Asylum Seeking and the Global City

'Asylum Seeking and the Global City is an impressive ethnographic study of asylum seekers, their transnational networks and survival strategies in the informal economy of Hong Kong. Through his vivid and sensitive depictions of life on the margins, Francesco Vecchio provides a major analysis of the intersections of local and global forces and individual agency in irregular migration and the troubling consequences of contemporary migration control policies and practices. A must-read for all those who are interested in globalisation studies and the criminology of mobility.' - Professor Maggy Lee, Department of Sociology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

'The book Asylum Seeking and the Global City by Dr. Francesco Vecchio is an excellent work. The author relies on his substantial research in the field and previous experience as a NGO worker in Hong Kong to give a rich and thick description of the life of refugees and asylum seekers in that city, one of the best ethnographic accounts of life in Hong Kong. I was deeply impressed with the careful, detailed and thoughtful treatment that Dr.Vecchio gave to the rich empirical material he collected. I found particularly arresting the way in which he was able to show how the conditions and destiny of many migrants are the outcome of an almost heroic struggle between conditions outside of their control and their continuous striving to acquire a measure of power and control over their own lives and destiny. This very presence of "agency" in the migrants’ lives – faced with often overarching economic and political forces – is perhaps the strongest impression with which the reader comes away from this book, where we find a wealth of empirical observation, mixed with very intelligent analysis, and a reflexive empathy for his subjects.’ - Dario Melossi,Professor of Criminology, University of Bologna, Italy

'Compared to most existing literature, Francesco Vecchio’s Asylum seeking and the Global City has the merit of being one of the rare studies in which the connections between economic globalization and migrants’ marginalization are traced through careful and extensive empirical analysis. The book is a remarkably well researched study of asylum seekers’ and refugees’ socio-legal and economic conditions in Hong Kong. Based on long, systematic fieldwork and benefiting from the author’s own experience as a legal aid worker, it’s particularly rich in ethnographic and legal data on both Hong Kong’s migration history and current legal regime. This in itself makes it a valuable tool for practitioners and students interested asylum and migration in South-East Asia.' —Elisa Pascucci, Border Criminologies