Difficulties of integrating into Hong Kong society –Taking actions to build up a harmonious society with ethnic minorities.

Difficulties of integrating into Hong Kong society –Taking actions to build up a harmonious society with ethnic minorities.

Thanks to Hong Kong’s historical background and immigration issue, it is a society combined with different races, religions and nationalities. With more than forty-five hundred thousand ethnic minorities living in Hong Kong, the deep-rooted problem of their integration has raised a significant amount of controversy (Census and Statistics Department, 2011). Ethnic minorities have various cultural background and living styles when comparing Hong Kong Chinese. This type of problems has caused a wide variety of misunderstanding and discrimination among ethnic minorities living in Hong Kong. According to research, almost half of the ethnic minority interviewees felt that they were discriminated as second-class citizens. Apart from that they also felt being discriminated against daily activities, namely: shopping and opening personal bank account (Department Social Work of The Chinese University of Hong Kong(CUHK), 2005). Seemingly, ethnic minorities in Hong Kong are facing three crucial issues, ranging from inadequate understanding of Hong Kong culture and social services, the discrimination from local citizens to insufficient mastery of Chinese language. Only if the government setting up various methods, namely: implementing comprehensive settlement support program and establishing mentorship program can this program be tackled in the foreseeable future.

It cannot be denied that the one of the crucial problems facing by ethnic minority immigrants is the inadequate understanding of Hong Kong culture and social service. As most of the ethnic immigrants were lived at Southeast Asian before they came to Hong Kong. Representing their cultural background and living style are different when to compare to local citizens. They celebrate their festivals and believes in different religions, at which the ethnic minorities are not able to experience and integrate into the mainstream local culture. Also, with the insufficient understanding towards social services, they are not able to seek assistances when facing problems. According to research, ninety percent out of 141 interviewees did not ask for help from the government and non-government organizations before (Caritas, 2010). The reason behind might because of unawareness of the service and lack of local connection. Those problems result in a slow integration of ethnic immigrant in our society, causing culturally exclusion and failure in building up their sense of belonging to our society.

Seemingly, the next problem to be noted here is the discrimination from local citizens. This issue can be separated into two perspectives –employment and daily discrimination. For employment discrimination, a survey shows that ethnic minorities felt that their ethnicity determines their job development and payments (Department Social Work of CUHK, 2005). From ethnic minorities’ personal experience, they will easily fail to get a job even they were more qualified than other competitors, at which the reason behind might related to racial discrimination. For daily discrimination, the same survey shows that racial discrimination most commonly happens in their daily activities including shopping and working. Taking workplace as an example, the ethnic employees are discriminated by their employers, at which they might have more duties but with fewer payments (Caritas, 2010). Those problems result in unequal among different racial, festering the unharmonious social phenomenon and racial discrimination.

    Apart from the problems of insufficient understanding of Hong Kong culture and discrimination from local citizens, the final problem to be noted here is the inadequate mastery of Chinese language. A report suggests that most of the South Asians found difficulties in learning Cantonese speaking for daily conversation. At the same time, South Asians students are not able to be familiar with the Chinese language, which is a crucial subject for further study in Hong Kong (Centre for Civil Society and Governance, 2011). Another report shows that the Chinese proficiency of ethnic minority students aged between 12 and 23 is almost the same level as the primary school one student (Oxfam, 2014). Due to their insufficient Chinese standard, the chance for pursuing higher education qualifications and future career development will be limited to ethnic minorities. At which will causing the problem of cross-generation poverty and widening the wealth gap among our society, because of the inadequate chance to complete for university education.

It cannot be denied that this is our responsibility to nurture an equal and harmonious society. It is hard to imagine how society is operating smoothly if the ethnic immigrants are failed in integrating to our community. Therefore, the following suggestions should be implemented by the Hong Kong government so as to tackling the problem from its roots.

Integrating ethnic immigrants in our society, the comprehensive settlement support program should provide by the government for ethnic minorities before they go into our community, to cope with the problem of inadequate understanding of Hong Kong culture and mastery of Chinese language. This idea is borrowed from South Korea Government, aiming to integrate North Korean refugees into their mainstream society. The government should operate institutions that provide housing and basic education for the immigrants for few weeks to few months. The training could mainly focus on language and cultural teaching. For the adult, vocational training, psychological counseling, social service briefing and career-aptitude test can also be included in the training (Cho and Kim, 2011). After the training, the institution should connect the ethnic immigrant to potential employers. The ethnic minorities will be empowered to sustain their life with own ability after engaging in the mainstream society (Cho and Kim, 2011). For students, more Chinese academic courses and after-school tutorial classes should be provided, so as to narrowing the Chinese learning gap between ethnic minorities’ students and local students. These suggestions are expected to equip ethnic minorities with enough understanding towards Hong Kong community. At which, this policy might reduce their pressure when facing a new living environment and increasing their integration and sense of belonging to our society.

Apart from the training, the government should implement the mentorship program for ethnic immigrants, to provide assistances when they are facing problems (Cho and Kim, 2011). It is suggested that the government should recruit some local citizens as their mentors, who are required to introduce Hong Kong and provide basic assistance to their mentees. By inviting residents to be their mentor, more chance will be provided for them to build up mutual understanding and trust, helping the immigrant to build up their local network and reduce the problem racial discrimination from the local citizen.

To sum up, it is time for us to rethink and reflect on ourselves that how an equal treatment is critical to our society. The government should take the lead to integrate ethnic minorities into our society, while we should take our initiative to accept and tolerance them, so as to leading a harmonious society with ethnic minorities.

Reference:

Caritas Community Centre (2010). Survey on working condition of South Asians in Hong Kong. Retrieved April 9, 2016 from, Web site:  http://klncc.caritas.org.hk/private/document/633.pdf

Census and Statistics Department (2011). Thematic Report: Ethnic Minorities. Retrieved April 9, 2016 from Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Web site: http://www.census2011.gov.hk/pdf/EM.pdf

Centre for Civil Society and Governance, The University of Hong Kong (2011). Study on Racial Encounters and Discrimination Experienced by South Asians. EOC Research Reports, 1-6.

Cho, D. and Kim, Y. (2011). A study on settlement service for North Korean defectors. Journal of Korean Public Police and Security Studies, 8 (2), 25-50.

Department of Social Work (2005). Survey Results on Racial Discrimination in Hong Kong. Retrieved April 9, 2016 from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Social Work Web site: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/cpr/pressrelease/051028e.htm

Oxfam Hong Kong (2014). Survey on the Chinese Learning Challenges South Asian Ethnic Minority Kindergarten Students from Low-Income Families Face. Retrieved April 9, 2016 from, Web site: http://www.oxfam.org.hk/filemgr/2639/Oxfam_Surveyon_Dec2.pdf