a strategy that would achieve preservation by requiring smaller houses to be constructed, and thus discourage demolition and re-building. The response rate (36 percent) was high for a mail-back questionnaire and indicative of keen local interest. Almost a quarter of all residents favoured the most radical zoning revision, a 40 percent reduction in the floor area permitted outright for a new house (Table 6.1), a massive intervention in the existing zoning protocol. Most residents preferred smaller reductions in the permitted building size, and only 20 percent wanted no revision to the existing bylaws. Interestingly, the desire for protection was not related to the actual incidence of landscape change. In Oakridge, the initial destination of wealthy Asian immigrants, existing houses were being demolished at the substantial rate of 3 percent per annum during 1991–92, ahead of the rate in Kerrisdale (1.8 percent) and twice the rate of 1.5 percent in South Shaughnessy (City of Vancouver 1992). Nonetheless few protest letters came from Oakridge and there was more support for the existing zoning. In this district of elderly households living disproportionately in ranch-style homes and bungalows there was no strong sense of the neighbourhood as a source of sentiment and symbolism worth saving. The shoe was on the other foot in South Shaughnessy, where the demolition rate was lower but endorsement was strongest for the radically restrictive option in downzoning (Table 6.1). South Shaughnessy was closest culturally and geographically to the iconic First Shaughnessy district. For residents it was not an asset to be sold, allowing trading up to a better district. It was already a destination of distinction (Bourdieu 1984), a positional good (Hirsch 1976), where scarcity is absolute rather than relative and substitution is not readily possible, a place and a way of life to protect.23

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Table 6.1 Resident preferences for downzoning changes, Westside neighbourhoods, 1992 (n = 1364) 40% 25% 10% floor space floor space floor space reduction reduction reduction No change Total South Shaughnessy Kerrisdale Oakridge All residents

34 16 22 24

40 52 41 44

13 12 10 12

13 21 28 20

100 100 100 100

Source: Ley (1995, Table 1)

Despatches from the Trenches As anxieties escalated markedly in South Shaughnessy about housing demolitions and the construction of new large houses unsympathetic to the local landscape, Council grasped the nettle, calling a public hearing for September 1992 to air opinions and bring a definitive resolution to a now acute problem. In one of the longest public hearings in the city’s history, councillors sat uncomfortably beneath television lights and before an agitated audience of up to 500 residents for six consecutive evenings. The arguments put forward by SHPOA and its allies were consistent with the rhetoric and discourse of neighbourhood protection that had been normalized in urban politics and local area planning in the City for the previous 20 years. Council was familiar with these arguments for they had been presented in petitions and letters for the past five years and indeed had been accepted as a rationale for the First Shaughnessy Plan in 1982. There was a constant refrain: the need for public regulation to preserve a heritage landscape, the requirement that new buildings be ‘neighbourly’ in their design, an insistence that mature trees and landscaping be respected. The tone of letters was sometimes defensive, even pugnacious, condemning the ‘indelible blight’ of ‘hideous monsters’. ‘My sense of beauty’, declared one writer ‘is assaulted by those stark, tasteless monster houses, built right in the middle of our neighbourhoods on clear cut lots without landscaping’. In letters to Council and in SHPOA’s brief at the public hearing the case for social rights and responsibilities was contrasted with the perceived individualism and social irresponsibility of the market. Shaughnessy, wrote a resident, is ‘a community of character and maturity’ threatened by ‘unbridled greed’. SHPOA’s brief affirmed the conclusion to such logic: ‘We need guidelines. The unique characteristics of the neighbourhood require limits. Are

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we talking about each man living on an island? Properties, our homes, are not commodities or poker chips. We cannot develop without consideration of others.’ A husband and wife in South Shaughnessy filled out the communitarian case in a letter to Council: We’ve raised our family here, sent our children to the neighbourhood schools, participated in all kinds of community events over the years. Now many of the people who own homes in the area don’t live here. The homes are empty. These homes are investments, perhaps one of many. You feel differently about a place when you live there, form friends there, become part of the neighbourhood and the community… We don’t mind change but we want to see it fit into the neighbourhood. We don’t like to see good homes with years of liveability in them destroyed if something not appropriate is put up in their place. We want the area to remain a liveable and lovely neighbourhood for the families that live here now and will live here in the future. We want to stress that this is a place to live not just a place to make money out of.

This coherent testimony presented a social ontology of the neighbourhood as a primary unit, a place of symbolic not primarily exchange value, a setting of bonding social capital. Such narratives of neighbourhood as a greater family home had political legitimacy as the City’s past decisions had proven. Indeed Council had brought to the public hearing two alternate downzoning motions with reductions in outright house floor area of either 25 percent or 10 percent. In each case the objective was to discourage demolitions. The sentiment and symbolism evident in such testimonies merged into a sense of grief among those who felt neighbourhood changes were irreversible. A Scottish couple who had lived in the area for 35 years despaired of a satisfactory future: ‘We’re old and we’re going out. This is the end of an era. As soon as we leave, the house will be sold and knocked down and another box will go up in its place’ (Griffin 1992). A furore had broken out with the felling of two mature sequoia trees following a Kerrisdale home sale in 1990, generating a full page of letters to the editor of the Vancouver Sun (Ley 1995). Most striking had been the elegy written by the former owner of the house, an extraordinary public effusion of topophilia, love of place, together with grief, akin almost to the loss of a family member and an apology to neighbours. It read, in part: My decision to sell the house was precipitated by impending retirement. It was taken with a strong sense of foreboding, given the recent fate of similar houses and trees in our city. Part of me has died with the trees. I bitterly regret what has happened. The two amputated stumps remain as mute grave markers to what has been destroyed.

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I am deeply sorry over the anger, grief and deprivation that have been felt by my friends, neighbours and those who care for the environmental fabric of our city (Anon. 1990).

SHPOA, City Council and the Planning Department had worked closely over the years in the planning of Shaughnessy and a choreographed outcome to the public hearing would have been passage of the more restrictive of the motions concerning new development. But this consummation of an ongoing political understanding was derailed by an unexpected intervention. While new immigrants had played almost no part in the ongoing debate up to the announcement of the public hearing, in the second half of 1992 residents with Chinese family names submitted a quarter of the letters to Council. Moreover, they mobilized and formed their own organization, the South Shaughnessy Property Owners’ Rights Committee. At the public hearing they worked as a co-ordinated block, seated together and waving small flags in unison when one of their number presented a brief. It was an act of no little risk-taking and courage by newcomers to test out the unfamiliar contours of free speech in a head-on clash with a 60-year old elite organization. But they out-worked the SHPOA and its supporters, and when Council tallied up the briefs after six boisterous nights of democratic exchange, they learned that residents with Chinese family names had presented almost half of the briefs. With allies in the real estate sector who campaigned against controls, and a few Anglo-Canadian allies worried about land values, it turned out that 63 percent of speakers had presented briefs opposing Council’s motions. The plan rehearsed by SHPOA and the City ahead of the public hearing could not proceed. The ideology of this unexpected political intervention owed its formation unmistakably to socialization around the meaning of property in Hong Kong, and expectations concerning democratic practice in Canada. The name of the new group, the South Shaughnessy Property Owners’ Rights Committee, clarified immediately its genesis and its platform. In letters and briefs, arguments moved around the themes of property rights, land values, individual freedom and democracy. The new homeowner who cut down the sequoias on his Kerrisdale property could not understand why his neighbours were up in arms: ‘That’s my private property. Why do you bother me? First, I don’t want publicity. I have my own private rights. It’s none of their business’ (Godley 1990). In complete opposition to SHPOA’s position, democracy was presented as the absence of government action, the removal of limits, and empowerment of individual property rights. A woman speaking through an interpreter made the case efficiently at the public hearing: I live in Shaughnessy and we built a house very much to my liking. The new zoning would not allow enough space for me… I strongly oppose this

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new proposal. Why do I have to be inconvenienced by so many regulations? This infringes my freedom. Canada is a democratic country and democracy should be returned to the people.

A second intervener agreed. ‘These rezonings have caused a lot of worry to investors. Taxpayers’ money should be making jobs not scaring people away. I’m for freedom, what people need for themselves.’ Another immigrant speaking through an interpreter landed in Canada with her family in 1988 ‘in pursuit of democracy and freedom and to build a happy family home. But this new proposal has shattered our dreams… So how do you say this is freedom? We are concerned about a drop in land values. I really hope our dream can be realized.’The language of family, enabling rights and freedoms, and their material expression in the family home provided the boundary of recognized obligations. SHPOA’s appeal to neighbourhood was a missing category that could not be understood. A fourth intervener moved from political philosophy to family outcomes: I oppose [the] changes. Is it right to deny the rights of these people? Is it right for government to force rights? Canada is a free country. We decided to build our own dream house for our own family needs. It was a family project. Everyone was excited by [plans for] our new house. Now the children will have to sleep in the basement.

For SHPOA, government would secure shared neighbourhood heritage by setting limits. For the new immigrants government appeared as the spoiler of the planned family home if it set those same limits. Another principal theme carried from Hong Kong was an emphasis on the exchange value of property. Members of the real estate industry lobbied hard against downzoning. One Shaughnessy resident, a property developer, sent eight letters to Council in a ten-week period, protesting the planned downzoning. After noting that his company’s ‘normal practice of building [is] to the maximum square footage allowed under the bylaws’, he predicted a fall in new property development if the downzoning went through, and cautioned ‘the present City Council was not elected with a mandate to devalue people’s property.’ Such fear mongering was repeated by members of the real estate industry to the media and at the public hearing. It touched a responsive chord with the ethnic Chinese presenters, as noted in the statements above and by the following speaker: We have large lots and nice houses can be built on these lots. Land value is dropping and there is a reduction of deals. There is evidence investors are scared away. We have to attract more investors. We should do our best to maintain land values and all parts of the community will profit and the country will grow prosperous.

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Downzoning, wrote a Hong Kong emigration lawyer to Vancouver Council, would mean a fall in business immigrants and loss of their real estate investment. The compatibility of such interventions with the market fixation of global neo-liberalism is hard to miss.

Interventions, Interpretations, Imputations and Name-Calling The preservationist ideology of the established Shaughnessy propertyowners is not without historic irony. Following forest clearance, the neighbourhood was settled early in the twentieth century by resource barons and other business elites on part of the huge land grant awarded to the Canadian Pacific Railway for pushing its Pacific terminus west to the Vancouver townsite. Land deals had been integral to the city’s business life since its founding and the residents of Shaughnessy as members of the elite had done their fair share of buying and selling. Dispossession was also part of that heritage, for the Shaughnessy land settled in the early twentieth century had been occupied [and to this day is claimed] by Aboriginal bands who had established a seniority of several thousand years in patrolling the forest glades. Now history was repeating itself as the dispossessors were being dispossessed and an existing place and identity was again being thrust aside. The irony was even deeper, for the elite who had cleared the primeval forest were now guardians of Shaughnessy’s leafy canopy; those who lived from the cut and thrust of the market in their work-place required a different morality in their home-place.24 Such historic reflections while suggestive are not fully appropriate for they would reify elite culture, presenting a line of continuity and homogeneity over the course of a century. The wide-open capitalism and the minimal state of 1900 has advanced to a welfare state with more complex objectives, and the modernist shock of the new has been replaced with a preservation ethic, reflected in strong market demand for older homes and revival European styles (Dostrovsky and Harris 2008). Shaughnessy residents of the 1990s should not be prejudged by the values and actions of an elite living in the same district three generations earlier. However, some critics of the SHPOA and its allies called forth exactly this historic continuity. Drawing upon the racist practices of Vancouver’s past, the resistance of the long-established homeowners in the 1990s was reduced to racism pure and simple. The most persistent of these accusations was made by the spokesperson for the West Side Builders Association, an alliance of small contractors who were benefitting economically from the hot property market. The group’s widely reported brief at the public hearing, repeating an earlier letter to Council, denounced the downzoning

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motion as ‘discriminatory, racist and unfair… If these new building by-laws are brought into effect, it will be akin to returning to the early 1900s where some of our land titles specifically excluded people of certain origins from owning land’. The builders clearly felt that this heavy-handed intervention provided a knockout punch for it was a strategy they had used repeatedly before Council since the first challenge to the design of new large houses in 1986.25 Such a strategy is not unique to Vancouver: ‘… in Monterey Park [Los Angeles] Timothy Fong found that coalitions between American city bosses, big developers, and Asian investors wielded racism as a weapon to push through pro-growth policies’ (Ong 1999: 100). Other interested business groups had made similar interventions. Following the Regatta affair and the debate about off-shore investment, the British Columbia business magazine, Equity, published a special issue with the eye-catching title, ‘Racism: will it kill investment billions?’ The front cover included a full-page photograph of Victor Li along with the issue’s probing title, while inside stories sustained the moral panic with such titles as ‘Racism is an ugly word’ and ‘Prosperity in the balance’ (Equity 1989). Once the racist genie was out of the bottle, there was no controlling its global dissipation. Racism offered a simple explanation for conflict in media sound bites, particularly for reporters at a distance. Imputations saved them the trouble of researching more nuanced interpretations. Radio-Television Hong Kong had aired a documentary, The Hong Kong Connection, in November 1989 that presented ‘Vancouver as a thoroughly racist society’ (Moore 1989a). What the South China Morning Post had called ‘The battle for Shaughnessy’ kept rhetoric at a high level,26 and the 1992 public hearing led to the troubling headline ‘Vancouver planning law fuels racist fire’ in the SCMP’s 4th October edition. But Vancouver media had also stepped up to the plate when it came to insensitive name-calling. Fundamental to their representation of the conflict was an uncritical use of the unhelpful moniker, the monster house. Prominent headlines used the derogatory label routinely, and the offensive barb was carried into popular discourse, including letter writing to Council. Cavell (1997) has properly challenged this term with the question, who lives in monster houses? Without accepting all of his psychoanalytic speculations he is surely correct to see in such a term at best name-calling and at worst a racist gloss. The houses had their supporters for whom they were far from monstrous. As a Chinese-Canadian correspondent observed in the Vancouver Sun: ‘Who are we to insult other people’s pride and joy by labelling these modernistic, beautiful, million-dollar homes, designed to suit today’s lifestyle, as ‘monsters’?’ (anon 1993). Race, however, was only part of a complex constellation of culpability and effects. Consider the following Anglo-Canadian letter, unusual in its

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identification of a subject, a naming rarely so explicit, though always understood in its absence: The house across the lane was bought by Orientals. Soon after they moved in, two 200 year-old Douglas firs were cut down. It felt to me like one of my children was dying… The English family who originally built the house and had lived there for 50 years had asked me especially to protect those trees, the tallest in the whole neighbourhood…

Agency is located generically in a non-specific cultural group from Asia. One might prefer that this naming, or any other, be erased. But the naming permits the contrast of cultures to be made between ‘the Orientals’ and ‘the English’ who are also named. This writer clearly identifies with the English landscape precedent, so acutely indeed that tree felling primed an extraordinary grieving analogy: ‘It felt to me like one of my children was dying’. The familiar narrative re-appears: longevity, protection, neighbourhood obligation, sale, destruction, loss. The naming permits the contrast of two cultural landscapes. It is a reminder of a sentiment made to me keenly by one South Shaughnessy resident – ‘You know we have a culture too’ – remarkable for the subject position it suggests of a people seen to be without a culture. To name one’s culture, to name the culture that threatens its place-based continuity, is a strategy for survival. For better or for worse to evoke the Englishness of Shaughnessy was akin to evoking the Chineseness of Chinatown. It permitted a case for survival to be made as a character neighbourhood, drawing upon social and cultural rights in an argument based on multicultural identity politics. There can be no doubt that business groups and others used the charge of racism tactically and it was strenuously resisted. ‘This issue has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with race,’ a South Shaughnessy resident wrote to Council, ‘I have Oriental neighbours who recently bought the house next door, intending to live in it long term and retain it. I am most happy they are my neighbours. The issue is solely one of preserving the basic design character of our area’. A similar message appeared in a letter to the Vancouver Courier, under the title ‘Good taste not racist’: ‘I am not racist. I tell myself this over and over again to loosen the creeping fingers of intimidation that Mr. Hersh and his developer friends are attempting to tighten around my voice box’ (anon 1992). Such prioritization of ‘good taste’ contrasted with an implied ‘inferior taste’ might itself be seen as a form of ethnocentrism or even cultural racism. But it can also be read as an appropriation of a multiculturalism that values the legacy of immigrant cultures, as in the preservation of Vancouver’s Chinatown. From such a perspective the right to protect Chinatown as a case of a valued cultural legacy could equally be extended to the English-derived character landscape in Shaughnessy.

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Figure 6.4 The compromise landscape: a large new house with revival elements including gables, turret, cedar shakes, ornate brick chimney, wood mouldings and stone wall, marketed by Manyee Lui

Multicultural Conclusion: A Compromise in Shaughnessy Of course, an appeal to multiculturalism re-opens the question of white privilege embedded within the structures of state and society. The arbiter of the impasse at the public hearing was the City of Vancouver, which now had to find some other model for conflict resolution. Discussion moved behind closed doors, away from media amplification, with a committee composed of members of SHPOA but also including delegates from the South Shaughnessy Property Owners’ Rights Committee and representatives of the property industry, with planning staff to facilitate and mediate. The decision model became one of multicultural inclusion. After six months of committee work and deeper mutual understanding among stakeholders, a compromise was reached. There would be a modest reduction in the permitted size of new houses, but this could be exceeded through a floor space bonus if the design of the new property matched a limited palette of alternatives drawn from existing older house styles in the neighbourhood (Figure 6.4). So contractors could continue to build large houses, and purchasers to buy them, but they would receive a size bonus

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only as long as their appearance provided landscape continuity with new facades respecting neighbourhood appearances (Appelbe 1997). Builders have maintained their preferred strategy of serial reproduction; the new landscape form is now a version of the Tudor revival style that has always been a preferred model for older mansions in Shaughnessy. The separate passage of a tree bylaw offered protection to established trees and some stability to the district’s leafy green canopy. This solution ended the ‘monster house’ controversy, providing some encouragement that democratic negotiation beneath the aegis of Canadian multiculturalism may lead to satisfactory compromise. Although immigration from Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1993 and 1996 rose above earlier levels and the immigrant market in Vancouver’s Westside neighbourhoods remained robust, the elite neighbourhoods returned to their earlier political somnolence, once again protected behind regulatory barriers from unwanted land use change. In 1998 when I re-examined letters to the City, fewer than 10 complaints about new houses were on file from the previous five years, in contrast to the hundreds that had been received in the tense years at the beginning of the decade. Several conclusions are suggested. The expectation of whiteness studies that multiculturalism and state administration include inbuilt white privilege is not sustained by the City’s actions in withdrawing their downzoning motion at the public hearing and initiating an inclusive process that incorporated the opposing views of Chinese-Canadian residents. That the compromise solution allowed landscape continuity satisfied SHPOA and its allies, and that it permitted ongoing construction of large houses satisfied new immigrants and builders. Indeed the virtual cessation of complaints even while immigrant numbers rose in the following years suggests that much more than crude racism was involved in this controversy. The rapid disappearance of housing complaints in Shaughnessy, despite growing immigrant numbers, following the resolution of the landscape question reinforces a view of intersecting class- and status-based distinction. Wong and Netting (1992: 121) also see resistance in class terms: ‘Most of the apparent racism is in fact class antagonism wrapped in a racial envelope’. Moreover, was the essential character of Shaughnessy’s landscape its whiteness, as Li (1995) suggests, or was it anglophilia, a much more specific English, class-based, ethnicity? This greater specificity matters, for as Satzewich (2007) points out in reference to this Vancouver conflict, the slippage of Englishness to whiteness and whiteness to racism takes too many empirical and conceptual short cuts. My principal theoretical objective in this chapter has been to challenge such short cuts. The intent has not been to deny the existence of racism but to make charges of racism accountable both to empirical verification and ideological analysis. In its discussion of race and racism scholarly culture

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sometimes follows, if unintentionally, partisan interests and the media when it errs toward simplifications of complex relations, ending up by offering premature closure in an all too coherent narrative. This intellectual error is compounded when it slides into implicit or explicit political accusation. However unwittingly, such slippage reproduces the cruel fashioning of racist categories: from simplification to typification and the ascription of a singular, usually prejudicial, characteristic to a whole population. In its eagerness to expose racism, the genre courts the danger of reproducing the dualistic mind of the racist. To repeat Bonnett’s (1996) warning, ‘the myth of whiteness’ in critical race studies can readily lead in this direction. Those who resisted landscape change in some, but not all, of Vancouver’s Westside neighbourhoods, usually had more complex and intersecting motives and subjectivities than racism. They occupied a political space where resistance to the unequal power relations of a branch-plant economy had mobilized a majority of the national population against free trade relations with the United States, mobilization that peaked in the 1988 general election a month before a new front opened up in overseas purchases in Vancouver’s land market. Property transactions also ran into local politics where, since the late 1960s, a neighbourhood movement had advocated local jurisdiction to control major land use change; preservation of character neighbourhoods had already been approved in several areas, including First Shaughnessy and Chinatown. Underlying preservation was a strong feeling of sentiment and symbolism, a synthesis of place and identity. Massive change thereby impaired identity and for some led to grieving for a lost home, in Shaughnessy as in Chinatown. These were the intersecting dimensions of the political environment that new immigrants entered in Vancouver’s Westside neighbourhoods. Neoliberal business interests did not underestimate the strength of these political barriers. They employed the reports from the Laurier Institution, the dirty tricks of the Vancouver Sun series to undercut political opposition and the accusation that resistance was just a matter of racism. That some strains of racism did exist, but in a much more complex constellation of motives, gave this accusation some traction, complicating local political culture and the problem-solving task of the local state as it was embroiled in the old conflict of property rights versus neighbourhood rights, but now with a troubling multicultural twist.

Chapter Seven

Establishing Roots: From the Nuclear Family to Substantive Citizenship

In the written and spoken testimonies of Chinese-Canadians contesting appropriate house design in Shaughnessy, the family was clearly the basic social unit, while neighbourhood was a missing social category. This should not be a matter of surprise, for the centrality of the overseas Chinese family and its flexibility in adjusting to a transnational world has frequently been noted (Ong 1999; Olds 2001). This chapter begins by looking more closely inside the recently landed Chinese-Canadian family and considers the effects of transnational status upon different family members, husband/father, wife/ mother and children. In particular I consider astronaut families, where members are scattered on opposite shores of the Pacific Ocean. How are family life lines maintained in the absence of physical proximity? Unlike the economic and political differences within the transnational social field considered in earlier chapters, in family life we see a new metric to the frictions of distance between the two sides of the Pacific. The cost of separation is measured less in conventional units of time or cost, but instead in terms of emotional distance and the subjective challenges it brings to the family unit. The Shaughnessy hearings raised a second issue to be pursued in this chapter. The mobilization of individuals into an organization and their intervention in the public sphere represented democratic citizenship in practice. The deployment of citizenship rights, primarily property rights, at the public hearing though precipitated in defence of the family home was also a step beyond the family into a multicultural civil society. As families problem-solve and engage in projects and networks important to them, they enlarge the Canadian side of the social field, increasing the density of contact, enhancing their capacity to find practical solutions, establishing everyday routines that move their members along the path toward integration. One key project is education, for it is commonly the pursuit of a child’s education that has been a primary motive for household migration in the

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first instance. Religion provides another point of engagement in civil society, as for many families spirituality adds a new dimension to social life, often scarcely experienced prior to migration. The immigrant church offers a particular mix of social and spiritual resources that helps to assuage the mental injuries of newcomer status, with its rude indignities and painful role reversals. Immigrant service and advocacy organizations are a parallel institution committed to easing the transition from immigrant struggles to establishing the conditions for bridge-building and integration. Consideration of these institutions will lead us to the issue of social and political participation in Canadian society and the questions of national belonging and territorial identity as expressions of incorporation within a new nation state. In the dualism of routes vs. roots, we consider in this chapter the trajectory toward integration, beyond formal citizenship to more substantive membership as a Chinese-Canadian.

The Transnational Chinese-Canadian Family Clara Law’s Floating Life (1996), a film tracing a Hong Kong family’s migration to Australia, portrays both the strategic but also the painful dimensions of long-range migration and family fragmentation (Teo 2001; Mitchell 2003). As the Chen family rejoins a daughter who has moved to Australia, the eldest son remains in Hong Kong and a second daughter re-locates to Germany. There are two sides to this mobility. The first is the oft-cited economic value added of family members located in different countries, spatial diversification that spreads risk for family interests and enhances access to economic opportunities across national borders (Mitchell 1995; Chan 1997). This is commonly seen as one of the assets of the ‘bamboo network’ of overseas Chinese family capitalism, a significant line item in the impressive résumé of the business migrant (Yeung and Olds 2000). The patriarchal control behind this network was well displayed in Li Ka-shing’s deployment of his sons to separate projects in Vancouver and Toronto to earn their business spurs and explore some fresh sources of investment for the family’s commercial empire. But there is a second aspect to all this mobility and it is this attribute that Floating Lives examines. Patriarchy alerts us to the distinctive gendering of migration (Boyle and Halfacree 1999; Pessar 1999; Willis and Yeoh 2000; Silvey 2004). Aihwa Ong (1999:135) has commented on the distribution of burdens within families under the patriarchal Chinese business model, a model she claims that has ‘revived premodern forms of child, gender and class oppression’, with disproportionate penalties for women and children. Moreover, diasporic life can be isolating and unsettling, an often troubling adventure with all of the disorientation associated with the phenomenological

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status of the stranger, where one’s ‘thinking as usual’, habitual schemes of thought, language, and problem-solving, suddenly have no currency (Schuetz 1944). According to clinical studies depression is a not uncommon response to disorientation and disappointment among immigrant Chinese-Canadians (Shen et al. 2006; Todd 2008).1 Transnationalism multiplies the unease of life as an immigrant stranger, for the family itself becomes geographically dispersed, perhaps economically stronger but often socially and emotionally weaker, with members separated behind distant national borders. Asia Pacific is a region with many versions of the divided family: Filipino domestic workers overseas are separated for years from their children and other family members (Pratt 2004; Parreñas 2005); ‘study mothers’ from China accompany their children to educational opportunities in Singapore (Huang and Yeoh 2005); and overseas Chinese businessmen sometimes maintain a ‘second family’ in China in their absence from their legal wife in the diaspora (Lang and Smart 2000; Yeoh and Willis 2004; Shen 2005). Each of these models of separation represents a dialectic of both opportunity and quiet suffering, frequently rationalized as for the good of the family, or endured more specifically for the good of the children. In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the astronaut household with the chief breadwinner working in Hong Kong, Taiwan or South Korea, and commuting irregularly to visit family members on the other side of the Pacific, is also a family form with a distinctive emotional geography.2 As I was told by a family temporarily re-united by a short-term visit, ‘When he leaves Vancouver… we cry in Vancouver and he cries in Taipei’. A second woman had not adjusted to the long-term absences of her husband in Hong Kong and had become depressed and fearful at home: ‘We do miss him a lot. But it’s been like this for so many years, we are used to this situation. It is tough… not an easy kind of life (in tears). If I don’t have the religion I don’t think I could handle my life’. The anxieties and depression of separated family members take up considerable counselling time in Chinese immigrant churches and NGOs. Because of the stressful nature of the astronaut lifestyle, few families are able to sustain separation for many years. A study of the school children of Hong Kong Chinese families in Auckland suggested that there are some quick adjustments in astronaut status. While more than two-thirds of children lived in an astronaut family during their first year in New Zealand, the figure fell to just over 40 percent three to four years after landing (Ho, Ip and Bedford 2000).3 This remains a very large proportion, however, suggesting the astronaut arrangement is a very common family strategy at least in the short term. Vancouver data convey the same impression. The Chinese-Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia estimated that two-thirds of male Canadians of Hong-Kong origin, between the ages of 25 and 44, live and work outside Canada

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(Cernetig 2007). An earlier survey conducted in the ethnoburb of Richmond by the immigrant agency, SUCCESS, reported that 40 percent of Hong Kong Chinese lived in transnational family arrangements (Man 2007). It became evident from my first interviews that the astronaut household was both common and also rife with personal and social tensions: women are alone and often stressed in Canada, men may be drawn into extra-marital affairs in Asia, children are at risk from predators and subject to behaviour problems.4 As a result the fragmented family is a structure that is entered reluctantly and for economic reasons only; families hope it will be temporary and it ends when social and emotional needs override economic objectives. Early in my research I met the Yuen family who had migrated to take up a managerial position in Los Angeles with a Hong Kong based corporation. However the social environment in southern California, particularly crime, disturbed the young family and they re-located to Vancouver, with Mr. Yuen arranging a transfer back to head office in Hong Kong. But the fragmentation of astronaut status was intolerable and he resigned from his position to be with his family in Vancouver. When I met them in 1997, living in a new house bought for $650,000 on Vancouver’s Westside, he had been out of work for three years. Mr.Yuen’s only economic activity was the several hours a week he spent on his computer managing his property portfolio. Not much different was the condition of the Huang’s from Taiwan also living in a new house in the same neighbourhood. Mr. Huang had withdrawn from his business partnership in Taipei to rejoin his wife and two young children. Like many Taiwanese, his English is poor and he has delayed looking for work or starting a business until his language skills improve. But he is listless, time weighs heavily, and the family savings will last only for another three years, long enough to gain citizenship, but then what? He is much too young and ambitious to retire, but economic prospects are bleak in Vancouver. Both the Yuens and the Huangs are torn apart emotionally by the spatial impossibility of their existence. There is a better life they see for their children in Canada, they are anxious about Chinese geopolitical ambitions in East Asia, but their savings are slipping away and how can they make a living on this side of their trans-Pacific social field? Both men are around the house most of the time. ‘We fight a lot more than we used to,’ says Mrs. Yuen. This is the hard to tolerate condition of ‘immigration jail’ endured by some business immigrants.

The Understimulated Male Existential conditions like these seem fairly common among business-class immigrants from East Asia. Economic under-performance in Canada establishes a spatial gradient, tugging men back to business activity across the

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Pacific where they have already proven themselves to be successful and esteemed economic actors. The asymmetry of economic achievement on each side of the Pacific creates a parallel geography of status. For it is not simply a matter of sustaining a family income flow that re-kindles the desire for East Asia, but it is also a matter of reputation, of face. Mr. Leung, somewhat older and wealthier than Mr. Yuen and Mr. Huang, eloquently spelt out the downward mobility of working age men to me. He and his wife had been landed for four years when we spoke, but during this time he had not been employed or started a business; landing through the investor stream he had lost substantial money in an ill-conceived venture, and most likely will continue his de facto retirement. With two sons doing well in school, and living in a million-dollar house in a good Westside neighbourhood, the family have decided to stay in Canada. But they are living off savings, and the prospects of earning money in Vancouver are not good: We have a lot of experience. Not only my experience. We always speak with the other immigrants who are from Hong Kong or from Taiwan. We have a lot of experience also from them… 95 percent of female immigrants like here very much… 95 percent of male immigrants feel upset, feel embarrassed, feel very bad… middle age, around 35 to 50… men in this age usually feel upset because they have lost their self-confidence… their job, lost their respect because when they are in Taiwan and Hong Kong, maybe in the highest position in the company… very high level position. After moving here they live with the family, wife and children go to school, the husbands stay home. Nothing to do. No work to do. It is very hard to look for a job same as they are in Hong Kong, They can only have their job in a very low class job, very low class.

Mr. Leung’s emphasis on ‘very low class’ underscores the reputational issues at stake. His observations rang true in the experience of the majority of male respondents we interviewed, who had invariably faced downward mobility and deskilling in Canada; this was the tragic story of the millionaire migrant as newspaper delivery boy presented in Chapter 1. The unequal gender impact, penalizing men, is noteworthy, though it can be savagely reversed in the case of some stranded astronaut wives, or ‘widows’ as they may call themselves (Ong 1999). Male identity challenges are frequently associated with additional family quarrels, and in the case of one respondent led to divorce, as her husband returned home with the failure of his company, while she chose to remain in Vancouver, living off payments from investments in a separate family business in Hong Kong. Another respondent told of the stress that overcame a friend’s husband, formerly a successful accountant, who had been unable to secure employment in Canada. After four years he entered a deep depression, threatened his son with a knife and broke down. Adding to the trauma, the parents decided to return to East Asia but their two teenage children refused to accompany them.

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Nora Chiang (2008) tells another sad tale of family division following male loss of face in a Taiwanese business family in Toronto: My ex-husband wanted to immigrate because he wanted a change of environment. After one year, he could not find work in Canada, and lost his selfesteem. A few times I found him locking himself up in his room and he often scolded his children. He did not like my health food store, partly because he could not ‘bend low’ and be a sales person like me.

Not surprisingly it is invariably the husband who raises the question of return either as an astronaut, or more permanently, and 80–90 percent of trans-Pacific commuters are men. Shortly after one interview was completed, a woman with a pastoral job she enjoyed felt obligated to leave her profession and return to Hong Kong in the classic position of the dutiful ‘trailing wife’. Her husband’s Vancouver venture had failed and he led the family back to his father’s business in Hong Kong. For a businessman enduring economic inactivity, downward mobility and loss of face, the temptation to move back to East Asia and put his human and social capital back to work is hard to resist. I met Amos in his expensive downtown condominium. An attractive and demure younger woman opened the door. She served us tea in an elegant Chinese tea set but spoke no English and was otherwise silent and absent during our two-hour conversation. Amos had moved to Canada from Hong Kong with his first wife, a professional, who had found enough to interest her in Vancouver. But he was under-stimulated after an active business life in Asia. After living here with my wife for six months, I was invited to join a new business partnership opening two factories in China, and employing over 2000 people. I travelled back and forth, coming to Vancouver four times a year for 2–3 weeks. At first you try not to remember her [his wife] but then the intimate feeling is lost. Living apart is very difficult and divorce is obvious. I really regret it and advise others against being an astronaut family.

The loneliness and temptations of single life in Guangzhou province had precipitated the collapse of his first marriage and the launching of his second. In abandoning the astronaut life, Amos felt keenly the emotional cost of separation it demanded.

The Resilient Woman There is a tendency to see immigrant women in transnational relationships primarily as victims of male patriarchy. The model of ‘the trailing wife’ presents the woman’s role as subordinate and dependent in the decision to

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move and the decision to return, sacrificing her own interests for those of ‘the family’ (Chee 2005). Aihwa Ong (1999: 128) notes that in California astronaut wives sarcastically identify themselves as ‘widows’, evoking their precarious status and identity, while in a trans-Pacific symmetry of experience as well as terminology, districts in Sydney with concentrations of such families have been informally labelled ‘widow streets’ (Mak 1991). Welleducated Chinese women, used to the welcome services of a housekeeper or nanny to take care of household and child care tasks in East Asia, can find themselves heavily over-committed in Canada (Man 1997, 2007). Yet interviews with immigrant women from Hong Kong and Taiwan who had been in Vancouver for several years also suggested a level of resourcefulness. A number were managing a family business in the absence of their husband overseas; a few had entered the real estate industry, a sector in which ethnic Chinese women have excelled in Vancouver as in San Francisco (Ong 1999). Like their Bay-Area sisters, too, women are often involved in a life filled with activities and social rounds; one of my interviews was conducted with a woman, tennis racket in hand, who had just left the courts. Living alone, she was not working but drawing an income from family investments. Clearly there are varied life-paths associated with the diversity of these experiences. How does one reconcile Ong’s view of ‘astronaut widows’ with Mr. Leung’s opinion that ‘95 percent of female immigrants like here very much’? Some reconciliation of apparent contrasts appears by giving more attention to change through time in the evolving settlement process. Waters (2002) has integrated some of these apparent contradictions from a set of interviews in Vancouver conducted with the wives of economic migrants working in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The move to Canada did lead to the loss of employment status and seniority built up in East Asia for these women, and very few were working at all in Vancouver. Some had sought jobs and run into the usual range of barriers (credentials not recognized, no Canadian experience, etc.), but most had left the labour market well alone.5 The cash flow from their husbands met the family’s economic needs and the women turned to the domestic duties of child care and home maintenance, tasks usually taken care of in Asia by their nanny, housekeeper or extended family. To be stripped of this support network, and in the absence of their husband overseas, the women were often stretched to the limit, sustaining the image of the stressed and vulnerable astronaut wife. While telephone calls across the Pacific were frequent, even daily, and often included use of MSN, web cameras and video clips,6 electronic contact was an imperfect substitute for physical presence, and for some women the combination of boredom, stress and loneliness was toxic, leading to a need for personal counselling. In this condition of distress, the image of the robust overseas Chinese family was a poor match with daily experience. Some distancing of marital partners could easily occur. Lawrence Lam

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highlights the emotional inadequacy of long-distance communication from an interview with an astronaut wife in Toronto: When I complain to him over the phone, he doesn’t understand and worse, he doesn’t have any sympathy. He said that I should be happy because I don’t have to go out and work and I have more time to enjoy life. It is really pathetic (Lam 1994: 171).

And in another case: I understand that he has to go back and continue working in Hong Kong to support the family. Sadly, though, he doesn’t know the heavy burden I have to shoulder. When I told him that we should take turns working in Hong Kong to support the family, he said that I must be crazy. Maybe I will become crazy (Lam 1994: 172).

The warning signs in these accounts sadly culminated in family separations in other interviews conducted with astronaut wives both in Vancouver and Toronto. But a significant break may occur in this narrative of sadness and oppression when the stresses of the first 12–24 months after family separation are set against a longer time horizon, where stoicism and perseverance seem to offer a more accurate description of astronaut wives (Chiang 2008). In her Vancouver interviews, Waters (2002) observed that with many women the dark period slowly came to an end as they established rudimentary problem-solving skills, met others like themselves and began to develop self-confidence and independence.7 They found time spent with their children not only novel after the busy family life in East Asia, where child care had been sub-contracted to a domestic helper, but also rewarding: We were having a very busy life in Hong Kong, particularly my husband… a lot of parties, meetings going on, and also he had to travel a lot during weekends… The only thing I could wish was I have to put more attention onto my kids. And this life in Hong Kong would not allow me to do so… Since I stopped working full time, my relationship with the children is very, very good. We’re getting so close together. It’s really nice.

So too Chiang (2008) found that her Taiwanese respondents were ‘happy mothers… I have seen closer mother and child relationships in both Toronto and Vancouver than in Taiwan, where almost everyone is busy’.8 The economic freedom of these women that made employment unnecessary also facilitated a range of leisure and self-development activities, including sports, the arts, language classes and lunch with friends while the children were in school. Amongst its activities the bulging monthly programme of

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the Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Society in Vancouver includes a bonsai club, table tennis, bowling, a golf club, Taiwanese opera, ocarina (flute) instruction, Karaoke, a reading group, finance and investment seminars, computer application lessons, a youth club, a health seminar, aerobics and rehabilitation classes, ten English grammar classes, a cancer support group, paper artwork and food making workshops, yoga and tai chi classes, a walking club and others. The larger Hong Kong population was able to support an even more complete programme of activities. Only one unexpectedly dark cloud remained on the horizon for some women, the return of the patriarch on a seasonal family visit. Ambivalence about their husband’s return was mentioned by a number of Vancouver women, a reaction that generated complex and confusing emotions.9 Leisure activities had to be suspended; more formality was expected in household arrangements especially at meal-time (the number of dishes was a common sticking point). Wings of freedom were clipped. ‘All my attention had to go back to the family. I had to cut out some of the (social) activities because of my husband’ (Waters 2002). Another woman told Waters: ‘The boss is back! And then he controls the family’. A third response ended enigmatically in laughter: ‘When he stays in Canada, he is always at home. Everything, he don’t like. He argues to me. If he stays in Taiwan I am free. My heart is free, you know’ (laughing). From the perspective of both genders, there are two theoretical conclusions. First, separation weakens male patriarchy; neither male influence nor emotional support is as easily sustained from afar. Control, like emotion, is variable across the complex meanings of space. Second, places exercise their own cultural effects through the routines of everyday life, so that as partners are separated on opposite sides of a shared transnational social field, they become socialized to different regional subcultures; the husband consolidates established patriarchal values in Asia Pacific while his wife acculturates toward the gender practices of the nation in which she is living. The gravitational fields that draw men to Asia and sameness, and women to Canada and difference, open up lines of separation across the transnational social field that can sometimes become an unbridgeable chasm.

Astronaut and Satellite Kids Other lines of separation may develop between parents and children. Thrown into an English-language culture at school, children often become more acculturated and linguistically competent than their parents. This can lead to some awkward examples of role reversal in a patriarchal household, as children navigate their parents through daily tasks. In interactions with school teachers, health professionals, repair companies or public officials,

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teenage children might be thrust into untried leadership roles as ‘language brokers’ (Chee 2005): ‘whenever they go shopping they have to grab me or my brother to go with them, and let us do all the talking.’10 Repeat performances of such an inverted power hierarchy within the family create the grounds for ‘explosive generational dissonance’ (Bartley and Spoonley 2008: 76), though the authors note that among their sample in Auckland the evidence suggested a more placid re-arrangement of family roles. While the temptations of consumer culture are familiar to children, slacker discipline and more limited surveillance at school are new, making temptations more accessible than they might be in East Asia. Individual preference rather than family obligations becomes a formerly unthinkable criterion for personal decision-making. Family conflicts often emerged over education when a child’s aptitude for careers differed from parents’ expectations. Not untypical was this testimony from a school leaver in Vancouver: When I first came here and I first decided that I want to take, like, drama, music or design, she’s [his mother] kind of, like, against it, right? Because in Chinese culture the parents always want the children to take, like, science or like business, or… to have a good career. They don’t like their children to take, like, art, to become an artist or whatever… I won’t go back to Hong Kong… If my mum told me to go to Hong Kong to study I would say no for sure… I like Vancouver… there’s stuff I want to study that you can only study in Vancouver. Can’t study in Hong Kong. I want to do drama and music… I’m not going into science or whatever (Waters 2003: 174-5).

Parents have a heavy stake in the success and happiness of their children in Canada, for the well being of the child has loomed large in the decision to migrate. The stakes are even higher in astronaut households, where the isolation and emotional vulnerabilities of migration are magnified for parents (Qiao 2007): ‘My daughters now have the opportunity to pursue whatever they want,’ says Yiu, 50, whose marriage fell apart after several years as an astronaut’s wife… ‘I am so proud of my daughters; I even sacrificed my own marriage for them,’ Yiu says, adding that she is happy they are growing up in Canada and helping her build the [family beauty products] business. ‘This is the biggest reward I have. They will never have to experience the constant pressures of living in a busy, polluted city like Hong Kong; nor will they be solely focused on making money, like so many Hong Kong people.’

Their absent father is occasionally present in kind: ‘He calls the girls before important events. He bought them a nice Mercedes-Benz and doesn’t hesitate to give them expensive gifts’.

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The substitution of gifts for physical presence has the potential to create greater instabilities in the case of parachute or satellite children, who have no parents living in Canada, and are in the care of an elder sibling, a relative or a guardian. They are left behind when a wife rejoins her husband in East Asia; sometimes they represent a family vanguard entering high school in Canada under the care of a guardian or home-stay programme. Though the numbers of pre-university children living alone are not great, their cases are more public because of the intensified exposure to risks of all kinds. Cases of extortion at school have come to the attention of both the Englishand Chinese-language press (Bellett 1997; Tang 1999). In some instances this leads to strong-arming to join teenage ‘big brother’ gangs requiring payment of a further ‘loyalty fee’. While newly arrived immigrants are targeted for these crimes, satellite kids supported by regular cash flows from East Asia have been particularly at risk. The gifts of cars led to a deadly subculture of ‘rice rockets’ and street racing that killed six people during 2001–02 in the ethnoburb of Richmond. In each case the driver was a young Chinese-Canadian male, and in the community view, absent business immigrants who were lavishing gifts on their children were to blame (Mickleburgh 2002).11 Though living in East Asia apart from their children, parents still try to script their future. Jason left Hong Kong at the age of 16 to complete high school (Fong 2003). For the past three years he has seen his parents once a year, though they speak on the phone several times a week. But although ‘We are not as close as a family as we used to be because we are so far apart’, Jason’s parents still have a definite career plan for him. Despite his technical education in Vancouver, they intend he will return to Hong Kong to work. But this will not achieve family re-unification, for they will criss-cross from one side to another of the transnational social space: ‘They expect me to go back and take over the [family] business when I’m done. Then they will retire and move out here to Canada and I will have to work hard in Hong Kong.’ The search for an affirming youth subculture follows from the emotional impoverishment often resulting from absent family members. A youth in Toronto reflected sadly on his own family life: It looks like a family but it is not a family. Talking to our parents over the phone and seeing them here infrequently does not make sense to me anymore. We know why they are doing this and we can look after ourselves. However, the feeling of emptiness is very real. When faced with a problem, we would like to have them here, listening to us and helping us. They expect us to do well in school and we don’t want to disappoint them. I am doing fine in my studies but my sister is not. She misses her friends and mom. She is always on the phone calling her friends and mom in Hong Kong. The phone bill runs into a few thousand dollars a month (Lam 1994: 176).

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Part of the stress placed on the children is the need to conceal their parents’ absence from teachers and other public authorities, for immigration status has residence requirements in Canada. When a break-in occurred at the home of two satellite children it was not reported to the police: We didn’t call the police. I asked my Mum… Of course they’re in Hong Kong and they’re not supposed to be in Hong Kong because of their immigration in Canada, right? They have to stay here. So my Mum is scared if they call the police they will find out they’re in Hong Kong (Waters 2003: 181).

Contributing to poor social decisions is the amount of unsupervised time available to children; a large survey of high school students in Toronto born in Hong Kong found that the presence in Canada of a student’s father was positively and significantly related to the student’s academic performance at school (Chow 2000). The school day in Canada is a good deal shorter than in East Asia, particularly when after-school studying is factored in. There is more time to hang out at malls, bubble tea shops and karaoke bars, especially if parents are away. But for some kids, life can be too slow and boring, especially compared to the 24-hour day in Hong Kong or Taipei (Birnie 2003). Fast and slow is another dimension with a discernible gradient across the transnational social field, a gradient to which young adults are especially attuned. As one male teenager told us some years ago, whereas ‘Vancouver was a Pentium I, Hong Kong was like a Pentium III’ (Ley and Waters 2004). But for others slowness has its virtues: Taiwan and Canada, there is a big difference. Canada is pretty slow. Everything is very slow… relaxed and slow. But in Taiwan every second is like war…. You have to fight for every second… If you do something too slow, probably other people might take your job away (Waters 2003: 175).

Of course there is a good deal of internal variation in the experiences of children and youth in general, and satellite kids in particular (Tsang et al. 2003). For some, separation from parents is not a trauma to be suffered through but more a time for growing independence and maturity. But for all of them, in a parent’s mind, school achievement offers the primary litmus test of time well spent.

Education and the Student Vanguard Education is a leading motive in migration and links with Canada are long established – especially in Hong Kong. By the early 1980s the universities in Vancouver and Toronto were already well-known destinations (Goldberg 1985), and the location of a child’s education often provided a beach-head

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for subsequent investment, as information flows were set in motion generating contacts and knowledge about business opportunities. Among the 90 business immigrant families interviewed in Vancouver in 2002, education was mentioned by over 40 percent as a leading factor precipitating migration (Table 3.1).12 The observations of a Taiwanese father who brought his family to Canada three years after his son had begun his education in Vancouver, bear repeating: ‘My son came to study as an international student. He has been here for five years. I came to visit him. He liked Canada very much so we decided to apply for entry.’ Children often begin their education at high school, for Vancouver-area school boards have an entrepreneurial view of foreign students whose fees subsidize educational services that might not otherwise be funded (Kwak 2008; Waters 2008). High school provides an entry point for moving on to a college or university degree programme. Because the fee structure disproportionately penalizes foreign students, there is a cost advantage to the family that immigrates to Canada and pays domestic fees. While this incentive alone would be unlikely to tip the scales toward migration, yet in combination with quality of life and passport considerations it counts as a significant benefit. Reasons for selecting a Canadian education are variable. Education in Asia Pacific tends to emphasize ‘force-feeding’ and cramming before a regular sequence of examinations; there is little space for personal variation, flexibility and creativity. Repeatedly parents identify the advantages of a western education in terms of these characteristics, making schooling a more creative and less stressful experience. At the same time there is a thin line between creativity, spontaneity and what some parents see as unfocussed classroom time. Criticism is regularly raised against the low expectations of homework, which contrasts markedly with the after-school cramming services in East Asia.13 One Taiwanese mother I interviewed who was quite critical of what she regarded as lackadaisical schooling in Canada, began ‘Taiwanese school’ once her young son returned home from his local primary education. He started a second school day in mid-afternoon with Taiwanese textbooks spread across the dining-room table under the watchful eye of his mother. But while many parents see the desirability of educational supplements, not all are as personally motivated as this mother. The commercialization of education, seen in the recruitment of foreign fee-paying students by school boards, is repeated in the development of a remarkably broad formal and informal education industry, offering after school, weekend and summer programmes. In East and Southeast Asia education is highly competitive and a key means of upward social mobility, so that families dedicate time and resources to high levels of performance (Charney et al. 2003). Children study for long hours under considerable stress to pass entrance examinations to elite schools and to prepare themselves for the next rung on the

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education ladder. Supplementary service providers supply enrichment and enhancement outside normal school hours and this pattern has carried over to North America. In Westside Vancouver public high schools it became normal in the 1990s for students to have after school tutors, most widely in mathematics and English, but in other subjects as required. For younger children, Kumon mathematics and reading classes became popular supplements, as well as after-school or Saturday lessons in (mainly Chinese) language schools (Zhou and Kim 2007). A ratcheting up effect was put in place, as parents could not allow their children to be left behind in a progressive spiral of educational enhancement. Many of these proliferating services were either informal or unregulated, and inevitably quality has varied greatly while scams have sometimes trapped the unwary. Just as the overseas Chinese carried the idea of property to Canada so they transported the habit of studying hard to establish the educational foundation for economic success. Chinese-Canadian children have become top achievers in the public and private school systems. At graduation, students in British Columbia schools from homes where a Chinese language was the primary means of communication attained grade point averages that were at least 10 percent higher than children from English-speaking homes (Frost 2010).14 This is a remarkable achievement, for Chineselanguage children working in a second language are out-performing children, most of them Canadian-born, who do not face this penalty. The British Columbia results are not isolated, for a national study has revealed that an astonishing 70 percent of the children of immigrant Chinese-Canadians complete a university degree, a rate 2.5 times greater than the Canadianborn (Abada et al. 2008).

The Geography of Educational Advantage In securing educational advantage, geography matters. Undoubtedly the availability of strong secondary schools has been a factor influencing the location of millionaire migrants in Vancouver’s Westside neighbourhoods, and among real estate advertisements the local school name is commonly mentioned. In a ranking of Vancouver schools from annual Ministry of Education data by the Fraser Institute, a conservative think tank, Westside secondary schools capture the strongest performance scores in the province. They comprise almost half of all entries in the top five percent of secondary schools in British Columbia and Westside fee-paying schools occupied the first three positions over the 2000–06 period (Figure 7.1). York House, Little Flower Academy and St. George’s are private schools dating from the 1930s and each attained perfect scores on the Fraser Institute index. York House, an independent girls’ school, and Little Flower

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0

2 miles

0

2 kilometres

King George Templeton

University Hill 1

West Point Grey Academy 1 Kitsilano

Pu bl ic s In de cho o pe nd l en ts ch oo l 2 3 4

1 Top 5% 2 Top 6–20% 3 Top 21–40% 4 Top 41–60% Bottom 61–80% Bottom 81–100%

St Johns

St Patricks

Van Tech

2

Lord Byng

1

Notre Dame

Britannia

St Georges

Crofton House

Little Flower Academy York House Prince of Wales Vancouver Hamber College Point Grey

Tupper

Gladstone Windermere

John Oliver

Magee

King David

Churchill

Killarney David Thompson

Figure 7.1 Provincial ranks of Westside secondary schools, 2002–06 Academy, a Catholic girls’ school, are long-established neighbours in Shaughnessy, while St. George’s is a private boys’ school that includes boarders from 15 countries. Crofton House in Kerrisdale, also in the top five percent in British Columbia, is a private girls’ school dating back to the 1890s, while Vancouver College in Oakridge is an independent Catholic school for boys founded in 1922. These older schools have reproduced an elite way of life for decades but in response to growing demand they have expanded in recent years and now include significant numbers of ethnic Chinese students. In addition two new independent co-educational schools, West Point Grey Academy and St. John’s have opened in recent years on the Westside as a result of growing demand for private education; West Point Grey Academy has grown rapidly to 900 students in 12 years.15 The schools have uniforms – Crofton House sports a Gordon clan dress code in memory of its founder – and there is an anglophile sense of tradition, service, sports and high intellectual achievement. The web site of each school emphasizes its multi-ethnic composition, including images of ethnic Chinese students; St. John’s features slides from the Headmaster’s recent recruiting trip to Hong Kong and South Korea. The schools have effectively reconfigured themselves for globalization. As well as a concentration of high performing independent schools, the Westside also includes high-achieving public schools, all but one in the top

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quintile on the Fraser Institute’s index, while University Hill is in the top five percent (Figure 7.1). The concentration of these top-ranked educational institutions in and around the Shaughnessy-Kerrisdale-Oakridge region favoured by millionaire migrants in the 1986–96 period is notable (cf. Figure 5.6). Among Korean families this cluster of schools is called ‘Vancouver’s eighth district’ for its equivalent standing to the most elite and competitive school district in Seoul (Kwak 2008). Something of an outlier is Churchill Secondary School in south Oakridge. This school is now 90 percent Chinese-Canadian and was an early magnet for immigrants because it is the only public school on the west side of the city that offers the International Baccalaureate Programme, an enhanced international curriculum that permits university entrance in the United States, Britain and France as well as across Canada. The International Baccalaureate offers an international education passport, of particular interest to cosmopolitan immigrants with a global network. In the early years of overseas Chinese migration to Oakridge a realtor told me about one of her clients looking for a house on a short visit from Hong Kong. She held a piece of paper at their first meeting, with two words on it: ‘Oakridge, Churchill’. A number of the public schools offer enriched programmes, variously in the arts, in language immersion, in athletics or in a specialized mini-school with high academic orientation. Because they are district programmes, application is open to students outside normal school catchment areas. These cross-boundary programmes enable parents to send their children from the much lower-scoring eastside schools to the university-directed westside schools, and there is a heavy traffic of applications. Currently, 20 percent of eastside youth cross school catchment boundaries daily, but only 3.5 percent on the westside move in the opposite direction (McMahon 2007). As a result eastside secondary schools have enrolments below capacity while westside schools are full, indeed above capacity (Steffenhagen 2003).

The Trade in University Credentials The search for educational achievement employs a range of service providers and leads to distinctive spatial circuits, across town and between continents (Butcher 2004; Waters 2005, 2006). The eventual prize from the perspective of transnational families is a western degree that will appreciate in value when traded as an educational credential in East Asia, for a degree from a well-known western university confers enhanced cultural capital upon its owner. Moreover, as educational networks thicken between top North American universities and corporate employers in East Asia, so graduates of institutions like the University of British Columbia (UBC) or the University of Toronto find themselves in the favourable position of being

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interviewed by employers who are alumni of the same university.16 To cultural capital is then added the benefit of social capital as relations are brokered among members of the same institutional network. As UBC’s alumni group in Hong Kong is said to be the largest outside Canada, the social capital premium can be appreciable, if not as entrenched as the deeply incised channels that meander from Oxbridge to corporate desks in the City of London (Butler and Lees 2006). The advantageous exchange and net growth of financial, cultural and social capitals are outcomes of strategic moves across the transnational social field. The important steps involve deploying the currency that gives the greatest rate of return at different locations. New arrivals in Canada typically have only financial capital to trade, but with it they can secure cultural capital through purchasing education that is more highly valued in Asia Pacific, where the salaries of university graduates are invariably higher than they would be in Canada. As these ‘trade routes’ become deeper and more widely acknowledged, so the social capital of recognition and trust inflates the trading power of the cultural capital of western education. This circular trade in the accumulation of varied capitals not only enriches the most able students. Arguably, it is even more important for weaker students, who would miss the cut in the highly disciplined and competitive education tracks in East Asia. Western education offers a remedial path to economic redemption (Chee 2005; Waters 2005). I interviewed Byron while he was visiting from Hong Kong. He reflected critically on his early education there: The students there are just like robots, you have to do this, you have to do this, you cannot do that, you cannot do that. For the exams or tests you must cover the whole book out of your brain, not [any] of your own ideas.

The family migrated for the sake of Byron’s education, entering Canada through the entrepreneur stream of the BIP. ‘They didn’t want me to stay there. They wanted me to go somewhere else. Because in Hong Kong, if you get an overseas university degree, it’s better.’ He had entered Canada with his family in grade 11, but his scholarly achievements remained undistinguished. He struggled through secondary school but now is brandishing his university diploma from Kingston College, a private institution established in 1991 with the surge in migration from East Asia, and a branch plant issuing degrees from ‘the American University in London’. I went to some private university and I get the British degree. Which university was that? The American University in London. So you went to London then?

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No actually, you have to… you can go to do exams in London but I did some correspondence courses here. And that way I can finish my degree much faster. So you did correspondence? Not quite correspondence. It’s international education. You can take it there [or] they have instructors here to teach us. I’ve found the instructors are good and especially their English. He’s a young guy, not a professor yet, he’s a lecturer, he’s a major in English literature at the university.

Not long after our interview, in autumn 2006, it was revealed that Kingston College was misrepresenting its degrees and that the ‘American University in London’ was an unaccredited entity occupying an office above a betting shop (Matas 2006). The London office was fined in Britain in 2006 for false claims to be a university. Kingston College had been offering fictional undergraduate and Master’s degrees from AUL to gullible foreign students from South and East Asia who were not qualified to enter accredited institutions. But Byron missed this rocky shoal, was able to ride the wave of his Canadian diploma and has parlayed it into a job in Hong Kong paying five times as much as he had been earning at his father’s business in Richmond. There was a network – social capital – at play as well: ‘the boss of that company had some connection with my father’. Byron’s social circle in Hong Kong are the friends he made at Kingston College: ‘My best friends from my university life, they all moved back there. We’ve got the same theory. We can be very proud of what we’re being paid and what we’re doing’. Working 12 hour days, six days a week, Byron doesn’t have much time to see his friends, but is happy they are all launched on their careers: ‘In Canada I cannot make a living like I’m making in Hong Kong’. Where there is a market, suppliers of all stripes will lay out their wares, not least in the lax regulatory culture of Canadian international education. While Byron was fortunate, a year or two later when the fraud was exposed, other students, desperate for a western degree to take home as a valued credential promising comparative advantage in the job market, were left with nothing but useless paper to show for an outlay of thousands of dollars.

The Asian-Canadian Church: From Isolation to Integration Education is not the only institutional nexus that focuses the attention of immigrants from East Asia, broadening their local networks into civil society and deepening a sense of rootedness. Affiliation with Christian churches has become a significant part of the life of a majority of Korean immigrants

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and a substantial number of ethnic Chinese. The extraordinary reach of Christianity into the overseas Korean diaspora has been frequently discussed; in the United States it is often stated that 25 percent of Koreans profess Christianity in their home country, a figure that rises to 50 percent among those who emigrate, and that inflates further to 75 percent with conversions in the United States (Warner 2001; Min 2002). Substantial, but not equal, dissemination of faith occurs among ethnic Chinese immigrants, though from a much smaller base, and with greater religious plurality (Wang and Yang 2006; Zhang 2006). One estimate suggests around 20 percent of Chinese-Americans are Christians, somewhat fewer are Buddhists, a smaller number again adhere to folk ritual, and the largest group is unaffiliated (Min 2002). But an early report on Chinese churches in Toronto found ‘the number of new converts is phenomenal’ (Lee 1994). The Canadian Census includes a question on religious affiliation once a decade, allowing a record of self-declared association to be collated. Crosstabulating religious affiliation against ethnicity from the 2001 Census established the broad contours of religious practice in Greater Vancouver. Some 23 percent of Chinese-Canadians identified as Christians, 15 percent as Buddhists and the large majority, 61 percent, claimed no religious affiliation. Nonetheless close to a quarter of 380,000 remains a large number and there are at least 85 Chinese Christian congregations in Greater Vancouver, some of them growing rapidly. Profiles published in the Directory of Chinese Churches reveal that over a half are less than ten years old, while a third have a congregation of less than a hundred. This dynamic pattern of a large number of small and recent churches is repeated amongst Koreans. Although the Korean population was less than a tenth the size of the Chinese population in 2001, an extensive network of over 60 congregations existed, benefiting from the high level of Christian affiliation (72 percent) among Koreans in Greater Vancouver, probably the highest figure for any ethnic group, and close to the estimated affiliation rate in the United States. The role of immigrants in the renewal and reconfiguration of established faith communities is a recent theme in North America and Europe (Ebaugh and Chavetz 2000; Jenkins 2007). There are many local variations, and the case of business immigrants from East Asia has its own particularities. A common refrain is that emigration was undertaken as a conscious status passage, for some families to construct a more rounded life than was possible in the frenzied capitalism of Asia Pacific. The move was undertaken to seek out difference, not sameness: geopolitical stability, passport ‘insurance’, a western education, and a life freed from the relentless pressure of the 70-hour work week that Byron and his young friends are presently engaging (it must be said) with some gusto in Hong Kong. Part of a more rounded life includes greater time given to family, like the astronaut wives who have taken

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up mothering as a career. For many families exploration of spirituality becomes part of this more expansive lifeworld. The case was well put to me by Mrs. Yip (whom we met in Chapter 3), whose family settled as business immigrants, yet deliberately planned to break loose from their former way of life in Hong Kong where both parents had demanding careers: And when we were leaving Hong Kong we were in the peak of our profession or business at that time. That’s why we were too busy and we find too little time giving to the family and the kids at that time. So when we came over to Canada, and we first get away from that fast living we maintain the family life. This is the first priority we need to have, otherwise it ruins the meaning of coming to Canada if we put all the time into working and still neglecting our kids. We find we can adjust so well here. This is what I think because God changed my point of value… Like when we were in Hong Kong, you know, everything, is, was, so pinpointed on money. Once you get the money you get everything in the world. But life is not like that as we now know. But it takes time for people to change their mind. Like they have to… to adjust themselves. I find it may be difficult if people, like, still are the same, not like us who have the religion and have a change in mind what is the priority in life. If they once know this, then they can adjust much better. Otherwise, they still keeping the mind like they do in Hong Kong, like making money easier and so on. Then they will find it very difficult here and they just can’t enjoy the good things here like the good environment, the nice people here and so many different places, like you can go golfing, paying just a few dollars here.

The Yip family discovered religious faith in Canada from a position of strength, and it has supported a significant shift in life priorities. Others, however, have come to the immigrant church in their weakness, in need of social support and spiritual succour, as ‘immigration for most people approximates a real life crisis’ (Lee 1994). Interviews with 70 pastors and elders at Chinese and especially Korean churches – where most members were immigrants – revealed the heightened isolation and anxieties of the newly arrived (Ley 2008): When they first arrive in Canada, they feel very much alone and scared. The church offers a community that will embrace them where they are at, Christian or non-Christian. The church offers cooked meals, places to stay when looking for a new place to rent or buy a home, advice on the educational system… The church becomes their home.

Repeatedly in interviews, a phenomenological contrast was drawn between church and society. The church was ‘a home’, ‘a refuge’, ‘a safe place’, while society was a place of struggle, ‘where many are lonely and stressed’. The

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immigrant church as a service hub offers both social and spiritual comforts, and its ministries provide a peephole into the initial needs of East Asian immigrants. At one Korean church: The recent immigrants want to find support and a network to be connected into as they are finding a new home here. They are in need of direction in the education system, the job opportunities and how they should learn English. Some are in need of real help because they contemplate suicide and come from broken families… There are many cases in which the fathers are being depressed or stressed because they can no longer be properly be head of the family household due to the language barrier.

Both Korean and Chinese churches mentioned the case of the downwardly mobile male, in status as well as in economic achievement, and the needs of astronaut wives. Counselling by church staff and caring in weekly ‘house groups’ were important services. Immigrant men ‘feel ashamed that they have no real status in this society’, and there was frequent reference to the need for recognition (Ley 2008). Indeed more than one speaker suggested that the large number of small churches resulted in part from congregational splits where groups formed around strong males, whose activism in the church might replace their deflated standing in more worldly pursuits. At a long-established Chinese-Canadian congregation with poorer members: ‘We help them to find accommodation and a job; teach them to fill in application forms; be their interpreter and a referee for them.’ Such practical assistance is often worked out in fellowship or care groups where new immigrants and longer-established church members share experiences. Mentoring is encouraged. Help is practical. ‘We are a walking yellow pages to them,’ declared another Chinese-Canadian minister. A third minister was more explicit: he offered short-term accommodation to immigrants in his own house ‘and then our members from a care group will advise them how to apply for the social insurance card, the medical card, how to open a bank account, recommend them a family doctor…’ Tension between parents and children, mentioned earlier, can reappear in institutional form in immigrant church life. The issue of the second generation received knowing responses from church leaders (Min 1992; Chai 1998). The Canadian-born children of immigrants have memories and current points of reference that are Canadian rather than homeland-based, they do not remember the struggles of being newly landed, and most of all speaking and writing English is second nature, not a daily trial. The church’s traditions, its homeland language, cultural memories, and patriarchal structure that anchor ethnic identity for the first generation are lower priorities, even distractions, for the second:

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The longer-established immigrants… have kept a lot of the Korean customs like respecting the elderly, honouring those who deserve respect in the hierarchy system and so on. They desire their children to keep communicating to them in Korean and not in English. Actually a lot of the children of the longer-established immigrants have left the church and are now attending a Canadian church or a church for second generation only.

Adjustments occur: an English-language service is started, with different music and worship styles, and a Canadian-born leader.17 The church and its congregation have begun the journey toward integration. The intense bonding and social capital accumulation and distribution of the early years has moved on to a sometimes challenging integration with the society from which the church was initially a haven, a place of refuge.

Settlement Agencies: Building the Bridges Canada has not followed the current American and British model of grants for faith-based organizations so that the public role of religious institutions is much more detached from the public ledger in the delivery of social services. But the state still plays an active role in immigrant settlement (Bloemraad 2006), largely through delegating funds for service delivery to non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Such agencies have provided a significant interface between the new immigrant and the society to which they may wish to integrate. NGOs represent in some respects the secular and formal version of the informal service hub of the immigrant church.18 A major distinction is the role of public funds and the organization’s embeddedness in the procedural rules of the welfare state. The clan and hometown based mutual aid associations in Old Chinatown (Willmott 1970: Wickberg et al. 1982) and umbrella organizations like the Chinese Benevolent Association have lost some of their earlier lustre with the immigration of a largely middle-class population schooled in the achievements of a cosmopolitan Asian modernity. Points of reference tend now to be more mainstream, including several business organizations like the Hong Kong-Canada Business Association or lobby groups like the Chinese Canadian National Council. With the large ethnic Chinese populations of Toronto and Vancouver, there are invariably differences in objectives and strategies among organizations, compounded by competition for government funding (Salaff 2006). But that is nothing new. Cross-cutting regional, clan and political sympathies in China contributed to traditional Chinatown civil life that was often marked by ‘disunity and factionalism’ (Wickberg et al. 1982), and these divisions have multiplied as older and more parochial organisations are juxtaposed with newer and more cosmopolitan associations in North

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American Chinatowns (Zhou and Kim 2001). In Vancouver significant disputes in the 1970s occurred between the pro-Taiwan Chinese Benevolent Association and the Chinese Cultural Centre, a new entity claiming 3000 members that emerged squarely from state-based multicultural initiatives in the early 1970s (Anderson 1991). The Cultural Centre represented a new generation of immigrants, well-educated, democratic, integrationist and savvy in their intersection with Canadian party politics. By the 1990s, however, an internal rift within the Cultural Centre pitted original board members against a younger cohort, many of them recent arrivals entering Canada as economic immigrants. They challenged older board members for being insufficiently democratic and overly supportive of the PRC in the wake of the Tiananmen repression in 1989 (Mitchell 1998). A turbulent episode in Chinatown politics ended with the defeat of the reformers in 1993 elections, with traditionalists aided, it was alleged, by the long reach of the Chinese state offering funding and logistical support. Meanwhile, a stone’s throw from the Chinese Cultural Centre, a very different organization has emerged. The United Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society, much better known as SUCCESS, was established in 1973, with its mandate ‘to bridge the gap between newcomers to Canada and Canadian society’.19 Building from the new status achieved by Chinatown in the late 1960s, the organization began as a three-year demonstration project, ‘The Chinese Connection’, whose aims were to break down the historic isolation of Chinatown, to reduce barriers to integration and to establish linkages with mainstream Canada. Especially under the energetic leadership of Lilian To, Executive Director then CEO from 1988 to her death in 2005, SUCCESS developed as a multi-faceted provider of settlement services primarily to ethnic Chinese immigrants, though it has sought to diversify its client base. Its level of activity is impressive (Guo 2006). Operating from 11 centres and offices in Greater Vancouver, in its 2006–07 financial year it provided 240,000 client-services across a broad range of settlement and multicultural areas (SUCCESS 2007). A third of the budget of $22 million is generated through fees for services and fund-raising. The principal community event of the year is the Annual Banquet and Gala, a fund-raiser that in recent years has attracted 10,000–12,000 to a concert with Canto-pop singers and other Hong Kong performers who donate their services free. Politicians from all major parties attend the Gala, a key event of the annual social calendar. A transnational cultural event, it is relayed back to Hong Kong and televised in parts of East Asia. In 2008 SUCCESS opened reception offices in Taipei and Seoul to offer pre-arrival orientation to potential immigrants. Carrying its services overseas, SUCCESS is following the example of the globalizing state. One of the SUCCESS ventures is a centre on Vancouver’s Westside offering advice to BIP entrepreneurs to help them establish a small business in

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Canada and develop culture-specific skills. I held three focus groups at the centre with BIP entrepreneurs from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea who had participated in these programmes. While they valued the services and networks that were offered, there was little difference in overall economic performance or expectations between these groups and the larger population of business immigrants. Mitchell (2001) has identified agencies like SUCCESS with the ‘shadow state’, the proliferating network of NGOs (and private companies) that distribute public services on a contractual basis in a neo-liberal governance regime. Interestingly, SUCCESS emerged in 1973 during the heyday of public participation, when the delegation of services to the grassroots level, especially in Chinatown, was a plank in left-liberal, not right wing, agendas. Like the Chinese Cultural Centre established the same year, SUCCESS, facilitated by multicultural funding, was founded by professionals: ‘teachers, physicians, government workers, lawyers, health nurses, social workers, a pastor and community activists’ (Li 1998). Unlike the traditional Chinatown associations it has a professional and entrepreneurial edge, and sees itself as a bridging, not an inward-looking, institution. David and Dorothy Lam, epitome of multicultural integration, have been patrons and the new head office is named, in memoriam, the Dr. Dorothy Lam Building. As a bridging institution, SUCCESS has responded effectively to the funding opportunities of the welfare state and the standards of middle-class immigrants schooled in the standards of an efficient ‘Asian modernity’.

Participation, Citizenship, Belonging, Identity: Climbing the Integration Ladder In the transition from stranger to host, from outsider to insider, several milestones may be located in an immigrant biography. Participation, a sense of interest and agency in the civil society around the place of residence, is a good starting point. We have already seen an example of such agency in the dramatic intervention of new business immigrants in the public hearings on zoning change in Shaughnessy in the early 1990s. Angela Kan, Executive Director of SUCCESS from 1977 to 1986, identified the period since the 1970s as the first era of widespread ‘active participation and identification with Canada’ among the formerly marginalized Chinese-Canadian population (Kan 1998). Her frame of reference was the activism associated with the arrival of well-educated, middle-class migrants from Hong Kong following the pro-Communist riots in 1967, reinforced by the second wave of economic migrants in the 1980s and 1990s. SUCCESS has always placed a strong emphasis on voluntarism as a form of participation and claims a massive volunteer force of over 5,000 that provide services beyond the

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capacity of funded programmes. There is evidence, too, of considerable volunteering among the more privileged immigrants, particularly women, landing from Taiwan (Chiang 2008). National surveys like the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey imply, however, that Chinese-Canadians at large are considerably less active participants than the view from SUCCESS might suggest (Reitz and Banerjee 2007). In the 1997 National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participation, 38 percent of 18,300 respondents reported some organisational involvement, but the rate for ethnic Chinese was lower at 28 percent, and below average across all five organizational types (Mata 1999). This under-representation remained even when various controls such as education and length of residence were introduced. The 2003 General Social Survey, with a sample of almost 19,000, also showed that on indicators of voluntary involvement, individuals from China and Hong Kong had lower levels of participation than most other groups even when controls were applied (Baer 2008). Focus groups with Hong Kongborn immigrants in suburban Toronto and Vancouver confirmed generally low levels of civic participation, although an exception was volunteering in a child’s school, an understandable response in light of the premium placed on education (Preston et al. 2006). The salience of the family has likely limited involvement in voluntary organizations, and the large number of ethnic Chinese with no religious affiliation has weakened membership in religious organisations, a site of substantial involvement for other immigrants. Besides promoting volunteering, SUCCESS has also been an incubator of political ideals, launching a number of political careers, and by its 25th anniversary in 1998, four former directors had been elected to Vancouver City Council. The 1990s represented a breakthrough period for ChineseCanadians with Raymond Chan elected to Parliament as MP for Richmond and appointed to a junior federal Cabinet position, while Jenny Kwan, a former Vancouver city councillor, became the first Chinese-Canadian cabinet minister in the British Columbia legislature. These successes coincided with an upturn in political awareness and participation. The limited attainment of democracy in Hong Kong has not prepared immigrants for activism in Canada, while among those heavily engaged in transnational activities, with an uncertain future in Canada, the motivation for participation is lowered further. Nonetheless analysis of voting in the Vancouver ethnoburbs of Richmond (where Chinese predominate) and Surrey (with a strong Punjabi Sikh presence) revealed that Chinese as a home language correlated positively with census tracts with a higher electoral turnout, while contrary to a public perception of active mobilisation among the Sikh population, Punjabi indicators coincided with lower turnout (Rose 2007).20 For some migrants, the hard work of getting established in a new land limits the leisure to think and act on a wider stage. Lack of time was a reason for non-involvement among residents of Richmond: ‘I am not involved in

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that – I’m not in the political community – because I think you need to have more time, and at this point I don’t think I have the time… Maybe when I retire’ (a middle-aged Hong Kong male, quoted in Rose 2007: 206). In contrast, with preliminaries out of the way, and especially with citizenship in hand, some see a democratic responsibility to vote: ‘When I first came here I was more concerned with adapting here, getting my citizenship, so noticing politics wasn’t really important. Now that I am a citizen and … I am preparing for the next vote. I am going to do my research now’ (a middle-aged Hong Kong woman, in Rose 2007: 205). A second and more common reason for voting was more purposive, directed toward a stake the voter held in the outcome: ‘We just wanted to have a change in the ruling party during the last provincial election. The [incumbents] were so lousy that we just had to get rid of them’ (middle-aged Hong Kong male, in Rose 2007: 190). To have a stake in the political outcome of an election indicates a deepening of affiliations with the Canadian side of the transnational social field. In principle, citizenship – a pre-requisite for voting – itself represents an expression of affinity beyond the more limited goal of participation. Of course it is not this simple, for citizenship and ‘passport insurance’ reveal other, more instrumental, goals for transnational households. The passport is often the prize for which many other sacrifices – economic, social and personal – have been made. Some 40 percent of responses from Hong Kong immigrants in Richmond alluded to such considerations: ‘[Citizenship] was more like an insurance. The passport is just like an insurance policy, so if you travel outside the country and there is any problem you have some security’ (quoted in Rose 2007: 227). Another pragmatic goal is the capacity of the passport to lubricate transnational movement to business interests in Hong Kong and minimise difficulties of re-entry to Canada: ‘If I am not a Canadian, there’s one limitation: I cannot leave Canada for more than half a year. I can stay away longer if I am a Canadian citizen’ (middle-aged male, in Rose 2007: 228). Or again, in a response by a middle-aged woman: After all if you’re a citizen you’re free to go back to Hong Kong. You get no problems… You know I’ve been flying for three years… coming back to Canada if you’re a landed immigrant, you start worrying how the immigration officials will judge you. But I’m a citizen. I can go to Hong Kong and live for two years, come back and still be a citizen… No problem, I’m going home. You cannot refuse me (ibid).

In this transnational logic, the freedom of citizenship is a freedom not for affinity, but for departure, to leave Canada as often and for as long as one wishes.21 As in so much else, we need to understand this trait in light of socialization in East Asia and the meaning of citizenship transported to Canada. Taiwan is a young and precarious democracy where security looms large in measures of

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citizenship. The situation in Hong Kong is even more fragile, for democratic citizenship has never existed. In the absence of a national project and with no substantive experience of citizenship, the family and the market became the primary points of reference in establishing rights and responsibilities (Mathews et al. 2008). Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, the Chinese diaspora has been a minority, frequently oppressed, with an ambivalent relationship with an unpredictable state (Ang 2001). Under historical circumstances such as these, the condition of ‘flexible citizenship’ (Ong 1999) is scarcely surprising. Moreover, although motivations might vary, a practice of conditional citizenship is far from exclusive to the overseas Chinese. In Australia, British and New Zealand immigrants, closest to the status and traditions of the Australian-born and with easy access to the full package of citizenship benefits, are nonetheless tardy in their acquisition of citizenship (Ip et al. 1997). Similarly in North America, American immigrants are slow to take out Canadian citizenship, while Canadian and British immigrants are in no hurry to become naturalized Americans (Bloemraad 2006). After six to eight years residence in Canada, 87 percent of immigrants from Hong Kong had acquired Canadian citizenship, but this step had been taken by only 56 percent of immigrants from the United Kingdom. Instrumentalism does not account for citizenship motives among a majority of immigrants from East Asia. More than half the responses from Hong Kong arrivals in Richmond did indicate a desire for social inclusion, an expression of belonging within the Canadian nation state (Rose 2007). According to a woman in her late twenties: For some other people, you know, they thought of going back to Hong Kong as an option, so they would like to retain that citizenship. You know, because they need to work there. So we never looked at it that way. We never actually thought of going back to Hong Kong. We were always looking at it like ‘this is it—we’re here’. From the very start, I would say. So that’s probably different from some other families… I don’t know, it was just that I thought it was a privilege, really, to get that citizenship card.

A recently retired man had burned his bridges in Hong Kong: I always stay here and never go back to Hong Kong. In fact, I sold my business and we sold my house before we came so… we cut off everything. Since we would be living here, from generation to generation, there was no reason not to become citizens. Frankly, we have no place to go. Well, maybe we could go back to Hong Kong, but we don’t. Let me put it this way: we like Hong Kong less and less.

The sense of belonging in Canada and an emerging identity as a Canadian were explored in the national Ethnic Diversity Survey in 2002. The survey revealed that 84 percent of ethnic Chinese had assumed Canadian citizenship,

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53 percent expressed a sense of belonging to Canada (just below the average for all ethnic groups), while 40.5 percent had a sense of Canadian identity (above other visible minorities, but below whites). Once the data were standardized for immigrant status, recent Chinese immigrants landing in the ten years prior to the survey displayed a relatively high level of citizenship and Canadian identity, but a relatively low level of civic participation and sense of belonging, and a still weaker level of life satisfaction (Reitz and Banerjee 2007). Unfortunately these scores are not explained, but most of the traits do show improvement with length of residence in Canada.22 A Ming Pao survey reveals the same steady incorporation of Canadian identity over time, with the respondents describing themselves as Canadian or Chinese-Canadian rising from 29 percent for those resident five years or less to 43 percent among those resident more than ten years, with an equivalent decline in the numbers selfidentifying as Chinese or Canadian-Chinese (Ming Pao 1997b). A final data base that bears on these questions brings us back to the question of business immigration and how that status intersects with the tendencies we have noted toward integration in Canadian society marked by participation, citizenship, belonging and identity. A large survey demarcated the extent and characteristics of transnational activities among immigrants in metropolitan Vancouver (Hiebert and Ley 2006). Respondents who had entered Canada through the business immigration streams showed the highest level of transnational activity on six out of eight indicators, including a job that required overseas travel and an active business in their home country. Respondents scoring highly on these attributes were disproportionately from East Asia and recent arrivals, with ten years or less residence in Canada. Importantly, this transnational business group were also less likely to hold Canadian citizenship and much more likely to have a feeling of Canadian identity only occasionally, or never. Other research has shown that high school youth from Hong Kong in astronaut families whose fathers are primarily in East Asia have a weaker sense of belonging in Canada (Chow 2007). The evidence suggests that regular movement through the expanded social field that stretches across the Pacific Ocean delays, and for some impedes, both a formal and an expressive relationship with Canada. In establishing a cosmopolitan transnational outlook, there is the characteristic neglect of locality, in this case the locality that comprises the immigrant destination. Plying transnational routes apparently disrupts establishing Canadian roots.23

Conclusion As immigrants climb the ladder of integration, a final rung may be reached by the small number who receive honorific status for themselves and by extension for the communities in which they are leaders. The exceptional

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cases of David Lam, appointed Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia from 1988 to 1995, and Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada from 1999 to 2005, represent perhaps the most complete inclusion of first generation Chinese-Canadians. David Lam achieved his status through multicultural community development and generous philanthropy, dispersing the fortune he accrued from real estate. From these high ranks, citizens have a capacity to shape civil society itself and David Lam has been active in encouraging both civic participation as a bridge between immigrants and the Canadian-born, and also philanthropy as a fundamental sign of immigrant commitment and belonging. He has successfully encouraged other wealthy ethnic Chinese immigrants to join him in philanthropic efforts that have bestowed gifts on universities, hospitals and religious institutions. The northwest corner of the campus of the University of British Columbia, for example, now includes the David Lam Management Research Library, the Choi Building (Asian Studies), the Sing Tao Building (School of Journalism), the Liu Institute for Global Issues, and the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts – all of them built in the past 15 years.24 Such honorific status locates the immigrant squarely within the bounds of the Canadian nation state, their source of economic, social and cultural capital. Not all immigrants are willing to accept such national incorporation and seek flexibility of movement and association. However, we have seen in this chapter that mobility can be costly in family life; social and emotional bonds stretched across space can snap. At the very least family separation commonly entails some suffering and the weakening of lines of social control. Moreover, it is not just the absence of physical contact that disorients family harmony. Because life across the transnational social field requires engaging geographical difference, not a surface of uniformity, location at one side or the other of the Pacific Ocean introduces variable spatial effects upon family members. As men are socialized deeper into the economic and cultural worlds of East Asia and women and children are drawn into the institutional and social worlds of Canada, family members are also drawn apart from each other. Distance can corrode the bonds of even the Chinese business family; wealth cannot always bridge the costs of separation.

Chapter Eight

Roots and Routes: The Myth of Return or Transnational Circulation?

In 1991 the Miss Hong Kong Pageant went global. A long established extravaganza produced by Television Broadcasts (TVB), the dominant station in Hong Kong, the contest pursued the dispersing Chinese diaspora in the 1990s, inviting communities in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto and Vancouver to arrange for the selection of a local contestant to send to the Pageant who was either born in Hong Kong or else held a Hong Kong identity card. Other overseas populations in Australia, New Zealand and London were also invited to participate but contestants had to travel to Hong Kong to enter the qualifying rounds. Going global meant that the Pageant not only recognized the scale of overseas migration by Hong Kong residents, but it also reproduced a transnational social field through the networks of popular culture. TVB programmes are available through satellite subscription throughout the diaspora and may be re-transmitted by local broadcasters like Fairchild Television in Canada. In the four years from 1997–2000, and again in 2007, the Pageant’s winning contestant was a Hong Kong immigrant who had entered the competition in Vancouver; indeed, competitors from Canada’s west coast have been the most successful among the overseas diaspora in the Miss Hong Kong Pageant.1 Success invariably means a return to Hong Kong and a career in film and television as a TVB actress. Anne Heung, the 1998 winner, earned a BA in Economics from the University of British Columbia and, after her Pageant success, became a TVB film and television actress in Hong Kong. Her successor, Sonija Kwok, received a degree from Simon Fraser University in suburban Vancouver and became a Cathay Pacific flight attendant. Following her crowning in 1999, she too became a TVB actress. Like the annual SUCCESS fund-raising gala in Vancouver mentioned in Chapter 7, with its complement of Canto-pop and other Hong Kong entertainers, the Miss Hong Kong Pageant deepens information flows and consolidates

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cultural identities between the two shores of the Pacific. Vancouver seems to be emerging as something of a hub in this broader reach of overseas Chinese mediascapes. Following the television series, Farewell Vancouver, shown on Mainland television,2 the popular musical variety show, Our Chinese Heart, was taped in Vancouver by Chinese state television in November 2008 to be broadcast throughout the global diaspora. Exuberantly billed as the ‘biggest Sino-event ever’ in North America (Shore 2008), the show’s name, with its call to a shared national sentiment, reveals the ongoing political attempt to consolidate the imagined community of the overseas Chinese and sustain loyal emotional ties with the Mainland. The show also disclosed Vancouver’s role in staging that diasporic project. An institutional infrastructure as well as a media network has flourished binding the two sides of the Canada-East Asia social field. Aside from large Canadian university alumni associations, the Chinese Canadian Association in Hong Kong had a membership of 3,000 by 1997, while the Hong KongCanada Business Association had 4,000 members dispersed on each side of the Pacific (Metcalfe 1997). The branch of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, with 800 members, was the largest outside Canada. The ties that bind were also underscored by the declaration of ‘Canada’s Year of Asia-Pacific’ in 1997. Far from a hollow declaration, events that year included the fifth Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference held in Vancouver, and the fourth World Chinese Entrepreneurs’ Forum, also located in Vancouver, the first time it had left an Asian venue. All of these networks and connections facilitated the circulation of information and permitted the switching of both capital and labour between Canada and Hong Kong to become routinized. While the winners of the Miss Hong Kong Pageant are highly visible examples of the movement of postgraduate labour within a transnational social field, the migration of Canadian-educated university students to Hong Kong is a much larger phenomenon. Already by the late 1980s, 50,000– 60,000 Canadian university graduates worked in Hong Kong with another 16,000–18,000 still studying in Canada (Chinatown News 1988a). Young, well-educated adults, often the children of millionaire migrants, are an important segment of the population to return, as they cash in the cultural capital of a western degree for economic capital in East Asia. But they are far from alone. Families have also made the trip back across the Pacific in large numbers to the point that estimates identify over 200,000 Hong Kong residents holding Canadian passports.3 This should not be a surprise for surveys in the early 1990s showed that significant numbers of potential emigrants expected to be back in the colony by 1997 after a brief sojourn overseas, fortified by an overseas passport as ‘insurance policy’. The temporary intent of the move was clear: ‘Most were clearly planning to move in order to stay’ (Lam et al. 1995). In this chapter I examine the phenomenon of return, but

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Figure 8.1 Chek Lap Kok airport, Hong Kong with a transnational twist. For interviews revealed that returnees to Hong Kong had not necessarily completed their trans-Pacific travels (Figure 8.1); return was itself conditional, relative to distinct stages in the life cycle and a reading of ongoing comparative advantages between East Asia and Canada across changing economic and social objectives. For many Hong Kongers re-migration is a distinct possibility, for some an intended probability. ‘Return’ disguises what is more properly a serial process; ongoing circulation more accurately describes actual and intended movements.

Return Migration: Themes and Variations Every great outward surge of voluntary departures has been accompanied by a weaker counter flow. There are always those for whom family or personal illness, the failure of economic aspirations, homesickness, and aging encourage a return home. Until recently, this movement has been understudied, submerged beneath the dominant settler society narrative of immigration, settlement, and assimilation. As Mark Wyman noted in Round Trip to America, the stories of those who failed to join the dominant narrative during the years of massive European immigration from 1880 to 1930 have been largely overlooked: ‘Returned immigrants rejected America and, it seems, American scholars have rejected them’ (Wyman 1993: 4). Estimates

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suggest that between a quarter and a third of new arrivals were temporary and completed the round trip back to Europe. Portions of more recent migrant flows have also rebounded, even among northwest Europeans living in culturally compatible settler societies; some 20–30 percent of Britons moving to Australia since 1945 are estimated to have made the journey home (Hammerton 2004). Among almost all migrant groups the ‘myth of return’ envisages a future day when old friendships will be renewed, former loyalties rekindled. Typically, however, with the passage of time actual return, rather than moving nearer, slips further into an improbable future. But for a minority of migrants, such as some West Indians in Britain, the trip home, long savoured, will occur at the life cycle transition to retirement (Western 1992; Byron and Condon 2007; Conway and Potter 2009). In some ways this view of return migration introduces the same sense of finality as the linear settlement model of departure, arrival, assimilation and citizenship. A move back home, long anticipated, takes place and a migrant history ends with the closing of the circle of mobility. While the dominant settler narrative is disrupted, there is the same sense of completion with the accomplishment of return. In contrast, a more complex system of circulation is characteristic of temporary workers, both skilled and unskilled, who engage in short-term sojourns in one or more foreign destinations. If they are the sought-after pool of ‘human talent’ they are welcomed, although they do not receive the full suite of citizenship privileges; if they are unskilled, however, they are merely tolerated and placed on short-term contracts (Yeoh 2006). The migrant cohort of skilled workers includes the corporate frequent fliers who are the overseas staff of transnational corporations (Beaverstock 2005) as well as the continuing brain drain of professionals from the developing world and from more peripheral countries in the global north (Harvey 2008). It is expected that brain drain migrants will settle in their destination country, and they normally do, but a recent complication has been the identification of a ‘brain exchange’ or ‘brain circulation’ that reverses conventional flows. The rapid development of India and China in particular has created opportunities for expatriate graduates and managerial and professional workers to return home for attractive career opportunities. Software engineers and other IT professionals, perhaps encouraged by targeted programmes aimed at skilled workers, might repatriate skills learned overseas to the high technology nodes of India or China (Iredale et al. 2002; Saxenian 2006). Incentives include science parks with research and development facilities matching those available in North America or Western Europe, together with western-style consumer landscapes (Luo et al. 2002; Tsay 2002; Chacko 2007). The movement of millionaire migrant families back across the Pacific is related to a brain exchange model but presents distinctive variations. First,

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children who return as postgraduates were not short-term visa students resident in North America only for the period of their degree programme. Instead they are typically part of the 1.5 generation who migrated with family members earlier in their lives, and completed secondary school and university education in Canada. Normally they have secured citizenship and speak excellent English with little or no discernible accent. Their identities are both Canadian and East Asian. Second, they are transnational rather than return migrants and there is no certainty that the trip back to East Asia will be their last move. A number of variations exist in family strategies as return is contemplated. In New Zealand, Ho and Bedford (2008) have noted that while astronaut families have frequently re-united in Asia (usually to work) or in New Zealand (often to retire) their 1.5 generation children have moved either back to the homeland or onwards to a third nation. We can identify the following family strategies among the overseas Chinese in Canada.

The working settler model This conventional scenario has been the experience of possibly a majority of East Asian immigrants. Despite the high number of returnees, the 2006 census shows the existence of 218,815 Hong Kong-born migrants and 68,225 Taiwanese still living in Canada. Not all of them of course are longterm stayers and some are fragmented transnational families. As we saw in Chapter 4, the economic circumstances of immigrants among the ethnic Chinese population in Canada have been poor. Tax returns in 2000 showed average incomes of $15,000, half the average for the entire population (Wang and Lo 2005). Business immigrants reported even lower returns around $13,000, with many households declaring incomes below the official poverty line. One problem has been the miserable financial returns provided by the niche market in the large Chinese-Canadian enclave economies in Toronto and Vancouver. In these settings, where success is quickly imitated, relentless hyper-competition drives down profit margins and contributes to business failure.

Retirement Business immigrants are older at the time of arrival because of the requirement that they amass significant entrepreneurial experience in their home country as a condition of entry through the Business Immigration Programme. The mean age of parents in the characteristically four-person nuclear family in the BIP was typically between 40 and 54 years. Among the

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investor stream parents were older and a number move directly into retirement in Vancouver, enjoying a rewarding quality of life. Indeed on their landing form a surprisingly large minority of BIP arrivals indicated they would not be working in Canada, although they entered within the general class of economic migrants. In addition an older immigration category, the retired class, survived into the 1990s and this category alone allowed admission for over 11,000 immigrants from Hong Kong to Vancouver and over 3,000 from Taiwan from 1980 onwards.

Short-term hunkering down This is a stressful social condition with families putting in time awaiting passage of the three years of residence that would qualify them for citizenship and ‘passport insurance’. Typically economic activity in Canada is limited: either entrepreneurs are running a business with stingy profits (or unacceptable losses) or, with their business approved by immigration staff, they are waiting out their time; investors are engaging in passive plays in the financial or property markets. These limited earnings plus savings and in many cases offshore income sustain the family. Especially for men used to active business lives this enforced sense of detention is grinding and aggravates interpersonal tensions around the house. The apt metaphor of ‘immigration jail’ is widely recognized in the immigrant community to describe this involuntary state of limbo (cf. Findlay and Li 1997; Teo 2007).

The astronaut household In the astronaut household frequently the principal wage earner, almost always a male, works in East Asia, often in a business owned prior to migration, and commutes several times a year to join his nuclear family in Canada for a few weeks at a time. Some families reach this strategy as a fall-back option with the failure of their economic aspirations in Canada, but some plan it consciously even before leaving Asia; Waters (2002) spoke to some families in Vancouver where the principal wage earner left Canada as little as a week after landing. But almost all become a fragmented family reluctantly and with a view to termination as soon as possible. The primacy of the international airport in the life of recent immigrants is suggested by the concentration of 1986–96 arrivals of ethnic Chinese in a semi-circle of census tracts around this activity node (Figure 5.6). The actual number of astronauts engaging in the ‘Pacific shuttle’ at any one time is uncertain, but it is large. In a lawsuit filed by four dozen astronauts in Greater Vancouver against the federal government in 2003, it was

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estimated that 50,000–100,000 permanent residents in Canada frequently travel to Taiwan and Mainland China ‘for work and family reasons’ (Fong 2003). This estimate excluded similar movement with Hong Kong.

Return Both the astronaut family and those hunkering down to wait out their eligibility for citizenship are primary candidates for return. Wives may rejoin husbands in East Asia leaving behind their teenage or adult children in school or university. Roots in Canada are shallow, motivations for migration above all pragmatic. Business class immigrants in particular have a limited sense of belonging and identity with Canada (Hiebert and Ley 2006), and such sentiments are readily trumped by economic motives. Many households have been disappointed by business failure and wish to re-enter the familiar economic culture of East Asia that has proven satisfying in the past. Return does not occupy the common position of a long planned retirement move. Rather, akin to ‘brain circulation’, a strategic step for career advancement is being undertaken. Indeed future retirement may require later remigration. Such repeated mobility across borders is part and parcel of the transnational condition. Newly emergent households, the adult children of immigrant families, are Canadian-educated but also see career opportunities as brighter in East Asia. Analytically separate, individual households commonly move between these five family strategies over time. Some households planned the terms of their stay in Canada from the outset, many improvised before an unexpected turn of events. The resilience and flexibility of the millionaire migrant leads to continuing re-appraisal of variable opportunities across the transnational social field.

Movers and Stayers among East Asian Migrants A considerable number of the 480,000 immigrants of all entry classes who landed in Canada from Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1980 and 2001 have remained, engaging in integration and putting down roots.4 But many have departed. By the early 1990s, the return of migrants to East Asia was being noticed on the street and reported in the media. At the end of 1993, the South China Morning Post was detecting a return flow of skilled workers – ‘Brain drain slows as managers return’ – even before the peak year of emigration out of Hong Kong in 1994 (Ng 1993). Soon after, the World Journal (1994a) in Vancouver announced that foreign passport holders in Hong

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Kong had increased by 15 percent in 1993: ‘mostly they are Canadian’. Through the 1990s the density of such stories thickened in the Hong Kong media: ‘Emigrants find grass no greener’ (Torode 1994); ‘Brain gain follows tremendous brain drain’ (Batha 1996); ‘Luxury (Vancouver) homes for sale as migrants return to SAR’ (Lyons 1997). Similar accounts, but lamenting losses rather than celebrating gains, could also be found on the Canadian West Coast. ‘Tycoons go over horizon’, announced the Globe and Mail as early as 1993. According to Bob Rennie, Vancouver’s most successful condominium sales agent, ‘The Hong Kong rich are still buying family homes here. But they’re selling off the other two or three homes or condos they bought for investments. Then they’re going back home to make money’ (Cernetig 1993). A rebound in 1994–96 was followed by a serious outflow of migrants and capital by 1997: a property report in the Wall Street Journal announced that ‘For Vancouver the party is over: Hong Kong money is no longer acting as stimulus’ (Carlisle 1997). The fervent denials of the effects of East Asian investment on the Vancouver housing market circa 1988–90, legitimated by the Laurier reports, were now long forgotten. ‘Hong Kong exodus worries BC’, stated a national affairs journalist for the Toronto Star. ‘Vancouver real estate prices drop as immigrants start going home’, he was told by the local real estate industry (Walkom 1997). The overseas asset disclosure legislation was held by some to be behind the exodus, but so too was growing optimism for the future of Hong Kong after 1997, until the financial crisis at the end of that year forced re-patriation of capital and labour across the Pacific. Others of course had been planning return all along. Making a number of assumptions,5 we can develop a rough sense of departures by comparing actual and predicted Hong Kong and Taiwanese totals in Canada when immigration flows are added to baseline populations (Table 8.1). Hong Kong-born immigrants numbered 77,410 in 1986. By adding 1986–90 immigration landings of 95,350, we would expect a 1991 population of some 173,000, holding other factors constant. The actual Census enumeration of 152,455 in 1991 indicates a net deficit of over 20,000 or 13 percent of the 1991 total. The 1991–95 computation estimates a deficit of 86,000, 36 percent of the 1996 total population, and the 1996–2000 calculation identifies 72,000 Hong Kongers missing from this simple accounting system, or 31 percent of the 2001 population. The Taiwanese trends suggest limited outflow in the late 1980s, but numbers pick up steadily in the 1990s with the 1996–2000 deficit amounting to 25,000 or 37 percent of the 2001 population. While an admittedly rough approximation, the figures do give us a sense of the large scale of return (and onward) migration. In Chapter 4 we detected a substantial cohort of business immigrants absent from tax filer data; the combination of landing cards plus census data also reveal significant numbers are missing from successive enumerations.

ROOTS AND ROUTES

Table 8.1

233

Estimation of the loss of Hong Kong and Taiwanese immigrants from Canada New Landings Estimated Population of Immigrants* of Immigrants** Population Apparent Deficit at b at + b (at+b)− at+1

a) Hong Kong 2001 1996–2000 1996 1991–95 1991 1986–90 1986 1981–85 1981 b) Taiwan 2001 1996–2000 1996 1991–95 1991 1986–90 1986

235,620

307,936

72,316

327,019

85,924

172,760

20,305

93,763

16,353

92,003

24,908

54,853

5,563

18,658

888

66,841 241,095 174,564 152,455 95,350 77,410 34,783 58,980 67,095 42,713 49,290 37,083 17,770 11,448 7,210

*

By country of birth (Source: Census of Canada, various years) By country of last permanent residence (Source: Government of Canada, Longitudinal Immigration Database (LIDS) ) **

In a more systematic linkage of the Immigration Data Base (IMDB) with the Census of Canada, Aydemir and Robinson (2006) sought to estimate out-migration, either by return to the nation of origin or onward to a third country. They confine their analysis to working age men at the time of landing and reach the transnational conclusion that, ‘It is clear that a substantial part of migration to Canada is temporary’ (2006: 21). A quarter of immigrant tax-filers in 1989 were subsequently ‘long-term’ absentees from the files, an absence that the authors interpret as representing departure out of the country. The proportion of missing tax-filers rises to one-third when short-term absentees are added, with their re-appearance in the tax files providing evidence of temporary absence followed by re-entry. Moreover, migrants from ‘Hong Kong and the United States had particularly short stays, as did those entering under the business class or skilled class category for source countries in general’ (2006: 7).

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The wastage of business immigrants is particularly marked, with 30 percent not surviving in the data base beyond the first year. During 1990–94, the period when Hong Kong was the leading country of immigration to Canada, there were much higher rates of loss than in a comparative period a decade earlier. Departure data from Hong Kong are so distinctive in the IMDB that it is identified as a ‘special case’ (Aydemir and Robinson 2006: 14).6 Forty percent of working age male arrivals from Hong Kong did not remain in the data base for more than a year, evidence of an extraordinary wastage rate. It is not known to what extent their absence indicates permanent departure or an astronaut arrangement. Of course departure from Canadian data systems need not mean that immigrants have returned home. Another option is onward migration to a third country and with Canada’s historic brain drain to the United States it is possible that immigrants will also follow the well-trodden trail southwards. However, unlike immigrants from the Mainland where considerable seepage of well-educated households occurs to the United States, the tendency for Hong Kong migrants to Canada to follow this trend is limited (King and Newbold 2007; Ma 2009). Their preferred trajectory is back to East Asia. While attempts have been made to quantify return migration in Hong Kong, all have foundered as they either represent partial counts or else suffer from respondent under-enumeration, or both. In the former case, the 2001 Hong Kong Census included a question on return migration, but only captured those who were locally born, living in Hong Kong in 2001, but living outside Hong Kong, Macau and China for some period between 1996 and 2001. It captured 86,000 returnees, 39 percent from Canada, the leading source (DeVoretz et al. 2002). An earlier General Household Survey in 1999 sampled 22,300 households. It specified returnees in terms of those currently living in Hong Kong, born in Hong Kong, Macau or the Mainland, who had spent at least two years anywhere abroad in the previous decade (Government of Hong Kong 2000). This more liberal definition inflated the estimate to 118,000 returnees, but the authors cautioned there were many reasons to regard this as an under-estimate, not least, ‘Owing to the rather sensitive nature of the subject, some respondents may not be willing to provide the required information accurately’ (2000: 48). Not for the first time, official statistics were subject to the wilful distortion of those asked to submit to them; the actions of skilled agents undermined the overseeing attempts of the state to define, evaluate and claim them, statistically and politically. There is general agreement among these studies of the profile of those least likely to stay in Canada. The 1999 special survey on returnees did reveal that an economic elite was re-establishing residence (Government of Hong Kong 2000). Returnees were three times more likely than the general population to be in the top income bracket, and almost three-quarters had jobs as professionals, managers and administrators. There was an impressive level of human capital, with over half the adults completing a university

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Table 8.2 Contrasting attributes, among Hong Kong-born, of returnees to Hong Kong and, stayers in Canada Returnees from Canada % Age 0–19 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60+ Education Primary school or less Secondary school and diploma Local university degree Overseas university degree Earnings (CADS annual) Under $13,820 Over $69,100 Mean

Stayers in Canada %

9.4 37.5 21.5 14.9 8.5 8.1

21.7 18.3 25.1 23.4 5.9 5.6

9.2 40.3 15.3 35.2

6.4 68.2 25.2

5.1 22.8 $53,700

{

45.7 4.9 $23,570

Source: DeVoretz, Ma and Zhang (2002) from the Census of Hong Kong and the Census of Canada

education, a rate five times higher than the population at large. Almost 60 percent of the population were in their 20s or 30s, with children and the elderly heavily under-represented. The profile is unmistakably one of migration that follows university education to take advantage of the cultural capital of a western degree (Waters 2005, 2006). Among respondents, 35 percent were arriving from Canada, by far the leading destination. A very similar profile emerged from a special tabulation of the 2001 Hong Kong Census, which helpfully compared Hong Kong-born returnees with stayers in Canada, data on the latter derived from a sample in the Canadian Census micro-data files (DeVoretz et al. 2002, Table 8.2). With almost 60 percent of the returnees from Canada in their twenties or thirties, there was marked contrast with a more middle-aged population of stayers in Canada that also included a higher proportion of children.7 Returnees had a much higher level of university education than stayers, with 35 percent holding an overseas degree. Occupationally, there was a concentration of returnees in assistant professional fields, indicative of the early stages of

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career development. The most substantial divide, however, occurred against earnings, with the earnings of returnees, despite their more youthful age, 2.3 times higher than the earnings of stayers, confirming our earlier finding on the surprisingly low incomes of the Hong Kong population in Canada. This analysis can usefully be matched with an interview and on-line survey of stayers in Canada and movers to Hong Kong (Deng 2007). It confirmed the demographic and educational profile of each group, and also substantiated Waters’ (2005, 2006) argument about the role of Canada (and Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK) as an educational staging point in a transnational social field. Returnees were likely to have moved to Canada in the first place, usually with their parents, in order to study and learn English (Deng 2007). Armed with this cultural capital, their primary motive for return was job opportunities in East Asia that usually exceeded those in Canada, as they found a better economic yield there for a western education and proficiency in English. In contrast stayers in Canada were more likely to nominate quality of life factors that had brought them to Canada and kept them there: a less stressful life, family reunion, children’s schooling, the natural environment. As we saw in Chapter 3, business immigrants were not highly motivated to undertake business in Canada. An exchange of assets is evidently occurring across the transnational social field. Economic capital was brought to Canada from East Asia, transformed into cultural capital in the 1.5 generation and reexported as labour to East Asia where it has found a ready employment market, reproducing economic capital. Some households with substantial economic assets remain in Canada, while others return to East Asia as part of the reunion of fragmented astronaut families; indeed family reunion is a secondary reason, behind economic opportunities, for return to Hong Kong (Deng 2007). So too young Canadians born in Hong Kong are more likely to return if they have a family member already living there; there is a home already waiting, removing a serious cost item from a young migrant’s budget (Salaff et al. 2008). Another social dynamic fuels the flight to Hong Kong. Just as a moral panic led to emigration from the colony earlier, social contagion among the young is part of the return.8 Recall from Chapter 7 that Byron returned with his classmates from his ersatz university courses in Vancouver: ‘My best friends from my university life, they all moved back there. We’ve got the same theory. We can be very proud of what we’re being paid and what we’re doing’, for, ‘In Canada, I cannot make a living like I’m making in Hong Kong’.

The Return of the 1.5 Generation Like the special case of the winners of the Miss Hong Kong Pageant, young adults are finding the gradient on the transnational social field carries them back to East Asia. Their loss is a serious one for the Canadian labour market

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and represents less of a brain exchange, as it is sometimes portrayed, than a brain drain removing highly talented young managers and professionals. More fluent usually in English than in Cantonese or Mandarin, these graduates have very high levels of education secured primarily in Canada; 70 percent of the children of immigrant Chinese-Canadians complete a university degree, an extraordinary rate of achievement that is 2.5 times greater than the Canadian-born (Abada et al. 2008). Although Chinese-Canadians are able to translate this impressive human capital into good jobs in Canada, there is an abiding sense that the grass is greener on the other side of the Pacific. Byron’s declaration of satisfaction with economic life in Hong Kong is repeated by most of his cohort. A number of young adults seemingly ‘fall into’ positions in Hong Kong while on holiday there with family or friends. Whether the holiday masked a more intentional job search or not, disguised perhaps in case it was unsuccessful, I often heard that young returnees had secured a position ‘by chance’. No doubt they were also benefiting from a much denser network of social capital than was readily available to them in the mainstream labour market in Canada. Nancy, a young Torontotrained physiotherapist found that even in the sometimes rocky labour market of the 2000s, it was not difficult to pick up a job: ‘You know because of all the different opportunities in Hong Kong, it is quite easy for any returnee to find a job, as long as you are not picky’ (Salaff et al. 2008: 40). But that initial position had to morph into a more substantial opportunity quickly, for returnees were not in Hong Kong to waste time. After completing her business degree in Vancouver, April Wong flew to Hong Kong to celebrate, staying with her father who had continued as an astronaut during his daughters’ secondary school and university education overseas (Sin 2005). After a casual job search, April found a stopgap job, enabling the fun to continue – ‘life is so much more exciting here’ – a job which she upgraded six weeks later for a career position in a bank. Responding to her success, her two sisters followed her, and their mother, now alone in a Vancouver suburb, sold their house, completing the family reunification in Hong Kong. Audrey Kobayashi and I heard many stories like these as we conducted a series of seven focus groups, with a total of 56 returnees, in Hong Kong (Ley and Kobayashi 2005). Some of the groups were assembled with the assistance of the alumni associations of the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto and these participants typically included young managers and professionals in their twenties and thirties, precisely the group identified as leading the charge back to Hong Kong in the data bases reviewed earlier. The focus groups presented a familiar set of motives for the initial move to Canada. A mix of political security (‘passport insurance’), quality of life, and children’s education (often their own) triggered the first instance of trans-Pacific mobility of their families, an account that

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has remained remarkably consistent across all of our interview samples. Equally familiar was the motive for return, repeated in each focus group: Everything is good in Canada except for job opportunities. The living standard is so good but the job opportunities are getting worse and worse.

Economic motives were paramount in the focus groups. Promotions, opportunity, money. I think it’s much better here. Here you work hard, but you get your promotions, your money. You do work up the ladder. With a lot of my friends who graduated at the same time, [they] are still in the same position [in Canada] or have only got one promotion, and it’s been three or four years now.

On this theme there was unanimity: I would say the working environment is better in Hong Kong. Like earning more money. Lower tax. That’s the main issue I would say, lower tax. More opportunities here. I would say it’s not hard to earn HK$15,0009 a month for a fresh grad. But it would be super hard for a fresh grad to get a really good job in Vancouver or in Canada.

The invidious comparison with Canada is of particular interest for special cross-tabulations from the 2006 Census show that Chinese-Canadians who are university-educated do not score at the top of the Canadian job market until the third and subsequent generations, when they surpass the income levels of all other groups including the children and grandchildren of white immigrants and even the Canadian born (Jiménez 2008, Jedwab 2008b).10 But clearly for the high-achievement 1.5 generation, Hong Kong returns trumped those in Canada. Respondents were working hard, commonly long hours for up to six days a week, to jump-start their careers. The only free time available for them to meet in our focus groups was over a working dinner in the evening. A closely related attraction was the intensity of a 24/7 city that engaged and animated ‘sensation-seeking’ (Van Dalen and Heskens 2007) among a number of younger focus group participants (as it did April Wong): Hong Kong is more bustling. It tends to be more lively, there’s more of a night life… and it’s more attractive to young people.

Against the buzz of bustling streets, night markets, and a city that never sleeps, the trans-Pacific alternative was found lacking, for some seriously lacking. A Canadian university graduate working in Hong Kong underscored the point to me while she was visiting family in Vancouver: ‘I’m into

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Hong Kong life, a very very Hong Kong life and then, I’m visiting here for a week almost, and right now, I have nothing else to do and I’m dying to go back already’. For some focus group participants whose families had single-mindedly sought a passport for security reasons, its acquisition removed any further rationale for staying overseas. Canadian citizenship also offered greater flexibility and predictability in international travel; some respondents for example used their passport when moving through immigration control to the Mainland. So the passport had a double function: ‘before it was insurance. Right now it is for the convenience.’ At the same time, there was a sense that young adults might be compromising other dimensions of life in the rush for career development: ‘The only reason I want to come back is to find a job. Because in Canada it’s not easy to find a job’. Another participant filled out the thinking behind this declaration: [I’m here] because of job opportunities. Yes, mainly. And because I’m still young enough so I can tolerate the environment. And I’m more mobile I guess. Just to give it a shot here.

These responses give a sense, not yet of return as a Faustian bargain, but certainly an indication of the loss of valued features in Canada and also the toleration of unwelcome features of Hong Kong life. On a later visit to the city some of these misgivings took on more substance. Unpublished research conducted for the government of Hong Kong has revealed uneasiness among returnees as they encounter prejudice against them in everyday life.11 No sooner had I learned of this study than I spoke to Alex, Hong Kong-born and undertaking a professional programme following an undergraduate degree in Canada where she had lived most of her life. Though performing well in her studies and anticipating a career in Hong Kong, life there was not without its difficulties: ‘I’m highly stressed here. I’ve lost 16 pounds since arriving and don’t eat well. It’s the long hours… There’s also discrimination against those who come back. I face it every day.’ The same week at a public event I heard a senior university scholar speak disparagingly of those Hong Kongers who had ‘run away’ in the 1990s. Now they return with fluent English, an education regarded as superior by many employers, and displaying a level of cosmopolitanism attractive to a city with strong global aspirations.12 As competitors in the labour market and sporting a more jaunty familiarity with a globalizing world it is not difficult to predict that their return might cause discomfort, even jealousy, among those whose human capital and family resources did not allow them to enrich their own résumé in a transnational social field.13 It is not of course unique to Hong Kong to act as a magnetic lure to the young white-collar worker, even to an international flow of young

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well-educated workers. London has been defined as the core of an escalator region where young adults can also move up the economic ladder as they too serve long hours of apprenticeship as financial, legal or advertising professionals and extol leisure opportunities they never quite have enough time or money to appropriate as they would wish (Hamnett 2003). But is this a life-long commitment to life in the fast lane? Is return truly the end of their migration history? And what of more mature residents in Hong Kong who have also returned? What of the astronauts and re-united families who have made the trip back across the Pacific?

The Mid-Career Returnee By the early 1990s it was evident to Eliza Chan, head of the Hong KongCanada Business Association and a former tax lawyer in Vancouver, that there were two principal groups of returnees to the colony: first, those aged 25–35 who were looking for faster career development in Hong Kong, and, second, those like herself who were somewhat older (and wealthier) and were returning, either permanently or as astronauts, to take up an existing family business or partnership (World Journal 1994a). The Hong Kong focus groups also included these more mature and wealthier returnees with more complex transnational migration biographies. Only for a few was astronaut status a long-term calling, and for many families long-distance separation followed by reunion might be a serial process, as the anxieties of separation led to reunion, but then perhaps a new phase of separation in response to changing economic opportunities. The basic motivations for movement across the transnational social field were unchanged for these more mature households. The outward trip to Canada continued to be dominated by children’s education, quality of life, and geopolitical desires for a foreign passport, while economic or employment motives were scarcely mentioned. The return trip was precipitated by economic underachievement in Canada, or else had been pre-planned to continue running an ongoing business in East Asia. In the words of one focus group participant: Talking about the advantages of Canada, life there is more comfortable. There’s more fresh air, better outdoor opportunities. I think all of these cannot beat one thing: that is business and employment opportunities in Hong Kong. Many people returning to Hong Kong had to be tolerant of smaller houses and dirty air, because there is more opportunity in making money and doing business.

These more mature migrants were commonly peripatetic, engaged in repeated trans-Pacific movement in response to distinct phases in the life cycle, where the calculation of benefits and losses for a Canadian or an East

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Asian location shifted according to changing family circumstances. Speaking in Cantonese, Simon, a focus group participant, represented an exaggerated example of these tendencies, displaying also in his own hyper-mobility different locational logics in response to sequential family status passages (Ley and Kobayashi 2005): I immigrated to Canada in 1989. I really love Canada. Before we immigrated, we would go to Canada for vacation, two to three times a year. The reason why I like Canada is because my younger brother studied there. After I visited him there I fell in love with Canada. He was in Vancouver… But my wife never wanted to go there. She really didn’t want to immigrate to Canada because she had a lot of friends in Hong Kong. But she went anyway because of me and the family… After June 4th. 1989, my wife was willing to immigrate to Canada. But her English wasn’t good at all. We also knew that if I leave, I would have to give up my business here, and I wouldn’t have anything to do in Canada.

In Simon’s condensed life history we gain insight to the decision dilemmas of middle-class residents of the colony in the late 1980s and the range of pressures and incentives acting upon them. A family member’s education had already brought Canada into the household’s information field and had permitted enjoyable holiday visits. However, disagreement within the family precluded a longer-term move until the jarring calamity of Tiananmen Square redefined geopolitical field forces and made migration suddenly unavoidable. But geopolitical necessity rubbed awkwardly against financial vulnerability, for their economic base was in Hong Kong, and it seemed as if Simon’s business would have to be sold with no prospects of an alternative in Vancouver. Moreover, they were linguistically unprepared, a severe handicap for business success and everyday survival. Migration went ahead with Simon assuming life as an astronaut to manage his Hong Kong business, the family’s economic lifeline. We pick up the narrative with the household now living in Vancouver: We’ve been there for over 12 years. I’ve always been flying back and forth. I was an astronaut for about four or five years when we first moved to Vancouver. After that I decided to move to Vancouver permanently. So I sold my business in Hong Kong and moved… But now I’m back here by myself. I’m working in Hong Kong while my family members are staying in Vancouver.

For several years Simon joined the long passenger list on the HKG-YVR link of the ‘Pacific shuttle’ (Ong 1999). In a separate interview on a short visit to Vancouver (‘I’m leaving tonight’), he revealed the back-story of economic and social tensions that led him to cease astronaut flying but then

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to renew it again. He has an enterprise in Vancouver but it is inconsequential: ‘we don’t have much business, and my wife takes care of it. I don’t have anything to do with it anymore.’ I’ve been struggling in the past years inVancouver to make a living. Unfortunately, the failed business and the economy have taken away my confidence. The money I’ve brought to Canada has shrunk a lot. I thought it would last until my wife and I both pass away. Now I realize that it can’t, it might if we cut back on everything, but that’s not what we’re prepared to do. On top of that, my three-year old daughter is another concern. I would want to leave her more than her two older brothers. With these worries in mind, when a job offer came, I went back to Hong Kong to work. I allowed myself a trial period of six months and promised my wife that I would come back to Vancouver if things didn’t work out.

But his reunion with economic opportunity meant separation from family intimacy. I went there. I was thrilled at the beginning because the salary was considered good and the job was challenging. After working for a couple of months, things turned out to be a little different from what I expected. I missed my family, I couldn’t help my tears when I was dining with my brother’s family on one occasion… Should I stay or should I go? I shouldn’t give up so soon, so I requested my wife to go back to Hong Kong with my daughter.

His wife Stella and young daughter returned across the Pacific, leaving behind two older sons at university. But Simon’s job was re-defined to a more challenging assignment that required frequent absences in China. When they returned I was travelling between Hong Kong and Beijing, which was beyond my wife’s expectation; it was very hard on her. She was prepared to support me both physically and mentally but in return she was left alone in Hong Kong. She missed our two sons in Vancouver; she had to take care of our daughter by herself while I was away… I’ve found that I’m too selfish in asking them to go back to Hong Kong. I don’t know if I should continue to work there (sighs)…

Stella became desperately lonely in Hong Kong, as she told us separately shortly after her own flight back to Canada. Let me tell you, the days in Hong Kong with my daughter were not easy. I went back to find out that Simon had to work in Beijing during weekdays and could only come back home during weekends. I was there with my daughter, facing four walls, I was depressed. I couldn’t help crying… I was there in Hong Kong all by myself. I have friends there but they are busy too, as you know well… Hong Kong people! I took my daughter to school and then sometimes met my friends who only wanted to sit in restaurants or

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do some shopping. I’ve been so used to have different activities in Vancouver, like playing tennis, choir singing and potluck dinners. I don’t seem to fit into the Hong Kong lifestyle anymore.

Back in Vancouver ‘with all my children’ she had regained her poise and resumed a rewarding and busy schedule. Her next (short) visit to Hong Kong, she told us, would be in three months. So Simon is once again an astronaut with financial and emotional needs continuing their unending and brutal struggle. If only the costs of emotional separation could be removed! To make life bearable, geography would be eliminated, for as another middle-class respondent told us, his preferred time-space scenario would be to work in Hong Kong and to sleep in Canada. Simon’s present family arrangement is evidently not sustainable but another stage in the life cycle is approaching as his boys in Canadian universities graduate, and career launching will revise the relative merits of each side of the trans-Pacific social field. His older son has been in Canada for most of his life but, like so many other ‘sons and daughters of Hong Kong’(Salaff et al. 2008), a homing instinct may bring him back. Now my son likes Canada, but he would like to come back to Hong Kong after his university education. He said that it’s difficult to find a job in Canada. Actually he prefers to live there.

How will this re-location affect the precarious spatial balance of the family? Yes, we do have a plan. My wife and I have made a commitment that we would stay in Hong Kong for five years, and then we’ll move back to Canada… Actually I was already planning [in the 1980s] to save enough money in Hong Kong and go to Canada to retire.

Simon’s spatially convoluted family history consolidates all that has been said about the two shores of the Pacific Ocean comprising for these millionaire migrants and their children a united, but not uniform, geography. Each side offers important but distinct resources, generating a well-defined meaning to space across the transnational social field. At particular stages of the life cycle these resources are re-appraised, the topography of preference is re-configured and a new logic will shape migration decisions. An exchange later in the same Hong Kong focus group provided the reminder that this topography is also often gender-specific. Doreen: I’ve still got some relatives and friends there [Vancouver]. I plan to go back there once a year, for the coming 15 years. I’ll take all my vacations in Canada. When I retire, I’ll go back for sure.

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Andy: We’re planning to go back there when we retire. Actually she didn’t want to come back to Hong Kong. Doreen (agitated): Yes, he forced me to come back. Twice! Andy: The only reason I want to come back is to find a job. Because in Canada it’s not easy to find a job.

Planning Ahead But if Hong Kong offers substantial economic returns, over time its limitations can become grinding. Hong Kong (like the other Asian tigers) has a very low birth rate, far below replacement, so that there is a constant need to draw in labour. Where does family life fit in such a work-driven schedule? By the late 1990s, Ming Pao journalists in Vancouver were detecting the relocation of some Hong Kong returnees. Under the by-line ‘Hong Kong is not a place for children’ one transnational biography was described. Gary moved to a job in Hong Kong in an investment consultancy after completing a Canadian engineering degree. Despite economic success, ‘the kind of life he was longing for… he needed to come back to Canada to breathe’ (Lam 2001). Gary’s own words identified the contending pressures he faced: Hong Kong dances around the clock. There is no weekend; all the people are busy in working or entertaining. Everyday I worked about 10 to 12 hours on average, watching investments of billions of US dollars moving up and down. The strong competitive environment gave us no break. At the beginning you wouldn’t mind sacrificing your personal time for work but that wouldn’t last long… I grew tired of receiving emergency calls from the office during holidays. My work and personal life were inseparable. Life was so crowded that I could find no time for personal interests and church life.

After three years, his wife became pregnant, and this life transition forced a resolution to the conflicts he experienced. With the assessment that ‘Hong Kong is not a place for children’ Gary returned to Vancouver to pursue a more satisfying work-life balance. Thinking ahead reverberated through the focus groups. Some of the young college graduate returnees were anticipating the decision Gary had made, that later they would repeat the strategy of their parents and move their children overseas for schooling. With their Canadian passport such a trip would be straightforward. Of course there would be the economic challenges of life in Canada, but with their perfect English, Canadian degree and Asia-Pacific experience their skills should be much more portable than those of their

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parents. Indeed in some fields, with their qualifications and transnational background, there might even be superior economic opportunities in Canada. I think my daughter will probably go back to Canada for her studies. Being that the education system here is such a mess. Going to international school, it costs so much money. She has to go back.

There were some variations around this theme, but a general recognition that having children in Hong Kong required careful educational planning that sooner or later would take the children overseas as long as finances permitted. I have definitely thought about that. I believe that if I have kids then I will definitely be moving back to Canada if there is an opportunity. Mainly because of the education of my kids.

And again, I would like my children to stay until they have finished primary school and then I may send them to international school like the Canadian International School in Hong Kong, or I could send them after primary school overseas. But I would at least let them learn some Chinese in Hong Kong.

There was considerable support for sending children overseas for the final two or three years of secondary school with time enough to prepare for university admission and also to miss the dreaded Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination, an unwelcome experience for many children and parents (Waters 2005, 2006). Typically at least one parent would make the move with the children: ‘when they go there for school, we’ll go with them.’ In this manner the transnational cycle is replayed, links with Canada restored for parents and made afresh for their children. The reproduction of these processes through the next generation suggests continuity to existing circulation patterns linking Canada and East Asia. The arrival of children sharpens a decision milestone, but even without a family, there may be a shelf life to the long hours typically expected by employers – though some participants found foreign companies and overseas-trained bosses encouraged a more balanced work culture. For many, however, the stereotype of relentless long hours was their daily regimen, and it could not go on indefinitely. In the beginning when I just came back, I was working for an advertising agency and worked crazy hours… at that age I didn’t really mind. But after a few years, you start to realize, ‘OK, well, I’m working long, crazy hours. As long as I’m paid for it, as long as the reward is justified, OK. Just put in ten

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years of those crazy hours and then just get the money and get out of Hong Kong.’ That’s another way to think. I mean it won’t last forever. Just put a time limit on it. Five or six years, and then just leave. Take off.

Retirement and the Myth of Return The myth of return is an abiding belief for many international migrants, but for far more than ever act upon it. Of course the young adults in their 20s and 30s and their working elders we spoke to have already returned to their point of departure, but will not stay there at retirement. While there are retirees from overseas in Hong Kong, we did not meet them, nor did our respondents speak of them. Instead transnational longing among our focus group participants is likely to carry them back eastwards across the Pacific. In a previous section, both Simon and also Doreen and Andy saw retirement as a decisive status passage that will once again tip the balance of locational preference back to Canada; indeed, Simon had been planning since the 1980s ‘to save enough money in Hong Kong and go to Canada to retire’. Focus group responses were not prompted and somewhat to our surprise the desire to retire in Canada was voiced and found agreement in every focus group. But we should not have been surprised for the cultural logic of retirement migration perfectly fits the general thesis of ‘Hong Kong for making money, Canada for quality of life’. Indeed participants in the focus groups either implied or stated explicitly that such a move was predicated upon accumulating a sufficient capital base in East Asia, for they knew from bitter experience that their ability to squeeze a decent return to fund their retirement years out of the miserly Canadian economy was limited. Undoubtedly there was generational weighting to the two shores of the transnational social field. Hong Kong is more bustling, it tends to be more lively, there’s more of a night life. It’s more attractive to younger people. People who are retired, at least the ones I know who are retired, they tend to say that they prefer Canada more.

A number of the younger graduates had been in astronaut families that had reunited in Hong Kong. But they expected their parents would resume their trans-Pacific circulation upon retirement. I’d say my parents really love Vancouver and Canada. Weather, clean air, environment, life style, standard of living, they love all sorts of things. I think they would choose Vancouver after they retire. Actually, they will go back.

For some families who continued to be fragmented, retirement would provide the opportunity for reunion:

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I will consider moving back after retirement, though I still have 30 years to go. My dream is to go back to Vancouver for retirement… [My parents] plan to be there after retirement. My dad will retire in seven years. [Then] he will be there with my mum, because there it’s more comfortable.

Among the more mature respondents the end of working days was closer, and most focus group participants were already thinking through their plans. ‘When I retire I will go back. I just stay here to make money. When I have enough money, I’ll go back.’ This response triggered other immediate comments around the circle: For sure I won’t prefer Hong Kong. For sure I won’t plan to stay here and retire here. Number one, too expensive, number two, too polluted.

In earlier chapters I commented on the transfer of East Asian values to Canada in such matters as the meaning of property, the role of education and family hierarchy. Corresponding North American values had also been internalized by transnational migrants and carried back with them. A prominent theme was appreciation for unpolluted nature, which emerged constantly in invidious comparisons between the two shores of the Pacific. ‘The environment! Hong Kong is much more polluted. I was coughing for six months non-stop last year when I came back’. For some, poor environmental quality became a metaphor for the unacceptable face of the city: There’s polluted air, polluted water. Almost everything is polluted in Hong Kong so when I retire I don’t want to stay in Hong Kong. I want some fresh air. There’s no fun, you can’t go fishing, you can’t go skiing. If I could, I want to go back there [Canada] tomorrow. But I can’t afford to go back there right now because I need to make a living.

These conclusions were closely replicated by a cultural psychologist working with returnees in Hong Kong: ‘Re-migrants overwhelmingly indicated their intention to return to their new country-of-citizenship to live, either permanently or for significant portions of the year. Many indicated that they would return either when their children were entering university or to retire’ (Sussman 2005). At different stages in the life cycle, the transnational migrant capitalizes upon one site or the other in the trans-Pacific social field, moving repeatedly to optimize resources and opportunities that are uppermost for now. Re-location is always conditional, subject to revision, as objectives shift and opportunities are re-arranged. For at least a few millionaire migrants calculations never end, the search for equipoise between competing and changing goals means continuing transnational activity through retirement, indeed beyond life itself:

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The living condition in Canada is first class. The air is fresh. Only it’s difficult to make a living… I had no choice but to come back to make a living. At first I was quite happy when I emigrated, because my kids were young, they needed me to take care of them. After they had grown up, they no longer needed me, I felt bored. Furthermore there had only been expenses and no income for so many years. So I considered coming back to make some money. I wish to go back after retirement, but it is contradictory. When I expire, I prefer to be buried in Hong Kong. But I still wish to live there after retirement, because I like the lifestyle there. But I prefer dying in Hong Kong, not there.

Conclusion In this chapter we have followed millionaire migrants and their children on the return flight from Vancouver to Hong Kong. The movement began early, even before the peak year of emigration from Hong Kong in 1994 when 44,000 residents of the colony appeared on Canadian landing cards. Returnees represent a significant loss of human capital from Canada, comprising young and usually bilingual college graduates, and middle-aged businessmen and their families. Young adults are beginning their business and professional careers cashing in cultural capital gained in Canada for financial capital in East Asia. Older households are on the same economic mission, but typically they are replenishing family resources that have been depleted in economic under-achievement in Canada.The existence of family, friends and even alumni of the same university also provide a stock of social capital that may provide expedited entry into the Hong Kong workforce. Census analysis has confirmed that in 2001 returnees were out-performing Hong Kong immigrants who remained in Canada by a wide margin. But we have seen that to label these movers as returnees is premature. A number are already planning ahead for their next move back to Canada on the occasion of a significant personal or family status passage. For young adults, marriage and the arrival of children will raise the same transnational urge as their parents confronted concerning the desire to launch their children into a western education. Some are already thinking about retirement, but for middle-aged returnees this is a more immediate eventuality and a number view it as a moment to transition out of Asia and to take the flight back to Canada. There are parallels in this repeated coming and going with domestic migration in and out of major cities. Metropolitan areas such as Sydney, New York or London all have labour markets that attract young adults from within their own national borders who are plunged into the long hours of establishing a professional or business career. With marriage, re-location typically occurs to the suburbs or a smaller city or town, and with later family downsizing and retirement renewed migration may occur to another

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region with recognized environmental amenities. The population geography of East Asian transnational migrants repeats these familiar phases of middle-class life cycle mobility, but with the significant variation that the game is played on a much more expansive spatial canvas.Their circulation between metropolis and hinterland crosses national borders, defining regions of opportunity at different life cycle stages within a transnational social field. These movements are flexible and open to review and amendment. Some are temporary by intent from the beginning; others are a response to changing circumstances. The shift from geographical embeddedness to mobility, from roots to routes, highlights the differences in resources across the regions of the social field, selectively activated to coincide with distinctive family status passages. The regions of the social field are diverse not uniform, and it is precisely their diversity that establishes the ties that bind its parts into a unity defined by mobility.

Chapter Nine

Conclusion: Immigrants in Space

In an era of sustained global movement across national borders of skilled workers, business migrants, students, temporary workers, re-unifying family members and refugees driven by civil war, persecution, climate change and poverty, there is no such person as the average immigrant. Nor is there a unique type of migration flow at a time of simultaneous brain drain and brain exchange, permanent and temporary movement, legal and undocumented cross-border travel. Dual, even multiple, passports, diasporic search and solicitation policies by governments, cheap travel and instantaneous global e-communication, all are re-defining the reach of citizenship, blurring the borders of the nation state, and confusing conventional ideas of national belonging and identity. Old narratives oversimplify and new conceptualisations are required. In this book I have turned to transnationalism less as a theory than as a conceptual heuristic to make sense of new times in international migration. Nor is there a typical representative of the global Chinese diaspora of 30–35 million (Ang 2001). Both the contexts of individual biographies as well as the meanings of individual subjectivities prescribe diversity and complexity. A Census term like ‘the ethnic Chinese’ imposes a false blanket of sameness over differentiated life experiences. Moreover, Census data fix households in the freeze-frame maps of ethnic residential patterns that give only a temporary impression of an overseas Chinese population that is highly mobile transnationally. Rather than lamenting that everything is unique and dynamic, it is more helpful to look at conceptualisations less of containment and permanence than of mobility and sojourning. Transnationalism is a valuable perspective for thinking about those households for whom permanent residence, settler status, is only one of a number of spatial strategies. Indeed the legal status of the growing number of temporary migrants usually permits only

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sojourning. Transnationalism from below recounts the family histories, the life lines, of repeat migrants, moving regularly between their countries of origin and one or more international destinations.

Globalization’s Prospect Transnational labour movements may also be subsumed in the broader globalization thesis from above, a thesis that has assumed paradigmatic (but not uncontested) status in the social sciences. Its conventional version of globalization has produced a profound transformation of both theory and practice worldwide, especially when it occupies the same discursive and political space as neo-liberalism (Harvey 2005). In its privileging of rational producers and consumers engaged in ideal-typical market transactions across national borders, the spaces of globalization theory are reminiscent of an earlier locational analysis that has jumped scales, from neoclassical models of urban land uses, or the regionally-framed central place theory of Walter Christaller or von Thunen’s isolated state, to a now global scale of the flat world, the level playing-field, the ‘end of geography’. Like its predecessors in location theory, the globalization thesis postulates a space that has been de-territorialized and locations that are rendered substitutable (Smith 2001). In this march to abstraction in theory and practice, places at all scales are stripped of the dimensions of differential meaning and materiality that together shape sentient human geographies. As we have seen, business immigration programmes share common assumptions with this flat world scenario: because entrepreneurs have been successful in other parts of the world there is an assumption that a cosmopolitan prowess can be transferred unproblematically across continental borders. The primary actors on the playing field in my account have been the state and the millionaire migrant, seemingly compatible partners in a globalizing neo-liberal scenario. From the prospect of globalization, the ideal state is the one that enhances neo-liberalism across borders, while the neo-liberal hero is the celebrated figure, homo economicus, the versatile and cosmopolitan entrepreneur who is not merely self-sufficient, but has the magical capacity to add (perhaps multiply) value to economic transactions in diverse locations. We have seen that the state is fully engaged in reaching pro-actively beyond its borders (Walsh 2008). In the 1960s and 1970s homo economicus was spotted from afar by observers of a dimly configured Pacific Rim. In the 1980s and 1990s government trade missions of discovery and exploration vigorously prospected this region. The Rim became more distinct as Asia Pacific, a region of prolific wealth creation, and institutional links like APEC and national business associations were forged to graft its economic energy into the then lethargic North American economy, to

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stretch Canada westwards to Asia. National immigration policy followed the same economistic formula, with a new prioritising of economic migrants and relegation of the family class in immigrant selection (Arat-Koc 1999). Among economic migrants, business families arriving through the Business Immigration Programme, with its commodification of citizenship (Harrison 1996), became a principal instrument of the enterprising state to harness the human energy of Asia Pacific and draw its benefits into Canada’s national territory. The state’s pre-supposition was entirely consistent with the impoverished geographical postulates of globalization, for it was anticipated that a successful entrepreneur in East Asia had skills that were perfectly portable, and could be transferred without attrition across the surface of a flat world to Canada.

The Other Globalization It is not always clear in social research where ideal types end and convenient fictions begin. Aihwa Ong (1999) observes that in California transnational ethnic Chinese have not disabused the lofty view of their enterprising business acumen as homo economicus, and certainly the Canadian state has kept alive belief in the commercial success of the Business Immigration Programme through its audit culture and press releases. The annual scorecard of jobs created and investments sunk into Canadian business through the BIP claims the considerable authority of measurement and large numbers. Our research certainly confirms that investments were made and jobs created, and this is the reason the programme has been so popular with provincial governments. But the gains have been much less impressive than the numbers declare, as is well known to the street-level managers who operate the programme on a day-to-day basis. Double counting from flipped businesses, subversion in the informal economy by creating ‘paper ownership’ of establishments, the spillage of investment funds into opportunistic pockets, and manifold commercial failures, all strip away the aura of success. The governmentality regimen of both surveillance and accountability built into the language of the BIP faltered in practice because of a lack of state capacity. Only limited monitoring of businesses was possible with insufficient resources and personnel, while a failure by entrepreneurs to comply with the published terms and conditions of their business agreement was invariably forgiven. This case at least suggests that neo-liberal governmentality may be rich in discourse but poorer in operational capacity, for the rules of the game for millionaire migrants were nullified both by inadequate monitoring and by forgiveness when the regulated terms and conditions were not met. I agree with Nonini (2004: 38) who noted in a related Australian context that ‘governmentality is an unfinished project’,

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discerning ‘a gap between [the state’s] grasp and reach’. Such an imperfect accountability culture provides space for enterprising actors to turn events to their own advantage, while providing the government with the unaudited quantitative returns to keep the annual scorecard cranking out its reassuring numbers. It was significant in this regard that managers I interviewed working in the programme at the federal and provincial levels were genuinely uncertain of the impacts of the BIP in even the most general of terms. They had evidently made their own tacit assessment of the validity of the annual scorecard. But if the state played the globalization game imperfectly, what of the millionaire migrants? For some, the relationship with the state through the BIP had some of the features of a danse macabre. For entrepreneurs, economic returns have been meagre and financial losses common from the impossible task of establishing a successful business in the required window of two years, while working, either in a crowded enclave economy or operating outside the enclave in an unfamiliar language, in a nation with an alien economic culture of high taxation and a disabling protocol of licensing and regulations. As we saw from the transcripts, the business outcomes could be stressful, confidence-sapping and highly frustrating. Their lack of local knowledge fatally compromised their cosmopolitan billing. The framing of ‘cosmopolitan capitalists’ seems to have overlooked the inconveniences of geographical difference. However, the subjectivity of many millionaire migrants was far from determined by these exchanges as virtual wards of the state. This qualified independence was not only due to the limited capacity of the governmental regime they encountered. For while the details of economic life in Canada took many of them by surprise, their general expectations of business success were evidently limited from the beginning. Many migrants were too astute to assume an unproblematic transferability of entrepreneurial skills that had worked so well in East Asia. Surveys in Hong Kong in the early 1990s disclosed considerable uneasiness among potential migrants about economic prospects in Canada and other countries competing for their talents. Landing cards completed at ports of entry showed that a surprisingly high proportion of migrants in the business streams (primarily investors) were not planning to work in Canada at all. Surveys reported in earlier chapters demonstrated that, especially in Vancouver the preferred destination of millionaire migrants, economic motives were unexpectedly absent in triggering their trans-Pacific migration, despite terms of entry requiring them to prime economic development in their chosen destination. Some families had already fixed upon the astronaut strategy even before they had left Hong Kong or Taiwan, sustaining their East Asian asset base while moving to Canada for non-economic reasons. Transnational life undercut the governmental intent to contain the new residents and their vaunted entrepreneurial capabilities within the borders of

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the nation state as the terms of the BIP had anticipated. When the screws were turned by the state in the foreign assets disclosure legislation in the late 1990s, a number of immigrants chose departure from Canada to negate this attempt at national accountability. But mobility rather than stasis was just one of the end runs of these ‘flexible citizens’ around the confinements and expectations set up by the state. More pervasive was limited economic performance, sometimes planned, sometimes unintended. So emerged the astonishing paradox of the millionaire migrant as newspaper delivery boy in the highly publicized and tragic murder case reported in Chapter 1. So it was that among a class of 30 adult language students from East Asia every one acknowledged losing money in Canada. So it was that in a focus group of business immigrants the statement that ‘Many people here are only working for their pocket money’ passed without comment. So it was that immigrant families living in million dollar houses could declare annual incomes below the official poverty line. The very existence of these paradoxes revealed also that millionaire migrants had careers and cash streams ‘off-line’, independent of their apparent tutelage to the disciplines of the Canadian state. These events were not particular to Canada. As we have seen throughout the discussion, a similar set of experiences and outcomes unfolded in Australia and New Zealand, but in Canada with the largest of the business immigration programmes these results were more substantial and more fully articulated. Analogous outcomes in all three countries suggest structural deficiencies in business programmes and their pre-suppositions, not least in the cosmopolitan assumption that business skills are portable and the governmentality assumption that the state has adequate regulatory capacity. This is not to deny the economic role of the immigration from East Asia that cascaded investment to Canada in the years following the Sino-British Joint Declaration for the future of Hong Kong in 1984. But a key recognition must be that immigrants came more as consumers than producers, their economic benefits measureable not in new factories but in a red hot construction industry, not in trans-Pacific trade but in the sale of import cars and consumer durables, not in resource development but in nurturing an education industry active outside normal school hours. They also helped to re-shape an urban society and its landscape. But they largely partitioned off their own revenue-generating activity to the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Geographies of Transnationalism The millionaire migrants from East Asia, engaging in temporary and circular movement across the Pacific to destinations in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and elsewhere provide an exemplary model of transnational

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movement. Responding to geopolitical, quality of life and educational gradients they have achieved a massive re-location of capital from the global accumulation hot-house of East Asia to the cooler shores of ‘white settler societies’ around the Pacific Rim. For some, Vancouver has become something of a post-colonial hill station, home for a season for recuperation and family development, while the heavy lifting of capital accumulation occurs on the muggy coastal plains of distant shores. In a remarkable transformation and circulation of capital forms, economic capital from East Asia is converted into cultural capital through investment in the overseas education of the 1.5 generation, which is then exported back with these high achieving young adults to Hong Kong and Taiwan to be transformed into economic capital in the labour market, where job-seeking is aided by the social capital of existing networks of alumni, friends and family. This westward pan-Pacific movement in human talent has accompanied the eastward flow of property investment, far different from the economic terms of trade in British Columbia anticipated by neo-liberal governments as benefits of the BIP. What undergirds this trade is geographical difference not sameness, the varying attributes of East Asia and the settler societies. The transnational social field is integrated by the variable resources that may be retrieved on each shore of the Pacific, career acceleration and capital accumulation in East Asia and educational and quality of life services together with geopolitical security in Canada. There is an articulation of these resources at different stages of the life cycle, prescribing serial movement on the HKG-YVR great circle route. Moreover there is also selective articulation within the family unit; women, children and retirees are drawn to the quality of life habitus in Vancouver, while working men and young adults follow the gravitational field toward the economic rush of East Asia. But geography can be a liability as well as a benefit. Too much difference in the economic environment between the opposite sides of the social field incapacitated even those migrants who toiled diligently to establish an economic beach head in Vancouver. In addition the more complex politics in Canada than in Hong Kong or Taiwan toward the open borders of globalisation left millionaire migrants mired in confusing political conflict as they brought proven models of capital accumulation into the Vancouver land market and encountered a more complex regime of objectives, policies, rights and expectations. Most acutely, the costs of separation among spatially fragmented astronaut families led in many instances to silent suffering, the emotional costs of absent intimacy, support and guidance. In the words of one astronaut head of household, briefly re-united with his family in Vancouver, ‘Don’t tell me I have a big house. This is a house of tears’. Among the varied meanings of distance, this emotional register requires much closer attention in an ever more transnational world. Rationality provides an incomplete guide to cosmopolitan life.

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We have learned too of substantial gendering in the emotional burden of migration. There has been insufficient attention in the literature to male vulnerabilities. Not only the depreciation of income but also a serious loss of status with de-skilling in Canada drew men readily into the astronaut role of re-opening (or maintaining) their economic accounts in East Asia, while their wives and children remained in Canada. While women had a very difficult year or two, effectively as single parents, over time they usually came to terms with North American society and shaped a habitus of child care and social activities that were rewarding. Frequently a return to East Asia was undertaken reluctantly and with a sense of loss.

‘Hongcouver’ Around 1990, media in Hong Kong and North America both fabricated an apparent fusion of the transnational social field into the imagined entity of ‘Hongcouver’, a Vancouver society and landscape heavily impregnated by immigration and investment from East Asia. The motivation for presenting this entity was in part satirical, possibly on occasion racist, but like all satire there was a significant insight in the exaggerated caricature. Vancouver had changed substantially as a place, with its society and landscapes internationalized in an Asian idiom. Old Chinatown of course remained but increasingly as a cultural relic that was of limited relevance to middle-class migrants from East Asia who were much more at home in suburban Asian-themed malls. A far more representative landscape of a contemporary Asian modernity was emerging adjacent to Chinatown in the high-rise residential towers emerging in the downtown mega-projects of Concord Pacific Place and nearby Coal Harbour, the largest and most visible of many development projects sired by investment capital from East Asia. While city planners had beaten back the developer’s desire for Hong Kong style densities, nonetheless an internationally-financed and marketed landscape was propelling a provincial city into a new age of global logics. Immigrants bring embodied cultures and values from other places and these have entered into Vancouver’s existing human geography. Andrea Eng, a top real estate executive for Collier’s International in Vancouver and then Hong Kong, saw herself as a ‘cultural translator’ of East Asian dispositions in Canada (Hyslop 2008), observing astutely that in Hong Kong, ‘the two ways to get ahead are through education and land. They study hard and buy property’ (Claiborne 1991).1 Education has proven an important component of Vancouver’s globalization (Waters 2006, 2008; Kwak 2008). Universities and school districts have played the globalization game with vigour, recognizing that there is a large market for Canadian education in East Asia and that foreign student fees add substantially to budgets depleted during the economic recessions

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and neo-liberal policy adjustments of the past 25 years.The British Columbia government has opened a high school in China with a Canadian curriculum,2 and plans to license others, with graduation certificates permitting postsecondary movement to Canadian universities. Education fees for study in Canada are of course much lower for Canadian tax-payers and these savings have provided a substantial bonus for business immigrants from East Asia. The heavy emphasis upon educational attainment among overseas Chinese and Koreans has led to a substantial new business sector in afterschool, weekend and holiday ‘cram’, enrichment, and remedial programmes. In addition scores of full- and part-time colleges of variable repute cater to language and full-programme foreign students. Many colleges are in or near downtown and the thousands of international students they serve make a significant contribution to the downtown boutique, restaurant and leisure market, not least on trendy Robson Street. The heavy investment in education in ethnic Chinese families has borne immediate, indeed spectacular, results. Children in the 1.5 or second generation whose families speak a Chinese language at home are the top achievers in British Columbia schools. Nationally, analyses of the 2006 Census show that the Chinese-origin population, whether immigrant or non-immigrant, widely outperforms the native white population (typically by around 30 percent) in terms of university education (Abada et al. 2008; Jedwab 2008a).3 But it appears that it is not until the third generation that the full benefits of this abundant human capital are transformed into the financial capital of very high incomes in Canada, and discerning better returns on their educational investment elsewhere, this superior talent has been part of the substantial brain drain from Canada to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Nonetheless education remains as a key institution structuring the trans-Pacific social field with interviews among young adult ‘returnees’ in Hong Kong indicating that many of them are likely to repeat their parents’ journey by sending their own children to Canada for education. Landscape change is a more obvious process in any exploration of the restructuring of Vancouver into a putative ‘Hongcouver’. In the transformation of the built environment the pace and scale of change has been extraordinary. Among the 150,000 ethnic Chinese immigrants who landed in Vancouver between 1986 and 1996 was an over-determined attention to the sale of property and the appreciation of land value through redevelopment. Vancouver has had a long history of land deals, beginning with the ‘incentive’ of a massive land grant that persuaded the Canadian Pacific Railway to re-locate its planned west coast terminus to the village of Granville, which it re-named Vancouver, substituting the name of an English ocean explorer for an English aristocrat. But the millionaire migrants arriving from East Asia in the 1980s and 1990s embodied the idea and practice of property like never before. In Hong Kong’s ‘property development regime’,

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wealth assembled by middle class residents in the final years of colonial government was frequently tied to the highly orchestrated market in land, where state-mandated scarcity led to a housing bubble that was sustained until 1997. Li Ka-shing’s portfolio expansion to Vancouver in his purchase and redevelopment of the massive Expo site, not only placed Vancouver on the investment map, but also helped to over-determine property as a pressing priority for those who discovered the city as a place to live and/or invest. The idea of land was embodied in the cultural repertoire of migrants and investors who came to Vancouver, creating an extraordinary property market for a decade after 1986, described with some hyperbole by Katharyne Mitchell (2004: 3) as ‘the hottest real estate in the world. It was a city on fire’. A significant element of the social construction of “Hongcouver” was the pre-eminence of housing inflation and property deals in the popular imagination, together with their mood swings of exhilaration and anxiety. The Vancouver property story should direct more theoretical attention to off-shore capital in the land markets of global cities, not least because the geographical switching of international investors can produce exaggerated boom-bust cycles in even mature urban economies. The old idea that mainly local and regional processes and actors drive the property market must be set aside in global cities. This is not to say that local actors are unimportant, for the hard work undertaken by Vancouver’s business elite and their academic consultants demonstrated that globalization was a project that was achieved through the power of persuasion. Resistance by some Vancouver residents in elite districts to overseas property investment was the most publicized aspect of the reception of new immigrants in the early 1990s. The infamous ‘monster house’ conflict drew much commentary from local business interests, out of town media, and critical academics who spoke from the same page in a language imputing race and racism as driving the controversy. The convergence of views among those who were seemingly detached (media, scholars) and those who were highly partisan (the property sector) created an ironic alliance. I argued that all three sets of critics were oversimplifying much more complex relations where well-established unease with off-shore commodification, with rapid growth, together with a strong sense of topophilia, love of place, intersected for some Vancouverites with prejudicial views concerning cultural difference. Such intersectionality in interpretation provides a fuller and more satisfactory account than a one-dimensional theorizing from critical race studies. A multicultural landscape compromise ended the dispute and, despite continuing in-migration of wealthy immigrants from East Asia, politicization disappeared. So in these two respects, education and land, among others the fusion of the transnational social field into the cultural formation of ‘Hongcouver’ took shape after 1986.This outcome demonstrates that Canada’s multicultural

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model need not produce assimilation with the disappearance of immigrant difference, but rather a process of integration where both newcomer and host societies are re-configured. Ethnic Chinese migrants and capital did not of course encounter empty space but a landscape and society cultured by the impress of a century of European settlement upon aboriginal land. The meeting of Asia and Europe led to some initial friction, as two separate constructions of place and identity competed for pre-eminence. But the longerterm outcome has been the construction of a hybrid city. Even though the frenzied era of business immigration has passed, and some of the wealthy Hong Kong and Taiwanese immigrants have returned to Asia (at least for now), a substantial new wave of younger, skilled workers from the Mainland has joined those from Hong Kong and Taiwan who remained to consolidate Vancouver’s new-found role and identity as geographical gateway to and from Asia Pacific.

Notes

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION: TRANS-PACIFIC MOBILITY AND THE NEW IMMIGRATION PARADIGM

1. The Canadian government placed the cost of evacuating 13,000 citizens at $90 million, and estimated that within 18 months 75 percent of evacuees had returned to Lebanon. 2. A recent re-statement of this figure was from Canadian consular sources. One estimate has placed the number as high as 500,000. While an outlier, it underscores the large numbers of Canadian citizens living in Hong Kong. Even more expatriate Canadians live in the United States, many of them retired in Sunbelt states (Zhang 2007). 3. A war across the Taiwan Strait could require evacuating as many as 300,000 Canadian passport holders from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China (Skelton 2006). 4. See Bartley and Spoonley (2008) for a review of the varying definitions of the 1.5 generation. Authors are agreed that prior to adulthood the 1.5 generation migrant has significant experience of both origin and destination, raising the potential for hybrid identities provoking anything from cosmopolitan opportunity to personal disorientation. 5. Comprehensive reviews and compilations of transnationalism include Portes 2001; Kelly 2003; Levitt et al. 2003; Satzewich and Wong 2006; Featherstone et al. 2007. For systematic treatments see Khagram and Levitt 2008 and Vertovec 2009. 6. Of course there are also transnational relations between immigrant gateway cities and continental hinterlands fully contained within Africa (Eyoh 2008; Simone 2008) and Asia (Yeoh et al. 2003). So too, exchanges of skilled migrants among major cities of the global north complicate a simplistic view of south-north movement (e.g. Harvey 2008). 7. See, for example, Mitchell (1997b), Kelly (2003), the contributions in Jackson et al. (2004), and Featherstone et al. (2007). 8. This is a translation of the colloquial Cantonese term that plays off the phonetic pun between ‘space’ and ‘empty wife’ (tai kung) referencing the status of ‘spacemen’

NOTES TO PP. 6–31

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

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and ‘separated families’ and alluding to frequent trans-Pacific travel and fragmented households (Skeldon 1995a). The Korean equivalent can be translated as ‘geese’ families. Despite the obvious gender narrowing of this well-established concept I use it, in part because the domineering attributes of its subject might typically be described as patriarchal, in part because the principal economic actors are invariably men. Australia’s Migrants Fiscal Impact Model for 2008 identifies ‘strong contributions’ by immigrant skilled workers to the Australian economy, leading all other entry streams (Government of Australia 2008: i). Canadian taxation data, from the Immigration Data Base, show that the earnings of this group exceed the national average for all workers. In 2003 Hong Kong launched its own Capital Investment Entrant Scheme, offering permanent residency after 7 years in return for a passive investment of HK$6.5 million in real estate or financial assets. By June 2008 there had been over 5,000 applications and 2400 approvals. The largest group of applicants were overseas Chinese nationals. www.cies.hk/, accessed 7 November, 2008. In the Vancouver metropolitan area, business immigrants landing from Hong Kong were 38.3 percent of the total and those from Taiwan, 29.6 percent, during this period. Economic forecasters expect China to have the world’s largest economy, exceeding that of the United States, by 2035, perhaps earlier. The Chinese-Canadian population grew close to 20 percent, 2001–06, largely the result of migration from the PRC. The self-identified Chinese population in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area had risen by 2006 to 486,300 and in Vancouver’s CMA to 381,500, for a total of 71 percent of the national population. Ethnic Chinese comprised 9.6 percent of the Toronto CMA, and 18.2 percent of theVancouver CMA in 2006 (Government of Canada 2008). Canadian government comprises municipal (local), provincial and federal levels, with a complex distribution of powers and responsibilities. Local government is weaker than in the United States. Maria Ng (1999) has expressed frustration with the undue boundedness of Chinatown as setting, and a younger generation of Chinese Canadian authors is breaking loose of this spatial containment (Deer 2008). Compare Anderson’s (1998) self-criticism of her earlier use of critical race studies. The 18.2 hectare Toronto site was acquired from the federal government in 1997. Six thousand units plus commercial space were projected over a ten-year building programme. The British sovereign remains the official head of state in Canada. The Australian Government passed legislation in 2007 that would extend the period of residence prior to eligibility for citizenship from two years to four. Flight data are for direct connections in July 2005. The Metropolis Project is currently in its third research phase from 2007–12, and its grants contributed to this research. Products of the Vancouver Centre, including over 250 working papers, are accessible at www.mbc.metropolis.net/. Priscilla Wei meticulously prepared newspaper translations.

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NOTES TO PP. 32–55

CHAPTER TWO: FROM THE ORIENT TO THE PACIFIC RIM

1. Li (1998: 34) cites the racist candour of the Prime Minister of Canada, addressing Parliament in 1883, during railway construction: ‘It will be all very well to exclude Chinese labour, when we can replace it with white labour, but until that is done, it is better to have Chinese labour than no labour at all’. 2. See also Mar (2007–8) and Yu (2007–8) for a revisionist account of a more complex Chinatown history, noting the previously unnoticed agency of residents, their mobility, interaction with other Canadians, and subversion of the state’s surveillance. 3. As Julian Wolpert and his students showed in their locational conflict studies in American cities during this period, racialized neighbourhoods were invariably candidates for freeways and other destructive land use projects (Wolpert et al. 1972). 4. Data were collected by Canada Customs, processed by Statistics Canada, and reported in a series of annual reports by the Province of British Columbia, including the Ministry of Economic Development’s External Trade through British Columbia Ports (1976–78), and the Ministry of Industry and Small Business Development’s External Trade Report, British Columbia (1980–88). 5. Unless otherwise stated, figures are quoted in Canadian dollars, trading in June 2009 at 85–90 cents to the US dollar. 6. For Canadian exports by value as a whole, the UK moved into second rank in 2006 far behind the United States but ahead of Japan, the first time it has regained this position for a generation. Trade talks were continuing in 2008–09 with the European Union. 7. Following Australia, Japan was in second position in 2005, Hong Kong in third and Singapore in fourth. FDI from Canada to China in 2004–05 was only onethird the level of the flow to Hong Kong. 8. Edgington (1996) noted that Japanese real estate investment targeted Toronto, Vancouver and nearby leisure destinations. 9. An additional 15 Canada Trade Missions were undertaken between 1998 and 2005. Led by a Cabinet Minister and with provincial ministerial representation these visited all five continents and with less fanfare. 10. Raymond Chan was elected Liberal MP in 1993 for Richmond, the suburb immediately south of Vancouver and site of the international airport. Born in Hong Kong, he became the first Chinese-Canadian to enter Cabinet, appointed by Jean Chrétien as Secretary of State for the Asia-Pacific region. 11. Most had been negotiated prior to the trip; a ceremonial announcement and signing before television crews achieved political objectives in Canada. 12. Li had an estimated net worth of $US12.4 billion in 2004, making him the nineteenth wealthiest person in the world, according to a ranking in Forbes (Wong and Ho 2006). 13. Li’s younger, son, Richard also went to Stanford followed by placement in a senior position in Toronto’s financial sector, giving each son his own separate space to develop. Richard was also recalled to Hong Kong after a few years for a

NOTES TO PP. 56–68

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

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more senior role. The Li family’s investment in Canada was largely wound up in 2005 as significant banking and energy holdings were reportedly cashed in (McNish 2005). Numbers do not sum to 100 percent because small miscellaneous categories have been omitted. The percentage values in the text are unweighted, representing the decadal average for annual percentage values, without correcting for the absolute number of immigrants landing each year. A more targeted strategy than business immigration includes attempts by states to repatriate valued overseas citizens. Special arrangements such as India’s NonResident Indian status and Italy’s provision for four deputies to be elected by Italians overseas are attempts to consolidate links with transnational resources. New Zealand, Australia and other states have established networks among skilled members of their diaspora to encourage contacts, identity, investment and return. Immigrants are classified by country of last permanent residence, not place of birth. LIDS records identify 19 classes of entry during 1980–2001, most of them small, with a number in force for only part of the period. Convention refugees are those forced to live outside their home country, who applied for refugee status while outside Canada, who have been referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or a public or private sponsor, and have been selected for entry to Canada after various forms of screening. These figures come from the Immigration Data Base (IMDB), a confidential linking of landing cards with tax-filer statistics, held by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. The lists show that all provinces bar British Columbia and Ontario lost business immigrants through secondary migration, though Quebec’s loss was the most severe. British Columbia and Ontario recorded large increases in all major immigrant classes – skilled, business, family, refugee and other – while every other province showed losses in all of the five classes (CIC 2000). Of course the dichotomy is rarely this sharp, and some authors would emphasize lines of continuity. While engaging this argument in Chapter 6, for now I simply declare my position.

CHAPTER THREE: CALCULATING AGENTS: MILLIONAIRE MIGRANTS MEET THE CANADIAN STATE

1. Ominously, however, later in the account it emerges that Mr. Wong’s company lost money in its previous fiscal year, though it was hoping for a ‘small profit’ in the current year (Aarsteinsen 1998). 2. Cited in James 1999: 74. 3. Despite the surfeit of funds registered in Quebec in 2005, 58 percent of investors planned to live in British Columbia (overwhelmingly in Vancouver) and only 12 percent in Quebec (CIC 2006). 4. The figure is even higher amongst Hong Kong and Taiwanese business households.

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5. The details of this survey are discussed more fully in Chapter 4. 6. The much less satisfactory assessment by the entrepreneurs themselves is discussed in Chapter 4. 7. In a 1988 interview, Andrea Eng, one of the most successful Vancouver realtors selling to the Hong Kong market, stated that her clients kept 80–90 percent of their wealth in Hong Kong, where returns were higher, and taxes lower (Iritani 1988). 8. This figure coincides with the estimate of Tung Chan (1998), then a senior banker for Toronto-Dominion Bank, ‘in excess of $30 billion’ (excluding secondary migration) for British Columbia for the same ten year period. 9. Li (1998: 139) also noted a substantial but lesser flow of $331 million the same year to personal accounts in ‘central Ontario and Greater Toronto’. Despite a larger Hong Kong population, the smaller dollar sum than that which reached British Columbia confirms the much greater market power of immigrants from Hong Kong in Greater Vancouver. 10. FDI from Hong Kong to Canada increased almost ten-fold from 1983 to 1990, reaching $1.26 billion in the latter year (Li 1993). 11. Li’s Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) established the CEF group, a joint-venture merchant bank, in Hong Kong in 1986 (Olds 2001: 65). CIBC held a minority stake in Li’s Concord Pacific development. 12. These immigrants originated in Hong Kong, Macao, PRC, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore and landed in 2000-2001. The data were drawn from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada, a panel study conducted by Statistics Canada (2003). 13. In 2004–5, 20 percent of business applications in the Hong Kong office were taking more than 4 years to adjudicate. Finalisation was even slower for skilled workers. For all permanent residence applications, 50 percent were assessed in 19 months (CIC 2005). 14. A businessman forced out of Hong Kong by the extended post-1997 recession described negative equity as ‘the middle-class sadness in Hong Kong’ (Ming Pao 2003). A friend with a Canadian passport noted in 2003 that it would soon be time for his young son to leave for school overseas. But he was trapped by losses on his flat, down 40 percent in value since its purchase, and could not re-migrate with such negative equity. 15. The interviews were conducted in the respondent’s language of choice: English, Cantonese, Mandarin or Korean. 16. Comparable responses were given in surveys to Hong Kong immigrants in Sydney (Pe-Pua et al. 1998) and ethnic Chinese immigrants in Auckland (Ip and Friesen 2001). 17. The centrality of education in family migration will be considered in more detail in Chapter 7. Education and political factors also emerged as the most prominent motives for migration among focus groups of Hong Kong immigrants held in Vancouver and Toronto (Preston et al. 2006). 18. The names of all respondents have been changed. 19. The same relegation of economic motives by wealthy East Asian immigrants has been noted in Australia (Pe-Pua et al. 1998), New Zealand (Ip 2003) and the US (Chee 2005).

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20. Facilitating the flow, Canada opened an immigration office in Taiwan that year, although no diplomatic relationships existed between the two jurisdictions. 21. A classic revisionist statement was Cyert and March’s A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (1963), noting decision-making under uncertainty. Similar revisions to location theory’s dependence upon neoclassical economics led to the rise of behavioural geography and the treatment of spatial decision-making under uncertainty (Wolpert 1964; Pred 1967). 22. Though as we shall see in Chapter 4, the market challenges were also extraordinary in comparison to business experience in East Asia. 23. The CIC 2007 Annual Report identified an inventory of over 850,000 immigration cases, equivalent to more than 3 years’ supply (CIC 2007c: 6). 24. For a discussion of legal precedents up to the late 1990s, see Lee (1998). 25. Following a presentation in Hong Kong in 2008 a former immigration officer at the Canadian High Commission challenged me for underemphasizing the ‘fraudulent’ aspects of the BIP. 26. Nonini (2004: 59) reports the common practice, for visa purposes, among Chinese-Indonesian business immigrants to Australia of holding unproductive companies whose ‘operations existed only on paper’. 27. The term is used in the context of urban governmentality by Osborne and Rose (2000). 28. Mason Loh, then Chairman of the Board at SUCCESS, the large ChineseCanadian immigrant NGO, ran as federal Liberal candidate in Vancouver East in 2000. Lee (1998) has a legal analysis of common objections to the foreign asset disclosure rules. 29. See, for example, Sing Tao Daily (1997), ‘Foreign asset reporting law: BC house prices plummet’. Exaggerations of departure numbers occurred in the heat of partisan controversy; Patrick Wong described the effect of the disclosure rules as ‘an atom bomb’ in their capacity to decimate the Chinese-Canadian community (McCarthy and Gibbon 1998). A telephone survey in Toronto and Vancouver by AC Nielsen in July 1997 revealed that only 3–4 percent from Hong Kong were considering return in the next 12 months, and 5 percent of Taiwanese (Chow 1997c). By then many had already left. 30. Sam’s observation was supported by a concurrent story on real estate investment in London by the Strait’s Times (1997) in Singapore reporting that ‘around half ’ of new properties in central London neighbourhoods were being ‘snapped up’ by investors from Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan, many of them at property marts held in Asian hotels. The report notices that ‘a big incentive’ was Britain’s favourable tax treatment of overseas assets. Meanwhile an expatriate Chinese-Canadian real estate agent in Hong Kong rationalized the capital switching out of Vancouver to more rewarding locations: a 1200 square foot condominium unit in Hong Kong was selling for $2.4 million (Cdn) but promised annual appreciation of 15 percent. Comparable figures were $1.3 million and 10 percent in London and $768,000 and 8 percent in Sydney. In contrast the Vancouver unit cost $360,000, but with only 3 percent annual return. Lenient tax laws were again cited as an advantage to London investors (Chow 1997f).

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NOTES TO PP. 98–110

CHAPTER FOUR: GEOGRAPHY (STILL) MATTERS: HOME ECONOMICUS AND THE BUSINESS IMMIGRATION PROGRAMME

1. In 1995, Vancouver’s Mercedes-Benz dealership identified Chinese-Canadians as ‘the largest part of our customer base’, with the most popular model selling for $125,000, typically in a cash sale (Chow, 1995). 2. A comment at a focus group of entrepreneurs on business visas from Hong Kong held in Vancouver in 2002. 3. A few of these interviews were first reported in a preliminary discussion in Ley (1999). 4. Ong (1999) places the divorce rate at 20 percent among wealthy East Asian immigrants in the San Francisco region. 5. The British colonial surrender on Christmas Day 1941 led to Japanese occupation that continued until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. It was a period of great privation, with an estimated decline of Hong Kong’s population from 1.6 million to 600,000. The implied correspondence with residence in Canada is extraordinary. 6. A large recent literature influenced by Foucault’s work on governmentality has rekindled interest in the rules and procedures of state authority, emphasizing inter alia, the uses of cartography and statistics, the census and surveys, and a predisposition to techniques of calculation in the construction of government and the governed. See Rose (1991), Barry et al.(1996), Dean (1998), Ong (2006); and in geography Legg (2005), Rose-Redwood (2006), Duncan (2007) and Larner (2007). 7. Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum) at the end of a mathematical or logical argument indicates that the proof has been demonstrated, the argument is complete. There is nothing more to be said. 8. The principal results are set out in Ley (2006) with a more substantial report to government funders (Ley 2002). 9. On a five-point scale, respondents placed their English facility on arrival at an average level of 3.64, with other family members even lower at 3.78, closer to ‘poor’ (= 4) than ‘fair’ (= 3). 10. The figure of 48 percent is very close to the 44 percent reported by 300 Vancouverarea entrepreneurs who replied to Glover and Sim’s (2002) short mail-back survey. 11. Among Glover and Sim’s (2002) respondents, 38 percent who sold their initial business after the lifting of terms and conditions said they did so because they could secure better business opportunities in their home countries. 12. Sixty percent of respondents answered this question. From the tone of non-respondents it is unlikely they recorded a better business history. 13. There is not space here to discuss the current business ventures of respondents compared to their initial operation. Evidence suggested limited, if any, improvement in the growth trajectory of net revenues. On a 5-point scale, ranging from ‘good growth’ (= 1) to ‘major decline’ (= 5), the average response was 3.2, indicating a tendency toward the negative side of ‘no growth’ (= 3), the mid-point on the scale.

NOTES TO PP. 110–19

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14. Chinese-Canadian businessmen have lobbied hard against this regulatory culture. In one meeting with Glen Clark, Premier of British Columbia, they challenged, ‘the Corporation Capital Tax, as well as high taxes in general; onerous regulations affecting small businesses; and proposed amendments to the Labour Code’ (Chow 1998d). 15. Manufacturing was the sector that was most highly favoured by government, but in fact almost three-quarters of respondents moved into the retailing or restaurant business. 16. The median net annual revenue for Korean entrepreneurs was $35,000 for their initial business the year terms and conditions were lifted. For the Hong Kong and Taiwanese groups the median net revenue that year was zero. 17. Wang and Lo (2005) also emphasize the positive effects of post-secondary education and English language proficiency upon the incomes of ethnic Chinese immigrants landing from 1980 to 2000. A bachelor’s degree added almost $10,000 (or 54 percent) to 1999 employment income compared to those with secondary education or less; proficiency in English added even more (59 percent) to employment income. 18. The probationary period has more recently been extended to three years. 19. While the Chinese in general are far from the most disadvantaged ethnic group in Toronto, Taiwanese are one of only six national-origin groups (out of more than 100) where more than 40 percent of incomes were below the poverty level (Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off) in 2001 (Ornstein 2006). Relative to the financial assets of Taiwanese business immigrants this outcome is a huge anomaly. 20. In the peak years of the BIP, from 1986–95, two-thirds of Taiwanese immigrants to Canada landed through this programme, compared with less than 30 percent of the (much larger) flow from Hong Kong (Guo and DeVoretz 2006). 21. Compare Yu’s (2006) analysis in Los Angeles where all Chinese groups had homeownership rates well above white households. The highest rates were for recently arrived Taiwanese, despite their lower incomes and low English proficiency. Yu suggests that this group ‘they may have wealth or resources connected to their home countries, which cannot fully be captured by the available dataset’ (p. 575). 22. Notably Shaughnessy, Oakridge, Kerrisdale and Arbutus/McKenzie Heights. A discussion of immigration and the housing market follows in Chapter 5. For general statistical contexts of housing market dynamics, see Ley et al. 2002. 23. The poverty level is defined by Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off (LICO) threshold in the Census of Canada. 24. The mother tongue included all Chinese dialects. Of these Cantonese (the dominant dialect in Hong Kong) comprised 61 percent and Mandarin 25 percent. 25. Income includes employment and self-employment earnings, investment income and income transferred from government. 26. In 1997 tax returns in British Columbia indicated that entrepreneurs declared average total income of $13,531, investors $11,918 and the self-employed $18,756 (Hiebert 2002). This compared with an average total income of

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29.

30.

31.

NOTES TO PP. 119–30

$18,621 for all immigrants and refugees, leaving business immigrants far below the average performance. Moreover business immigrants from East Asia – the wealthiest group on landing – declared average total incomes of only $11,764, 15 percent below the average for all business immigrants. See in particular the discussions of Lam et al. (1995) and Skeldon (1995a) in Chapter 3. Compare an earlier assessment of the investor programme by a Canadian immigration lawyer with offices in Vancouver, Toronto, Shanghai and Taipei: ‘Commissions of up to six percent on a $350,000 investment [by an investor immigrant client] attract many greedy and unqualified agents. At the same time these consultants take their own hefty consulting fee from investors’ (Weston 1996). Such ‘double-dipping’ by consultants both from investment fund promoters and investors themselves was one of several flaws leading the lawyer to recommend terminating the investor stream altogether. More recently, for example in the 2005 listings on the CIC website, the data source is identified as the Entrepreneur Monitoring Information System. However, with the limited monitoring that actually occurs, I would surmise that EMIS data are a compilation of largely unaudited self-reporting by entrepreneurs. CIC managers told me in the early 2000s that – despite its name – EMIS comprised unmonitored data. The ten managers interviewed were promised anonymity and are not identified more specifically. Middle and senior managers in the provincial and federal governments, they had either past or present responsibilities for the BIP. This observation underscores the selective nature of media stories, for example the three ‘success stories’ cited at the beginning of Chapter 3. Such selectivity is the desired outcome of press releases staged primarily to shape public opinion. For the relationship between CIC and the media during the ‘crisis’ accompanying the marine landings of undocumented migrants on the British Columbia coast in 1999, see Mountz (2003).

CHAPTER FIVE: EMBODIED REAL ESTATE: THE CULTURAL MOBILITY OF PROPERTY

1. During 2002, five Hong Kong dollars were approximately equal to one Canadian dollar. 2. The three largest property conglomerates accounted for 42 percent of all new residential units in Hong Kong in 1996 (Poon 2006). 3. In 2005–06 land revenue accounted for 31 percent of total government revenue, rising to 35 percent in the following fiscal year (Tang 2008). 4. Half of all FDI to Shanghai recently is said to be targeted at property development. 5. In 1991, among immigrants aged 55–64 landing in the previous five years, 27 percent were homeowners in Montreal, 44 percent in Toronto and 75 percent in Vancouver. The high ranking of Vancouver immigrants was repeated, if by lesser margins, for all age cohorts, ‘reflecting the impact of the wave of immigrants in the investor and entrepreneurial group from Hong Kong’ (Lapointe and Murdie 1996: 35).

NOTES TO PP. 131–41

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6. Almost 90 percent of Hong Kong astronaut households surveyed in Sydney had bought residential property in Australia, over half had bought commercial property and close to 60 percent had acquired investment property (Pe-Pua et al. 1998). 7. Vancouver’s metropolitan population grew by 14 percent, 1986–91, and by another 14 percent in the first half of the 1990s. 8. Data come from the Central Credit Union of British Columbia (Penner 2004). 9. Li and Lee continued to lead Forbes Asia’s list of wealthiest men in Greater China in 2006. In third position were the Kwok brothers who run Sun Hung Kai Properties, the developer of Coal Harbour. Thus the three wealthiest tycoons in Greater China all had major development projects simultaneously in downtown Vancouver (Kohn 2007). 10. The Hui family, living in Vancouver and Hong Kong, has been active in local real estate since 1970 (Gutstein 1988). Terry Hui was appointed president and CEO of Concord Pacific in 1993, and has remained in that position. Like Li Ka-shing’s son Victor, his good friend, he arrived in Vancouver as a young man from a wealthy Hong Kong family via an engineering degree at Stanford. He and Victor ran the Hui property company in Vancouver, Grand Adex Developments (Olds 2001). 11. Sun Hung Kai Properties was founded by three wealthy families including Fung King Hey, father of Thomas Fung, owner of the Fairchild media group in Canada and developer of Asian malls in Richmond and Markham, in suburban Toronto. Here is another possible example of transnational economic activity from Hong Kong connected to information flows with a son on the ground in Canada. Linkages with the Kuok family (The Residences on Georgia and The Palisades) also aided the growth of Fung’s Fairchild media network. Robert Kuok and the powerful Shaw family controlled Hong Kong’s Television Broadcasts Ltd., the leading producer of Chinese-language programming for export, and an important resource for Fairchild. Their business connections with Fung’s father, through Sun Hung Kai’s financial services, created linkages aiding the success of Thomas Fung’s television network in Canada (Williamson 1994). 12. Aoki bought out the North American hotel assets of US-based Westin as part of the Japanese property surge in 1988 (Chow 1997h). 13. ‘Estates’ is the marketing term for apartments. Sales commenced in September 2004 and in ten days 75 percent of the units were sold. Occupancy took place only in 2009. 14. As early as 1988, ‘a string of (7) apartment blocks’ were held by Hong Kong investors along sought-after Beach Avenue in the West End, fronting directly onto English Bay (Chinatown News 1988b). 15. ‘Chinese’ business ownership in the prime 900–1200 blocks of Robson Street was placed at 70 percent in 2002 (Ming Pao 2002). 16. ‘They just walked into a sales presentation on the weekend and 40–50 of them put down payments on their Visa cards, sight unseen’ (Colliers Jardine Hong Kong manager, in Chow 1996e). 17. Because only a sample of real estate newspapers was examined, Figure 5.3 does not include all million dollar listings for either agent over this period. Some of the

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20. 21.

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24.

25.

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NOTES TO PP. 142–52

high-priced exclusive listings would not appear anyway in the Real Estate Weekly. A land title search in 1997 revealed that persons with a Chinese surname owned more than 75 percent of Westside homes priced over $1 million (Chow 1997g). At both time periods Asian names were overwhelmingly Chinese, and non-Asian names were European, overwhelmingly Anglo-Canadian. A larger sample of over 150 properties in South Granville recorded similar results: over 80 percent of new dwellings were occupied by families with a Chinese surname while 80 percent of older properties were associated with European family names (Majury 1990). Many properties had their addresses changed to include a three (a Chinese character conferring good luck) or an eight (promising wealth), and if possible to avoid an unlucky four (evoking the character for death). In 1996 Vancouver had to hire four additional full-time staff to process requests for address changes (Fong 1996). The City got into the spirit of this performative numerology, charging a fee of $383 for the address change. Another 16 percent of the population is of other East, Southeast, or South Asian origin. In one scam in north Richmond, their co-ethnic ‘landlord’ cheated more than 70 Chinese families, principally recent Mainland immigrants, of their rents on sublet units. The families were crowded at 5–10 families per house or duplex (World Journal 2002). The Toronto-based Torgan Group, a Jewish developer, built the Pacific Mall though Thomas Fung’s Fairchild Group was reported to be a partner (Chow 1996g). Lai’s study of 19 Richmond Asian malls revealed that 44 percent of units were less than 500 square feet; 14 of the 19 malls were strata titled. Sixteen of the mall developers were immigrants, 12 of them from Hong Kong. All of the malls were owned by a family company or by a syndicate of investors. With the size of immigrant households at about 4 persons during the 1986–96 period, the 37,000 households amount to close to 150,000 persons (CIC 2000). Remember the anomalous reported incomes among this population (see Chapter 4). In the nine census tracts comprising the elite Westside districts of Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale-Oakridge (‘South Granville’) and Arbutus Ridge newly arrived ethnic Chinese comprised over 16 percent of the (unweighted) 1996 population. Median homeownership for the same group was at the remarkably high level of 87.3 percent in 1996. Yet half of the same households reported incomes below the low-income cut-off (the poverty level), implying substantial cash transfers from outside Canada. Of course Vancouver is not a major global city like London or New York, or for that matter Hong Kong. Its status is more like Geneva’s, with specialized global functions, in Vancouver’s case an immigrant gateway offering a high quality of life. The comparable statistics for the Toronto metropolitan area show a correlation of 0.86 between international migration and house prices, and a figure of −0.66 against net domestic migration. In fact there was a net domestic migration outflow from metropolitan Toronto every year after 1987 (Ley 2007).

NOTES TO PP. 153–62

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28. The ‘constellation’ was revealed statistically by factor analysis where indicators of both local economic growth and global effects loaded strongly on the same leading factor, which in turn correlated at r = 0.98 with the 26-year series of nominal house prices, and 0.91 with real prices (Ley and Tutchener 2001). These extraordinarily strong relationships offer unambiguous evidence of the role of global influences upon the trajectory of Vancouver house prices. In contrast domestic migration and the Canadian bank rate loaded strongly on a second factor whose correlation with house prices was negligible (r = −0.09). Unemployment and the rental vacancy rate loaded strongly on a third factor that was equally inconsequential as an effect upon prices (r = 0.04). 29. Whistler is an international ski resort, site of the alpine events in the 2010 Olympics, and a summer outdoors destination, two hours north of Vancouver. It has seen waves of Japanese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese and American property investment. 30. The Bureau was closely connected with the local and trans-Pacific real estate industry. It was formed in 1988 and funded by the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia and five other real estate bodies. The CV of Ozzie Jurock, a Director of the Bureau from 1990–94, describes him as ‘Real Estate Guru’, past President of Royal LePage Real Estate, and manager of real estate companies in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tokyo. He has also been President of the Canada Taiwan Trade Association. (www2.jurock.com/insider/seminars/alberta2004.asp Accessed 18 June 2008). 31. ‘… the responsible group is everyone, not some unusual or exotic group of residents or migrants. In fact there is no one to blame’ (Baxter 1989). 32. See also Edgington and Goldberg (1990: 48): ‘many of the impacts attributed to the growing Asian influence in Vancouver – such as the rise in average housing prices – are illusory’. 33. Though by 1995, the Real Estate Weekly was acknowledging the obvious. ‘Recent immigrants major players in market’, drawing from a consultant’s report on purchases in 1988–91, stated that ‘a quarter or more’ of new home buyers in Vancouver and Richmond were recent immigrants. 34. Russ Froese, speaking at the ‘Role of media’ workshop in the ‘Immigration and Citizenship Issues Significant to BC’ symposium, Vancouver, 11 June 1997 (my italics). 35. For 1986–91, Bourne and Olivet (1995) showed total gains from net domestic migration in the Vancouver metropolitan area at 40,000, just a third of the level of net immigration. 36. The housing affordability data for Canadian provinces and larger cities has been developed in a quarterly time series by the RBC Financial Group.

CHAPTER SIX: IMMIGRANT RECEPTION: CONTESTING GLOBALIZATION… OR RESISTANT RACISM

1. Trudeau’s National Energy Policy caused particular dismay in the Reagan White House.

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2. The dominant issue in the November 1988 General Election was the impending Free Trade Agreement with the United States. The two major opposition parties (Liberals and New Democrats) together won 52 percent of the vote, but the Conservative Party that had negotiated the FTA and was its sole advocate won a majority government, with 43 percent support. So most Canadians opposed the border-weakening terms of the FTA. 3. The colony of British Columbia was established in 1858. 4. See for example Ray et al. (1997) on residential change in Richmond, and Li (1995) and Cavell (1997) on the ‘monster house’ debate in Vancouver. 5. For Richmond Hill, see Preston and Lo (2000) and for Richmond, Rose (2001). 6. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), adding Mexico to the trade pact, followed in 1993. 7. The general success of Vancouver planning during the Spaxman era and the tenure of his successor, Larry Beasley, has led to considerable praise in urban planning and design circles (Punter 2004), and even the invention of the term ‘Vancouverism’. 8. This section draws in part upon Duncan (1994) and Ley (1995). 9. In Quebec the policy of interculturalism promotes tolerance and respect but also a clearer acknowledgement of the primacy of the values of a francophone culture. Symptomatic was the 2007–08 debate in Quebec around the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on ‘reasonable accommodation’ to immigrants. 10. Data from the Association of Canadian Studies show that 70–75 percent of Canadians agree that multiculturalism aids immigrant integration, equal participation in society, a sense of national belonging, national identity and citizenship, and the identification of shared values (Jedwab 2006). These figures are a little higher for immigrants than non-immigrants. 11. Less than 3 percent of Chinese-Canadians reported such experiences had occurred ‘often’, 15 percent ‘sometimes’ and 15 percent ‘rarely’ (Statistics Canada 2003b). Two-thirds had not experienced discrimination. 12. Focus groups were conducted with 54 ‘returnees’ from Canada living in Hong Kong; details are discussed in Chapter 8. 13. According to a writer in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, ‘dozens’ of sales had been handled this way (Gossen 1989). 14. The Urban Development Institute, a voice for Canadian developers, estimated in spring 1989 that 60 percent of current condominium projects in Vancouver were developed or part-financed by Hong Kong interests (Mitchell 1989). 15. Gutstein’s earlier book Vancouver Ltd. (1975) had examined anti-development fights against primarily Canadian developers in the 1965–75 period. His 1990 study showed considerable continuity in argument and method. While the source of investment and development had changed, the effects, displacement of tenants, price inflation and a lack of neighbourhood accountability, were constant. 16. The ‘two-market theory’ became well established among local realtors (Constantineau 1994). 17. There was particular objection to the 1989 series by Sun reporter Gillian Shaw. The first story described the scale of Hong Kong residential investment in Vancouver as a result of title searches, ‘with concentrations in popular

NOTES TO PP. 180–98

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20. 21.

22. 23.

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Westside neighborhoods’ (Shaw 1989). A subsequent feature highlighted the prominence of an economic mentality in Hong Kong and the role of land development in profit-making. These remarks were compatible with the comments of Hong Kong writers such as Poon (2006), Tang (2008) and Mathews et al. (2008). The Lieutenant Governor entered the inter-cultural fray more than once. His typically didactic advice to ‘newcomers’ included, ‘Be sensitive to Canadian values, especially the respect for a clean and beautiful environment, the reverence with which older buildings are held, the social heritage of friendliness, caring and serving…’ (Lam 1989b). One of my few differences with Mitchell’s interpretation of the housing conflicts of the early 1990s is her failure to differentiate the subjectivity of long-term white residents with enough subtlety. For example the assertion of ‘citywide racism’ (2004: 71) directs an undocumented accusation against an unspecified and very large population. Note the start date of the Beijing Summer Olympics: 08/08/08. We consulted two files of almost 400 letters sent to Vancouver Council about large house development between 1987 and the end of 1992. Half were associated with the public hearing held in autumn 1992; the remaining half were sent in the previous five years The letters are public record, but to maintain anonymity the dates of letters and names of correspondents are withheld. For a fuller account of the ‘monster house’ issue in Shaughnessy see Ley (1995) and Mitchell (2004). Similar controversies occurred in several suburbs including Richmond and Burnaby. But the big house conflict nowhere else attained the depth of feeling and degree of local, national and international media attention it did in South Shaughnessy. This is not the end of the ironies, for in a final recursive turn (noted by several Chinese-Canadians) historical analysis would also remember the British role in re-making the landscape and society of Hong Kong, not least the role of the colonial government in ensuring land scarcity and real estate fixation through its land disposal policy. See the 1986 brief to Council by Michael Hennessey and Allied Builders, ‘Racism and the dilemma of changing neighbourhoods’. Quoted by Jack Moore (1989b), Asia reporter of the Vancouver Courier.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ESTABLISHING ROOTS: FROM THE NUCLEAR FAMILY TO SUBSTANTIVE CITIZENSHIP

1. In the winter of 2006, the Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Society in Vancouver ran a discussion series, ‘Living a meaningful life’. Twice-monthly meetings had such titles as ‘Emotional well-being and optimism’ and ‘Happiness is waiting for you – with a change of thoughts and actions’. The upbeat titles suggested a more sombre emotional reality needing this kind of uplift. 2. For another example of transnationalism and ‘emotional geographies’ see Ho (2009). Other economic migrants have reluctantly adopted astronaut status.

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NOTES TO PP. 198–208

They include wealthy Iranians in Vancouver and Arabs and South Asians in Toronto with economic ties to the Persian Gulf. Their numbers, however, are much lower than East Asian astronauts. See the lengthy newspaper account of the begum pura or South Asian ‘women’s colony’ in Toronto whose husbands are working in the Gulf (Elton 2006). The scale of ethnic Chinese men working overseas in New Zealand shows up on census-based age-sex pyramids, with women aged 20–49 markedly outnumbering men in the same age cohorts (Ip 2003). Pe-Pua et al.(1998: 291) note from their Sydney survey of Hong Kong immigrants, ‘separation caused a great deal of emotional stress to couples’. They also refer to Mak’s (1991) observation that Chinese-Australian counsellors identified a high incidence of ‘marital discord, divorce, parent-child difficulties, and behavioural problems of children’ among astronaut families. Chang and Darlington (2008) note the anxieties of astronaut wives in Australia about their husbands’ fidelity in East Asia. From interviews with well-off, educated Taiwanese women with children in Toronto and Vancouver, Chiang (2008) also found most had not entered the labour market, especially in Vancouver. Households work hard to maintain a sense of normality. In one Toronto family, the wife who was the astronaut working in Asia read stories to her young children over the phone each night before they went to sleep (Qiao 2007). Compare the view of Pe-Pua et al. (1998: 292) that astronaut status in Sydney imparted a sense of ‘greater confidence and sense of independence on the part of the woman’. Among astronaut wives in Brisbane, Chang and Darlington (2008) also observed the ‘paradox’ of Hong Kong women finding traditional mothering roles to be rewarding. This unanticipated response was substantiated independently in interviews with Taiwanese-American women in transnational families in California (Chee 2005: 190–3). The speaker was a youth living with his ‘kind of scared’ parents in Auckland (Bartley and Spoonley 2008: 75). The parents had been well-respected professionals in Taiwan. A Vancouver police officer took the issue public in a full-page newspaper article that challenged the ‘self-indulgent attitude’ of ‘that segment of young Asians who use our streets as race tracks. Many come from affluent backgrounds where the parents work hard to provide for their families. Often one or both parents live overseas while the children attend school here. To compensate for their absence and as an expression of affection, some of these parents shower their children with money and material things… It is ironic that in a culture where the family unit is traditionally held in the highest regard, the persistent search for wealth and status to provide for the family has contributed to its breakdown’ (Fung 2002). Children’s education was more than three times as important as any other factor in stimulating migration to the United States by transnational Taiwanese families in California (Chee 2005). Pe-Pua et al. (1998) and Ip and Friesen (2001) report similar Australian and New Zealand trends.

NOTES TO PP. 208–26

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13. An abiding memory from Taipei was seeing girls in uniform leaving ‘cram school’ at 9pm. I was told they would have completed a 7.30am–5pm school day, before cram school began at 7pm. 14. For Chinese girls the grade point advantage was 10 percent and for boys somewhat higher. The gender gap, identifying girls’ superiority over boys (also about 10 percent), was the same for Chinese-speakers as for English-speakers (Frost 2010). 15. Smaller and more specialized is the 20-year old King David High School in Oakridge serving a middle-class Jewish population. 16. See Saxenian (2006) for the role of alumni networks among Asian immigrants in Silicon Valley. 17. Tse (2009) presents a profile of a transnational Hong Kong church in Richmond. 18. Though run as a secular NGO, Christian groups were involved with the founding of SUCCESS, the major Chinese-Canadian settlement agency, and its two long-term executive directors, Angela Kan (1977–86) and Lilian To (1988–2005) were evangelical Christians. 19. Mason Loh (1998b), then Chair of SUCCESS, in the volume celebrating the organization’s 25th. anniversary. 20. The strongest correlations in these suburbs were between electoral turnout and socio-economic variables, led by homeownership rates and income measures (Rose 2007). 21. Pragmatic advantages of citizenship re-appear in interviews reported in Preston et al. (2006), and for Hong Kong and Taiwanese immigrants in Australia in Ip et al. (1997). Punjabi Sikhs in suburban Surrey voiced a similar sentiment (Rose 2007). 22. Reitz and Banerjee argue that upward tendencies are stalled or even fall back in the second generation – notably belonging, life satisfaction, and voting – especially in a contrast between white and visible minority groups. This finding has been contested in a lengthy intervention (Palmer 2006), who points to the need to control for very different average ages between groups in the second generation. 23. A parallel study of transnational activities between American cities and home countries in central America and the Caribbean claimed in contrast that transnational economic activity was a mark of assimilation into American society (Portes et al. 2002). Clearly there is no common immigrant experience in cross-national comparisons. 24. When Li Ka-shing sold his substantial Canadian bank interests in 2005, he established a philanthropic foundation, one of the ten largest in the country, with an interest in making gifts to universities and hospitals (Waldie 2006). CHAPTER EIGHT: ROOTS AND ROUTES: THE MYTH OF RETURN OR TRANSNATIONAL CIRCULATION?

1.

The information on the Miss Hong Kong Pageant is drawn from the Wikipedia entry, accessed 24 November 2008: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Hong_Kong 2. This 22-episode drama series, filmed in part on location in Vancouver, was shown in 2003 on CCTV (Chinese Central Television), the major Mainland broadcaster.

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NOTES TO PP. 226–39

3. Jim (2007) estimated 240,000–300,000 Canadian citizens are living in Hong Kong. 4. Between 1980 and 2001, 380,000 immigrants from Hong Kong completed landing cards in Canada – a high share of a population of only 5 million in 1980 and 6.7 million in 2001 – and 98,000 from Taiwan. 5. These are not trivial assumptions. Census population data are classified by place of birth, while migration data derived from the Landed Immigrant Data System (LIDS) are enumerated by last country of residence. Deaths would remove a small number from the baseline population during the next time period. The present estimate is rough, but in combination with other data sources still useful. 6. Taiwan is not examined separately but is grouped with ‘Asia, excluding Hong Kong’. 7. Compare out-migrants from another high-income country (the Netherlands): ‘The potential migrant is predominantly young, better educated, with a high income, and with family or friends abroad. The effects of social networks—both the networks abroad and those at home … are substantial.’ (Van Dalen and Henkens 2007). Young Chinese-Canadians returnees to Hong Kong fit this profile, though high personal income is anticipated rather than in hand at the time of migration. Distinctive personality dispositions ‘sensation seeking and self-efficacy’ also characterize young returnees to East Asia. 8. The case of Byron (and April and Nancy whom we shall meet shortly) supports the role of social networks in emigration (Van Dalen and Henkens 2007; see note 7). 9. In 2001 when the focus groups were undertaken, this amounted to a starting salary of CAD$3,000 a month. 10. Jiménez cited unpublished research by Jack Jedwab of the Association of Canadian Studies. By the third generation university-educated ChineseCanadians aged 25–44 earn the highest incomes among larger ethnic groups, $11,700 a year (or 17 percent) more than a comparable white population (Jedwab 2008b). But first generation Chinese-Canadian incomes lag 23 percent behind comparably educated white immigrants and by over 11 percent in the second generation. Dr. Jedwab kindly shared these results with me. 11. Professor Chan Kwok-Bun of the Hong Kong Baptist University, author of the study, alerted me to these findings in October 2008. 12. A manager of international banking at the regional head office of HSBC in Hong Kong told me that a Canadian degree is ‘definitely’ an advantage. ‘Overseas experience leads to a broader mindset. The ability to speak English is important… We have recruited many people from Canada in this bank.’ 13. In Canada too, there is limited contact between Canadian-born Chinese (‘CBCs’) and immigrants, sometimes unsympathetically called ‘FOBs’ (fresh off the boat). A young graduate returnee in Hong Kong told us: ‘I don’t have any friends who are CBCs. I have two Caucasian friends but I don’t have friends who are CBCs’. A second focus group member didn’t consider this separation a problem: ‘It’s just natural human nature to gravitate towards those who are more likeminded’.

NOTES TO PP. 256–57

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CHAPTER NINE: CONCLUSION: IMMIGRANTS IN SPACE

1. Eng has been a catalytic figure in the trans-Pacific real estate trade. A former Miss Canada, she had reportedly sold over 50 high rise buildings in the downtown West End neighbourhood when she left Vancouver for an executive position with Collier’s International in Hong Kong in 1993 at the age of 38 (Hyslop 2008). 2. The Dalian Maple Leaf School had 2,300 students and 72 British Columbia teachers by 2007. Another 15 high schools in China with certified BC curricula were in the planning stages (Waters 2008: 58–60). 3. The much smaller Korean population scores even higher in university attainment.

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Index

Note: ‘n’ after a page number denotes a note number on that page. Abbas, Ackbar 128–9 air passenger traffic through YVR 43–5 Anderson, Kay 17, 33, 34, 35, 173, 174 Ang, Ien 12, 171 APEC 41, 48 Appadurai, Arjun 23 Asian financial crisis (1997) 128, 134–5, 146–7, 159 Asian malls 131, 144–7, 270 n22, n23 Asian modernity 6, 17, 183, 219 astronaut family 5, 10, 22, 90, 92, 100, 105, 196, 198–207, 230–1, 240–3, 273–4 n2 attitudes to immigration 171–2 Auckland 198, 205, 274 n10 Australia 11, 20–1, 22, 46, 58, 84, 119–20, 171–2, 173, 197, 222, 252, 254, 274 n4, n7, n8 property markets 132, 150, 269 n6 banks 70, 71–3 belonging (sense of, in Canada) 222–3 Bennett, Premier Bill 52, 53 Bonnett, Alastair 174, 195 Boston 196

British Columbia 19, 33, 71, 72, 164 Pacific Rim trade flows 41–4 Burnaby, BC 148 business immigrants 6, 9, 20, 56–8, 60–4, 67–70, 75–6, 77–81, 199, 223, 253–4 see also entrepreneur business immigrants, investor business immigrants, self-employed business immigrants business failure 101, 102, 105, 107, 108, 109–14, 125, 200, 201, 242 human capital 9, 58, 61, 109 incomes in Canada 118–19, 267 n26 language competence 61, 109, 199, 241 mother tongue 62 motives for migration 76–81, 83 return migration 234 self-employment 102, 104–5 subverting state regulations 89–91, 92–5, 122 wealth 9, 20, 62–3, 68–70, 80, 98–9 Business Immigration Programme 9, 20, 21–2, 56–9, 67, 68, 69, 93, 108, 114, 115, 120–3, 252 business networks 46

310

INDEX

capital switching (in real estate) 95, 132–5, 146–7, 159, 265 n30 Castells, Manuel 4 Chiang, Nora 201, 203 children (immigrant) 5, 199, 204–13, 216–17 China 10–11, 12, 40, 49, 50, 146, 198 immigrant economic achievement in Canada 115 immigration numbers to Canada 62–3, 135 internal migration 11 media 23, 226 trade with Canada 40–4 urbanization 11 Chinese-Canadians 12–13, 16–17, 24–5, 36, 40, 130, 143–4, 147, 209, 220, 238 Chinese diaspora 11–13, 61–2, 126–7, 225–6 Chinese families 9, 21–2, 196, 197–207, 224 Chinese Immigration Act 16, 32, 56 Choy, Wayson 17 Chretien, Prime Minister Jean 48–9, 51 churches see religion citizenship rights 86, 166, 186, 188–9, 192, 196, 221–3 Clarkson, Adrienne 32, 224 colonial state 32–36 Concord Pacific Developments 55, 131, 134, 136–8, 178 consumerism 98–9 cosmopolitanism 19, 29, 124–5, 217, 223, 253 critical race studies 10, 16–17, 19, 35, 163, 173, 174, 195 cultural capital 211–13, 236 Davies, Libby 180, 181 Dirlik, Arif 49 Dunn, Kevin 171 economic migrants 8, 56, 60, 79 economic prospects motive for migration 77, 79, 80

economic regulation in Canada 101, 110, 124 education 207–13, 256–7 see also university graduates achievement 209 motive for migration 22, 77–8, 79, 119, 196, 207–8, 236, 237, 245, 274 n12 emotional geographies 5, 22–3, 198–207, 242–4, 255, 273 n2 Eng, Andrea 140, 180, 256, 264 n7, 277 n1 entrepreneur business immigrants 22, 57–8, 62–3, 66–7, 68, 69, 76, 79–81, 85, 87–9, 103, 108–14, 120, 121, 253 ethnic enclave economy 104, 111–12, 114 family status 10, 61 foreign assets disclosure legislation 91–6, 159 Fried, Mark 176 Friedman, Thomas 5, 8 Fung, Thomas 131, 145, 269 n11 Furnivall, J. S. 50, 170 Gans, Herbert 176 gender variations within immigrant families 5, 10, 22, 197, 200, 243–4 men 5, 198, 199–201, 216 women 5, 198, 199, 200, 201–4 geopolitics 20 motive for migration 74–5, 77, 78, 83 global city 13–16, 150, 154, 155, 258 Global Commission on International Migration 1–2, 29 globalization 4–5, 6–8, 13, 21, 23, 58, 150, 152–5, 157, 160–1, 169–70, 251–4 and isotropic plain 8, 123–5, 251 Goldberg, Michael 67, 127, 150, 158 Government of British Columbia 19, 51–3, 93, 162–3, 164–5

INDEX

Government of Canada 20, 38, 48–9, 51, 67–8, 85, 86–9, 92–5, 120–3, 162, 171 governmentality 7, 86–9, 123, 252, 266 n6 Green, Jim 169, 181 growth politics 168–70 guanxi 21–2 Gutstein, Donald 179, 272 n15 Hage, Ghassan 173 Harcourt, Michael 38, 46, 163, 165 Harper, Prime Minister Stephen 32 Harris, Cole 170 Head Tax 16, 33 Ho, Stanley 138 homeownership 98, 116, 129–30, 267 n21, 268 n5 homo economicus 6, 9, 19, 58, 67, 82, 251 Hong Kong 2, 5, 11, 12, 20, 47, 57, 78, 80–1, 92, 93, 103, 126, 218, 222, 261 n11 air traffic with YVR 44–5 business immigrants 56, 62–3, 69–70, 75–6, 103, 111–12, 125 buzz 5, 207, 237, 238–9, 246 economic growth 81–2 economic opportunities 83, 213, 234–8, 240, 247–8 emigration 83–4 housing market 74, 128, 129, 159 immigrant economic achievement in Canada 113–14, 115, 235–6, 267 n16 immigration numbers to Canada 59, 62–63, 73–6, 135, 231–3 investment flows to Canada 70, 71–3, 132–9, 159 marketing of Canadian real estate 133–5, 177–80 media 179–80, 191, 225–6, 231–2, 269 n11 popular culture 218, 225–6 property development 6, 127–30, 188, 257–8 return migration 212, 225–49

311

and SARS 14 stressful pace 80–1, 215, 239, 244, 245–6 trade with Canada 40–3 ‘Hongcouver’ 256–9 HSBC 70, 72–3, 276 n12 Huang, Michelle 4 Hui, Terry 66, 136, 137, 177, 178, 269 n10 human smuggling 12 hybrid identities 4, 12, 256–9 identity as Canadian 222–3 immigrant settlement organizations 197, 204, 217–19 immigration consultants 59, 83, 85–6, 268 n28 ‘immigration jail’ 106, 199, 230 immigration numbers 59–64 immigration policy 8–9, 56–9, 64–5 intersectionality 174, 194, 195, 258 investment flows, trans-Pacific 67–73, 132–9 investor business immigrants 57–8, 62–3, 68, 69, 103, 120–1, 268 n28 Japan 40 air traffic with YVR 44–5 investment in Canada 71, 146 trade with Canada 40–3 Kobayashi, Audrey 40, 173, 237 Korea see South Korea Kuok Group 138, 139, 269 n11 Kwok, Grace 131, 139 Lai, David 33, 144–5 Lam, David (and Dorothy) 17, 19, 32, 55, 131, 180, 219, 224, 273 n18 Lam, Lawrence 78, 202–3 Lam, Lily 141–2 Larner, Wendy 123 Laurier Institution 157–9 Law, Clara 20–1, 197 Lebanese transnationalism 2 Lefebvre, Henri 4

312

INDEX

Li, Ka-shing 17, 19, 21, 55, 72, 127, 136, 177–8, 197, 262 n12, 275 n24 Li, Peter 36, 262 n1, 264 n9 Li, Victor 21, 55, 177, 178, 191, 269 n10 Li, Wei, 143 Lo, Lucia 115, 117 local knowledge 125 Loh, Mason 94, 265 n28 London 213, 240 air traffic with YVR 44–5 property market 133, 135, 265 n30 Los Angeles 129, 191, 267 n21 air traffic with YVR 44–5 Lui, Manyee 95, 131, 140–2, 193 Maher, Chris 150 Mak, Anita 11, 119 Marger, Martin 120 media, news 23–25, 41, 66, 98–9, 157, 158, 169, 180, 191, 232, 268 n31 ethnic Chinese media 24–5, 71–2, 89, 90, 94, 180 methodology 3, 29–31, 108–9, 114 Mitchell, Katharyne 31, 72, 169, 173, 181, 219, 258 ‘monster houses’ 23–4, 181–5, 186, 191, 258 Montreal immigration numbers 60–3 Mulroney, Prime Minister Brian 51, 164 multiculturalism 17, 19, 38, 165–6, 171, 173, 192, 193–4, 272 n10 municipal politics 165–70 nation state see also Government of Canada and globalization 4, 6–9, 58, 92, 124, 251–3 neo-liberalism 6–9, 51–5, 164–5, 219, 251 and immigration policy 6, 8–9, 56, 64–5, 123, 251–3 audit culture 67–8, 88, 108 New Zealand 119–20, 123, 198, 229, 254, 274 n3

Newman, Peter 66 Ng, Wing Chung 35 NGOs see immigrant settlement organizations Nonini, Donald 252–3, 265 n26 official statistics (as social constructs) 13, 59, 67–8, 108, 121, 234 Ong, Aihwa 11, 12, 22, 35, 89, 124, 197, 202, 252 Orientalism 16–20, 23, 32–6 Pacific Rim 7, 19, 20, 32, 40–51, 160 ‘passport insurance’ (immigration as) 22, 78, 83, 113, 221, 230, 237 patriarchy 21–2, 197, 204 philanthropy 224, 275 n24 political participation 219–21 Portes, Alejandro 3 poverty levels 117, 267 n19 preservation of neighbourhoods 165–9, 176–7, 183, 185, 186, 190, 192, 195 property investment 55, 71, 95, 116, 126, 127–31, 132–9, 156, 160, 177–81 property speculation 135–6 quality of life 105, 165, 170, 240 motive for migration 22, 76–7, 78, 79, 80–1, 119, 155, 236, 237, 247–8 racism 10, 33, 163, 170–6, 180, 181, 190–2, 194–5, 258 Rankin, Harry 179, 181 real estate see home ownership, Hong Kong property development, property investment, Toronto housing market, Vancouver housing market, Vancouver property investment real estate companies 133, 139–43 religion 81, 197, 213–17 retirement 101, 103, 229–30, 243–4, 246–8

INDEX

return migration 11, 84, 106, 119, 225–49 Richmond, BC 73, 131, 143–6, 148–9, 169, 206, 220, 222 Rose, Nikolas 67–8 Royal Pacific Realty 139–40 ‘satellite kids’ 204–7 scale effects 15–16, 150–60, 162–3 schools 207–11, 277 n2 see also education self-employed business immigrants 57, 69, 110–14, 120 SHPOA 167–8, 183–4, 186, 188, 189, 190, 193, 194 Singapore 48, 127, 139, 198, 265 n30 property market 133 skilled workers 8–9, 11, 58, 60, 61, 62, 79, 228 Smart, Josephine 102, 112 Smith, Michael Peter 21 social capital 79, 176, 187, 212, 213, 217, 237 South Korea 20, 139 business immigrants 62–3, 69, 80, 102, 111, 211 and Christianity 213–17 immigrant economic achievement in Canada 102, 112–13, 267 n16 immigration numbers to Canada 59, 62–3, 74–5 trade with Canada 40–4 Sparke, Matthew 164 Spaxman, Ray 166, 168 SPOTA 38–40 SUCCESS 17, 25, 199, 218–20, 275 n18, n19 Surrey, BC 146, 220 surveillant state 34, 87–8, 90, 91, 121, 123 Sydney 171, 202, 274 n4, n7 property market 129, 132, 133, 150–1, 153–4 Taiwan 11, 12, 20, 93, 96 business immigrants 62–3, 69, 75–6, 82–3, 87, 105, 111–12, 208

313

economic opportunities 83, 87 education 208, 275 n13 homeownership 267 n21 housing market 129 immigrant economic achievement in Canada 104, 115, 267 n16, 267 n19 immigration consultants 85–6 immigration numbers to Canada 59, 62–3, 74–6, 231–3, 276 n4 investment flows to Canada 71–2, 132, 139, 146 return migration 232–3 stressful pace 207 trade with Canada 40–4 taxation in Canada 91–6, 101, 103, 110, 267 n14 temporary migration 1, 8, 11, 228 Tiananmen Square 20, 74, 75, 241 time-space compression 4, 5, 15–16 To, Lilian 25, 218 Toronto 12–13, 78, 79, 84, 85, 207, 214, 274 n2, n6 housing market 151–4, 270 n27 immigrant economic achievement 115, 118 immigration numbers 60–4 property investment 136 and SARS 13–16 suburbs 14, 15, 143–4 trade 40–4 trade missions 7, 19, 46–9, 66 transnational activities 3, 15, 221, 223 see also astronaut families transnational capitalist class 66–7, 124 transnational migration 1–6, 13, 22, 82, 123–5, 221, 225–49, 250–1, 254–6 Trudeau, Prime Minister Pierre 37, 38, 40, 162 undocumented immigration 12, 35 United Kingdom 46, 132, 222 United States 3, 22, 45, 51, 90, 132, 214, 222, 233, 234, 274 n9

314

INDEX

United States (cont’d) free trade agreements 42, 162, 164, 178, 272 n2 trade with Canada 42–5 university graduates 127, 211–13, 225–6, 229, 235–40 Vancouver 13, 15, 79, 80–1, 126, 198, 202 Chinatown 16–19, 34–40, 149, 165–6, 173, 217–18 city government 34–5, 37–40, 46–8, 165–70, 183, 185–90, 193–4 Coal Harbour redevelopment 136–8 commercial property market 136, 139 Concord Pacific Place 17–19, 21, 55, 136–7, 177–8 Expo 86 19, 53–5 housing market 95, 151–61, 177–81, 271 n28 immigrant homeownership 98, 116, 130, 268 n5, 270 n25 immigration numbers 60–4, 75–6 incomes of business immigrants 118–19, 267 n26 investment by business immigrants 68–70 Kerrisdale 141–2, 184–6, 187 media representations 23–5, 66, 98–9 Oakridge 36, 55, 141–2, 148, 181, 183, 184–6, 211

perception of economic prospects 77, 79 property investment 130–47, 177–81, 257–8 and SARS 16 Shaughnessy 23, 141–2, 159, 167, 177, 183–95 South Granville 142–3, 149, 159 suburbs 143–7, 169, see also Richmond, Surrey urban renewal 37–9 West End 139, 277 n1 Westside neighbourhoods 24, 94–5, 99, 116, 117, 130, 131, 139–40, 149, 164, 195, 209–11, 270 n25 YVR (international airport) 43–5, 142, 144, 149, 230 Vancouver Board of Trade 93, 159 Vertovec, Steven 3 voluntarism 219–20 Wang, Gungwu 12 Wang, Lu 115 Wang, Shuguang 117 Waters, Johanna 202, 203, 204 welfare state 7, 51–2, 166 white settler society 16, 33–5, 64 whiteness studies 172–4, 193, 194–5 Wong, Lloyd 58 Wong, Patrick 93, 94, 96, 265 n29 Woo, Edward 69, 112 Woodside, Alexander 50