Non-state Diplomacies and Norm-making during the Occupy Central and Umbrella Movement: Hong Kong’s Canadian Residents

ABSTRACT

The article advances understanding of the relationships between diplomacies and governance and the role of non-state actors in them, through a case study of migrant norm-making. Drawing from 50 interviews, the analysis examines how Canadian residents of Hong Kong during the 2014 Occupy Central and Umbrella Movement protests enacted through their diplomatic practices what Wiener calls the “meanings-in-use” of norms—specifically, respect for democracy and human rights, as well as foreign non-interference. These NSA diplomatic practices made visible world order's contested multi-level normative frames within a local democratization struggle. The analysis provides starting points for research on how transnational lives, liminal identifications, class, denizenship, and state power shape NSA diplomacies. It advances the theorizing of norm-making within diplomacy, using insights from critical diplomacy studies, including the “other diplomacies” approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Non-state diplomacies
• democratisation
• Hong Kong
• Canadians abroad
• norm-making

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to the peer reviewers for their generous and insightful feedback, to the journal editors for their advice, and to Mary Young for her astute comments. The remaining errors or weaknesses are the author’s sole responsibility. The author also warmly thanks the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong, where she was a visitor when conducting this research, and York University, which provided research funding.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Following Robert Cox (1992 , 1981) and Chaturvedi and Painter (2007), “world order” refers to prevailing patterns of expectations (norms, or collective standards), thinking, and action within a social totality, from the local to the macro-level, including the public and private, the formal and the everyday (see Young and Henders 2016, 357–358). Normatively, the patterns involve what Wiener describes as intersecting, overlapping, conflicting, and changing “normative grids … on a horizontal and vertical global scale (i.e., including national, regional, and global scenarios of contested normative meaning)” (2017, 170).

2 Elsewhere, the author used this interview data to examine how the diplomatic practices of Canadians living in Hong Kong during the OCUM protests constituted and contested Canadian identities and values (see Henders 2020). The present article builds upon some of the theoretical and empirical analysis in that work, but with a focus on interviewee involvement in norm-making as diplomatic practice.

3 Hong Kong’s income inequality measured by Gini coefficient had risen to 0.54 by 2014 from 0.45 in 1981 (Hong Kong Council of Social Service 2019; Nobel 2014; Chen 2014).

4 Although numbers are imprecise, among the other large overseas national populations in Hong Kong are Filipino and Indonesians (about 165,000 foreign domestic workers alone from each), UK nationals (an estimated 22,000 in 1997), Australians (an estimated 30,000), and United States nationals (see Ladegaard 2016; Dewolf 2014; “Hong Kong Citizenship: Thou Shalt Have No Other,” The Economist, June 5, 2008).

5 Among these were the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong; Canadian Club of Hong Kong; Chinese Canadian Association (HK); Canadian University Association Hong Kong; the Hong Kong alumni associations of Canadian universities; and Canadian-curriculum schools in the territory.

6 Cantonese: Slang for white Westerners.

7 Cantonese: Open-air food stalls.

8 Legco: Legislative Council.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susan J. Henders

Susan J. Henders researches non-state diplomacies, particularly in Canadian external relations, as well as state architectures and the politics of nation, ethnicity, class and gender in culturally regionalised states. She has published single- and co-authored articles (with Mary M. Young) on “other diplomacies” in Canadian-Asian relations past and present in the Hague Journal of Diplomacy and in the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal. Henders teaches in the Department of Politics at York University (Canada) and is a Faculty Associate and former Director of the York Centre for Asian Research.