Abstract This ethnography is based on fieldwork in two very different cities, Hong Kong and Sydney. It traces the movements of subjects from Hong Kong through the analysis of differing modes of inhabiting urban space. The texture of lived spaces provides an analytic focus for examining a highly mobile migrant group. This ethnography explores the mesh of objective structures and migrant subjectivities in a mobile field of migrant ‘place’. A basic assumption of this study is that people from Hong Kong have acquired a common array of dispositions attuned to living in a specific environment. Hong Kong’s dense and challenging urban space embodies aspects of the singular historical ‘production of space’ underpinning a colonial entrepôt that has expanded into a major global economic node. The conditions of lived space are examined through an historical analysis of urban space in Hong Kong and an ethnographic analysis of spatial practices and dispositions. The sprawling spaces of suburban Sydney clearly differ sharply from that of Hong Kong. Interview accounts of settling in Sydney are used to investigate the ‘gap’ in spatial dispositions. Settling entails both practical accommodations to new and unfamiliar localities and an interweaving of cultural and ideological elements into the expanded everyday of migrant subjectivity. Language and speech are integral to spatial practices and provide means of referencing and evaluating ongoing social relations and trajectories. The ‘discourse space’ of interview accounts of settlement in Sydney and movements back to Hong Kong are closely examined, yielding an array of perceptions and representations of different, and contested styles of urban life. All the senses are brought into play in accounts of densities and absences in people’s everyday worlds. At the same time this thesis provides a perspective from which to interrogate contemporary interpretations of ‘transnational’ migration, suggesting the need for an analysis grounded in a specific economy of capacities and dispositions to appropriate social and symbolic goods. Table of Contents Accommodating Places: a migrant ethnography of two cities Page Abstract i Declaration iii Acknowledgements iv List of tables x Chapter 1 A Tale of Two Cities: placing migrant practices a) Ground zero: a preface 1 b) 1997 and Hong Kong emigration 8 c) Conceiving the research project 10 d) Subjects in motion: decentring the anthropological field 12 e) Subjects in motion: transnational migration 18 f) Conceptual framework: migrant dispositions, practices and spatiality 22 g) Thesis chapter outline 29 Chapter 2 Hong Kong: a spatial history a) Chapter introduction 33 b) Hong Kong as colonial entrepôt 34 c) Production of space in Hong Kong 36 d) Built space and local practices 37 e) After the fires: planning comes to Hong Kong 49 f) Specificities of planned space in Hong Kong 57 g) Chapter conclusion 60 Chapter 3 Walking contradictions: spatial practices in Hong Kong a) Chapter introduction 63 b) Pedestrian practices 64 c) A walk in Tsing Yi 70 d) A gateway to anywhere? Lived and represented spaces in Tsing Yi 78 e) Spatial dispositions in Hong Kong 84 f) Embodiments of density and speed 87 g) Chapter conclusion 92 Chapter 4 Hong Kong-Australia migration a) Chapter introduction 97 b) Identifying and enumerating ‘HK immigrants’ to Australia 98 c) Exiles or yuppies: political and economic factors 99 d) Australian figures 105 e) Sydney destinations 107 f) Migration trajectories: a play of categories 109 g) Australian immigration: policies and procedures 115 h) Characteristics of interview subjects 119 i) Chapter summary 123 Chapter 5 Home And Away: Language and migration a) Chapter introduction 126 b) The place of language 128 c) Contexts of bilingualism in Hong Kong 130 d) Language and migrant strategies 137 e) Interview in English: some methodological implications 142 f) Inter-views to go: fast food ethnography 144 g) Re-placing speech 148 h) Chapter conclusion 155 Chapter 6 Here and there: comparisons of place in accounts of settlement in Sydney a) Chapter introduction 157 b) Comparisons of place: spatial stories of here and there 158 c) Migrant sense of place in Sydney 161 d) ‘Good for retirement’: life in the slow lane 162 e) ‘Just the place is different’: modes of being in place 169 f) One who cannot find her place 173 g) Between here and there: economies of migrant mobility 177 h) Chapter conclusion A migrant ethnography of two cities (Hong Kong and Sydney) ( Tạm dịch: Một dân tộc học di dân của hai thành phố (Hong Kong và Sydney))