Political efficacy and fertility intentions: A survey experiment study in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.

The decline in fertility is a pressing issue for most advanced economies. Previous studies on fertility have not paid enough attention to politics. This study investigates the role of political efficacy on people's fertility intentions in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore - three advanced economies with different political regimes. We also uncover how such a relationship varies depending on people's political attitudes. This study gathered data from three online surveys with a factorial experiment design in Hong Kong (N = 1895), Taiwan (N = 1971), and Singapore (N = 1985). The results of random-intercept regression analyses show that the impact of political efficacy varies depending on the context. The results indicate that political efficacy positively impacts fertility intentions in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where there are active political movements, especially among those who support democratic values. In Singapore, where there is a lack of active political movements, political efficacy has a lesser impact on fertility intentions. In modern societies with advanced economies and influential political voices from civil society, promoting citizens' involvement in policymaking may be a beneficial strategy to increase fertility rates.

"I Wish I Were a Plumber!": Transnational Class Re-Constructions Across Migrant Experiences Among Hong Kong's Professionals and Managers.

This study examines processes of class construction within a transnational community of professionals and managers who are emigrants, returnees, and non-migrants. Building on Bourdieu's class analysis and literature on transnational migration, we examine how class statuses are supported by moral claims based on varying transnational mobility strategies. We draw our results from qualitative interviews with 45 Hong Kong respondents in Hong Kong and Canada. We find that despite Hong Kong emigrants' loss of economic capital due to de-professionalization, their cultural and symbolic claims frame an alternative set of norms about their life successes. Returnees claim to have the best of both worlds having amassed economic capital, while making social distinctions from stayers in terms of their globalized cosmopolitan imaginaries. Stayers appear envious of emigrants' and returnees' flexibility and seek to accumulate economic capital for future retirement migration or to send their children abroad. Respondents' moralizing discourses reveal a social field defining within class distinctions apart from hyper concerns of upward mobility through material gains. Nuanced class distinctions articulate values around freedom of space, time, and expression not readily accessible to residents remaining in Hong Kong.