Citizenship and multicultural social work: Challenges and opportunities of ethnic minority youth in political engagement in Hong Kong

Abstract

This article reports on qualitative research investigating Pakistani minority youth’s political engagement in the 2019 Anti-Extradition Movement in Hong Kong. Some informants’ engagement was inhibited by challenges such as institutional limitations, while others identified various opportunities. This article presents an Asian example from a unique historical context to illuminate the potential role of political engagement in ethnic minority youth’s personal and social development and how the citizenship social work framework enhances understanding of ethnic minority youth and cultural competence in multicultural social work. Furthermore, it advocates social work as an empowering agency to implement citizenship rights for ethnic minority youth.

Keywords

Citizenship social work cultural competence ethnic minority youth multicultural social work political engagement

Introduction

Social work scholarship regarding ethnic minority youth has largely ignored their citizenship. Social work is considered a human rights profession (Healy, 2008) whose mission is to enhance human rights and social justice (Checkoway, 2011; McGregor et al., 2020; Richards-Schuster and Pritzker, 2015) and safeguard the realisation of citizenship (Satka, 2014). Moreover, minority youth form part of the greater social and political advocacy movements and promote societal changes such as the development of racial justice (Back and Solomos, 1995; Pallares and Flores-González, 2010). These examples offer an alternative to the deficit approach (Kirshner and Ginwright, 2012). However, these insights have not extended to multicultural social work on minority youth, where existing literature generally focuses on how they navigate Western mainstream societies.

The 2019 Anti-Extradition Movement (AEM), triggered by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government’s introduction of the controversial extradition law amendment bill, was considered an extension of the 2014 Umbrella Movement (UM) that similarly sought democratic reforms and increased autonomy in Hong Kong. Both movements deepened people’s political awakening and were characterised by versatile political engagement of many local Chinese (Chung, 2020; Ku, 2020) and some non-Chinese youth (Iyengar, 2014; Lhatoo, 2019; 莫坤菱, 2019). Although most ethnic Pakistanis in Hong Kong do not have Chinese nationality and full citizenship, many of them possess core citizenship rights granted by their Hong Kong Permanent Residence (HKPR) status and have developed a strong sense of citizenship identity in Hong Kong (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2012; Kennedy, 2016; Ng and Kennedy, 2019). This article explores Pakistani minority youth’s political experiences and explains their active engagement and non-engagement in Hong Kong in general, and the AEM in particular, and draws implications for multicultural social work within a broader national context of China as well as international social work. It employed citizenship social work (Arce, 2018; Lister, 1998; Van Ewijk, 2009), a rights-based framework that is consistent with social work mission and is also practised under authoritarian regimes, but absent from existing studies of ethnic minority youth in the social work literature.

Literature review

Multicultural social work and ethnic minority youth

Existing multicultural social work scholarship regarding ethnic minority youth primarily addresses their challenges and needs regarding deficits (risk factors) or strengths and resources (protective factors). The deficit approach concentrates on at-risk minority youth who encounter problematic multicultural integration developmental or adaptation issues, such as school dropout (Zambrana and Zoppi, 2002), substance misuse (Lee et al., 2002), violence and delinquency (Godinet and Vakalahi, 2008). For example, research examining academic disparities between Latina students and female students of other ethnicities argued that family responsibilities, family poverty, lack of preschool education and gender roles compromised school performance (Zambrana and Zoppi, 2002). Minority youth have been largely framed as passive victims subject to various risk factors in their cultural and familial environments, having few resources to solve problems, thus meriting constant care (Heidbrink, 2018). Conversely, strengths-based studies pay more attention to the strengths of ethnic minority youth and their cultural communities’ internal resources, albeit retaining investigation of risk factors. For example, studies on minority youth in Canada (Burgos et al., 2017) and the United States (Kyere and Huguley, 2020) confirm that families provide protective resources of resilience: security, esteem, reliability and support on one hand, and maintain racial/cultural heritage facilitating positive academic performance on the other. Other studies reveal minority youth’s active agency in tackling integration issues, for example, as agents of household caregiving through child and elder care (Heidbrink, 2018), mediating conflicts and providing translation and interpretation for family members (Orellana, 2009).

These approaches provide little focus on the challenges and needs of ethnic minority youth’s rights as citizens. In Western societies, youth’s political and civic engagement has attracted increasing attention for its potential to promote healthy democracy and positive young adulthood (Flanagan and Levine, 2010; Shaw et al., 2014). Ethnic minority youth’s civic and political involvement has impacted societal change, offering an alternative to the deficit perspective (Kirshner and Ginwright, 2012). For example, young black people’s political engagement in Birmingham contributed to identity politics and the development of racial justice in Britain (Back and Solomos, 1995). Latino youth and migrant groups’ active organisation gave shape and power to the immigrant rights movement in Chicago and, subsequently, reform of immigration policies (Pallares and Flores-González, 2010). Moreover, engagement opportunities may be particularly significant for minority or marginalised youth because of their higher risk of juvenile delinquency, educational disengagement and social exclusion when their political and civic participation opportunities are limited (Gaby, 2017; Kelly, 2009).

Social work has an historical involvement in the human rights movement (Healy, 2008) and has been encouraged to increase focus on young people’s political and civic engagement to strengthen their personal and social development and promote greater social justice for young people, thus enhancing compliance with the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (Checkoway, 2011; McGregor et al., 2020; Richards-Schuster and Pritzker, 2015). However, this has not been extended to ethnic minority youth’s human rights challenges and needs. Existing literature has generally focused on how minority youth navigate Western mainstream societies, with limited empirical research in Asia.

Citizenship social work

Citizenship social work can help bridge the research gap. Citizenship has emerged in social work scholarship, including social welfare policy (Taylor-Gooby, 2008), older people (Payne, 2012) and young people (McGregor et al., 2020), and ranging from humanistic duty and individual rights to politically informed and collective acts, even under authoritarian regimes (Arce, 2018; Payne, 2012). The concept of citizenship resonates with social work’s mission ‘to look after the maintenance of reasonable social cohesion and to safeguard the overall realisation of social citizenship’ (Satka, 2014: 200–201). Lister (1998) highlights two dimensions of citizenship as status (rights) and practice (participation), arguing that citizenship rights (civil, political and social rights) ‘are not set in stone’ but are open to ‘renegotiation and need to be defended and extended through political and social action’ (p. 6). Therefore, citizenship rights and practice can be seen in a dialectical relationship providing a useful framework for social work theory and practice, aiming at practical outcomes for disadvantaged groups and communities and involving them in working for change. Besides, social work should be an empowering agency to ‘make people’s citizenship in society more real’ (p. 13) but not a barrier in their citizenship building. To support active citizenship, for example, Lister suggests considering political exclusion, mobilising community resources and user involvement to give citizens a voice enabling them to activate their rights. Van Ewijk (2009) proposes citizenship-based social work practice should not focus on curing but activating people’s social citizenship and supporting them through information, training, intervention, and facilitating social action and social cohesion. Children and youth should be supported through activities, services and the implementation of appropriate policies.

South Asian ethnic minorities, partial citizenship and political participation in Hong Kong

Of Hong Kong’s 7.4 million population, 91.6 percent are ethnic Chinese. The authorities use the term ‘ethnic minority’ to refer to all persons of non-Chinese ethnicity, including Filipinos and Indonesians (4.6%), South Asians (1.4%, including people of Pakistani, Nepali and Indian origin), Japanese and Koreans (0.2%) and White people (0.8%) (Census and Statistics Department, 2022). South Asians are not a homogeneous group, and while a minority (especially Indians) are affluent and enjoy high social status (Sautman, 2004), most remain serially disadvantaged and generally enjoy lower income and higher poverty risk. Pakistanis experience the highest poverty rate (Commission on Poverty, 2016) and education barriers in school (Bhowmik and Kennedy, 2017). Compared with other ethnicities, South Asians experience lower social and racial acceptance (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2009), face deep-seated but unspoken bias and discrimination in daily lives (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2016), and are seen as ‘racialised outsiders’, an economic burden and culturally and morally inferior to mainstream Hong Kong Chinese (Lee and Law, 2016). This may explain the indiscriminate perception of South Asian people as underprivileged and the main targets of public and academic discourses regarding ethnic minorities and social integration in Hong Kong, including those of multicultural social work.

The citizenship status of Hong Kong ethnic minorities has become complicated after the transfer of sovereignty in 1997 to china. Although Hong Kong-born and possessing HKPR, many ethnic minorities are prohibited from becoming Chinese nationals and obtaining a HKSAR passport due to the Chinese Nationality Law’s jus sanguine principle. While some South Asians have secured naturalisation as Chinese citizens, others have retained the citizenship of their country of origin or obtained British citizenship (Kwok and Law, 2016; Ng and Kennedy, 2019). Although even without a HKSAR passport, possession of HKPR allows most South Asian residents to enjoy almost the same political and social rights as the majority ethnic Chinese citizens, such as voting, education and welfare rights, except taking up key public offices such as Chief Executive (Ng and Kennedy, 2019). In other words, while possessing partial citizenship (Bauböck, 2011; Kennedy, 2016), permanent residents of South Asian origin are granted core citizenship rights. Besides, some studies (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2012; Kennedy, 2016; Ng and Kennedy, 2019) suggest that missing legal citizenship (being naturalised as Chinese citizens) has not prohibited ethnic minority youth developing a strong Hong Kong citizenship identity and considering Hong Kong their home.

South Asians’ general participation in local political issues and the electoral process was low before 2019 (Baig, 2010; Kwok and Law, 2016). The likely reasons for this are the language used in election publicity material and the lack of suitable candidates who genuinely represent South Asian people’s needs and concerns (Hong Kong Council of Social Service, 2017). Nevertheless, some young South Asians have demonstrated noticeable awareness and political engagement, including participation in the 2014 UM (Iyengar, 2014), the 2019 AEM (莫坤菱, 2019) and the 2020 pro-democracy primary election (Chan, 2020), highlighting their wishes for inclusion in wider Hong Kong society.

This study adopted the framework of citizenship social work to understand Pakistani ethnic minority youth’s political involvement by highlighting their human agency in citizenship practice, taking account of the status and practice dimensions of citizenship, South Asian ethnic minorities’ partial citizenship with core citizenship rights and their subjective citizenship identity.

Methodology

This article reports a research project identifying and explaining ethnic minority youth’s political engagement during the AEM in Hong Kong. It adopted a qualitative descriptive approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Vaismoradi and Snelgrove, 2019), emphasising the description and interpretation of narrative-based data.

Target informants and data collection

This study focused on Pakistani youth as a distinct group of non-Chinese citizens with long-standing residence in Hong Kong yet are socially excluded. During the AEM, responses among members of this community were markedly different.

Informants were recruited through referrals by Pakistani associations, mosques and the project’s ethnic Pakistani research assistant’s extensive community contacts. Selection criteria were informants identifying as ethnic Pakistani and having personally experienced the AEM. While convenience sampling was used, the research team endeavoured to ensure background diversity among informants. Twenty-nine informants were interviewed, comprising three in-person focus group interviews, one Zoom dual interview and 10 individual in-person and telephone interviews. Informants’ ages ranged from 14 to 74 years. This study was guided by the concept of political opportunity (Koopmans, 2004) that examines both the ‘objective’ institutional context of the political system and the ‘subjective’ perceptions of political opportunities.

The focus of interviews thus explored informants’ perceptions and acknowledgement of their political opportunities. Semi-structured interview questions covered informants’ (1) experiences and reactions during the AEM; (2) routine political practices, including expression of opinions, participation in civic associations and voting; and (3) perceptions of factors facilitating and limiting their participation. All informants provided informed consent and were assured of confidentiality. Ethics approval was obtained from the author’s former institute, Caritas Institute of Higher Education, prior to recruitment and data collection.

All interviews were conducted by the author or the research assistant and generally started by asking: ‘Please share your experiences in the recent AEM’. Interviews were conducted in Cantonese, English, or Urdu, using a community interpreter where necessary. Interviews lasted between 45 minutes and 2 hours. Twenty-eight interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, one informant withholding her consent for recording. Interview notes were also taken. This article focuses primarily on 16 informants aged between 14 and 35. All were second- or third-generation ethnic Pakistani with HKPR. Six were born in Pakistan and 10 in Hong Kong. Five were female, and 11 were male. Those who no longer attended school had completed post-secondary higher education and were well-informed and well-versed in Cantonese. All names used in this article are pseudonyms. Four ethnic Chinese social workers were also interviewed to seek their perceptions about the barriers and motivations of young ethnic minorities’ political engagement, in general, and during the AEM, and the role of social work. Two worked in mainstream youth services and had 1–2 years of experience working with Pakistani families, and two working with ethnic minority communities.

Data analysis

Data analysis utilised Braun and Clarke’s (2006) five-step qualitative thematic analysis approach. First, the research team familiarised itself with the data through reading and re-reading the interview transcripts, notes and media reports. Second, it generated initial codes such as fear and anxiety, outsider, survival needs, no political rights, no proper platform, no interest, generational gap, showing love for Hong Kong and community attachment, using the NVivo software package. Third, after sorting the codes, themes emerged with relevant data extracts, including institutional constraints, generational differences, social stigma, minority stress, sense of belonging, growing acceptance and cultural bridge. Fourth, coded themes were reviewed, and coherence was checked. Fifth, the overarching themes – challenges and opportunities – were named after refining the earlier emergent themes. Initial findings and analysis were shared with some informants and community interpreters to ensure the study’s trustworthiness.

Findings and analysis

The findings explaining Pakistani youth’s active engagement and inactivity are displayed as challenges and opportunities, representing the constraining and motivating factors of their political engagement.

Challenges

Lack of institutional platform and support

Institutional limitations appeared a significant challenge discouraging Pakistani youth’s political motivation. Some informants were very conscious of their citizenship rights, voting in elections and speaking for their community. However, they were disappointed by the lack of obvious improvement. Samee, a well-educated and well-connected 37-year-old, articulated his frustration:

How effective is my freedom of speech? . . . Yes, I do manage to go out and speak. But then I’m ignored. Just because we are a minority . . . in an open section of the Legislative Council, or I can go and say whatever on social media or in the news or, like, write a letter to the Chief Executive. . . . But then the concerns, the issues of ethnic minorities remain . . . For example, facing difficulties in learning Chinese. . . .We’ve been expressing it for more than a decade.

The slow improvement in ethnic minorities’ circumstances can be related to the lack of a ‘proper platform’ or official representation in public bodies and legislative politics. For example, since 1997, no ethnic minority community representatives have been elected to the Legislative Council, and few have won election to District Councils (Kwok and Law, 2016). This gap in representation may be attributed to established political parties’ limited interest in engaging with ethnic minorities, as reflected by Ali, 30, the son of a respected community leader:

In my area, I always see the [less established political party] guy. . . . He knows the people. He knows my father by name. Even if he doesn’t know you by name, he will recognise you and say: ‘hi, how are you? Blah, blah, blah’. But [a more established political party], you never see them . . . even on voting day, they don’t see you . . . They are very rude, very rude.

The lack of interest in ethnic minorities implies mainstream political establishment’s limited effort to include ethnic minorities in the legislative mechanism, address their concerns, solicit their support or nurture ethnic minority election candidates, echoing previous research and helping explain ethnic minorities’ lower registration rate compared with the general population (Hong Kong Council of Social Service, 2017; Kwok and Law, 2016). Consistent with this is the way information is delivered. For example, most election promotion material is written in Chinese only, deterring many Pakistani people from local political involvement. Even Samee, who spoke Cantonese well, noted the exclusion of his community because even similarly well-educated young Pakistanis were not fluent in written Chinese: ‘I have to ask my friends, check it up in the English media [to verify the information in Chinese] . . . So many of us do not vote’.

Intergenerational differences

Older people’s opinions and daily practice during the AEM represented a significant force in the Pakistani community affecting young people’s participation.

Most older informants criticised young protesters’, including younger Pakistanis’, political actions (莫坤菱, 2019). Fifty-year-old Farid articulated his frustration, referring to the hard time Pakistani migrants had experienced, during which their priority had been survival. He opposed anti-government action:

. . . the youngsters of Hong Kong do not understand how hard we have built up the image of Hong Kong . . . My father came here in the early ’50s . . . so I grew up here [seeing] my father work so hard . . . and suddenly [people] ruin everything . . . I trust the people who run the government but because the new generation thinks that we don’t have freedom. How much freedom does a person need?

Sixty-nine-year-old Imma added there was no reason to complain because conditions for ethnic minorities, who were considered ‘outsiders’, had improved considerably over time: ‘I find it is better now. Better prospects for the younger generation. In our time, we did not have that . . . they can now go to university . . . get subsidies or so’.

Some Pakistani parents forbade their children’s participation in street protests, reasoning they had no right to do so. Some even felt ashamed if their children protested. This could be because protests were usually considered disruptive behaviour that could harm the city. Harib, a 15-year-old student, explained his non-participation:

I didn’t go [to] protest . . . [My parents] told me not to join because [we have] no right to protest . . . Hong Kong [is our] home to stay, so [we] do not protest against [the authority of Hong Kong].

While negative perceptions of the protests may partly result from the image of violence and disruptiveness prevalent in mainstream media (Chung, 2020; Ku, 2020), the perception that Pakistani people had no right to protest may be related to the social stigma and discrimination they experienced over the years.

Experiences of social stigma and discrimination

Another reason for being withdrawn and inactive was their long-term experience of discrimination and stigmatisation and fears of being readily blamed if something undesirable occurred. They feared damage to the image of ethnic minorities if they were found on the streets among the protesters. Thirty-year-old Hussan, born and raised in Hong Kong, explained his worries and reasons for not participating in AEM protests:

I was worried about my family’s safety, particularly because we are Pakistani . . . People [are] just venting the frustration upon us and you will never know . . . I have the legitimate concern, somehow we can be scapegoated to [take responsibility for the] entire problem or something.

Ali explained he avoided overtly taking a stand during the protests because he observed that ethnic minorities were not treated seriously as human beings but were easily taken advantage of by all sides of the political spectrum, for example, the racial tensions ignited by rumours of South Asians’ involvement in attacks on pro-democratic protesters and activists (Lhatoo, 2019):

You might have seen photos of some Pakistani or Indian asylum seekers standing there . . . They [protesters in social media] started to say, ‘they [pro-government camp] have hired ethnic minorities to beat up protesters now and be careful of ethnic minorities’ . . . there was fear on the protesters’ side. And then later, some youngsters from the ethnic minority communities joined the protesters. And then the other side started saying, ‘see you are using ethnic minorities for your advantage’ . . . So I realised that I was not a human. I was just like a football . . . In Hong Kong, ethnic minorities have not been seen as very useful contributors to society. And when such a divisive thing happens, people want to abuse the weak ones . . . Both sides abused the ethnic minorities.

From social stigma to minority stress

Despite core citizenship rights to vote, protest and associate, some Pakistani youth perceived themselves as ‘outsiders’ with no right to articulate or oppose opinions but obliged to follow policymakers’ decisions. This could result from internalising the social stigma they and their parents were subject to, leading them to apply negative stereotypes to themselves (Vogel et al., 2007). Institutional limitations (including a lack of inclusive domestic politics, insufficient representation in public bodies and culturally insensitive arrangements in elections) and views of older Pakistani community members possibly explained these young people’s worries about expressing themselves and participating freely in political actions. Even those who believed they had citizenship rights avoided overt involvement in the AEM because they feared becoming scapegoats. Their fears, avoidance, and sense of reduced self-value suggest that young Pakistanis experienced racism-based minority stress, a unique and excess stress deriving from racism and a stigmatised ethnic minority position perpetrated through negative individual interactions and institutional settings (Wei et al., 2008).

While social workers were aware of their worries and avoidance, they primarily perceived these reactions as resulting from their community culture. For instance, one youth worker from a mainstream youth service setting recalled: ‘Young people exchanged a lot [at the beginning of the AEM]. In contrast, the two Pakistani students did not share . . . It is difficult to talk to them. I am afraid of touching [their cultural] taboo’. Another social worker from a specialist ethnic minority service unit attributed their passive reactions to powerful older community members and lack of interest: ‘Their internal culture is strong, and the older members are powerful . . . usually [older people] are not concerned about what is happening here. I understand, everyone is busy working to survive’.

These perceptions, attributing ethnic minority youth’s avoidance to internal community culture, older members’ authority and lack of interest, tend to overlook external challenges such as social stigma and institutional limitations that contribute to barriers and stress for Pakistani youth. Our social work informants’ reactions reflect their inclinations to avoid the topic of political participation when working with ethnic minority youth because they were aware of their own cultural competence limitations, echoing previous studies revealing that Hong Kong social workers generally lack the necessary knowledge and skills to work with non-Chinese service users (Lee et al., 2020) and tend to underestimate the needs and stress of ethnic minority youth due to cultural distance (Kwan et al., 2018).

Opportunities

Sense of belonging to Hong Kong

One motivation for young Pakistanis, especially those born and raised in Hong Kong, to engage in the AEM was their sense of belonging to Hong Kong. One such informant, 35-year-old Rohaan, who distributed water to protesters, welcomed the general public’s initiative to clean up the Kowloon Mosque following water cannon damage and organised high-profile cultural encounters between South Asians and Chinese residents to mitigate the negative effects of rumours (Lhatoo, 2019). These actions were motivated by his sense of belonging to Hong Kong: ‘You know we don’t care yellow, we don’t care blue, we don’t care. We care about Hong Kong people. We are Hong Kong’¹.

At the same time, such engagement enabled Rohaan to inform the general public that ethnic minorities were not a welfare burden and deserved more social acceptance: ‘We support Hong Kong people because we don’t want them to think that we [ethnic minorities] are just getting benefit from Hong Kong’.

He continued:

My father was very worried . . . but I explained to him, we are not doing anything illegal . . . See father, you guys were born in Pakistan. And you are not involved in this system or the community. But we need to [be involved] for our children . . . if we do not integrate, how can our next generation live here?

Nineteen-year-old Khan shared similar reasoning: ‘We grew up here, go to school and work here. Of course Hong Kong is my home, not Pakistan, I told my parents’.

As these excerpts illustrate, although engaging in these actions created generational tensions, the rationale developed by young Pakistanis like Rohaan and Khan was based on their bonding to Hong Kong to defend their involvement or active concern regarding the AEM.

Growth of political and identity awareness

Some young Pakistanis’ sense of belonging had not gone unquestioned from the outset. They underwent a challenging process, initially of rejection followed by gradual acceptance. Recent political and social upheavals appear to have stimulated development of their identities and political awareness. Twenty-two-year-old Amira reviewed the changes she had experienced:

I rejected the Hong Kong identity . . . I was bullied by local students in mainstream school. They said I did not belong here . . . so I rejected this identity. . . . But slowly, because of this Movement, I have got to know many ethnic minorities from different nationalities, and they are so proud of their identity as Hong Kongers . . . gradually I started to accept myself as part of Hong Kong.

Twenty-four-year-old Yamar shared a similar path of political and identity awareness:

I share some common values such as freedom, peace, equality . . . These factors established my Hong Kong identity . . . but sometimes I distanced myself from this Hong Kong identity, especially when I experienced discrimination . . . Many Hong Kong people hesitate to recognise us as Hong Kongers . . . During the Umbrella Movement, I started to explore what they wanted to pursue in the Movement . . . it was about exploitation, political suppression, freedom . . . I realised these are values that I also ‘buy’ . . . they have welcomed me, they like me, so at that moment I realised that this identity was good . . . gradually more people respect Hong Kongers with different skin colours, this is a breakthrough.

While some Pakistani youth developed their sense of belonging more smoothly, some, like Amira and Yamar, had to experience a painful process before realising their identification with Hong Kong’s democratic values and that being part of Hong Kong was their right. Recent political incidents provided rich soil for their growth.

Unique role as a cultural mediator

Some young Pakistanis developed unique roles as cultural mediators that motivated their participation in the political movement, such as bridging Chinese and Pakistani cultures. Some loosely organised themselves into a group to disseminate information in their community and conduct dialogue with older community members, as reported by Yamar:

We are a group of friends . . . we concentrate on doing some education for the community . . . translate information to English or Urdu, to explain to our people . . . because most information is in Chinese. . . . second, we discussed with our elder members who blindly support one side . . . we explain them patiently, tell them that there are two sides of the argument . . . we have to obtain a balance . . . we go to the mosque . . . talk to them during the meal, and chat . . . third, we go to peaceful demonstrations and back up.

Possessing cultural competence in both ‘cultures’ and adopting a soft and harmonious approach (chatting and dining together), these young Pakistanis believed they could at least help reduce misunderstanding and hostility of older members towards young protesters. Another form of cultural mediation was to bridge the Chinese protesters and the international community. Amira evidenced this role as a member of the protest front-line ‘extinguishing team’ – clearing the air following police discharge of teargas – and as a supporter of the ‘publicity team’, enabling her to deploy her English ability on the international platform:

I know my advantage because I am an ethnic minority, because I have more contacts with other cultures . . . so I know better how to use this platform, use my English skills, to promote our ideas . . . I can be the start, I can bring up these topics . . . such as EM rights, or to identify how the Bill can affect us EM, I use this angle to think, to arouse attention [in our EM communities].

Their unique bridging role increased these young people’s incentive for political engagement and contribution to both the Pakistani community and the wider Hong Kong community.

Discussion and implications for social work

Challenges and opportunities

The above findings and analysis explain the political engagement of Pakistani minority youth in Hong Kong before 2019 by identifying the challenges and opportunities they experienced. On one hand, despite possessing core citizenship rights, their active participation was inhibited by institutional limitations, generational differences, social stigma and minority stress. These barriers and stress cannot be merely attributed to personal deficit or Pakistani cultural characteristics but understood as resulting from insufficient activation of citizenship rights of Pakistani people in Hong Kong. Institutional limitations and social stigma are related to policymakers’, politicians’ and the general public’s deficient acknowledgement of Pakistani people’s rights. Generational tensions are not primarily caused by intrinsic cultural values represented by the older Pakistani generation to oppose political engagement as generally believed but are related to their life experiences as a socio-economically deprived minority group in Hong Kong whose rights have not been respected.

On the other hand, our findings reveal opportunities in political participation in developing a citizenship identity, growth in political awareness and cultural mediator role. Through realising their core citizenship rights, Pakistani youth utilised their personal or group strengths skilfully (such as in cultural encounters and chatting in the mosques) to enhance their social recognition in the Pakistani community and wider Hong Kong society. These were characterised by their harmonious approach, which the specific context of Hong Kong may explain, a city embedded in both Eastern harmonious cultures and Western cultures of human rights values (Arat and Kerelian, 2019; Law and Lee, 2016). This soft and harmonious approach to tension-resolution has not been identified in relevant research in Western settings (e.g. Back and Solomos, 1995; Pallares and Flores-González, 2010). Our findings affirm some existing studies regarding political and civic engagement’s potential impact on young people’s sense of belonging, long-term social development and social justice (Checkoway, 2011; McGregor et al., 2020; Shaw et al., 2014).

Citizenship and multicultural social work

Significant changes in civic and political life in Hong Kong have occurred following enactment of the National Security Law in 2020 and electoral reforms in 2021, including the decline of participatory democracy and civil liberties (Teo, 2021). This political contingency will probably constrain citizenship and multiculturalism, challenging or even prohibiting social workers’ facilitation of young people’s exercise of political rights in Hong Kong. In follow-up conversations with some informants after 2020, some indicated the possibility of emigrating from Hong Kong because of the current situation, while others expressed their wish to remain because Hong Kong is their home. Taking account of this political contingency and referring to existing literature regarding citizenship social work in authoritarian areas (e.g. Arce, 2018) and social work’s human rights and social justice agenda (Healy, 2008; Lister, 1998; Satka, 2014), this study highlights implications for multicultural social work and citizenship social work not only for Hong Kong within the national context of China but also for international social work more broadly.

First, multicultural social work with ethnic minority youth should integrate the citizenship framework, going beyond the existing deficits and strengths approaches. In a depolicitised society like contemporary Hong Kong that offers limited space for political negotiation (Teo, 2021), the exercise of citizenship rights could be focused on safeguarding basic social rights such as rights to education and employment for the maintenance of ‘reasonable social cohesion’ (Satka, 2014). Given the current situation, the long-term impact of youth’s political involvement on societal change locally is uncertain and different from that suggested by some Western studies (Back and Solomos, 1995; Pallares and Flores-González, 2010). Nevertheless, this article reiterates some existing research highlighting the potential role of civic and political engagement as an alternative approach to the deficit model in youth’s personal and social development (Checkoway, 2011; Kirshner and Ginwright, 2012; McGregor et al., 2020; Richards-Schuster and Pritzker, 2015). This helps avoid pathologising individual or group characteristics and provides an insight into how human behaviours or social phenomena are related to the deprivation of rights.

Second, citizenship social work sheds light on cultural competence and the need to accept cultural differences (e.g. Lee et al., 2002; Lum, 2011). As suggested by critical commentators (Danso, 2015; Healy, 2007), cultural competence should not be limited to respecting cultural differences and acquiring cultural knowledge and skills but should also address social injustice, including institutional racism and conflict between respecting cultures and respecting basic citizenship rights. Social workers should remember that respect for cultural difference and lack of cultural knowledge should not be prioritised at the expense of active citizenship and eliminating social stigma and exclusion, thus making citizenship more real (Lister, 1998). Citizenship social work enriches our understanding of cultural competence by highlighting the right to avoid social injustice while respecting cultural differences. Since social work practice in China addresses the needs of ethnic minority populations (王思斌, 2012), this insight may also be useful in the broader national context.

Third, as an empowering rather than a curative agency, the purpose of social work is not to provide constant care to cure but support to facilitate implementation of citizenship rights (Van Ewijk, 2009). At the institutional level, as in the Hong Kong context, for instance, social workers could promote change to eliminate institutional limitations through, for example, culturally sensitive measures in the election mechanism and dissemination of policy materials, including the use of language. Social workers could also advocate for the inclusion of ethnic minorities in public bodies to promote their integration into the ‘formal platform’ and increase their visibility. At the community level, social workers can provide community education to enhance awareness of ethnic minorities’ basic rights and counter views of minorities as ‘racialised outsiders’. Social workers can serve as cultural brokers at the individual and group levels to help ethnic minority youth understand the external sources (e.g. social stigma and political exclusion) of their stress and avoidant behaviours. Moreover, social workers should acknowledge personal and group strengths of ethnic minority youth and address barriers such as generational differences by engaging them as skilful and innovative brokers.

Limitations and conclusions

This study has limitations. First, funding and time constraints restricted its focus to one ethnic minority group. The extent to which our findings can be generalised is limited, given its exploratory nature. They also restricted the researchers’ ability to include more social worker informants, thus limiting analysis of social workers’ responses. Second, following sweeping changes in the political and civic arenas in Hong Kong after 2019, part of our analysis may not be applicable beyond the specific historical moment of the AEM protests. Nevertheless, this study contributes to scholarship and practice by presenting a unique Asian case study as part of the broader international discourses about minority youth political participation and citizenship social work. First, it illuminates how ethnic minority youth’s resources can be utilised harmoniously to promote their political engagement and enhance their sense of belonging, although the long-term impact remains uncertain. Second, it shows how incorporating the citizenship social work framework can avoid pathologising individual or group characteristics and enhance understanding of the needs and difficulties of ethnic minority youth while illuminating cultural competence in multicultural social work. Third, it highlights social work’s role as an empowering agency promoting ethnic minority youth’s citizenship rights.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author acknowledges the Public Policy Research Funding Scheme from the HKSAR government that funded the present study (SR2020.B23.002).

ORCID iD

Kim Kwok

Notes

Author biography

Kim Kwok is Visiting Assistant Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. Her teaching and research cover migration, gender, diversity and multicultural social work.

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