Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Eurocentric studies on the racialisation of migrants often focus on Whiteness as a default type of dominant symbolic capital and on how it manifests at the socio-economic and political levels. This article attempts to move beyond Whiteness by focusing on a non-Western context and analysing the tensions associated with the appropriation of what has recently been conceptualised as ‘racial capital’. Drawing on interviews with 28 mainland Chinese immigrants (MCIs) in Hong Kong and their interactions with locals, this article demonstrates the tensions between the Chinese government’s socio-political agenda to promote a Chinese identity and Hong Kong’s identity-based resistance to this top-down delegation and its perceived migratory exponents. I re-emphasise Alloul’s claim that racial capital is about understanding one’s experiences of perceiving and evaluating other social groups’ identities, while also subject to the influence of politics. This article takes an intersectional approach to examine the intersection between constructed/perceived racial differences, political identities, socio-economic status, and the shifting colonial context in Hong Kong (from the legacy of British colonial rule to the Chinese ‘neo-colonial’ regime).
Source: Third World Quarterly
Author: Yao-Tai Li
Institution: UNSW Sydney
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Nanyang Technological University
OpenAlex ID: W4411739049