Immigration Policies, Discourses, and the Politics of Local Belonging in Hong Kong (1950-1980)

Abstract

This article shows the trajectory of the discourse of identity in tandem with the history of immigration in Hong Kong between 1950 and 1980. On one hand, international politics, which figured prominently in the refugee question in the 1950s and the 1960s, later gave way to local interests. On the other hand, the colonial government at first adopted a primarily reactive and accommodating position in its policy toward the continual influxes of Chinese immigration, but there was a gradual shift from reactive measures to more deliberate control, planning, and hegemonic discourses over time. The process of identity articulation was being mediated through at least four intersecting discursive developments: the rise of a changing and contested notion of “settled residence,” the introduction of the notion of “Hong Kong belonging,” an evolving discourse of the “problem of people,” and the unfolding of a new hegemonic narrative of economic success.