内地专业人才在香港的社会适应问题及其应对策略

Hong Kong's Professional Immigrants from China's Mainland and Their Strategies of Adaptation

是次研究深入访问了30个在港工作的内地专业人士。透过工作和职业发展、家庭关系、人际交往、文化差异和冲突四个方面来了解内地专才所面对的适应问题及其所采取的应对策略。在适应问题方面,内地专才感受最多的是香港工作文化和自己原居地的不同。忙碌的被合理化,工作压力的难以负荷,同事之间过度保护自己的私隐,语言问题造成的心理隔阂,生活经历和思维方式的差异形成的心理距离,以及香港城市设计和建筑风格缺乏"小小区"的营建,很多内地专才觉得自己始终融不进香港。专才所采取的应对策略主要包括:认知上对自己处境的积极解释,强调边缘性的竞争优势;在行为策略方面,一方面增强代际支持,另一方面通过跨越两地的消费与社交来维持和强化两地的社会网络,以应付在香港所面对的疏离困境。

This essay is based on a 2007-2008 study in which we interviewed 30 professional immigrants from China's Mainland now working and living in Hong Kong.We focussed on four areas of their immigrant adjustment:work,family,social relations,and culture contact. Their major adjustment difficulty was in coping with differences in work culture between the mainland and Hong Kong.Our respondents reported on stresses and strains arising from heavy workload,long work hours,sensitivity about interpersonal privacy in the workplace,insurmountable language barriers,and Hong Kong's city planning not conducive to living as a community—as a result of which they experienced alienation and failed to integrate into Hong Kong society.These professional immigrants from the mainland resorted to cognitive coping:rationalization or'positive'attribution about their present life condition,emphasizing the paradox that their social marginality,their'in-betweenness',could well be a competitive advantage to be put to good use while bridging the Hong Kong and China economies.In terms of behavioral coping,they strove to strengthen intergenerational solidarity and cooperativeness within the extended family,and engaged in various transnational practices of shuttling between Hong Kong and the mainland to cultivate,consolidate and utilize cross-border social networks—all in attempt to maximize these strategies' expressive and instrumental functions.