Social mobility in Hong Kong

This thesis examines the micro-process of social mobility in modern Hong Kong. It also studies Hong Kong's mobility regime in a conventional macro-comparative fashion. By applying the core model of social fluidity developed in the CASMIN (Comparative Analysis of Social Mobility in Industrial Nations) project to the mobility data collected in the 1989 Hong Kong Social Mobility Survey, I point to several distinctive features of Hong Kong's mobility regime. This exercise also allows me to engage in the ongoing debate concerning the degree of commonality and variation in relative mobility rates across industrial nations. Having made this macrocomparison, I turn to explore the micro-mobility process. Drawing on worklife data collected in the 1991-92 follow-up study, I consider the following issues: (a) typical mobility paths in Hong Kong, (b) how social networks facilitate the job search process, and (c) how career beginning affects subsequent mobility outcome. In this study, I also test and apply a new technique, Optimal Matching Analysis, which compares and classifies complete career sequences. Thus, apart from offering substantive findings on social mobility in Hong Kong, this thesis also seeks to make a technical contribution to the analysis of life course data