While global capital and trade flows continue to increase, and indeed to accelerate, labor is the factor whose mobility always seems to lag. Political and cultural constraints have slowed the formulation of economically driven migration policies. As a result, people around the world have been resorting to a much more idiosyncratic means of migration: the pursuit of citizenship.
Last week, the border crossings between Hong Kong and mainland China became the setting for one of the most extreme reactions against one of the most extreme forms of this pursuit. According to news reports, Hong Kong immigration officers are now allowed to stop women in the final stages of pregnancy from entering Hong Kong from mainland China, even using tape measures to ascertain their medical status. The presumption is that they are trying to give birth in Hong Kong so that their children will have a right to residency, and greater economic opportunities, in the wealthy special administration region of China.
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