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ABSTRACT
This article traces how citizenship in Hong Kong is constructed via familial tropes that privilege sameness and a politics of identification; this rhetorical representation, I argue, not only perpetuates a jus sanguinis model of citizenship that privileges ethnic blood ties, but also allows the state and the dominant citizenry to justify neoliberal and racist practices that exclude brown bodies. By analyzing the citizenship claims made by the marginalized South Asian community in Hong Kong and the subsequent responses they receive from the mainstream public, I demonstrate that racialized populations face a rhetorical double bind: on the one hand, they must deploy the familial metaphors commonly used by the existing citizenry to demonstrate their sense of belonging, but, on the other hand, such tropes reinscribe them in a power hierarchy that undermines their subjectivity. This case study illuminates that while it is commonly seen as a viable rhetorical tactic for marginalized rhetors to resist and participate, the repurposing and redeployment of dominant tropes have significant limitations as they are constricted by power structures that are staunchly in place.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their generous and constructive feedback.
Notes
1 “I’m a Hongkonger—Q Bo Bo.” Eastweek Magazine, last modified July 12, 2012, Accessed January 3, 2017. eastweek.my-magazine.me/main/20862
2 “Q Bo Bo Thankful for Netizens’ Support.” The Sun, last modified July 17, 2012, Accessed December 15, 2016. the-sun.on.cc/cnt/entertainment/20120717/00470_052.html?pubdate=20120717
3 “Q Bo Bo Leaves Hong Kong.” Apple Daily, last modified May 14, 2013, Accessed December 27, 2016. chiuhk.apple.nextmedia.com/entertainment/art/20130514/18258823
4 While disproportionate number of South Asians in Hong Kong are working class or poor because of systematic marginalization, this group of petitioners is composed entirely of middle-class professionals. Their social status and education background give them access to sympathetic politicians and local media; they also help destigmatize the South Asian community and garner more mainstream support. Kam-Yee Law and Kim-Ming Lee, “Socio-Political Embeddings of South Asian Ethnic Minorities’ Economic Situations in Hong Kong,” Journal of Contemporary China 22, no. 84 (November 1, 2013): 984–1005, doi:10.1080/10670564.2013.795312.
5 Joanna Chiu, “Ethnic Minorities Make Joint Application for Chinese Citizenship,” South China Morning Post, last modified September 25, 2015, Accessed January 25, 2017. www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1226242/ethnic-minorities-make-joint-application-chinese-citizenship; “Rooted in Hong Kong for a Hundred Years, Pakistani Man Rejected for Naturalization; Reason from Immigration Department: No Chinese Close Relatives,” Apple Daily, last modified December 13, 2012, Accessed January 25, 2017. hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/20121213/18099692
6 Since the Hong Kong government does not release any statistics on naturalization cases based on race and ethnicity, activists and journalists could only conjecture that white expatriates do not experience the same kind of barrier when applying for naturalization. Sijia Jiang, “More Hong Kong Expats Seeking Chinese Citizenship, Minorities Left Out in the Cold,” South China Morning Post, last modified May 30, 2014, Accessed 29 January, 2016. www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1521247/more-expats-seek-chinese-citizenship-minorities-left-out-cold
7 John Nguyet Erni and Lisa Yuk-ming Leung, Understanding South Asian Minorities in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014), 56.
8 Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 59–61.
9 Shui-Yin Sharon Yam, “Education and Transnational Nationalism: The Rhetoric of Integration in Chinese National and Moral Education in Hong Kong,” Howard Journal of Communications 27, no. 1 (January 2, 2016): 38–52, doi:10.1080/10646175.2015.1080639.
10 Rebecca Dingo, Networking Arguments: Rhetoric, Transnational Feminism, and Public Policy Writing, 1st ed. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); Aihwa Ong, Buddha is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
11 Jennifer Wingard, Branded Bodies, Rhetoric, and the Neoliberal Nation-State (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015).
12 Amy J. Wan, Producing Good Citizens: Literacy Training in Anxious Times (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), 8.
13 I am aware that the conferral of legal citizenship status does not necessarily entail equality among citizens across racial, class, and power difference. However, as Luis F. B. Plascencia, Linda Bosniak, and Judith Butler point out, legal citizenship remains affectively and politically significant for marginalized Others. Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Judith Butler, “Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?,” Differences 13, no. 1 (January 1, 2002): 14–44, doi:10.1215/10407391-13-1-14; Luis F. B. Plascencia, Disenchanting Citizenship: Mexican Migrants and the Boundaries of Belonging (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 187.
14 Interviewed in Shankar Vedantam, Our Politics, Our Parenting-Hidden Brain 44, podcast audio, MP3, 23:17. Accessed May 14, 2017. http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510308/hidden-brain
15 Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 1997), 5.
16 Lauren Berlant, “The Theory of Infantile Citizenship,” Public Culture 5, no. 3 (March 20, 1993): 395–410, doi:10.1215/08992363-5-3-395.
17 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
18 Mary E. McCoy, “Purifying Islam in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia: Corporatist Metaphors and the Rise of Religious Intolerance,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 16, no. 2 (2013): 275–316, doi:10.14321/rhetpublaffa.16.2.0275, 279.
19 Sara Ahmed, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness,” Feminist Theory 8, no. 2 (August 1, 2007): 149–68, doi:10.1177/1464700107078139.
20 For critiques of citizenship as exclusionary mechanisms, see Amy L. Brandzel, Against Citizenship: The Violence of the Normative (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016); Sara McKinnon, Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016); Berlant, The Queen of America; Chandan Reddy, Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the US State (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2011); Wingard, Branded Bodies.
21 Leo Chavez examines how anti-immigration sentiments extends to children born to mothers who are undocumented. Leo Chavez, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 88. For more critiques on public discourse against pregnant migrant women, see Eithne Luibhéid, Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013); Wingard, Branded Bodies; Shui-yin Sharon Yam, “Affective Economies and Alienizing Discourse: Citizenship and Maternity Tourism in Hong Kong,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46, no. 5 (October 19, 2016): 410–33, doi:10.1080/02773945.2016.1159721.
22 Brandzel, Against Citizenship, xiv.
23 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington, 8th ed. (New York, NY: Black Cat, 1968).
24 Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
25 Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 26.
26 Ahmed, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness,” 155.
27 My argument here builds upon scholarship on recognition and subjectivity, particularly that of Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998); and Oliver, Witnessing.
28 Erni and Leung, Understanding South Asian Minorities in Hong Kong, 5.
29 Diane Deane, “Hong Kong Minorities Fear their Stateless Future,” Washington Post, last modified July 1, 1993, Accessed January 29, 2017. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/07/01/hong-kong-minorities-fear-their-stateless-future/0b415792-ba77-4cf0-b421-745004351fbc/?utm_term=.372f9fe6c6e8
30 One obtains permanent residency status in Hong Kong either by being born in the SAR or through formal application after residing in the city for over seven years. Migrant domestic workers, however, are not eligible to apply regardless of the length of their stay. “Eligibility for the Right of Abode in the HKSAR,” Hong Kong Immigration Department, Accessed August 7, 2017, last modified December 15, 2016. http://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/roa/eligible.html
31 Erni and Leung, Understanding South Asian Minorities in Hong Kong.
32 Hon-Chu Leung, “Politics of Incorporation and Exclusion: Immigration and Citizenship Issues,” in Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation, and the Global City, ed. Agnes S. Ku and Ngai Pun (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 87–102.
33 Barry Sautman, “Hong Kong as a Semi-Ethnocracy: ‘Race,’ Migration, and Citizenship in a Globalized Region,” in Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong, 104; “The Demographics: Ethnic Groups,” The Government of the Hong Kong SAR, last modified November 28, 2016, Accessed February 2, 2017. www.had.gov.hk/rru/english/info/info_dem.html
34 Sautman, “Hong Kong as a Semi-Ethnocracy,” 104.
35 Sautman, “Hong Kong as a Semi-Ethnocracy,” 104.
36 Barry Sautman and Ellen Kneehans, “The Politics of Racial Discrimination in Hong Kong,” Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies 2002, no. 2, Article 1. http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mscas/vol2002/iss2/1
37 “Carrie Lam: Mainland Newcomers are Members of the Big Hong Kong Family,” Asia Pacific News, last modified September 21, 2013, zh.apdnews.com/education/universities/7343.html; Hong Kong Connections, “Unclear Identity,” Radio Television Hong Kong, October 15, 2012. http://podcast.rthk.hk/podcast/item_epi.php?pid=244&lang=en-US&id=25039. For discussions on the empty promises of citizenship, see Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2011); Brandzel, Against Citizenship.
38 Hon-Chu Leung, “Politics of Incorporation and Exclusion,” 89.
39 Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Hon-Chu Leung, “Politics of Incorporation and Exclusion.”
40 Hon-Chu Leung, “Politics of Incorporation and Exclusion,” 87.
41 Edward Vickers, In Search of an Identity: The Politics of History as a School Subject in Hong Kong, 1960s-2005 (Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, Hong Kong University, 2007).
42 Shao Dan, “Chinese by Definition: Nationality Law, Jus Sanguinis, and State Succession, 1909–1980,” Twentieth-Century China 35, no. 1 (2009): 4. Jus sanguinis, in Latin, means “right of blood.” It is often juxtaposed to the jus soli—right of soil or birthplace—model, where citizenship is granted to anyone born on the soil of the sovereign state.
43 “Nationality Law of the People’s Republic of China,” The Government of the Hong Kong SAR, last modified March, 2010, Accessed January 25, 2017. www.gov.hk/en/residents/immigration/chinese/law.htm
44 “Application for Naturalisation as a Chinese National,” Hong Kong Immigration Department, Accessed August 7, 2017, last modified December 20, 2016. http://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/chinese_nationality/Application_for_Naturalization_as_a_Chinese_National.html. The rest of the factors to be considered are:
whether you have the right of abode in Hong Kong; whether your habitual residence is in Hong Kong; whether the principal members of your family (spouse and minor children) are in Hong Kong; whether you have a reasonable income to support yourself and your family; whether you have paid taxes in accordance with the law; whether you are of good character and sound mind; whether you have sufficient knowledge of the Chinese language; whether you intend to continue to live in Hong Kong in case your naturalization application is approved; whether there are other legitimate reasons to support your application.
45 Sijia Jiang, “More Hong Kong Expats Seeking Chinese Citizenship.”
46 Grace Kyungwon Hong, “Existentially Surplus Women of Color Feminism and the New Crises of Capitalism,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 18, no. 1 (January 1, 2012): 87–106, doi:10.1215/10642684-1422152, 94.
47 “Foreign Helpers’ Final Loss: Cried for Unfairness.” Apple Daily, last modified March 26, 2013, Accessed December 11, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7LnWdXLcwI
48 For more in-depth discussions on why mainstream Hongkongers perceive mainland Chinese as a threat, see Yam, “Affective Economies and Alienizing Discourse.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46, no. 5 (October 19, 2016): 410–33. doi:10.1080/02773945.2016.1159721
49 “Unclear Identity.”
50 John Torpey, “States and the Regulation of Migration in the Twentieth-Century North Atlantic World,” in The Wall Around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe, ed. Peter Andreas and Timothy Snyder (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 37.
51 Kate Elizabeth Vieira, “‘American by Paper’: Assimilation and Documentation in a Biliterate, Bi-Ethnic Immigrant Community,” College English 73, no. 1 (September 2010): 50–72.
52 Vieira, “American by Paper,” 54.
53 “Unclear Identity.”
54 Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (London; New York: Routledge, 2000).
55 Ahmed, Strange Encounters, 87.
56 “Unclear Identity.”
57 “Unclear Identity.”
58 “Unclear Identity.”
59 “Unclear Identity.”
60 “Unclear Identity.”
61 Ahmed, Strange Encounters.
62 Tuk-ming Yeung, “Pakistani Girl with a Hongkonger's Heart” Sina News Hong Kong, last modified November 18, 2012, Accessed March 8, 2016. www.life.mingpao.com/cfm/dailynews3b.cfm?File=20121118/nalgg/gga1.txt
63 Yeung, “Pakistani Girl with a Hongkonger's Heart”; Ngoi-yee Margaret Ng, “Maggie’s Story,” Yahoo! News Hong Kong, last modified November 26, 2012, Accessed August 8, 2017. https://hk.news.yahoo.com/blogs/margaretng/%E7%BE%8E%E5%A7%AC%E7%9A%84%E6%95%85%E4%BA%8B-161037010.html
64 Janet Carsten, “The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood, and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi,” American Ethnologist 22, no. 2 (1995): 223–41.
65 Janet Carsten, After Kinship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 140.
66 Ng, “Maggie’s Story.”
67 Wingard, Branded Bodies, 47.
68 Wingard, Branded Bodies, 47.
69 Yeung, “Pakistani Girl with a Hongkonger’s Heart.”
70 Simpson Cheung, “Hong Kong-Born Adoptee Wins Fight for Chinese Nationality,” South China Morning Post, last modified November 18, 2012, Accessed February 16, 2016. www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1084957/hong-kong-born-adoptee-wins-fight-chinese-nationality
71 Cheung, “Hong Kong-Born Adoptee Wins Fight for Chinese Nationality”; Yeung, “Pakistani Girl with a Hongkonger’s Heart.”
72 Ahmed, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness,” 154.
73 Cheung Mung-kit, “Eight-dimensional Personalities: CAS Member of Pakistani Descent Turned Golden Master of Ceremony,” Apple Daily, last modified December 24, 2012, Accessed January 28, 2015. http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/20101224/14800182; “Hong Kong Civil Aid Service Welcomes Ethnic Minorities,” AM 730, last modified December 24, 2010, Accessed February 15, 2017. http://archive.am730.com.hk/article-37983
74 Cheung Mung-kit, “Eight-dimensional Personalities: CAS Member of Pakistani Descent Turned Golden Master of Ceremony,” Apple Daily, last modified December 24, 2012, Accessed January 28, 2015. http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/20101224/14800182
75 E.g., Dingo, Networking Arguments; Wendy Hesford, Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, and Feminisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).
76 “Unclear Identity.”
77 “Unclear Identity.”
78 CNBC, 2017, “CNBC Transcript: Allan Zeman, Founder & Chairman, Lan Kwai Fong Group,” CNBC, April 28. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/28/cnbc-transcript-allan-zeman-founder-chairman-lan-kwai-fong-group.html; Maggie Hiufu Wong, “Lan Kwai Fong: The Hottest Place to Party in the World?,” CNN, Accessed May 15, 2017. http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/03/travel/lan-kwai-fong-allan-zeman-interview/index.html.
79 Vivian Wai-yin Kwok, 2007, “Allan Zeman: Hong Kong’s Mouse Killer,” Forbes, February 13. https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/13/zeman-ocean-park-face-cx_vk_0213autofacescan01.html
80 Vickers, In Search of an Identity.
81 For detailed analysis on inferiority complex and the desire among the colonized to become white, see Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox, revised ed. (New York: Grove Press, 2008).
82 “Unclear Identity.”
83 Erni and Leung, Understanding South Asian Minorities in Hong Kong.
84 “Unclear Identity.”
85 “Unclear Identity.”
86 “Unclear Identity.”
87 E.g., Dingo, Networking Arguments; Rebecca Dingo and J. Blake Scott, eds, The Megarhetorics of Global Development, 1st ed. (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).