Precarity of belonging? Belongingness and race of ethnically diverse young people in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This paper attends to the belongingness of a group of ethnically diverse young people in Hong Kong. The quest for belonging is no less intense for them during the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) movement in Hong Kong. Resulting from such sociopolitical climate are paradoxical questions of who might (not) count as Hong Konger. This study draws on focus groups with ethnically diverse young people conducted at the height of the Anti-ELAB protests. It considers how belonging is segmented across racial lines and different temporal locations. The analysis illustrates tacit links between ethnically diverse young people's non-belonging resulting from their past experiences of structural racism and belonging realized in the collectivity that sits with the movement's sociopolitical climate. The precarity of belongingness, we argue, is contingent upon an acute consciousness and redrawing of cultural membership in Hong Kong's shifting sociopolitical realm.

KEYWORDS:

• Belonging
• race
• ethnic minority
• young people
• anti-ELAB
• Hong Kong

Background

In the decade following Hong Kong's return to China, the discourse of the state has powerfully entered Hong Kong life, but many in Hong Kong have refused to fully accept it, continuing to adhere to the discourse of the market, as we’ve seen. However, might there be an alternative means of “belonging to a nation” other than offered by the discourse of the state? (Mathews, Ma, and Lui 2008, 147)

Mathews, Ma, and Lui’s quote appeared a decade after the handover of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the British rule to China. He pointed to a paradox felt in the city. Business ties with the Mainland aside, the question of belonging in Hong Kong is not always a straightforward matter. Just as the search for “alternative means” of belonging to the nation continues, events and sentiments arising from the 2019 Anti-ELAB movement are signalling a clearer realization about who (should) have a stake and can lay belonging claims to Hong Kong and Mainland China. These events underscore the growing attention to distinct belonging claims made by different population groups and how people embed these claims in their cultural and political affiliations.

This paper illustrates how the Anti-ELAB movement has given rise to racialized expressions of belonging in Hong Kong. At times, research on race and belonging tends to focus on people's loyalty to the nation (Slootman and Duyvendak 2016). Yet, Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region of China governed under the One Country Two Systems (OCTS) constitutional principle, has left open questions of analysing conceptions of belonging, particularly those who are in the minority. Put plainly, if Hong Kong Chinese people question their belonging to the nation in the way Mathews, Ma, and Lui (2008) described above, what would such questions look like for those who are not identified as Chinese? Thus, the intersections between Hong Kong's cultural demographics and socio-political sphere provide a unique prism to explore how social movements engender ethnically diverse people's divergent belonging claims.

Prior to the Anti-ELAB movement, young people have already developed uneasy sentiments about their belonging to Hong Kong and Mainland China that have origins in large-scale protests, known as the Umbrella Movement in 2014. These sentiments were represented in polls, suggesting how young adults developed the “lowest degree of sense of belonging to Hong Kong” (Chiu 2010, S-3), a declining rate of life satisfaction (Shek and Liu 2014), and questions on their belonging in Hong Kong society (Ip 2015; Tang and Yuen 2016). They also speak to some political undercurrents associated with the reunification of Hong Kong with China. A governance lacuna in the OCTS contributed to the Anti-ELAB, in which “Hong Kong found itself encountering an entirely different macro context for handling OCTS” (Lui 2020, 273). Embedded in this macro context was young people's dwindling optimism on Hong Kong's liberal conditions. This political reality, however, was not something that Hong Kong was ready for, particularly during pre-handover times (Lui 2020). Thus, a pronounced rhetoric in the Anti-ELAB movement was the resistance against Mainland China. The resistance was evident in various pro-democracy demonstrations and the Umbrella Movement in 2014.

The Anti-ELAB protests were reportedly triggered by Chan Tong Kai, a fugitive who was found guilty of murder of his girlfriend in Taiwan. The juridical differences between Hong Kong and Taiwan, however, meant that Hong Kong authorities could not transfer Chan to Taiwan to face trial. The barrier then became a rationale for the government to propose the ELAB, which was soon met with strong resistance from Hong Kong's wider community as evidenced by the sporadic protests that lasted 1 year and 4 months (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2022, June 6). The resistance evoked a concern that the bill would cover mainland China in the extradition arrangement. Embedded also within this concern was a fear of the possibility of being transferred to face trial in mainland China if persecuted (Purbrick 2019).

The sentiments around the resistance towards the ELAB was not merely political. It was in part related to the need to redress protracted livelihood issues more proactively and satisfy the city's democratic ideals (Lo, Hung, and Loo 2021). These sentiments, including the mounting distrust towards the government, have morphed into a sociopolitical climate that “gradually embraced the idea that everyday life and political life are inseparable” (Tang and Cheng 2022, 129). In a way, the movement engendered new collective identities that lie a solidarity within Hong Kong's sociopolitical climate and, as we will show below, intergroup relations.

Hong Kong's ethically diverse population and sociopolitical changes

Hong Kong is home to an ethnically diverse residents who make up 8% of the non-Chinese population (Census and Statistics Department 2017). Presently, official statistics identify this population group as “ethnic minorities”, consisting mainly of Filipinos, Indonesians, Indians, Nepalese, Pakistanis, etc. These groups have strong historical ties with Hong Kong. These historical ties are evident in the Indian troops’ involvement in the hoisting of the Union Jack Flag in mid 1800s, the Nepalese Gurkhas who arrived in 1900 (O’Connor 2018), and the first Philippine flag sewn in Hong Kong (Department of Foreign Affairs 2014, May 5). Except foreign domestic workers who are not eligible for permanent residency, “ethnic minorities” may show stronger proclivity to identify Hong Kong as their long-term residential destination (e.g. Ng and Kennedy 2019; Ng, Kennedy, and Hue 2019), where they (or their children) receive education in the local system. For the purposes of this paper, we adopt the term “ethnically diverse” to represent the diverse cultural backgrounds of our sample and individuals of mainly non-Chinese heritage (Table 1).

Table 1. Participant demographics.

Participants	Birthplace	Years of Residence in Hong Kong	Age	Ethnicity	Passport	Gender	Work Status	Highest Level of Education	Current Year of Study
Anne	Philippines	11	24	Filipina	HKSAR	Female	Working	Tertiary	N/A
Cecile	Hong Kong	18	18	Indonesian	Indonesian	Female	Student	Secondary	Year 1
Chris	Philippines	9 years 8 months	21	Filipino	Filipino	Male	Student	Secondary	Year 3
Daisy	Hong Kong	19	23	Chinese	HKSAR	Female	Working	Bachelor	N/A
Joseph	Hong Kong	17 years 10 months	17	Indian	HKSAR	Male	Student	Secondary	Year 1
K	Philippines	23	23	Filipina	HKSAR	Female	Student	Bachelor	N/A
Maya	Hong Kong	4	21	Nepalese	HKSAR	Female	Working	Intermediate	N/A
Nisha	Hong Kong	20 years and 10 months	20	Nepalese	British	Female	Student	Undergraduate	Year 3
Rachel	Hong Kong	21 years 9 months	21	Filipina	Filipino	Female	Student	Associate degree	Year 2
Radhika	Nepal	4	22	Nepalese	Nepali	Female	Student	Intermediate	Year 2
Singh	Hong Kong	15 years 3 months	22	Indian	Indian	Male	Student	Secondary	Year 2
Sonia	Hong Kong	23	23	Pakistani	Pakistani	Female	Seeking employment	Bachelor	N/A

Consisted of Filipinos (n = 5), Nepalese (n = 3), Indians (n = 2), Pakistani (n = 1) and Chinese (n = 1).

Most (n = 8) were born in Hong Kong. The rest (n = 4) were born in their country of origin; these non-Hong Kong born participants had resided in the city from 4 to 11 years.

Academic and social mobility issues of ethnically diverse youth in Hong Kong have been receiving policy concern for quite some time. A widely reported cause of these issues is their lack of Chinese language proficiency (Bhowmik, Kennedy, and Hue 2018). For example, Pakistani girls employ cultural, religious and language strategies to navigate and succeed academically in Hong Kong whilst confronting racial exclusion (Gu 2015). Gu's findings demonstrate the wider “struggles around the determination of what is involved in belonging, in being a member of a community” (Yuval-Davis 2006). The growing anxieties felt by young people raise questions about how they integrate and how they feel “needed and valued” in a society (Stebleton et al. 2014, 9). At stake, therefore, are questions about the extent to which ethnically diverse groups feel included in Hong Kong's current socio-political state.

Ethnically diverse people tend to show lukewarm participation in civic activities (e.g. voting for public officers) (Kapai 2015). Such a general lack of active civic participation raises questions about the extent to which ethno-culturally diverse people are (not) willing to integrate in Hong Kong society. However, this reported lack of civic participation might not extend to Hong Kong's to the sociopolitical context of Anti-ELAB protests. Media reports had documented the support of some ethnically diverse people for the protest movement (Lew 2019, October 30). Their support stemmed in part from a possible a long-held but fraught sense of belonging to Hong Kong (Burkholder 2016; Chor 2019, July 6) and the racial inferiorisation some of these groups faced historically (Leung 2020). The intertwining of Hong Kong's sociopolitical context and the ways in which ethnically diverse people are racialized (Gube and Burkholder 2019) marks the shifting cultural boundaries, thereby underpinning the forms of belonging that are contingent upon societal perceptions of their characteristics, competencies and efforts (De Waal 2020).

Understanding belonging in such conditions necessitates a reassessment of how ethnically diverse youth navigate cultural differences, whether self-ascribed or ascribed by others, in Hong Kong's socio-political climate. The narrative regarding these cultural differences came through prominently in a report from a civil organization that proposed new labels, such as “Hong Kong Indian”, “Hong Kong Filipino”, “Hong Kong Pakistani”, to identify these populations (Kapai and Singh 2018). On the one hand, Kapai and Singh's report diverges from common imaginings and discussions of belonging that tend to be confined to the majority Chinese group. On the other, the coining of such labels foreshadows emerging belonging claims by ethnically diverse groups who, as “contingent insiders” (Back 1996), have been subjected to the shifting lines of inclusion and exclusion in the “complexity of contemporary economic and social conditions in Hong Kong” (Lowe and Tsang 2017, 157).

The growing interest in Hong Kong's ethnically diverse groups reflects a growing representation of incidents related to racial and educational inequalities (Gube and Burkholder 2019). This interest also originates from an intense realization of identity characteristics and the multilingual capacity of ethnically diverse people that together hinge on their belonging to Hong Kong (Gao, Lai, and Halse 2019; O’Connor 2018). The resulting cultural climate testifies to a need to consider “how political community should be constructed in light of contemporary diversity” (Chin 2019, 716), thereby putting to test how Hong Kong inclusive is of its ethnically diverse groups (Lam 2016, March 21).

Despite the contingent insider status of ethnically diverse young people in Hong Kong, their view of themselves as insiders is rooted in a shared belief of the need to safeguard the city's future. This shared belief underpinned a perceived closer affinity to the mainstream Chinese community, at least in terms of political outlook (Hui 2019, October 24; Ting 2019, August 3). The mainstay of this belief “is not about race or nationality. Anyone who supports the anti-extradition bill protest and truly hopes for the good of Hong Kong can be called a Hongkonger”, argued Zain Syed, a protester with a South Asian background who was quoted in a media report (Chan and Yeo 2019, July 6). The active supplanting of race and nationality in this belief suggests a de-territorialized social solidarity (Halse 2018), where one does not need to be ethnically Chinese to be regarded as a Hongkonger. This paper seeks to shed light on these ethno-racial relations through examining the forms of belonging that ethnically diverse young people portray.

Racialized belonging

The notion of belonging is intricate in ethnically diverse communities given the varied histories of settlement that are tied to “local hierarchies of acceptance and inclusion” (Clayton 2012, 1688–1689). The intricacy in belonging is not a distant reality in Hong Kong. An earlier study (Jang et al. 2022) observed a higher level of belongingness amongst ethnically diverse young people compared to their Hong Kong Chinese counterpart. The intricacy around the shifting narratives of belonging arising from the Anti-ELAB movement points to how societies may privilege an integration discourse that segregates ethnic “minority” and “majority” population (Korteweg 2017), which diverts attention away from structural issues that disadvantage minority groups in “host” societies. Such a critique on integration is important for redressing the effects of the “us” versus “them” narratives. This binary discourse runs the risk of reifying the ethno-cultural roots of minority groups (Ghorashi 2017) and normalizing social forces that essentialize them as unassimilable Others (Bonjour and Duyvendak 2018). Examining the emerging belonging claims of ethnically diverse groups arising from Hong Kong's sociopolitical climate necessitates an engagement with how belonging might be racialized.

Belongingness is a multidisciplinary concept with constant academic interest in and beyond the fields of sociology, race relations, gender studies, psychology, and youth studies (Halse 2018). Conceptually, belongingness is not divorced from various forms of ethnic, cultural, and social identities; it signals how a person is connected to her or himself (intra-personally), others like family members and friends (interpersonally) and the broader society (DeWall et al. 2011; Halse 2018). This connection is forged through emotional and physical attachments to others and places. These attachments, as expressions of belongingness, are manifested in how a person develops sensitivity towards one's actions and performing acts of care to others and society (Baumeister and Leary 1995). Thus, belongingness serves as a foundation for adult lives, in which young people find their “purpose, identity, recognition, security, and value” (Jang et al. 2022, 1308–1309).

Belonging is relational in at least twofold. First, belongingness – at an individual level – is a fundamental psychological need (Baumeister and Leary 1995; Walton et al. 2011) with implications for psychosocial well-being (Bernat and Resnick 2009) and identity formation (Anthias 2016). Second, belongingness – at a societal level – marks the relations, solidarities, and ways of life in a society (Calhoun 2003). These relational aspects undergird how people negotiate belonging along ethnic, gender, racial, religious, and language lines as they become (partially) included or not in institutions, jurisdictions and societies. Belonging can thus be a bedrock of social cohesion, economic security and stability of institutions, particularly in societies characterized as ethnically and racially diverse (Anderson 2010; Halse 2018).

Belonging is concerned with specific attitudes and values that individuals develop (Yuval-Davis 2006). These attitudes and values demarcate membership of individuals across cultural groups. On a broader scale, these attitudes and values mark the relations between the state and multicultural/immigrant communities in a society, or more aptly, the “dirty work of boundary making” (Crowley 1999, 30). Discernments that social actors and nation-states make on this boundary are “inherently spatial, and therefore signal who belongs and who does not is written in the landscape” (Antonsich 2010, 650). This landscape figures the distinct forms of membership (in a group) and ownership (of a place). The nexus between group membership and place ownership underwrites who claims belonging and who holds the power of “granting” belonging (Antonsich 2010, 651).

The focus on what “grants” belonging is important for understanding how belonging is racialized. Racialization refers to social processes that create and produce racial meanings “to relationships, social practice, or group” (Omi and Winant 1986, 111). Racialization as a concept draws attention to the ways in which individuals construct racial boundaries and identities in intergroup situations. This is because “racialization is something that is done to a group, by some social agent, at a certain time, for a given period, in and through various processes, and relative to a particular social context” (Garcia 2003, 285, italics in original). This line of thought helps break away from the reification of race as a biological category (Gonzalez-Sobrino and Goss 2019). It recognizes that the social origins of race requires an analytical focus on identifying who and what racialize who and when.

The fact that racial meanings are governed by time, as hinted in Garcia's quote above, indicates the need to consider belonging's temporal dimension. May (2017) argued that one's sense of self is born out of recollections and acts of remembering, which involve a person comparing her/his past and present selves. These recollections point to sense-making practices of a person in arriving at a coherent self as s/he constructs belonging. The temporal aspect of belonging involves memory and nostalgia. Memory highlights the agency of individuals remembering events and experiences in the past. When individuals describe their experiences, they gather and recount multiple points of life events and “contract them into a single intuition” (Guerlac 2006, 122). Memory also invokes the past in ways that responds to “the appeal of the present state” (Bergson 1988). Nostalgia underscores the capacity of individuals in using significant past events to make sense of present experiences. It is a form yearning, in which a person seeks to linger (at least temporarily) in the past. This yearning could be based on a joyous past experience that a person may want to reminisce when s/he currently experiences adversity in life. It could also be a devastating past experience that a person cannot forget and still bears significant relevance in her/his present life. In a broad sense and as an act of remembering, people travel back and forth as they think through their experiences in understanding how they are (not) belonging their society in the present. Belonging is thus not merely a “here-and-now” experience but is a sense-making exercise that is partly rooted in the past to make sense of a person's present and future. This lens is important for drawing attention to how present events might trigger memories that partly govern people's thinking on how they belonged, belong and trying to belong to a society.

In sum, the focus on social processes can help centre empirical analyses on the intertwining of belonging and racialization of ethnically diverse groups, particularly when belonging attitudes and values are realized in intergroup situations and socio-political contexts. The Anti-ELAB – as an emerging political community that is conditioned and contingent (Lee 2020) – have offered young people a means to express belonging to Hong Kong. This condition indicates belonging is “both a status, something held, and a practice, the ability to navigate the symbols, ideas and institutions of group” (Chin 2019, 717). While the Anti-ELAB movement was contingent upon the sociopolitical climate of Hong Kong, the event became a moment for ethnically diverse young people to recollect racial exclusionary practices about their lives while expressing their desire to belonging in Hong Kong.

Although empirically focused on Hong Kong, this study is important as it captures how ethnically diverse young people negotiate belonging in a socio-politically significant moment that reconfigures intergroup relations in racial terms. This paper adds to conversations around the racialisation of ethnically diverse and minoritised groups in jurisdictions that tend to be occupied with racial lines around the black – white binary (Gonzalez-Sobrino and Goss 2019). It also takes up Gans (2017) call to identify what sets racialisation in motion, particularly the treatments on minority groups. Conceptually, this paper provides a portal to break away from fixations on a view that ethnically diverse individuals are unassimilable others (Bonjour and Duyvendak 2018) who may not always be seen as deserving of membership in a political community.

To cast further light on the interstices of ethnically diverse people's belonging and the ways in which they envisage Hong Kong's socio-political future, racialization as a lens can expose the interfaces between what Hong Kong is as a political community and the diverse accounts of belonging. It acknowledges ethnically diverse people's agency in selectively responding to opportunities and challenges of simultaneity of racial strata stemming from their familial roots and host society (Levitt 2009) across different temporal locations. In aggregate, the racio-temporal focus of this paper is that the belonging is racialized not only in and through present events but also rooted in significant memories of the past. The cyclical relationship of the past and present reinforces a collectivity in which young people make sense of their belonging to a society. This paper addresses a question: What racialized forms of (non-)belonging do a group of ethnically diverse young people attach to the sociopolitical context arising from Hong Kong's Anti-ELAB Movement?

The study

This paper draws on focus group data from ethnically diverse young people (age 18–24) (Human Research Ethics Committee – The Education University of Hong Kong approval number: 018-2019-0224). The focus group data derive from a larger study that explored comparatively the belonging experiences of diverse youth in Hong Kong. Conducted in Cantonese, English and Mandarin, the focus groups took place between October and December 2019, which coincided with the weekly protests against the withdrawn extradition bill. This paper focuses on data from 4 English-speaking focus groups, representing 6 different ethnicities: Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Indonesian, Nepalese, and Pakistani.

Across the 4 groups, 18 young people agreed to participate, although only 12 attended the focus groups. The average age of participants was 21.25 years. Each group comprised two to four participants and lasted between 1.5 and 2 hours. Traffic disruptions and uncertainties brought by the social unrest throughout Hong Kong made it infeasible to attract and recruit more participants, despite conducting the focus groups at a safe location away from the protest areas and our offer to compensate participants’ time and effort. To maintain the participants’ anonymity, we present the findings using their self-chosen pseudonyms.

Focus groups, as a method, provide an edge in capturing how participants’ negotiate meaning in a group context (Sim and Waterfield 2019). We investigated factors that promoted and impeded young people's sense of belonging. The focus group discussion topics covered perceptions of feeling “at home”, use of social media, views on Hong Kong's socio-political environment about multiculturalism and relations with Mainland China, and strategies to promote belonging. In keeping with the focus of this paper, we report findings relating to racialized aspects of belonging and how some of these resulted in the participants’ views on Hong Kong's socio-political climate. We transcribed the data and imported them to NVivo 12 for management and analysis. We used thematic analysis (Clarke and Braun 2014) to interrogate transcript segments that contain responses to belonging and more broadly about issues of race, ethnicity and multiculturalism, and the links of all these living in Hong Kong.

Building on the theoretical arguments raised in the previous section, we discuss our analysis starting with the temporal location of belonging in the past and how it relates to some of their sentiments about the Anti-ELAB protest events, which positioned the ethnically diverse young people to move back and forth across their past and present experiences. These experiences foreground accounts of non-belonging and belonging, particularly how this belonging is (not) granted and racialized from the young people's point of view.

Findings

Nonbelonging from the past

In line with the aims of the focus groups and indications of racism that ethnically diverse young people experienced in Hong Kong, we asked about the extent to which they experienced racism. The following interaction encapsulates how some young people referred to past schooling experience and how this made them feel excluded as a non-Chinese group, especially those who lacked proficiency in Cantonese and were marginalized. Chris was quick to respond at length:

Chris:

It's very high. Very high. So all of three were born and raised … we’re raised here. I was not born here. But you both are, right? You guys speak Cantonese?

Sonia:

Yes I do speak Cantonese.

Chris:

Ya here’s a thing. There are ethnic minority schools where they [split], where they physically segregate non-Chinese people from Chinese people. Like say let’s just call it not Carson School. When I heard from a friend of mine who was studying there that he would see his Pakistani classmates get lined up. It’s about a decade ago, but I don’t know if it’s changed then, since then. And the curriculum in Hong Kong doesn’t really like help non-Chinese people speak Chinese, like learn how to read and write Cantonese, written Cantonese. So, me for example, I have not been able to learn it to an extent they have because they’ve lived here all the lives. Me? I've been here half my life and I still can't do anything about it. It's … I find it kind of sad. In most other countries have learnt how to speak the language already by the second or third year and have been able to integrate with the society. But in Hong Kong … I think it systematically tries to prevent that. So you’re either part of the international community in Hong Kong, or you’re part of the local community … You can see it in the sports that people in Hong Kong play. Look at the cricket team and the rugby club and the rugby teams. And look at the football team and the handball team. There are specific groups that take over specific sports, so you can tie that back to the cultural segregation here that you can [see] in Hong Kong.

Singh:

So, for me like I was born there but there are some history so I spent around 16 years? 16 or so years in Hong Kong. What I’ve seen is I used to think because there wasn't much initial contact with the local community like Chris said like usually our own ethnic minority community most of the time. And my first contact came in my secondary school education with the Cantonese. So what happened was when they first saw me, how do I know why … like to what extent it is really depends on that … how that person was brought up for me. More of like individual basis. But like Chris said that is true it's big segregation of the local and the international community. So what happened was my friends, they didn't really have … like who are my current friends … from my secondary school. They were like because once I got to know them I told them why won't you guys … . like are you guys shy or are you guys not brave enough to talk to me or what was the concern. Like I literally just ask them right out and then they were like the thing is you know Chungking Mansion. They are like first of all the thing is in Hong Kong local news, what we hear is … even my face … because the thing is when you see other guys, you won't be smiling, like you won't be like hey. Like you won't smile because I don't even know you. Like I will meet you I will give you small smile but you won't be like laughing like a joker or something like that. So the thing is they were like I saw your serious face. It's like the poker face and we thought you are like some triad member, gang member. Like I was like I don't even have any tattoos on me so they were like it's not that. It's just that … it's that our first impression is that it's somehow connects with the negativity of your community. So that kind of … prejudice they have in their mind in secondary.

This exchange shows how experiences of racism were particularly evident in their school years. They were looking back to some unpleasant experiences, such as how they were not able to conform to the language norms in Hong Kong. Chris resented the fact that he could not master his Cantonese and written Chinese. He attributed this to the segregation between minority groups and Chinese students in the schooling system. Further, the racial meanings emerging from this exchange indicate how schooling structures had subjected ethnically diverse young people to racial exclusion. For both participants, this lack of cultural contact was still a reality (“that is true”) they perceived in Hong Kong: “ … like Chris said that is true it's big segregation of the local and the international community” (Singh). A broader outcome of this suggests the demarcations among ethnic groups, an implicit norm that made the young people feel excluded from belonging to the city and arguments about minorities’ failures to integrate as observed elsewhere (e.g. Goicolea et al. 2022).

Nonbelonging in the present

The implications of Hong Kong's socio-political climate on belonging are evident in how the young people described the present state and duration of the protests. A dominant theme in this episode is an uncertainty about the city's socio-political developments. The young people's responses were racialized and embedded in their “ethnic minority” background, except for an English-speaking participant who was ethnically Chinese:

Maya:

I think in this protest, the ethnic minority groups are being a big target because when the protest was already going on for 2 months and we receive a message in a group chat that I don't know if it's fake or real but I received a message from some Chinese guy that they were WhatsApping that whenever you see a Pakistani or Nepali people, you just shoot them. As I received a message like that in my group chat so it's really … it's really scary to get out. Because the protest is happening in the weekends and we only get off from work on the weekend. I think we are being locked up at our own home and we are not receiving not getting the freedom we had before the protest.

Daisy:

I feel like the protest has made me realize how divided Hong Kong people are and it kind of makes me feel sad and almost a little bit like hopeless because it's gone on for so long and there's no solution. And I feel like there's so much divide not just within the entire society but also within individual families as I've heard a lot of people like getting too big argument with their family members and it just feels like the whole Hong Kong is not very stable. It's like very volatile and I feel like … I don't know … just not that's safe overall. And I feel like Hong Kong has always been like … very … like we were always doing very well and safe, but now it's just like very uncertain regarding like our future. So it feels like I belong even less this year especially because personally I don't have very strong political views because I’m not conventional so I just like to stay neutral but everyone around you like feeding me all the information and I just don't really like to know how to feel.

In general, Maya and Daisy agreed on the adverse effects of and the diminished sense of security brought by the protests. These effects speak to a “temporal dislocation” (May 2017) – “having lost their niche in contemporary society and present time” (407) – in their sense of belonging in which they felt less safe in the society they lived in. This sentiment speaks to an overarching effect of the protests. As an example, Anne echoed this sentiment up in another focus group: “For me the protests haven't exactly, well it affected my community and I’m scared. I can feel that I’m actually stressed like I can't be around this area this time”.

Despite their agreement on the lack of sense of security, one can differentiate Maya and Daisy's accounts in terms of the level of their ethno-racial undertones. Maya was recounting a perceived threat on “ethnic minority” groups, fearing that they could be targets of assault, according a message she received. This fear was based on an idea that “ethnic minorities” were racially distinguishable that could mark them as obvious targets.

Daisy, a participant who described herself as a Chinese with an “international outlook”, captures the kinds of social divisions that Hong Kong had been experiencing due to the protests and their duration. However, her remark stood in stark contrast to that of Maya. She showed that the protests made her feel “sad” and that nothing could resolve the uncertainty in terms the changing relations among Hong Kong families and her future. She made no mention of other ethnic groups. Despite the absence of Daisy's “strong political views”, the protests still affected her emotionally like other participants, which made her “belong[ed] even less this year” to Hong Kong. Her sense of diminished belonging was contingent upon the sociopolitical climate of the protests.

Belonging in the present

An examination of the young people's comments in relation to the protests reveals new ways of forging belonging. Although the protests were described sources of social divisions, they appeared to be a turning point for young people in which they felt that they got closer to local Chinese people. This turning point could be regarded as a form of “granting” of belonging to the city, in which ethnically diverse young people claimed a sense of ownership to the effects of the protests. Singh illustrated this point clearly that spoke of the significance of the protests on how the young people viewed these.

Singh:

The sense of community is there. And the thing is like not to bring in sensitive topics like the current political situation of Hong Kong, so the thing is all of us are going through the same thing and then we'll be able to like when we look back hopefully finish it quickly … like [when] this political situation wrap[s] up, then the thing is when we grow older than we would like look back at this has a common memory of us. But the thing is some people will think it's more of a Chinese event because it's connected with China, but the thing is we are also living [here]. You’re like the three of us … or even you guys like it's affecting all of us and we are like having our own solutions and role. It's a common memory for all of us but it's in a different way affecting different people.

Singh used pronouns “us”, “we” and “our” frequently to justify the solidarity he experienced with other people in Hong Kong. The protests invoke a sense of belonging that embeds a temporal logic, which forestalls a future reminiscing of the present, i.e. emphasizing that these were a “common memory” that they “look back at”. Singh referred to the political situation's impact and expressed a desire to see its end (“hopefully finish it quickly”). He debunked the discourse that the protests were exclusive to the Chinese community only (“the three of us or even you guys … it's affecting all of us”). Cecile articulated a form of solidarity emerging from the protests:

Cecile:

I feel like with ethnic minorities who have been locals, this issue has sort of made us closer. It feels like local ethnic minorities tend to stand towards the more yellow side of the issue. And as such, it's become like a conversation topic amongst Chinese students as well. And as such, we grew closer. And I feel like I don't know how long ago it was, the water gun at the mosque thing, I don't know if you guys heard of that, that just solidified the whole … it feels like the minorities were closer to locals, Chinese locals during that moment because people were visibly upset about the situation and like I’m Muslim as well, and it was nice to see because it felt like I was under represent[ed] [in] the entire life for … it's nice to see locals genuinely care about what just happened your people you associate with.

Nisha:

I feel like Hong Kong as a city, there are a lot of values, that you know I never really … like democracy, rule of laws all these values, I think these represent Hong Kong. In that sense, I feel closer to that. But I feel more disconnected with the local Chinese people, you know you mentioned the mosque, that made me feel more … created a side of the opposition, sort of feelings within me. I don't think they really care as much as the police. I followed like their Telegram groups and everything and a lot of the people was like, even it's not just this incident … like with other ethnic groups like oh don't say bad things to them, or else they will be against this movement, things like that.

Cecile referred to a widely reported incident in which a police vehicle inadvertently sprayed paint on a mosque and some worshippers in the vicinity, including a Muslim community leader Mohan Chugani while intending to repel the protesters. The incident caused an uproar among some local Muslim communities in Hong Kong (Chan and Chung 2019, October 23). It also upset Cecile, who self-identified as a Muslim, and triggered a response among the “locals”. The concern of the locals on the incident made Cecile feel supported (“nice to see”). This feeling has roots in how she felt “underrepresented” in her whole life, marking the simultaneity of relational and temporal aspects of belonging. It corroborates an observation from other focus groups, where some of them remarked: “I feel like Hong Kong people have become really friendly over the years, because … when I came here in like 2014, there were still some kind of racism but I feel like they are understanding our culture more” (Radhika) and how chanting protest slogans has “created a sense of proper belonging to this city that for 150 years did not know what it was” (Chris). However, Nisha only partially agreed with the position of Cecile, Radhika and Chris. Nisha felt more connected to the democratic values of Hong Kong but not necessarily the “local Chinese people”. Her rationale was that the locals only needed the support of “ethnic minorities” during the movement. Despite the varying degree of perceived connection with local Chinese people, the sociopolitical climate of the protests enabled the young people to share the sentiments of the wider community and express a formerly unspoken belonging to Hong Kong. In this instance, the incident allowed them to “slip in” of belonging to social solidarities (Halse 2018).

Discussion

The purpose of this paper was to articulate how a group of ethnically diverse young people's articulations of belonging intersect with the sociopolitical climate of the Anti-ELAB protests. This paper fills an important gap by illustrating how young people mobilized past racialized experiences to make sense of their present belonging to Hong Kong. The temporal and racialized aspects of belonging indicate that ethnically diverse people do not necessarily belong in the same way (Chin 2019). This phenomenon is neither new nor surprising. Yet, of interest here is the manner in which the sociopolitical climate of the protests has altered intergroup relations in Hong Kong, such as the structural conditions that (did not) grant one's cultural membership in a society, thereby contributing to our understanding of how belongingness can become segmented across different cultural groups.

The segmentation of belongingness manifests in the ways ethnically diverse young people experienced racism in the past and collectivity in the present. Reminiscence was central to these belonging claims (May 2017), in which young people's (non-)belonging has been constituted both in the past and present. The recollections evoked feelings of (non-)belonging and accounts that were “tinged with sadness”, particularly with what they experienced in school and racism in Hong Kong. Somewhat contrary to May's (2017) argument, this study demonstrates the implications of the protests on forging sense belonging in the present. Reference to past events is not necessarily nostalgic. Rather, these past events serve as anchor points in making sense of the present at the height of the protests, particularly in the way ethnically diverse young reclaim their belonging from what was or has been lost in the past through racial exclusion. This cyclical relationship of past and present allows them to demonstrate a “solidarity-promoting form of multiculturalism” that suggests a possible route to belonging motivated by a deeper social commitment to, for example, their place of residence (Kymlicka 2015). Challenging implicit narratives of being unassimilable Others (Bonjour and Duyvendak 2018), the participants’ perceived solidarity enabled them to claim belonging in Hong Kong. In a way, these oscillating claims of cultural membership render belongingness as something rarely categorical (Halse 2018). These accounts speak to the “various routes of belonging” (Ghorashi 2017, 2440) through different temporal locations (May 2017) and “new forms of inclusion and exclusion” (Chin 2019, 293) among the different population groups of Hong Kong. Thus, the temporality in the fluctuations of young people's sense of belonging has wider implications for how researchers theorize the precarity of belongingness brought by the sociopolitical climate.

Conclusion

This study helps us understand and theorize the relationship between belonging and race. Regardless of the forms of prejudice that young people experienced, their desire for social acceptance in Hong Kong is evident, particularly when attention is paid to the racio-temporal dimensions of belonging. On the one hand, the protests have disrupted the normal order of the city and triggered sentiments of uncertainty regarding young people's future and safety. On the other, the protests had prompted considerations on what it means to belong to Hong Kong even if one is not Chinese. Thus, the influence of the Anti-ELAB movement was not merely about the here-and-now (re-)making of belonging but also how young people envisage what Hong Kong was, is and will be to them.

When protests become daily events and daily events become protests, ordinary people can no longer maintain “neutrality” by claiming that they are just “distant spectators”. They are turned into witnesses of history, forced to make a moral judgment and take a stand. The situation also creates new roles for those not directly involved in the movement to participate in the movement. (Choi 2020, 277)

The protests, as this study shows, have engendered new modes of belonging, especially if one considers the sentiments that ethnically diverse people make and their sense of belonging to Hong Kong. This consideration challenges the idea that one group possesses a state and that there is only one way to belong, or ways of claiming membership and participating in a political community (Chin 2019; Yuval-Davis 2016), “where diverse cultural groups will not all belong to the political community in the same way” (Chin 2019, 732). This pluralistic view of belonging is helpful in probing the social expectations and the granting of entitlement to a person – to belong to the collectivity (Yuval-Davis 2006), in part because ethnically young people combine parts of their heritage identity and local culture (Benton and Gomez 2014). The result of which might advance novel ways of understanding the complexity of belonging, where they are not always regarded as “natives” (Ghorashi 2017), who nevertheless are part and parcel of the present and future (re-)imaginings of the social fabric of their “host” society.

Author note

An earlier version of this paper appeared in the Korean Association of Multicultural Education Conference 2020. We acknowledge the financial support of Central Reserve Allocation Committee, The Education University of Hong Kong, for this project. We are indebted to colleagues who helped organize and facilitate the focus groups: Melissa Au, Miron Bhowmik, Aaron Chan, and Queenie Hon. Credits also go to three anonymous reviewers who offered very helpful comments. The interpretation of data is that of the authors only.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Central Reserve Allocation Committee, The Education University of Hong Kong: [Grant Number 04A04].