Revisiting the Pattern of Youth Transition: The Interrelationship between Labor Market Insecurity and Residential Autonomy Among Young Working People in Hong Kong

Leaving the family of origin and setting up one’s own household is one types of youth transition (GoCorijin & Klijzing, 2001; Manzoni, 2016; Nico, 2016; Settersten, 2012) , and represents one of the key indicators of the transition from younghood to adulthood. Domestic transition not only implies financially independent, but also reaching the greater social autonomy for young people.

The striving for residential autonomy is hindered by a lack of sufficient financial resources. Most underclass youth in Hong Kong are suffering from precarious employment. Several structural conditions have been identified in the transitional process from family of origin to family of destination, and from residence with parents to living away from parents (Chisholm 1993), including, flexible specialization in workplace, insecure employment, and families’ cultural capital in a time of labor uncertainty. It is found that those impacts not only reshape the experiences in youth transition, but also make domestic transition become more delayed and highly fragmented.

Against the above social backdrop, this research aims to investigate how labour market exclusion and job insecurity affect the transition out of the parental home for young people in Hong Kong, and investigate how labour market conditions influences the attainment of housing autonomy, several dimensions are particularly examined: gender, type of employment, monthly income and occupations.

The research conducted as quantitative study and used the telephone survey to collect data. 1000 young people aged between 20 to 34 years old with Hong Kong permanent residential status and full-time employment status were targeted. This research contributes further studies on youth, particularly in the field of youth transition in pan-pacific regions. The similar research topic is underdeveloped in East-Asia countries. It is worth further extending as a comparative research to compare the patterns of youth transition between Europe and East Asia countries.