A Migration Channels Approach to the Study of Professionals Moving to and from Hong Kong 1

This article evaluates the concept of migration channels, identifying the strengths and weaknesses that have emerged from use of a migration channels framework in international migration research. Using professional migration to and from Hong Kong in the 1990s as an empirical lens, it is argued that the meso-scale understanding offered by examining the effect of migration channels is valuable. This is illustrated in terms of the contrasting channels used by different professions, as well by migrants motivated to move by citizenship as opposed to career reasons. Survey research of migrant engineers and doctors, however, points to the need to recast the channels migration framework in at least three ways, giving stronger recognition to 1) the strategic behavior of migrants themselves, 2) the need for a theorization of the hierarchically ordered economic “space” within which migration channels operate and, 3) the sociocultural context within which constructions of the meaning of migration and place occur.