Lecture by Prof. John Nguyet Erni
Many in Hong Kong have identified the city as “half-sovereign” or “conditionally sovereign,” as the times of post-1997 have brought about new ruptures and shifting boundaries of citizenship in economic, cultural, and legal terms. The work of deciphering questions of belonging and multicultural existence is still ongoing, and has in fact intensified in recent times. Increasingly, who qualifies as a citizen and where their sense of home is have become vital questions for two visible groups: the Chinese Mainlanders whose personal and cultural fortunes have been transformed by opportunities presented by the permeability of the city-border, and the foreign domestic helpers whose right of belonging has been caught in the discrimination of immigration laws.
Prof Erni invites participants to join in conversation to consider a notion he posits: that people’s fates are conjoined by a state of “included-out” – something augmented by nebulous doctrines of citizenship rights as well as by legalized and informal forms of cultural racialism.