Page 53 - IJPS-9-1

International Journal of
Population Studies Transportation assimilation in Hong Kong

work is a more routine process in which the random shifting Department of Hong Kong, which started in August 2017,
routes or waving to the minibus between stations are less all newly registered minibuses must be equipped with a
involved. The relatively lower difficulty in this process stop button. This requirement would free passengers from
might explain the models’ significant but small effect size. shouting “chin min yau lok” (stop at the front), thus easing
Second, to explore the dynamic mode of integration, we immigrants’ procedures to take the minibus. Nevertheless,
could not include the locals in our model. We acknowledge the minibus deserves more scholarly attention as a unique
that comparing immigrants to the locals is a more and culturally loaded transportation mode in Hong Kong.
common practice in integration studies. Some research
on immigrants’ integration into the destination also used Acknowledgments
a similar approach to ours (Martinović, 2013; Martinovic The first author thanks her father for taking pictures of the
et al., 2009). Third, we could not obtain information on the minibusses. The first author wants to provide a brief
initial ethnic concentration when immigrants first arrived background of writing the paper. She has lived in Hong Kong
in Hong Kong, which becomes impossible to infer whether as an immigrant for several years but was always intimidated
the initial district-level ethnic diversity was important for by taking the minibus. The primary reason is that she does
one’s social integration. Fourth, as a large-scale quantitative not speak perfect Cantonese and is not very familiar with the
study, we lack depth in interpreting inter-ethnic differences topography in Hong Kong. However, during the Umbrella
in transportation adaptation. The future research might Movement, the metro service, and the mode of transportation,
want to conduct interviews with immigrants from different which she relied on the most, halted due to the protest. The
ethnic groups regarding their minibus ridership. only possible transportation route to her workplace was the
5. Conclusion minibus. Therefore, she picked up some Cantonese and forced
herself to step on the very secretive and culturally-loaded
Our paper provides another avenue for studying immigrant public transportation option in Hong Kong, and she liked it.
adaptation by exploring the transportation mode of
immigrants. By looking at immigrants’ minibus ridership Funding
throughout the years, our research zooms in on a routine The authors did not receive any funding for this research.
activity to delineate immigrants’ integration process in
Hong Kong. This research creatively examines immigration Conflict of interest
and mobility in a non-traditional immigrant region, which
extends the scope of the application of immigration theories. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
In addition, our research further expands transportation Author contributions
socialization studies by adding the dynamic mode of
integration of immigrants. Capitalizing on a pooled set of Conceptualization: Skylar Biyang Sun, Xiaohang Zhao
census data and relying on linear probability models, we Data curation: Skylar Biyang Sun, Xiaohang Zhao
confirmed several expectations on immigrants’ minibus
taking in Hong Kong. By dissecting the main effects from Formal analysis: Skylar Biyang Sun
the total effects of transportation assimilation, we applied Methodology: Skylar Biyang Sun, Xiaohang Zhao
general theories on interethnic contacts to a specific
type of interethnic contact, for example, transportation Writing – original draft: Skylar Biyang Sun
assimilation as a typical type of non-leisure contact. Writing – review & editing: Skylar Biyang Sun, Xiaohang
One innovation in this study is differentiating the effects Zhao, Guixiang Zhang
between entry and long-term differences in the process. Ethics approval and consent to participate
Compared to other immigration research on Hong Kong,
one major contribution of our study is using a regionally Not applicable.
representative dataset to explore immigrants’ social
integration into the local society. Due to data limitations, Consent for publication
the previous Hong Kong studies had either only focused Not applicable.
on economic integration (Tong et al., 2018; Zhang & Wu,
2011) or social integration with a much smaller sample size Availability of data
(Chen et al., 2019). Interested scholars may apply to the Census and Statistics
From a more local level, our research efficiently captures Department of Hong Kong to obtain the microdata used
a fleeting scene in Hong Kong. According to the Transport in this research.

Volume 9 Issue 1 (2023) 47 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.0386