In 1557, Macau seemed just like any other sleepy fishing village in Southern China, except it was an outpost for seafarers and merchants to explore, settle and exchange goods for survival outside of their native land. Macau became the birthplace for a new group of Luso-Asian ‘mestiços’ or ‘filhos da terra’ for the following four centuries, creating a new cultural heritage: a hybrid of East and West, along with its very own distinctive creole – derived from 12th century archaic Portuguese, and infused with other influences from the maritime explorations of the Far East.  
By the 20th century, the mestiço population began to expand and some travelled overseas, creating ‘casas’ or pockets of diasporic communities for better social-political stability and economic prosperity. This pattern of migration continued in various ‘phases’ up until the 1999 – the eventual return of sovereignty to Chinese possession from the Portuguese government (Pina Cabral, 2002).  The migratory patterns had not only formed new settlements of second or third generation of Macanese immigrants born into their new host countries, at the same time, severely draining the cultural miscegenation mix in Macau.   
The authors of this paper will present and discuss some of the reasons for migration as well as their choices for settlement, presenting statistical and demographic information where possible. In addition, the authors will also provide an account of the social and demographic structures of Macau and its post 1999 identity as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) operating under the demise of a One Country, Two Systems Policy.