Courses

Hong Kong is often described as a city built on migration. This upper-year seminar course will consider how scholars have understood the place of migration from the perspective of history, ranging from Hong Kong's emergence as a colonial port city through to key developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will engage with the major issues and questions posed by historians of migration from both local and global perspectives, including political belonging, citizenship, border controls and technologies of exclusion, labour and mobility, and economy and culture. The course is primarily orientated towards guiding students to the completion of a significant independent project in the form of an extended research essay or an archival project. Archival projects will require students to propose, plan, and execute the collection and organization of material that contributes to the recording of Hong Kong history. Examples might include oral histories, the preservation of local community or institutional records, or non-conventional approaches to the collection of historical sources and records. Students should be aware that the focus of this course will change depending on the instructor. In 2025-26 the primary focus will be on South Asian migration to Hong Kong.