Knowledge Migration and the Politics of Innovation

Authors

  • Saskia Witteborn The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Keywords:

digital economy, generation Z, innovation, migration, startups, technology

Abstract

This article illustrates how transborder knowledge migrants cocreate sociotechnical imaginary in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) in the wake of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protests and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through interviews with migrant-led and -staffed startups and analysis of documents published by the Hong Kong SAR government and its institutions, the study shows how these actors shape an imaginary of socioeconomic well-being through technological innovation and diversity. Young people are protagonists in this narrative and are envisioned as transforming desires for political emancipation into desires for self-actualization and creative labor for the common good. The startups’ narrative of growth through technology backs the official narrative of the innovative knowledge society firmly embedded in a sovereign China. By referring to other regions in the world, the study argues that migrants become a socioeconomic prosthesis for a society under pressure as they are implicated in narratives of cultural and economic reproduction that serve political goals.

Author Biography

Saskia Witteborn, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Saskia Witteborn is Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). She received her PhD from the University of Washington. She specializes in critical technology studies and the digital transformation of migration processes and practices. She has worked with migrants in North America, Europe, Asia, and in digital space. She was a visiting scholar at Free University of Berlin, at the Berlin Institute for Empirical Migration and Integration Research at Humboldt University, at Télécom Paris, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research has appeared in leading journals and edited collections, including the Journal of Communication, Cultural Studies, Telematics and Informatics, and the Journal of Refugee Studies. She is author of Unruly Speech: Displacement and the Politics of Transgression (Stanford University Press, 2023), co-editor of The SAGE Handbook of Media and Migration (SAGE, 2020), and co-author of Together (Oxford University Press, 2005). 

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Published

2023-12-26

Issue

Vol. 18 (2024)

Section

Articles

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