Migrant mothers, rejected refugees and excluded belonging in Hong Kong

Abstract

AbstractBuilding on ethnographic research and on studies of noncitizenship, this paper examines ‘excluded belonging’, a condition that is constructed over time, through a process of interactions between noncitizens and migratory assemblages. Noncitizens respond to the shifting parameters of inclusion and exclusion in their everyday lives in their attempts to construct a substantive sense of belonging that is often fleeting, fragile and ever challenged. Maintaining this condition entails work, learning, struggles and strategising by noncitizens within spaces of exclusion and with institutional actors who deny them rights and also assist them. Ethnographic research in Hong Kong (2010–2018), among women migrant workers whose pathways shift as they become mothers, overstayers, nonrefoulement (asylum) claimants and rejected refugees, illustrates the lived paradox of excluded belonging, as illustrated by the challenges they face in relation to acquiring food, shelter and children's education while facing increasing migratory exclusion and the growing threat of deportation.