Stateless nation within a nationless state: The political past, present, and future of Hongkongers, 1949–2019

What motivates people in the peripheries to risk their safety and even their lives to resist a centralising centre? In literature, a thesis of peripheral resistance movements was long constructed to postulate that under centre-periphery conflicts, rising peripheral identity will contribute to resistance movements against a centralising centre. Over the years, this thesis has been developed into a body of historical and contemporary qualitative case studies to account for centre-periphery conflicts worldwide. Yet, quantitative studies that empirically test the mechanism through which peripheral identity influences peripheral resistance movements remain rare. This study endeavours to make a modest contribution to the field by exploring a triangulated approach that combines both quantitative and qualitative analyses of peripheral resistance movements, using the 2019-2020 Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Bill Movement as the research testing site. Both the quantitative and qualitative findings of this study validate the thesis of peripheral resistance movements in the context of Hong Kong, with 'peripheral identity' found to be the most significant variable in predicting people's level of 'support' and 'participation' in the movement. By fostering a triangulated approach for investigating peripheral resistance movements, this study provides The author has published part of the telephone survey dataset used in this manuscript in another journal article in Democratization (see Fong, Brian C. H. 2022. Movement-voting nexus in hybrid regimes: voter mobilization in Hong Kong's Antit-Extradition Bill Movement, Democratization,

Section: Summary Of the Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 6 For an account of centre–periphery conflicts in post‐1997 Hong Kong, see Fong (2020); Yiu‐man (2020). …”

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confidence: 99%

Peripheral resistance movements: Towards a triangulated research approach

Fong

2022

“…The rise of a separate notion of ‘Hong Kong diaspora’ in the Anti‐Extradition Bill Movement, to be elaborated in the next section, should be interpreted as part of the transborder projection of Hongkongers' stateless‐national identity (Minahan, 2016: 174–175; Fong, 2020). Whereas Hong Kong had been colonised by the British since 1841, a distinctive Hongkonger identity vis‐à‐vis a Chinese identity did not exist before the Second World War.…”

Section: Research Case Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the past few decades, large communities of 'Hong Kong migrants' were found across many Global North countries, though it had immersed itself within a larger pan-ethnic Chinese diaspora community instead of singling itself out as a separate 'Hong Kong diaspora'. The rise of a separate notion of 'Hong Kong diaspora' in the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, to be elaborated in the next section, should be interpreted as part of the transborder projection of Hongkongers' stateless-national identity (Minahan, 2016: 174-175;Fong, 2020). Whereas Hong Kong had been colonised by the British since 1841, a distinctive Hongkonger identity vis-à-vis a Chinese identity did not exist before the Second World War.…”

Section: Research Case Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diaspora formation and mobilisation: The emerging Hong Kong diaspora in the anti‐extradition bill movement

Fong

2021

Over the years, literature studying stateless diaspora formation through a transborder social movement studies approach is growing. The recent rise of Hong Kong diaspora provides an emerging case of stateless diaspora that introduces new empirical insights into the scholarly literature. Using a mixed‐method research strategy, this study empirically investigates the formation of the Hong Kong diaspora as a ‘historically contingent process’, through which overseas Hongkongers were mobilised during the 2019–20 Anti‐Extradition Bill Movement (critical event) to join global protests (mobilising practices) by diaspora groups and activists (mobilising agents). Achieved transborder outreach across the Global North by mobilising their strong moral and cultural resources, it remains to be seen whether the emerging Hong Kong diaspora will move towards a full‐fledged, sustained identity‐based movement. The case study of Hong Kong diaspora offers new comparative insights and establishes a mixed‐method analytical framework for comparing stateless diaspora worldwide.

“…Existing work on Hong Kong nationalism often focuses on the mechanism that gave rise to Hong Kong nationalism. Wu (2016) and Veg (2017), for example, study how Hong Kong nationalism as an ideology has been constructed by public intellectuals and university students, and Fong (2017Fong ( , 2019 argues that Hong Kong nationalism has been inspired by China's interventionist policy. While these studies offer valuable insights into Hong Kong nationalism as a phenomenon, they fall short of revealing the nuanced relationship between nationalism and nationalist mobilisation and how the former is invoked purposefully by the political actors of the latter.…”

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confidence: 99%

Understanding Hong Kong nationalism: A topic network approach

2022

Drawing on data from Facebook, this article examines how elements of nationalism discourse were invoked by political actors to advance their agenda. In this paper, a novel mixed-method approach is introduced. The analysis begins with the quantitative phase, and topic modelling is used to identify the recurring themes in corpus. A topic network is generated based on the semantic association and centrality measures from social network analysis are used to identify the core topics in the discourse. In the qualitative phase, texts from the core topics are analysed discursively. The findings reveal that Hong Kong nationalism discourse includes three frames: the threat frame that constructs the overarching narrative of China Threat, the identity frame that engages with the debate on localism and nationalism and the action frame that discusses the actions to be taken in response to the threats.