Minoritised communities and Hong Kong’s ‘summer of uprising’: attitudes and engagement without citizenship

Abstract

ABSTRACT Hong Kong experienced unprecedented political and social turmoil starting in June 2019. The original impetus was a proposed law that would have enabled the extradition of Hong Kong residents to Mainland China. The focus of previous work relating to the consequent social movement that opposed the law has been on the engagement of the dominant Chinese population. Little attention has been paid to the attitudes or experiences of Hong Kong’s minoritised communities. This paper, therefore, shifts the focus of research to those communities, who are resident in Hong Kong but many of them are not Chinese citizens. The interviews with twenty-five study participants revealed multiple views of the social movement ranging from those who were in full support to those who were wary of the social movement because of its potential to impinge on an already fragile social context. The conundrum of providing education for the city’s ‘non-citizens’ is discussed.