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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
The study of migration is generally conducted along the lines of communication theory and it is assumed that we deal with a source, a medium of transfer and a receiver. An investigation of a particular migratory movement should ideally embrace two discrete geographical territories and their socio–cultural contents, and the means providing passage from one to the other. The communication model provides an overview understanding. However, when anthropologists have scrutinized migratory movements, the clear–cut categories of source and receiver have turned out to be less obvious. In this paper it is my intention to give an ethnographical account for the “end” of a channel in a process of migration, the final stage of a transfer in which people who are on the move reach their destinations. It is obvious that “destination” is not the same thing as “terminal.” Often people move in stages, and it is quite possible that what we regard as a destination in one study would turn out to be a stage in a chain of stages in a future enquiry.
* Field work in the New Territories was conducted between June 1967 and February 1968 and between June and September 1969. Generous financial support was provided by the Swedish Research Council for the Humanities. Subsidiary grants from the University of Stockholm and the Nathhorst Foundation allowed me to draft this essay in the Harvard–Yenching Institute, Harvard University, in 1970. I wish to thank that Institute for its hospitality. Local Hong Kong names are given in the official Cantonese versions.
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