Asylum seeking in Hong Kong as a rite of passage

Abstract This article, based on interactions and interviews within a class of mostly African asylum seekers in Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions over the past 17 years, examines their asylum-seeking as an extended rite of passage, one that eventually led their lives in a more fulfilling direction than asylum-seeking as generally portrayed in the academic literature. Some of these former asylum seekers in Hong Kong have returned to their home countries; some have attained refugee status and now live in the United States or Canada; some have found alternative paths to leave asylum-seeker status, and now live in Southeast Asia; and some have gotten married to Hongkongers and have become permanent Hong Kong residents. Most of the former asylum seekers I interviewed said that, although being an asylum seeker was a long and frustrating process, it was in the end worthwhile for them. What they have experienced as asylum seekers was a long voyage lasting many years into the prime of their lives but that eventually reached a destination better than where they had left.