How pre- and post-migratory cultural capital and practices enable adaptation competence: insights from the agentic process of Chinese migrants in Hong Kong

Abstract

Most migration research tends to focus on migrants' adaptation challenges, with very few studies paying attention to the ways and the agentic process through which they cope with migratory difficulties. Drawing on the lens of structure-agency and practice theories, this study explores the even less attended area of sources of socialisation. Through biographical narrative interviews, we focus on how immigrants from Mainland China and Taiwan acquire cultural capital of agentic competencies for adaptations in Hong Kong, a context where the three places share ethnic roots yet exhibit dissimilar socio-cultural practices that may shed light on regional migration to developed cities and metropolises. Adopting a processual view to capture the temporal dynamics of cultural coping, the study re-conceptualises primary and secondary socialisation to reveal the prominence of pre-migratory knowledge in adaptation. Other sources, including workplace and social media groups, also found changing saliency in different coping stages but necessitate migrants' differentiating cultural judgement. Convertibility and mutual enabling among economic, social and cultural capital are also highly evident. Above all, successful adaptation relies on migrants' appreciative attitude and readiness to off-load incompatible pre-existing cultural capital, which extends our current understanding that the a.gentic process entails not only accumulating field-specific capital.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2026 · DOI ↗