This piece offers preliminary reflections on the theoretical justification of a highly organised protest staged against the non-profit organisation contracted by the Hong Kong Government to provide asylum seekers with humanitarian assistance. In so doing, it reveals the central role played by asylum seekers reacting to border policies and practices that cause their immiseration.
AasK. F.BosworthM., eds, The Borders of Punishment: migration, citizenship, and social exclusion (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013).
2.
VecchioF., Asylum Seeking and the Global City (Abingdon, Routledge, 2015).
3.
With the end of the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ era in the late 1990s, provisions in their regard were removed from the local Immigration Ordinance following the belief that refugees would no longer arrive in Hong Kong. This piece analyses the agency of the most recent inflow of asylum seekers, who differ from previous momentous arrivals of Chinese and Vietnamese refugees between the 1950s and the 1990s. Recent arrivals are ethnically diverse urban refugees, allowed to reside in society, but illegalised within a complex post-colonial framework that in the past decade included an extemporaneous two-tracked screening mechanism. UNHCR would screen applications under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention), which has not been extended by the People’s Republic of China to the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s Immigration Department would assess claims under Article 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), which applies to the territory. Following Ubamaka Edward Wilson v Secretary for Security (FACV 15, 2011) and C v Director of Immigration (FACV 18-20, 2011) a government-led unified screening mechanism was introduced in early 2014, to assess ‘non-refoulement claims’ (hereafter, asylum claims) under Article 33 of the Refugee Convention, Article 3 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights and Article 3 of the CAT.
4.
In HKSAR v Usman Butt, the Court of Appeal upheld a decision made in 1988 to adopt a standard sentence of fifteen months’ imprisonment after plea for persons unlawfully remaining in the territory and caught working (HCMA70/2010, 27October, 2010).
5.
This rate refers to CAT screening prior to the introduction of a unified screening mechanism. The UNHCR recognition rate was reportedly around 10 per cent in 2012, although this was believed to be lower by civil society groups. Additionally, refugees and torture victims are not automatically provided with residence status when granted protection. See Vecchio, op. cit.
6.
Legislative Council, Background brief prepared by the Legislative Council secretariat for the meeting on 12 April 2011, torture claim screening mechanism (CB(2)1454/10-11(4), 7April).
WilsonT. M.DonnanH. (Eds), A Companion to Border Studies (Hoboken, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
13.
VecchioF.GerardA., ‘Surviving the politics of illegality’, in PickeringS.HamJ., eds, Routledge Handbook on Crime and International Migration (Abingdon, Routledge, forthcoming 2014).
14.
ManJ., ‘Police called in to deal with asylum seeker protest at Kowloon office’, South China Morning Post (2August2013).
GreenP.WardT., ‘Civil society, resistance and state crime’, in StanleyE.McCullochJ., eds, State Crime and Resistance (Abingdon, Routledge, 2012), pp. 28–40.
20.
GarlandD., ‘“Governmentality” and the problem of crime: Foucault, criminology, sociology’, Theoretical Criminology (Vol. 1, no. 2, 1997), pp. 173–214.
21.
ZetterR., ‘More labels, fewer refugees: remaking the refugee label in an era of globalization’, Journal of Refugee Studies (Vol. 20, no. 2, 2007), pp. 172–92.
22.
Vecchio and Gerard, op. cit.
23.
KapoorI., Celebrity Humanitarianism: the ideology of global charity (Abingdon, Routledge, 2013).
24.
AlbistonC. R.NielsenL. B., ‘Funding the cause: how public interest law organizations fund their activities and why it matters for social change’, Law & Social Inquiry (Vol. 39, no. 1, 2014), pp. 62–95.
25.
ChoiC., ‘Refugees demand government better monitor food and housing they get’, South China Morning Post (2March2014).
26.
WebberF., ‘UK: the real “immigration debate”’, Race & Class (Vol. 53, no. 3, 2012), pp. 91–8.
27.
Kapoor, op. cit.
28.
CastlesS., ‘Towards a sociology of forced migration and social transformation’, Sociology (Vol. 37, no. 1, 2003), pp. 13–34.
29.
ByrneJ., ed., The Occupy Handbook (New York, Back Bay Books, 2012).
30.
ChoiC., ‘Calls for more transparency as food costs for Hong Kong’s asylum seekers don’t add up’, South China Morning Post (19February2014).
31.
BaileyR., ‘Up against the wall: bare life and resistance in Australian immigration detention’, Law and Critique (Vol. 20, no. 2, 2009), pp. 113–32.
