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Intercessor Roles in Migration: Recruitment Processes in Rural Hong Kong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Göran Aijmer
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Extract

The study of migration is generally conducted along the lines of communication theory and it is assumed that we deal with a source, a medium of transfer and a receiver. An investigation of a particular migratory movement should ideally embrace two discrete geographical territories and their socio–cultural contents, and the means providing passage from one to the other. The communication model provides an overview understanding. However, when anthropologists have scrutinized migratory movements, the clear–cut categories of source and receiver have turned out to be less obvious. In this paper it is my intention to give an ethnographical account for the “end” of a channel in a process of migration, the final stage of a transfer in which people who are on the move reach their destinations. It is obvious that “destination” is not the same thing as “terminal.” Often people move in stages, and it is quite possible that what we regard as a destination in one study would turn out to be a stage in a chain of stages in a future enquiry.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 66 , June 1976 , pp. 247 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1976

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References

* Field work in the New Territories was conducted between June 1967 and February 1968 and between June and September 1969. Generous financial support was provided by the Swedish Research Council for the Humanities. Subsidiary grants from the University of Stockholm and the Nathhorst Foundation allowed me to draft this essay in the Harvard–Yenching Institute, Harvard University, in 1970. I wish to thank that Institute for its hospitality. Local Hong Kong names are given in the official Cantonese versions.

1. Cf. Aijmer, Göran, “Expansion and extension in Hakka society,” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 7 (1967), pp. 42–79;Google ScholarDouglass, William A., “Peasant emigrants: reactors or actors?” in Spencer, Robert F. and Kasdan, Leonard (eds.), Migration and Anthropology. Proceedings of the 1970 Annual Spring meeting of the American Ethnological Society (Seattle and London: American Ethnological Society, University of Washington Press, 1970), pp. 21–35;Google ScholarMayer, Philip, Townsmen or Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanization in a South African City (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1963);Google ScholarPhilpott, Stuart B., “Remittance obligations, social networks and choice among Montserratian migrants in Britain,” Man, N.S., Vol. 3 (1968), pp. 465–76,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “The implications of migration for sending societies: some theoretical considerations,” in Spencer and Kasdan, Migration and Anthropology, pp. 9–20; Wolf, Eric R., “Kinship, friendship, and patron–client relations in complex societies,” in Banton, Michael (ed.), The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966. A.S.A. Monograph No. 4), pp. 1–22.Google Scholar

2. Westley, Bruce H. and MacLean, Malcolm S. Jr, “A conceptual model for communications research,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 34 (1957), pp. 31–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. See, for instance, MacDonald, John S. and MacDonald, Leatrice D., “Chain migration, ethnic neighborhood formation and social networks,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Vol. 42 (1964), pp. 82–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

4. Aijmer, Göran, “Migrants into Hong Kong's New Territories: on the background of outsider vegetable farmers,” Ethnos, Vol. 38 (1973), pp. 57–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Wodehouse, P. P. J., “Report on the census of the Colony for 1911,” Papers Laid before the Legislative Council of Hongkong 1911 (Hong Kong: Noronha, 1911), p. 103 (21), tab. xii;Google ScholarLloyd, J. D., “Report on the Census of the Colony for 1921,” Papers Laid before the Legislative Council of Hongkong 1921 (Hong Kong: Noronha, 1921), p. 189, tab. xiii;Google ScholarCarrie, W. J., Report on the Census of the Colony of Hong Kong Taken on the Night of March 7, 1931 (Hong Kong: Government Printer, n.d.), p. 19, tab. 5;Google ScholarBarnett, K. M. A., Report of the Census 1961 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press, 1962), Vol. ii, tab. 121.Google Scholar The unofficial rough estimate of 1964, which includes “fishermen and dwellers in squatter huts and unseaworthy boats,” is 25,000 people in Sha Tin; see Aserappa, J. P., Hong Kong, Annual Departmental Report by the District Commissioner, New Territories, J. P. Aserappa, for the Financial Year 1964–65 (Hong Kong: S. Young, 1965), p. 6. I have no figures from the 1971 census.Google Scholar

6. On the basis of the 1961 census report it can be calculated that village population, exclusive of children under five, amounts to 4,148; see Barnett, , Report of the Census 1961, Vol. ii, tabs. 107, 121 and 135.Google Scholar

7. Holmes, D. R., Hong Kong, Annual Departmental Report by the District Commissioner, New Territories for the Financial Year 1960–61 (Hong Kong: S. Young, 1962), p. 16.Google Scholar

8. Jack M. Potter mentions land brokers in his study of rural life in another part of the New Territories, but these specialize in buying land and offer it for sale to industrial enterprises; see Potter, Jack M., Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 48 ff.Google Scholar See also Topley, Marjorie, “Capital, saving and credit among indigenous rice farmers and immigrant vegetable farmers in Hong Kong's New Territories,” in Firth, Raymond and Yamey, B. S. (eds.), Capital, Saving and Credit in Peasant Societies, Studies from Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean and Middle America (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964), p. 168 ff.Google Scholar

9. The term chiu–tsu is derived from the fact that the segment includes also four generations below Ego. In all, nine generations are embraced. The chiu–tsu seems to equal the wu–fu group, described systematically in Freedman, Maurice, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London: The Athlone Press, 1958. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 18), pp. 41–45.Google Scholar

10. In the sense of Adrian C. Mayer, “The significance of quasi–groups in the study of complex societies,” in Banton (ed.), The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, pp. 97–122.

11. See, further, Aijmer, Göran, “Immoral wealth and generosity: a note on traditionalistic Chinese and charity,” Sociologus, N.S., Vol. 24 (1974), pp. 147–59.Google Scholar

12. In the sense of Sahlins, Marshall D., “On the sociology of primitive exchange,” in Banton, Michael (ed.), The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology (London: Tavistock Publications, 1965. A.S.A. Monograph No. 1).Google Scholar