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Abstract :
[en] Since the 2019 anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protest and the advent of the National Security Law into Hong Kong’s Basic Law a year later, Hong Kong has witnessed successive waves of population exodus, estimates and figures indicating that more than 100.000 people were leaving the Special Administrative Region on a yearly basis since 2019. Among the destinations of those who left, the United-Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and the United-States stood out most prominently for relocation. Although there are no systematic data available on the demographic (socio-cultural and socio-economic characteristics) profile of those who out-migrated since 2019, existing data at the national level for the UK tend to show that middle-class people with graduate (36%) and postgraduate (23%) qualifications stood out quite prominently, (Rolfe and Benson 2023).
A substantive body of scholarship has documented both the politics of the umbrella movement and of the (post)2019 Anti-Elab protest and within this scholarship, the politics of Hong Kong diaspora has become an emerging focus of research.
In this paper, I present the preliminary results of a two-year research project (2025-2027) focusing on Hong Kong scholars among post-2019 migrants and on their ways of coping with various forms of statutory and professional uncertainties, and their crafting belonging and agency. In addition to Hong Kong studies, this project draws from insights from three main body of literature: “displaced scholars”/academics in exile; diaspora studies; and social movement literature. In this paper, I conceive of mobility and of those engaged in mobility as “a socially constitutive power” capable of agency and of navigating and re-imagining forms of political, cultural and scientific membership (Nail 2015).
In this paper I focus on the following three sets of questions. Firstly, I explore how Hong Kong scholars abroad explain their decision to leave Hong Kong and relocate. Research in migration studies highlights that displacement does not occur along a singular trajectory of forced or voluntary movement but that it is rather moving within a spectrum of agency and constraints (Betts 2009). I account for a plurality of motives of more or less (un)voluntary mobility. Among Hong Kong scholars abroad, some (academic escapees/exiles) may have been compelled to leave to escape direct political repression, others may have left preemptively to avoid worsening political persecution, while others may account for their decision via the interplay of a mix of socio-economic, cultural and political forces and partly as part of future-oriented projects. Secondly, I delve on how my informants cope with the uncertainties of their citizenship status and academic/professional prospects, while also in many instances having to face feelings of isolation, guilt (Ho 2023), trauma and estrangement in adverse situations. Thirdly, I explore if and through which forms of mediation can a new sense of home and of community be re-imagined and in which respects Hong Kong scholars abroad contribute to crafting new knowledge and to fostering communities of emotions, care (Ho 2025) solidary and hope. I also explore the heterogeneity of forms of political engagements and citizenship practices, from everyday individual practices, to more collective and public forms of engagement, raising the issue of the political risks of public engagement in a context of sustained transnational repression. I also ask what the values through which they define themselves as (public) scholars are.
The material for this presentation consists in a first series of 10 to 15 semi-directed qualitative interviews with 10 to 15 Hong Kong scholars abroad based in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan (a total of 2. A snowballing method is used to establish contact with a number of key actors with a view to conducting interviews. It will also draw from a variety of online and print publications (essays, blog posts, etc.). This paper is part of a two-year (2025-2027) research project funded by the Human and Social Sciences Council of the University of Liege.
Quoted references:
BETTS, Alexander. 2009. Protection by Persuasion: International Cooperation in the Refugee Regime. Cornell: Cornell University Press.
HO, Ming-sho. 2019. Challenging Beijing’s Mandate of Heaven: Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
HO, Ming-Sho. 2023. “Hongkongers’ International Front: Diaspora Activism During and After the 2019 Anti-Extradition Protest”, Journal of Contemporary Asia, DOI: 10.1080/00472336.2023.2168208
HO, Ming-sho. 2025. “From mobilization to aftercare: Movement trauma and care work for exiled Hongkongers”, Journal of Civil Society, DOI: 10.1080/17448689.2025.2500358
Lee, Ching Kwan. 2025. Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Struggle for Decolonization, Harvard University Press.
Lee, Francis L. F. 2022. “Proactive Internationalization and Diaspora Mobilization in a Networked Movement: The Case of Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Bill Protests.” Social Movement Studies 22 (2): 232–49. doi:10.1080/14742837.2022.2031957
Rolfe, Heather and Benson, Thomas. 2023. From HK to UK: Hong Kongers and their new lives in Britain, Welcoming Committee for Hong Kongers, https://www.britishfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/HK-to-UK-report.Final_.pdf
Nail, Thomas. 2015. The Figure of the Migrant. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
