CARESCAPES: TRANSNATIONAL URBAN REDEVELOPMENT OF THE POST-COLONIAL HONG KONG

Abstract

Drawing upon the massive redevelopment catalyzed by the government-led urban renewal in Hong Kong in the past two decades, this research pays attention to how biased normalization of care and dependency contributes to a neoliberal regime of urban redevelopment that dictates more than 200 urban renewal projects. It examines the ways in which the regime reconfigures the daily existence of urban citizens, and moreover, the intense competition among Pearl River Delta cities. Taking a transnational perspective from below, it reveals how the denial has affected a particular population on the move and more importantly, unsettled the civil society. By theorizing "carescapes" as a heuristic device, it trace the ways in which the transnational circulation of rent/capital travels across borders at the cost of care and needs. It illuminates the multiple displacements of care: the displacement of reproductive space and nested dependency relations; the displacement of urban residents to make room for the elite visitors; the displacement of citizens on a transnational scale, including both the underprivileged migrants and the elite expatriates who struggle to stay put in the liquid labor market.