Hok Bun KU

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Racism and Social Inequality Work and Employment
of South Asian Ethnic Minority in Hong Kong

• Hok Bun KU Kam Wah CHAN
• Department of Applied Social Sciences
• The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

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Introduction

• According to the 2001 official population census,
  ethnic minorities constituted 5.1 per cent of the
  Hong Kong population with a total of 343,950.
  Among them, the population of South and Southeast
  Asians, including Pakistanis, Indians, Nepalese,
  Filipinos, Indonesians and Thais, was 249,516
  (Census and Statistics Department, 2002).

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• Discrimination against South Asian people is
  largely unarticulated and undocumented in Hong
  Kong.
• Making people invisible is one way of
  marginalizing and socially excluding them.
• In 2002 we started a pilot study about the life
  situation of Pakistanis in Hong Kong and then in
  2004 funded by the CERG Grant we continued
  another bigger project titled Ethnicity and
  Social Exclusion A Study on the Life Situation
  of South Asian Ethnic Minority in Hong Kong

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• It aims to understand the situation of South
  Asian ethnic minority groups through their hidden
  voices and to see what social forces contribute
  to the social exclusion of ethnic minority
  groups, as well as to understand how their racial
  and ethnic identities make their position
  vulnerable in areas such as education,
  employment, housing, health and social services.
• We also hope to make the finding reach to the
  policy makers and helps them reformulate the law
  to outlaw racial discrimination and design
  services more favorable to the ethnic minority.
• The paper focuses on the employment issues
  concerning South Asian ethnic minority groups in
  Hong Kong, namely the Filipinos, Indians,
  Nepalese and Pakistanis.

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Race/Ethnicity and Social Exclusion in Hong Kong

• In recent years, social exclusion has been one of
  the important themes in policy debates in Western
  societies
• It has also replaced the underclass in
  discussions about the poor in post-industrial
  society.
• Social exclusion means much more than poverty
  because many exclusions and inequalities are
  embedded in everyday social interactions, social
  practices and social discourse.

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• It involves not just the lack of material
  resources but also a multi-dimensional process in
  which various forms of exclusion are combined
  participation in decision making and the
  political process, access to employment and
  material resources, and integration into common
  cultural processes.
• There is a close relation between ethnicity and
  social exclusion.

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• Numerous surveys by academics, the press, and
  other NGOs provide incontrovertible evidence that
  racist attitudes lie very deep and racial
  discrimination is a serious problem in Hong Kong
• We do hope via this paper, South Asian ethnic
  minorities voices can be heard by the government
  and the public

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Employment Situation of South Asian Ethnic
Minorities in Hong Kong
Table 6 Employment Status
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• Racial Labor Market Segmentation

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Table 7 Occupation and Ethnic Origin
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Table 8 Working hours per week
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Table 9 Average monthly income
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Table 10 Means of getting current job
Note The respondent may write more than one
career chances. Total Number of Respondent 190
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Table 11. Difficulties in searching for a job in
Hong Kong
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Table 12 Time spent to find the current job
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Table 13. Problems at workplace in Hong Kong
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Color Still Matters

• Racial Bias and Discrimination in job searching
  and at Workplace
• Unequal treatment at the workplace
• Unrecognized educational qualifications

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South Asian Peoples Narratives

• Even in the newspaper recruitment ad, the
  requirement is not Chinese. It is an English
  company. Still, if you phone them for an
  interview, and they come to know that youre a
  Pakistani, your nationality, they will just not
  call you. They wont bother. They wont even
  bother to give you some time. Theyll just say,
  Okay, well call you or something like that.
  And then just finish! At this point they dont
  even ask you if you know Cantonese or
  notConcerning Hong Kong environment and the
  culture, they still think that Chinese will be
  more adapted to the kind of society.

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• Sometimes I look for jobs in Recruit. When I
  called them, they asked about my qualifications.
  After that, they asked me, Whore you? Are you a
  Chinese? I answered that my nationality is
  Pakistani. Then, they said, Sorry, you cant.

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• I think this is a show the language barrier
  we can call it a show. It is played in the hands
  of the government, non-government organizations
  and other firms. Whenever a South Asian who cant
  read or write Chinese and goes to any firms to
  apply for jobs, straightly the first question is,
  Do you know how to read and write Chinese?
  Sorry. This is the show that everybody is using
  on everybody. Ive seen many advertisements that
  state good English, better job opportunities.
  Where are the job opportunities? Any person who
  speaks English, you use the Chinese show. And you
  give the job to the one whom you want. To whom
  you want to give it, you give it!

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• Religion matters toothe kindergarten was
  affiliated with a church. The person frankly told
  me, Were afraid that you may teach your
  religion to our children. I said, Why will I do
  so? Exclaimed sadly. Though I had kindergarten
  teaching experience, its in his mind that maybe
  I would teach them my religion. I see a lot of
  Christians preaching on streets. Some even came
  to our doorsteps and offered us books and things.
  Weve never had these things. Theyre doing that,
  fine, no problem. But why did he think Id do the
  same? This is a barrier.

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Conclusion

• A sense of exclusion is common for our
  respondents.
• racism operates subtly and constitutes inequality
  in work and employment among South Asian people
  in Hong Kong.
• Their life experiences in Hong Kong are shaped by
  discrimination, racism and differential or
  preferential treatment.
• Racial labour market segmentation is the obvious
  pattern in Hong Kong.
• While language and credential are two of the main
  problems the ethnic minorities faced in job
  search or at work, racial discrimination is
  another significant factor.
• Racial discrimination in the labour market was
  overwhelming, and it led to unequal treatments
  suffered by the ethnic minorities.
• Comparing to their local Chinese counterpart, the
  ethnic minorities received unequal/lower pay,
  less promotion opportunity, more workload, less
  job safety, higher chances of being laid off,
  less working benefits and are at times rejected
  because of cultural and/or religious practices.