Unable to stay, unwilling to leave: Southeast Asian migrants’ decision making on (non-)migration to Hong Kong

The research explores the complexity of the individual migration decision-making process for both high-skilled and low-skilled migrant workers from Southeast Asia in Hong Kong by looking at how an individual’s consideration interacts with meso-social level and macro-level determinants to (non-)migrate. Drawing on participatory research and in-depth interviews with 25 low-skilled migrants and 25 high-skilled migrants, this study attempts to understand the nexus and intricacies of the individual decision-making process when it could be complicated by other factors. More importantly, it examines how different strata of Southeast Asian skilled workers’ individual mobility and (non-)migration decisions could be changed over time at the different stages of their journey, and how factors such as education, age, family, gender and ethnicity could interplay with factors such as social and community network, which not only contribute to conceptualizing transnational migration theories by analyzing the decision-making process from an intersectional perspective but also will enhance the migration policies in both Hong Kong and Southeast Asian countries.