Negotiating Multilingualism: Return migration and identities in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper reports sociolinguistic and ethnographic research on Hong Kong Chinese who returned to Hong Kong after migrating to an Anglophone country. In investigating this ‘moving population’ during an era of increasing global movements, this project conjoins diverse areas of transnationalism, sociolinguistics and bilingualism, so to erect a knowledge base which attends to local-global articulations and micro-macro sociolinguistic junctures. Investigation of returnee’s linguistic repertoires and practices, their re-adaptation and re-negotiation of identities during their reversion, and ways through which the flexibility of individuals connects to larger regimes of social organization, all inspire fascinating insight into ways in which individuals maneuver in a globalized world where boundaries are constantly crossed. The 2001 Hong Kong census reported that 3.5% of the population (over 240,000 people) were ethnic Chinese holding a foreign passport. This new trend in mobile and flexibile citizenship (cf. Ong 1999) has significantly inspired studies in population research and the social geography of returnees in Hong Kong (Ley & Kobayashi 2005, Sussman 2005, Waters 2005, 2007,2008), but little within linguistics/sociolinguistics domains. This research investigates the micro structurally distinctive styles of code-switching used strategically by these returnee bilinguals, and the mediating language ideologies associated with a macro societal trajectory in post-colonial Hong Kong. Data includes 110 hours of natural speech among a self- forming community of returnees, interviews, and ethnographic observation across six years.