Y T Li
Biographic Data
| ID | 47533 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Y T Li |
| GIVEN NAMES | Y T |
| FAMILY NAME | Li |
| SIGNATURE | LI Y T |
| AFFILIATIONS | UNSW Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4897-3616 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 138 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
“Not traditionally Asian”: Boba shops and the dialectics of pan-Asian identity
This article explores the emergence of boba shops as an ethnic-spatial landscape as well as a lived space for Asian Americans to navigate their pan-Asian and related cultural identity in the United States. Drawing data from participant observations in over 40 boba shops in the San Gabriel Valley area, multiple focus group interviews with 28 college students, and interviews with key informants about their experience and perceptions of the boba cul…
“Covid refugees” in Taiwan: Identity, aspiration, and friction in diasporic return
This study investigates the phenomenon of temporary diasporic return migration during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing specifically on Taiwanese Americans who returned to Taiwan—a group we conceptualized as “COVID refugees.” Drawing from eighteen qualitative interviews conducted with Taiwanese American returnees, this research explores how Taiwan’s effective health governance, heightened geopolitical tensions, and rising anti-Asian racism in the U…
Cold feet on foreign soil? How repressive threats shape migrants’ political engagement
How do repressive threats in countries of origin influence migrants’ political participation after migration to new countries? While migrating to new countries is often assumed to provide opportunities for political voice, this study reveals a more complex picture. Drawing on survey data from Ukrainian, Polish, and Argentinian migrants in Western democracies, we examine how repressive threats in their home countries continue to shape political en…
Immobility–mobility nexus: The opportunities and challenges of the Australian Covid-19 visa for temporary migrant workers
Migration studies have discussed the regime of (im)mobility and the impacts of COVID-19 on temporary migrants’ life chances. Fewer studies, however, have examined the potential opportunities, challenges, and consequences based on timescales and spatialities in unusual times, such as COVID-19. This paper focuses on the Australian government’s COVID-19 temporary activity visa (subclass 408)—a contingent visa that allowed temporary migrants whose vi…
Protest Walls: Co-authoring Contentious Repertoires
Protest walls have played an important role in movement communication and mobilizing the public. We focus on contentious performances and the way diverse actors co-authored spaces into the protest walls that were seen in Hong Kong and other countries including Lebanon, Iraq, and Taiwan. We argue that once created, protest walls can become objects symbolic of dissent. They exist as a lexicon-a complex language of symbols and spatial practices. Thi…
‘Black self-serve’: The depreciation of blackness and racialized vision among Taiwanese netizens
While the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was proliferating in the United States, the movement did not gain similar degrees of support in Taiwan. Instead, on social media there is even a term, 'Black Self-serve,' meaning that Black people always use race as an 'excuse' to demand whatever they want. Analyzing computer-mediated communication about blackness from the largest bulletin board system in Taiwan – PTT, this article highlights how and wh…
From patriotic nationals to critical citizens? The A4 Movement and the change in long-distance nationalism among overseas PRC-Chinese
Familiar strangers? Mainland Chinese immigrants navigating racial capital in Hong Kong
Effects of childhood environments on the discernment of health misinformation
Mobilising Behind Trump for Democracy: The Case of Hong Kong
This article examines social media posts and uses surveys to determine whether and why pro-democracy individuals in Hong Kong reconcile two seemingly incongruent understandings of democracy – support for Hong Kong’s democratic future in alignment with global democracy and support for Donald Trump, who is often seen to have promoted democratic backsliding. We also examine how Hong Kong-based Trump supporters define global democracy and perceive th…
An "Unsettling" Journey? Hong Kong's Exodus to Taiwan and Australia After the 2019 Protests
This article compares the considerations, expectations, and realizations of Hong Kongers migrating to Taiwan and Australia. Based on interviews with 22 Hong Konger migrants, we identified some key drivers for Hong Kongers who moved to Taiwan or Australia. The findings add insights into the spatial-temporal nexus of migration and extend the static push-pull model by including migrants' changing perceptions about the sociopolitical conditions of di…
Digital Organizers in Hong Kong: The Challenges of Movement Organizing Through Social Media Amid Democratic Backsliding
The 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement (Anti-ELAB Movement) in Hong Kong has been seen as a successful civil society organizing characterized by its decentralized, leaderless, and networked nature using various social media platforms. Drawing on interviews with 16 digital organizers who were involved in the production of flyers and the dissemination of movement-related information through social media platforms, this article reflects on the chal…
Evaluating the Geospatial Thinking of Pre-Service Geography Teachers Through an Orienteering Design Task: Analysis Using the Many-Faceted Rasch Model
Measurement is significant in geospatial thinking research. This study evaluated the geospatial thinking of pre-service geography teachers through an orienteering design tasks and subjective evaluation methods. Moreover, it analyzed their level of geospatial thinking, difficulty of evaluation indicators and rater severity with the Many-Faceted Rasch Model. The results showed the geospatial thinking of participating pre-service geography teachers …
Integration Based on Socio-economic Status? Everyday Interactions and Boundary (Un)making Between Mainland Skilled Professionals and Locals in Hong Kong
Scholars and the Hong Kong government are concerned about the social, economic, and cultural integration of new mainland Chinese immigrants (NMCIs) into local society. Research on NMCIs’ integration difficulties in Hong Kong has largely focused on one-way permit-holder migrants from China — who are less skilled and face discrimination and problems with integration based on differences in human capital — while overlooking other NMCI groups, such a…
Coordinating and doxing data: Hong Kong protesters’ and government supporters’ data strategies in the age of datafication
Scholars across various disciplines have discussed the role of ICTs and social media in contentious politics and social movements. Other studies have also highlighted the duality of data particularly in the context of contentious politics: data is simultaneously an object of political struggle and a weapon in repertoires of political struggle. Taking the protesters’ collective and networked program of sousveillance during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-…
Health communication on social media at the early stage of the pandemic: Examining health professionals' Covid-19 related tweets
Focusing on health professionals' tweets regarding COVID-19, this study examines whether and how those tweets are unique based on their identity as health experts. The data revealed that the infusion of health communication with political opinions, whether pro- or against certain political parties or health policies, reflects values and may deviate from the original purpose of health communication. In addition, sentiment analysis countered the in…
Sometimes "us", other times "others: Identity politics within Chinese voluntary associations in Australia
Research has noticed the heterogeneity within overseas Chinese communities. Yet, not much research has examined the internal dynamics and identity conflicts within Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs) from a transnational perspective. This article focuses on CVAs formed by two Chinese groups - Taiwanese and Hong Kongers in Australia, and argues that homeland identity politics influences association participation and the day-to-day lives of migra…
The right to information or data sovereignty? Sending unsolicited messages to Russians about the war in Ukraine
The Russian government's narrative about the Russia-Ukraine war has raised concerns about disinformation, fake news and freedom of information. In response, websites have been developed that allow people across the world to call or send emails and texts with information about the war to individuals based in Russia. To facilitate this person-to-person communication between strangers, automated data processing has been used to collect personal data…
Contentious Repertoires: Examining Lennon Walls in Hong Kong's Social Unrest of 2019
Scholars have examined the mobilising roles of text and images played during social movements. Studies of the Lennon Walls in Hong Kong have also discussed how citizens expressed opinions, shared information, and mobilised support for political reform. Few studies, however, have systematically examined the content of post-it notes and images on Lennon Walls and explored how the persuasive functions of movements have been distributed across text a…
Taiwan and the WHO: Negotiating the deconstruction of racialized discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic
Racialized and politicized discourses on individuals and countries have accompanied the emergence and spread of COVID-19. Adopting critical discourse analysis (CDA) and investigating the WHO's news releases, press conferences and the Taiwanese government's formal responses, this article examines three discursive events involving the deconstruction of racialized discourses during the pandemic by the WHO, the WHO's Director-General and Taiwan. Spec…
Information Diffusion or Deviation? An Exponential Random Graph Model of Activism Against Discrimination on Airbnb
This study examines the information diffusion of “Airbnb discrimination” and related digital activism on Twitter. The model-based inferential network analysis shows a hub-and-spoke network that is loosely connected, indicating that the diffusion network of Airbnb discrimination includes various issues (e.g., antisemitism). The retweet network mirrors the existing offline relationship of users (e.g., those who support opinion leaders of antisemiti…
‘I became a Taiwanese after I left Taiwan’: Identity shift among young immigrants in the United States
Migration and transnationalism studies use variables such as migration trajectory, length of stay, and ties with origin country to examine migrant identities. Research has also found that contrary to the prediction of assimilation theory, some well-adapted migrants activate their origin country identities. Using young Taiwanese immigrants who stayed in Taiwan for most of their lives and went to the United States as a case, this article examines t…
Redefining consumer nationalism: The ambiguities of shopping yellow during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Elab movement
An iconic characteristic of Hong Kong’s social unrest in 2019 was the establishment of the so-called “yellow economic circle”—a networked system of retailers and consumers linked by shared political values. Movement sympathizers chose to consume products from retailers perceived as supporting movement aims and boycotted retailers thought to be in favor of closer ties with China. This research focuses on the challenges of the yellow economic circl…
Digital togetherness as everyday resistance: The use of new media in addressing work exploitation in rural areas
The literature on spatial-temporal barriers shows that temporary migrant workers are vulnerable to exploitation and has concentrated on how they utilize new media to address underpayment and exploitation. These studies, however, have left unexplored the agency, temporality, and spatial considerations that underpin why workers prefer to activate “informal” mechanisms of complaint rather than accessing “formal” channels of redress, such as the Fair…
Data as a Weapon: The Evolution of Hong Kong Protesters’ Doxing Strategies
In Hong Kong’s social unrest of 2019, protesters adopted a variety of strategies to express their demands, including demonstrations on the street, political consumerism, and vandalizing stores of retailers perceived to be ideologically opposed to the movement, among others. When the Hong Kong government began to more forcefully suppress and monitor the protest, data became a contentious object as well as a weapon in the repertoire of political st…
Constituting Co-Ethnic Exploitation: The Economic and Cultural Meanings of Cash-in-Hand Jobs for Ethnic Chinese Migrants in Australia
This article asks two questions: for immigrants, how is an exploitative labor market constituted, and how do immigrant employees and employers understand exploitation involving co-ethnics? Taking ethnic Chinese immigrants (PRC-Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kongese) as an example, this article examines employer hiring strategies, employee economic rationales, cultural perceptions, and the work experiences of ethnic Chinese migrant workers who find work…
When the State Becomes Part of the Exploitation: Migrants’ Agency within the Institutional Constraints in Australia
Studies have shown the unequal treatments temporary migrants face in the processes of immigration. In Australia for a short period of time and not citizens, they face conditions that allow for employer exploitation. This article is interested in exploring how institutional structures shape and normalize the choices that migrants make to work in the cash economy or other exploitative conditions. To do this, we take PRC‐Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong…
An "Unsettling" Journey? Hong Kong's Exodus to Taiwan and Australia After the 2019 Protests
This article compares the considerations, expectations, and realizations of Hong Kongers migrating to Taiwan and Australia. Based on interviews with 22 Hong Konger migrants, we identified some key drivers for Hong Kongers who moved to Taiwan or Australia. The findings add insights into the spatial-temporal nexus of migration and extend the static push-pull model by including migrants' changing perceptions about the sociopolitical conditions of di…
Contentious Repertoires: Examining Lennon Walls in Hong Kong's Social Unrest of 2019
Scholars have examined the mobilising roles of text and images played during social movements. Studies of the Lennon Walls in Hong Kong have also discussed how citizens expressed opinions, shared information, and mobilised support for political reform. Few studies, however, have systematically examined the content of post-it notes and images on Lennon Walls and explored how the persuasive functions of movements have been distributed across text a…
Donating to the fight for democracy: The connective activism of overseas Hong Kongers and Taiwanese in the 2019 Anti-extradition bill movement
The 2019 Anti-extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong has generated global support on both the narrative side and through material donations. This article compares global support networks organized by Taiwanese and overseas Hong Kongers. Drawing on interview data with 17 Taiwanese and 13 overseas Hong Kongers regarding the reasons, processes and meanings of donation to Hong Kong protesters, we found that even though both groups organized support n…
One person, three identities? Examining re-politicization of ethnic, national, and Australian identities among 1.5-generation Taiwanese immigrants in Australia
Immigrants of the 1.5-generation (1.5-ers) differ from first- and second-generation immigrants because they are generally better immersed in the culture of the host society than the first generation; yet, compared to the second generation, they often have to renegotiate their identities in relation to parents, colleagues at work, and people in the host society during the processes of migration. Drawing on interview data from Taiwanese 1.5-ers in …
It's Not Discrimination: Chinese Migrant Workers' Perceptions of and Reactions to Racial Microaggressions in Australia
Racial microaggressions appear in different forms and affect racial and ethnic groups through everyday practices. We know little, however, about how racial microaggressions are perceived and operate in the context of institutionalized racism. In an immigration context, the structural mechanisms that influence migrant workers' interpretations of racial microaggressions remain understudied. This article examines job-search processes, self-perceptio…
Sometimes "us", other times "others: Identity politics within Chinese voluntary associations in Australia
Research has noticed the heterogeneity within overseas Chinese communities. Yet, not much research has examined the internal dynamics and identity conflicts within Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs) from a transnational perspective. This article focuses on CVAs formed by two Chinese groups - Taiwanese and Hong Kongers in Australia, and argues that homeland identity politics influences association participation and the day-to-day lives of migra…
Reclaiming Hong Kong through neighbourhood-making: A study of the 2019 Anti-Elab movement
Set in the context of the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) protest movement in Hong Kong, this study focuses on selected material and social appropriations of space including community-focused events held in shopping malls, the establishment of networks connecting consumers to suppliers with like-minded political values, and human chains. Drawing on popular concepts such as scale, network and place-frames found in the literatu…
Asymmetrical understandings of the value of time between Taiwanese Working Holiday Makers and the Australian government: Cultural exchange or serving time
The impact temporary visa status has on the lives of migrants and their experience of time has been widely discussed. Fewer studies, however, focus discussion on the competing interpretations of the value of Working Holiday Makers' (WHMs) time and the complexities of disruption and (un)certainties: more specifically the contrast between the value the Australian government places on time spent doing agricultural work in rural areas to become eligi…
I was discriminated against because I was seen as PRC-Chinese: The negotiation between ethnicity and nationalism among Taiwanese migrants in Australia
Research on race and ethnicity has focused on conditions under which solidarity will be developed to consolidate collective benefits. For example, facing racial discrimination can bring large-scale affiliations (e.g., people of color, Latinos, or Asians) to fight against racial injustice. Focusing on the negotiation and struggle between ethnicity and nationalism among Taiwanese migrants in Australia-a politicizing context associated with a prior …
Taiwan as ghost island? Ambivalent articulation of marginalized identities in computer-mediated discourses
This study examines the conflicting self-presentations when using the term ‘ghost island’ in Taiwan, a self-mocking way to belittle the homeland. While some view this term as a form of social critique, others consider it to be suggestive of a social malaise affecting contemporary Taiwanese. Drawing on online posts and comments from the most popular bulletin board system in Taiwan, this study combines topic modeling with a discourse-historical app…
Playing' at the ethnic boundary: Strategic boundary making/unmaking among ethnic Chinese groups in Australia
The sociological literature has constructed a systematic typology of 'modes' and 'means' of strategic ethnic boundary making/unmaking. Through exploring different strategies, scholars illustrate the processes and contexts of boundary expansion or contraction. Other scholars also distinguish ethnic elements and 'moral' values attached to certain ethnicities but not to others. This paper acknowledges dynamic boundary making/unmaking and moral aspec…
Coordinating and doxing data: Hong Kong protesters’ and government supporters’ data strategies in the age of datafication
Scholars across various disciplines have discussed the role of ICTs and social media in contentious politics and social movements. Other studies have also highlighted the duality of data particularly in the context of contentious politics: data is simultaneously an object of political struggle and a weapon in repertoires of political struggle. Taking the protesters’ collective and networked program of sousveillance during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-…
Data as a Weapon: The Evolution of Hong Kong Protesters’ Doxing Strategies
In Hong Kong’s social unrest of 2019, protesters adopted a variety of strategies to express their demands, including demonstrations on the street, political consumerism, and vandalizing stores of retailers perceived to be ideologically opposed to the movement, among others. When the Hong Kong government began to more forcefully suppress and monitor the protest, data became a contentious object as well as a weapon in the repertoire of political st…
Moral Dilemma of Striking: A Medical Worker’s Response to Job Duty, Public Health Protection and the Politicization of Strikes
The emergence of COVID-19 has led many countries to take strong border control measures. In Hong Kong, in reaction to government reluctance to close the border, more than 9000 medical workers went on strike. The strike lasted for five days only, yet it provoked a moral dilemma for healthcare occupations – when workers strike, citizens’ medical needs may be sacrificed. This article presents Jenna, a medical worker who went on strike, and her evalu…
Digital togetherness as everyday resistance: The use of new media in addressing work exploitation in rural areas
The literature on spatial-temporal barriers shows that temporary migrant workers are vulnerable to exploitation and has concentrated on how they utilize new media to address underpayment and exploitation. These studies, however, have left unexplored the agency, temporality, and spatial considerations that underpin why workers prefer to activate “informal” mechanisms of complaint rather than accessing “formal” channels of redress, such as the Fair…
Accounting for "the social" in contact tracing applications: The paradox between public health governance and mistrust of government's data use
This essay adopts three accounts (sociological, neoliberal, and cybernetic) of "the social" to get a clearer picture of why there is a barrier faced by the government when implementing contact tracing mobile applications. In Hong Kong's context, the paradox involves declining trust of the government's protection of data privacy and growing concern about data surveillance since the 2019 social unrest I argue that exploring the idea of sociality is…
Auditing ethnic preference in Hong Kong's financial job market: The mediation of white privilege and Hong Kong localism
Using the case of Hong Kong's finance-related industries, this article examines whether preference or discrimination based on job applicants' ethnic background manifests in Hong Kong employers' hiring practices. The authors took an audit approach and compared applicants of three distinctive ethnic groups: Anglo-Saxons, local Hong Kongers, and mainland Chinese. They found that in Hong Kong, local applicants receive the highest callback rate, follo…
Integration Based on Socio-economic Status? Everyday Interactions and Boundary (Un)making Between Mainland Skilled Professionals and Locals in Hong Kong
Scholars and the Hong Kong government are concerned about the social, economic, and cultural integration of new mainland Chinese immigrants (NMCIs) into local society. Research on NMCIs’ integration difficulties in Hong Kong has largely focused on one-way permit-holder migrants from China — who are less skilled and face discrimination and problems with integration based on differences in human capital — while overlooking other NMCI groups, such a…
Redefining consumer nationalism: The ambiguities of shopping yellow during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Elab movement
An iconic characteristic of Hong Kong’s social unrest in 2019 was the establishment of the so-called “yellow economic circle”—a networked system of retailers and consumers linked by shared political values. Movement sympathizers chose to consume products from retailers perceived as supporting movement aims and boycotted retailers thought to be in favor of closer ties with China. This research focuses on the challenges of the yellow economic circl…
Maintaining transnational ties and the convertibility of working holiday makers' experiences in Australia
Migration studies have investigated the complex relationship between transnational ties and integration among long-term immigrants. However, discussions about temporary migrant motives for maintaining transnational ties remain under-explored. Focusing on how Chinese Working Holiday Makers (WHMs) see integration and the 'convertibility' of temporary experiences in Australia, this article highlights that temporary migrants are not just concerned wi…
Taiwan and the WHO: Negotiating the deconstruction of racialized discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic
Racialized and politicized discourses on individuals and countries have accompanied the emergence and spread of COVID-19. Adopting critical discourse analysis (CDA) and investigating the WHO's news releases, press conferences and the Taiwanese government's formal responses, this article examines three discursive events involving the deconstruction of racialized discourses during the pandemic by the WHO, the WHO's Director-General and Taiwan. Spec…
Unequal discourses: Problems of the current model of world health development
Disharmonious Chinese ethnic business: Intergroup stereotypes among Chinese migrant employees in Australia
This article focuses on perceptual divisions in the ethnic businesses and how PRC-Chinese and Taiwanese employees navigate and contest ethnic stereotypes within Chinese workplaces in Australia. Literature has highlighted internal ethnicity in the overseas Chinese ethnic businesses; but there has been little examination of the structural and symbolic aspects that lead Chinese migrant employees to generate specific ethnic stereotypes of other subgr…
When the State Becomes Part of the Exploitation: Migrants’ Agency within the Institutional Constraints in Australia
Studies have shown the unequal treatments temporary migrants face in the processes of immigration. In Australia for a short period of time and not citizens, they face conditions that allow for employer exploitation. This article is interested in exploring how institutional structures shape and normalize the choices that migrants make to work in the cash economy or other exploitative conditions. To do this, we take PRC‐Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong…
Playing' at the ethnic boundary: Strategic boundary making/unmaking among ethnic Chinese groups in Australia
The sociological literature has constructed a systematic typology of 'modes' and 'means' of strategic ethnic boundary making/unmaking. Through exploring different strategies, scholars illustrate the processes and contexts of boundary expansion or contraction. Other scholars also distinguish ethnic elements and 'moral' values attached to certain ethnicities but not to others. This paper acknowledges dynamic boundary making/unmaking and moral aspec…
Constituting Co-Ethnic Exploitation: The Economic and Cultural Meanings of Cash-in-Hand Jobs for Ethnic Chinese Migrants in Australia
This article asks two questions: for immigrants, how is an exploitative labor market constituted, and how do immigrant employees and employers understand exploitation involving co-ethnics? Taking ethnic Chinese immigrants (PRC-Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kongese) as an example, this article examines employer hiring strategies, employee economic rationales, cultural perceptions, and the work experiences of ethnic Chinese migrant workers who find work…
Taiwan as ghost island? Ambivalent articulation of marginalized identities in computer-mediated discourses
This study examines the conflicting self-presentations when using the term ‘ghost island’ in Taiwan, a self-mocking way to belittle the homeland. While some view this term as a form of social critique, others consider it to be suggestive of a social malaise affecting contemporary Taiwanese. Drawing on online posts and comments from the most popular bulletin board system in Taiwan, this study combines topic modeling with a discourse-historical app…
It's Not Discrimination: Chinese Migrant Workers' Perceptions of and Reactions to Racial Microaggressions in Australia
Racial microaggressions appear in different forms and affect racial and ethnic groups through everyday practices. We know little, however, about how racial microaggressions are perceived and operate in the context of institutionalized racism. In an immigration context, the structural mechanisms that influence migrant workers' interpretations of racial microaggressions remain understudied. This article examines job-search processes, self-perceptio…
One person, three identities? Examining re-politicization of ethnic, national, and Australian identities among 1.5-generation Taiwanese immigrants in Australia
Immigrants of the 1.5-generation (1.5-ers) differ from first- and second-generation immigrants because they are generally better immersed in the culture of the host society than the first generation; yet, compared to the second generation, they often have to renegotiate their identities in relation to parents, colleagues at work, and people in the host society during the processes of migration. Drawing on interview data from Taiwanese 1.5-ers in …
Unequal discourses: Problems of the current model of world health development
I was discriminated against because I was seen as PRC-Chinese: The negotiation between ethnicity and nationalism among Taiwanese migrants in Australia
Research on race and ethnicity has focused on conditions under which solidarity will be developed to consolidate collective benefits. For example, facing racial discrimination can bring large-scale affiliations (e.g., people of color, Latinos, or Asians) to fight against racial injustice. Focusing on the negotiation and struggle between ethnicity and nationalism among Taiwanese migrants in Australia-a politicizing context associated with a prior …
Maintaining transnational ties and the convertibility of working holiday makers' experiences in Australia
Migration studies have investigated the complex relationship between transnational ties and integration among long-term immigrants. However, discussions about temporary migrant motives for maintaining transnational ties remain under-explored. Focusing on how Chinese Working Holiday Makers (WHMs) see integration and the 'convertibility' of temporary experiences in Australia, this article highlights that temporary migrants are not just concerned wi…
Disharmonious Chinese ethnic business: Intergroup stereotypes among Chinese migrant employees in Australia
This article focuses on perceptual divisions in the ethnic businesses and how PRC-Chinese and Taiwanese employees navigate and contest ethnic stereotypes within Chinese workplaces in Australia. Literature has highlighted internal ethnicity in the overseas Chinese ethnic businesses; but there has been little examination of the structural and symbolic aspects that lead Chinese migrant employees to generate specific ethnic stereotypes of other subgr…
“Hong Kong, Add Oil!”: The Lennon Walls in the 2019 Hong Kong Movement
In June 2019, millions poured onto the streets of Hong Kong to protest the proposed Extradition Bill. In addition to physical confrontations between the police and protesters on the streets, Lennon Walls were also erected. This essay captures the zeitgeist of the Hong Kong 2019 movement through post-it notes on Lennon Walls across Hong Kong’s major districts
How important is English, Mandarin, and Cantonese for getting a job? Exploring employers’ perceptions of linguistic capital in Hong Kong
As a global city, English proficiency in Hong Kong is seen as a form of cultural capital in everyday life, particularly in the labor market. Studies have substantiated that in Hong Kong, white privilege is evident, as can be seen in that white people are more likely to occupy managerial positions and have higher pay than members of other ethnic groups. After returning to China’s rule in 1997, however, with an increasing flow of migrants from main…
Moral Dilemma of Striking: A Medical Worker’s Response to Job Duty, Public Health Protection and the Politicization of Strikes
The emergence of COVID-19 has led many countries to take strong border control measures. In Hong Kong, in reaction to government reluctance to close the border, more than 9000 medical workers went on strike. The strike lasted for five days only, yet it provoked a moral dilemma for healthcare occupations – when workers strike, citizens’ medical needs may be sacrificed. This article presents Jenna, a medical worker who went on strike, and her evalu…
Accounting for "the social" in contact tracing applications: The paradox between public health governance and mistrust of government's data use
This essay adopts three accounts (sociological, neoliberal, and cybernetic) of "the social" to get a clearer picture of why there is a barrier faced by the government when implementing contact tracing mobile applications. In Hong Kong's context, the paradox involves declining trust of the government's protection of data privacy and growing concern about data surveillance since the 2019 social unrest I argue that exploring the idea of sociality is…
Auditing ethnic preference in Hong Kong's financial job market: The mediation of white privilege and Hong Kong localism
Using the case of Hong Kong's finance-related industries, this article examines whether preference or discrimination based on job applicants' ethnic background manifests in Hong Kong employers' hiring practices. The authors took an audit approach and compared applicants of three distinctive ethnic groups: Anglo-Saxons, local Hong Kongers, and mainland Chinese. They found that in Hong Kong, local applicants receive the highest callback rate, follo…
Information Diffusion or Deviation? An Exponential Random Graph Model of Activism Against Discrimination on Airbnb
This study examines the information diffusion of “Airbnb discrimination” and related digital activism on Twitter. The model-based inferential network analysis shows a hub-and-spoke network that is loosely connected, indicating that the diffusion network of Airbnb discrimination includes various issues (e.g., antisemitism). The retweet network mirrors the existing offline relationship of users (e.g., those who support opinion leaders of antisemiti…
‘I became a Taiwanese after I left Taiwan’: Identity shift among young immigrants in the United States
Migration and transnationalism studies use variables such as migration trajectory, length of stay, and ties with origin country to examine migrant identities. Research has also found that contrary to the prediction of assimilation theory, some well-adapted migrants activate their origin country identities. Using young Taiwanese immigrants who stayed in Taiwan for most of their lives and went to the United States as a case, this article examines t…
Redefining consumer nationalism: The ambiguities of shopping yellow during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Elab movement
An iconic characteristic of Hong Kong’s social unrest in 2019 was the establishment of the so-called “yellow economic circle”—a networked system of retailers and consumers linked by shared political values. Movement sympathizers chose to consume products from retailers perceived as supporting movement aims and boycotted retailers thought to be in favor of closer ties with China. This research focuses on the challenges of the yellow economic circl…
Digital togetherness as everyday resistance: The use of new media in addressing work exploitation in rural areas
The literature on spatial-temporal barriers shows that temporary migrant workers are vulnerable to exploitation and has concentrated on how they utilize new media to address underpayment and exploitation. These studies, however, have left unexplored the agency, temporality, and spatial considerations that underpin why workers prefer to activate “informal” mechanisms of complaint rather than accessing “formal” channels of redress, such as the Fair…
Data as a Weapon: The Evolution of Hong Kong Protesters’ Doxing Strategies
In Hong Kong’s social unrest of 2019, protesters adopted a variety of strategies to express their demands, including demonstrations on the street, political consumerism, and vandalizing stores of retailers perceived to be ideologically opposed to the movement, among others. When the Hong Kong government began to more forcefully suppress and monitor the protest, data became a contentious object as well as a weapon in the repertoire of political st…
Reclaiming Hong Kong through neighbourhood-making: A study of the 2019 Anti-Elab movement
Set in the context of the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) protest movement in Hong Kong, this study focuses on selected material and social appropriations of space including community-focused events held in shopping malls, the establishment of networks connecting consumers to suppliers with like-minded political values, and human chains. Drawing on popular concepts such as scale, network and place-frames found in the literatu…
Donating to the fight for democracy: The connective activism of overseas Hong Kongers and Taiwanese in the 2019 Anti-extradition bill movement
The 2019 Anti-extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong has generated global support on both the narrative side and through material donations. This article compares global support networks organized by Taiwanese and overseas Hong Kongers. Drawing on interview data with 17 Taiwanese and 13 overseas Hong Kongers regarding the reasons, processes and meanings of donation to Hong Kong protesters, we found that even though both groups organized support n…
Asymmetrical understandings of the value of time between Taiwanese Working Holiday Makers and the Australian government: Cultural exchange or serving time
The impact temporary visa status has on the lives of migrants and their experience of time has been widely discussed. Fewer studies, however, focus discussion on the competing interpretations of the value of Working Holiday Makers' (WHMs) time and the complexities of disruption and (un)certainties: more specifically the contrast between the value the Australian government places on time spent doing agricultural work in rural areas to become eligi…
The right to information or data sovereignty? Sending unsolicited messages to Russians about the war in Ukraine
The Russian government's narrative about the Russia-Ukraine war has raised concerns about disinformation, fake news and freedom of information. In response, websites have been developed that allow people across the world to call or send emails and texts with information about the war to individuals based in Russia. To facilitate this person-to-person communication between strangers, automated data processing has been used to collect personal data…
Contentious Repertoires: Examining Lennon Walls in Hong Kong's Social Unrest of 2019
Scholars have examined the mobilising roles of text and images played during social movements. Studies of the Lennon Walls in Hong Kong have also discussed how citizens expressed opinions, shared information, and mobilised support for political reform. Few studies, however, have systematically examined the content of post-it notes and images on Lennon Walls and explored how the persuasive functions of movements have been distributed across text a…
Sociology (36 works) · Political science (32 works) · Law (26 works) · Politics (23 works) · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy (17 works) · Gender Studies (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (15 works) · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity (14 works) · Economics (11 works)