This book provides an examination of the wealthy migrants who left East Asia, notably Hong Kong and Taiwan, and migrated to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, in the 1980s and 1990s. Through extensive interviewing and access to databases in Canada and Hong Kong over a 15 year period, Ley traces their migration career, from pre-migration, to arrival in Canada, to housing and business experiences in Vancouver, and for many, the continuing circular migration across the Pacific.

The book traces the attempts of Canada to establish governance mechanisms to contain these migrants as national citizens, and the immigrants' reluctance to be contained. Considering the differential responses of men, women, and children within the family unit, the book also emphasises the role of distance, place, and space in confounding the transnational objectives of the immigrants and the globalizing aspirations of the neo-liberal state.

David Ley is Canada Research Chair of Geography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His research examines the social geography of gateway cities, including relations between immigration and urbanisation, and gentrification and housing markets. He is the author of The New Middle Class and the Remaking of the Central City (1996), and A Social Geography of the City (1983), co-author of Neighbourhood Organizations and the Welfare State (1994), and co-editor of Place/Culture/Representation (1993). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Pierre Trudeau Foundation.