The Expat Puzzle
Priya
She arrived in Hong Kong in June 2013 on a Dependent Visa, joining her husband who had moved to the city three years earlier for work. She married in 2012 while still completing her Bachelor of Education in India, and after finishing her exams, she relocated with her husband here. When she first arrived, she wasn’t working, job hunting was difficult, especially without Cantonese and without eligibility for the professional “expat packages” that some corporate migrants receive. After several months of searching, rejections, and one job offer withdrawn because she was on a dependent visa, she eventually paused her career plans and focused on starting a family. It was only years later, once her daughter was older, that she found her way into an educational organization, where she now writes, edits, and coordinates English-language educational programmes for local primary schools.
Priya does not see herself as an “expat” in the corporate sense, nor does she feel represented by the government category of “ethnic minority.” Instead, she uses the word “expat” in her own way, less about visa type or salary package, and more about the simple fact of not being from Hong Kong. “Expat are those who racially do not belong to a particular place,” she says. “I’m one of them, but I still call Hong Kong home.”
Kiran
Kiran grew up in a wealthy family where women were not expected to work in the family business, as she recalls, “I remembered this that my grandfather had said, and so I always put it in my books saying I’ll never work with a family, so I always went out and made my own name.” she set out to “make my own legacy.”
She shows the desire to build a profession that is not inherited but earned. For Kiran, this meant being seen not only as part of a family lineage but as an independent professional. When we ask her about expat identity, she firmly identifies herself as an expat: “I describe myself very much as an expat.”
Hong Kong became “a steppingstone to many steppingstones” in her words. It was the place the steppingstone where she began to shape her legacy. Yet the process was not linear, meeting her local Indian husband shifted her trajectory, anchoring her more permanently in Hong Kong. Family relations reshaped her ambitions, as she says, “Home for me is where my family is.” reminding us that women’s motivations are often negotiated between personal dreams and relational commitments.