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Transnationalism is an increasingly popular concept used to describe contemporary forms of migration and is commonly defined as the process by which migrants actively maintain a variety of ties––political, social, economic, and emotional, to more than one country simultaneously (Basch, Glick Schiller, & Szanton Blanc, 1994). Recent scholarship on Chinese migration has illustrated some of the ways in which families are spatially dispersed, continuing to live and work in Asia even as they ‘reside’ in North America (e.g., Kobayashi & Preston, 2007; Waters, 2002; Yeoh, Huang & Lam, 2005). Many now possess dual, or even triple citizenship, caricatured in Ong’s (1999) description of the Hong Kong-Chinese ‘multiple-passport holder’ (p. 19) who claims to feel at home anywhere as long as it is near an airport. Transnational migration is inextricably linked to wider accumulation strategies with the ultimate goal of securing social reproduction.
The transformation of the Asia-Pacific regional economy provides the context for these families’ migration. In a remarkably short span of time—just 30 years from the mid 1960s—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan became the most competitive producers and exporters with the highest rate of GNP growth in the world (Dicken, 2003). Whilst explanations for this rapid economic development have been widely debated, a consensus seems to have emerged around the importance of small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms (SMEs). These SMEs exercised flexibility in the face of a fluctuating demand for goods by using networking and subcontracting to link up effectively to the global market. Hong Kong’s industrial structure, for example, was overwhelmingly comprised of small businesses; in 1981 over 90% of its manufacturing firms had less than 50 employees (Castells, 1996). Similarly in Taiwan, development was dependent upon SMEs who were established with family savings and supported by government bank credits (Castells).
Interestingly, explanations for economic growth have emphasised social and cultural factors. Many accounts, for example, have stressed the importance of affective ties, or guanxi. As Dicken (2003) described,