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Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Cities pp 67–96Cite as

Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Hong Kong

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Abstract

Hong Kong has long been a financial center in Asia and a major global city. Its unique colonial history, its laissez-faire economic policies in the last century, and its booming economic achievements today have attracted immigrants from all over the world. Ranging from high-skilled westerners engaging in the business of education to relatively less wealthy South Asians working in labor-intensive industries, these migrants with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds have contributed to the constant growth of immigrant entrepreneurship in Hong Kong. In this chapter, we dissect the 2016 Hong Kong By-census to document the diverse characteristics of immigrant entrepreneurs in Hong Kong. We will explore the sociodemographic backgrounds of immigrant entrepreneurs and the locational and industrial distribution of their businesses. Additionally, we will delineate the Chinese influence on immigrant entrepreneurs in Hong Kong after the Handover in 1997.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the dataset, hawker is coded as 14 “Self-employed (Hawkers),” and self-employed is coded as 15 “Self-employed (Others)” under the census variable ACTIV.

  2. 2.

    In the dataset, employee is coded as 11 “Employees” under the census variable ACTIV.

  3. 3.

    Census variable MEARN (monthly income from main employment).

  4. 4.

    Census variable WDJHEAD (whether household head).

  5. 5.

    Self-employed persons refer to people who work in their own business, neither employed by someone nor employing anyone.

  6. 6.

    “Others” include entrepreneurs from Macao, Taiwan, other East Asian countries, UK, countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, North America, etc.

  7. 7.

    To better capture the dynamics of immigrant entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, we picked the more-populated industries as those mostly engaged by entrepreneurs, i.e., (1) import/export, wholesale and retail trades, (2) construction, (3) transportation, storage, postal and courier services, (4) financial and insurance activities, and (5) others. Therefore, industry like work activities within domestic households, while being the second most populated industry in Hong Kong, due to its small number of entrepreneurs engaged, is not included as a more-populated industry in our regression analysis.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 4/F, Sino Building, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Biyang Sun

  2. Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Eric Fong

Authors
  1. Biyang Sun
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  2. Eric Fong
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Correspondence to Eric Fong .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Cathy Yang Liu

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Sun, B., Fong, E. (2021). Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Hong Kong. In: Liu, C.Y. (eds) Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Cities. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50363-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50363-5_4

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