Trapped in the current of mobilities: China-Hong Kong cross-border families

What is it about?

This article explores the mechanics, logics and effects of different infrastructures that circumscribe Mainland mothers’ border-crossing experiences and how they respond.

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Why is it important?

Through the complexities of Mainland Chinese pregnant women travelling to Hong Kong to give birth, this article unravels the politics in the infrastructural production of migrant mobilities, and highlights the political agencies of borders to produce unequal access to resources and opportunities. Central to this infrastructuring process is a mismatch between what HK aims at producing and what the mothers desire to become. HK seeks to create a new category of maternity tourists who would pay for the obstetrics service and leave the city; whereas the mothers hope to gain permanent residency, at least for the children if not also for the whole family. This mismatch creates an ‘inflexible,’ vulnerable group of ‘ever-temporary migrants’ in the guise of tourists who are compelled to routinely move back and forth between two sides of the border in order to prolong this temporary status. This example unsettles the common stance that considers migration as a clear-cut change in state-based citizenship status, as well as challenges the simplistic assumption that movement is evidence of mobility. As this article unfolds the workings of the infrastructuring process and the infrastructural trap, it allows a more nuanced understanding of the constitution of mobility injustice.