RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY AND KINSHIP TIES AMONG URBAN CHINESE FAMILIES IN HK
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time the survey was undertaken, most residents had moved into the estate for three years. All had moved from within Hong Kong (including the New Territories).
In the course of our interviews, we asked household heads or their spouses two questions concerning their social contacts after they moved into Oi Man. These were: "Who do you most frequently have round for dinner or an evening at home?” and “Who would you say are the few people whom you most frequently visit or go out together with?" We asked them to select their responses from five categories, "close relatives", "kin", "workmates", "neighbours", and "friends". The definitions of these words were left to them and not probed into. The responses are tabulated in Table 1. It is obvious that the most important social contacts reported were "close relatives."
Table 1 Social Contacts of Oi Man Estate Residents
Social contacts Households that frequently invited social contacts home Households that frequently went out with social contacts Close Relatives 56.2% 50.5% Kin 11.2 13.1 Work-mates 9.8 9.5 Neighbours 1.2 1.2 Friends 11.4 10.2 None 11.4 10.5 Others 1.0 2.6 Total 100.0 (420) 100.0 (420)In the light of differences in the choice of social contacts by manual and non-manual workers shown in studies in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, we tried to relate these responses to the respondents' occupational class (see Table 2). The responses from the 215 manual workers and 87 non-manual workers show that the two occupational classes in Oi Man Estate did not differ significantly in their choice of social contacts at the time of the survey. Manual workers were only slightly more bound to going out with their "close relatives", and non-manual workers with their kin, workmates, and friends. It should be noted, nonetheless, that the income differences of manual and non-manual workers in public housing estates are not greatly different, and this may account partly for the similarities.