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Marriage Migration
Hong Kong
The Impact of Cross-Border Marriage
In the last 50 years, Hong Kong owed much of its prosperity to its unique role of acting as the gateway to mainland China. Overseas investors used it as the springboard to enter the Mainland whereas the Mainland Government took advantage of its ability to acquire money and expertise from Hong Kong. With the opening of China, this indispensable role of Hong Kong is vanishing. Compared to cities in China, the living costs in Hong Kong began to look prohibitively high. With globalisation, logistics services in China have gradually approximated world standards and this, together with the lower labour costs, have attracted businesses to move. In the past 20 years some 60,000 factories in Hong Kong have migrated to the Mainland.
The changing economic structure has resulted in increased cross-border flows of people in the Hong Kong-China border region. The number of cross-boundary passenger trips recorded by the Hong Kong Government indicated continuous increase over the past few years with more being for business and work purposes. Government statistics showed that in 2006 102,000 Hong Kong citizens (3% of the working population) worked in the Mainland, representing a 29% increase in five years.
Working in the Mainland has indirectly induced cross-border marriage. In the 1990s, there were already around 2,000 cross-border marriages each year. But since 2004, the number rose sharply and in 2005 the figure climbed to 29,800. The majority of the wives were from the Mainland. Correspondingly, the number of babies born to Mainland mothers in Hong Kong has surged from several hundred a year in the late 1990s to 15,000 in 2006.
Cross-border population mobility and marriages have given rise to two major non-traditional family forms. First, the wife, who is a Mainlander, stays in the Mainland with the husband working in Hong Kong and visiting her periodically. Second, regardless of the place of origin of the wife (a native Hong Konger or one who immigrates to Hong Kong from the Mainland), the couple settles in Hong Kong but the husband continues to work in the Mainland.
No matter which form is taken, it is quite clear that when the couple have a child, they will strive to bring or leave the children in Hong Kong rather than in the Mainland, hoping they can achieve better schooling and prospects. These children, though structurally speaking they grow up in dual-parent families, in reality lack the care of one parent. In this case, where the mother stays in Hong Kong, the child still lacks the care of the father who has to work frequently in the Mainland. Worse still, if the mother stays in the Mainland, the child would be taken care of mainly by the grandparents.
It has been argued that with globalisation people no longer necessarily assign primary value to the biological family. Technological changes such as e-mail and the telephone allow the maintenance of sustained social relationships outside the boundaries of local space and time. However, in Hong Kong, the functioning of these family forms is far less satisfactory. First of all, the relationship established by two people with different cultural backgrounds and maintained through periodic visits proved to be vulnerable. Second, the absence of a parent in the family presents an insecure environment for the children, who consequently suffer because of inadequate care. In 2007 there have been a number of incidents where children of Mainland/Hong Kong cross-border marriages were lost or injured through accidents when they were left alone. Many social workers in Hong Kong believe that these were just the tip of the iceberg. Many working-class families living in remote areas in Hong Kong are poor and lack the resources to provide care and support for their children.
In addition, we are also concerned about the rising incidents of family violence in Hong Kong. In the first six months of this year, 3,702 incidents were reported, representing an average of 20 cases per day. A number of these were between the female immigrant from the Mainland and her “old and poor” husband in Hong Kong. Tension often arises because of cultural difference between the couple and the wife’s disenchantment with the economic reality of the family in Hong Kong. How can we expect that the children can grow up healthily in such a family environment? In recent years, rates of student suicide, school bullying, teenage violence and substance abuse have reached alarming levels in districts where families with immigrant mothers are numerous. I do not mean to blame them or label them, but the situations of the children cause us concern.
Social service agencies in Hong Kong are aware of the problems and provide different services supporting these families. We provide inter-country counselling services and cross-border support services. By setting up office in the Mainland, social workers can provide counselling services to cross-border couples before their partners come to Hong Kong. Counselling service and mutual support groups on marriage and childcare are provided in Hong Kong. Women’s shelters have been set up to provide protection to women who are abused by their husbands.
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