本文以2006年“香港社会流动与机会”调查的资料为基础,分析当前香港社会的机会结构、社会流动及阶级结构的变化。初步观察所得,香港社会的阶级结构、社会流动机会并未如一些评论所预言般,因为经济衰退及转型以至中产阶级消失或社会流动逆转。经过亚洲金融风暴之后,香港社会仍有上向社会流动的机会。不过,随着阶级结构制度化,社会流动越来越由教育决定,大部分人都挤在教育渠道之内进行竞争,气氛日趋紧张。香港社会所面对的挑战,并不是中产阶级消失,或出现大规模“下流”,而是在内地与香港经济融合、香港经济转型的过程中,中产阶级的内部按其经济功能而分裂为“在地的”和“流动的”中产,他们于这个社会经济转变中各有不同遭遇。
<<Nowadays,the impacts of economic restructuring on reshaping of the social structure are widely perceived as a cause of growing frustrations and discontents. Recent discussions of the arrival of an M-form society and a shrinking middle class(and thus a decrease in opportunity of upward social mobility)in many Asian societies are symptomatic of such growing fears of a major transformation of the opportunity structure of the former newly industrialized economies(NIEs)such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is suggested that the earlier developmental drive of these NIEs has been exhausted and a fall of economic growth rate and the maturation of the economy have reversed the trend of a loosening of the social structure and an increase in opportunity for mobility. Informed by the 2006 Social Mobility Survey,this paper is an attempt to look at the changing situation of the middle class and to examine the above questions in the light of empirical findings. It is contended that there is no sign of a disappearance of the middle class or a drastic decline in the openness of Hong Kong’s social structure. People are still able to climb up the social ladder via the channel of education. The sources of growing anxiety seem to fall not in the rise of social closure but in the unevenness of new opportunities shaped by Hong Kong’s socio-economic integration with China.
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