Asylum-seeking Journeys in Asia: Refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok 9781138551923, 9781315147864

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Asylum-seeking Journeys in Asia

This book looks in detail at the journeys to asylum in Asia which are largely neglected in the media and academic analyses, despite Asia becoming the most essential region for asylum, receiving refugees from both within and outside of the continent. Treating asylum-seeking journeys as a transnational space, the a­ uthor investigates the actual asylum-seeking process from homelands to e­ ither Hong Kong or Bangkok. Today, refugees undertake multiple, long, and life-threatening journeys before arriving in receiving societies; from the ­moment of arrival in Hong Kong or Bangkok, they face a wide array of ­challenges. An ethnographic account of how refugees navigate and ­negotiate their journeys to asylum, this book highlights the social, political, economic, and psychological processes involved in “becoming” and “being” a refugee. This encompasses not only the physical movement of refugees, but also their embodiments and emotional encounters. The author offers a micro-level analysis of asylum-seeking journeys—from the aspiration to flee, to migration preparation, to border crossing, to homemaking in prolonged displacement. All of these stages reveal how these journeys create ever-evolving realities with new constellations of options and constraints. By focusing on refugees’ understanding, perception of, and interaction with the people, environments, and situations around them, this book illustrates how refugee life plans are shaped and reshaped by the embodied experience of their journeys, and how their ideas of home have changed over time. Asylum-seeking Journeys in Asia will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of migration and refugee studies, diaspora studies, globalisation, and Asian studies. It will also be of interest to policymakers and humanitarian workers involved in providing services and assistance to the global refugee population. Terence Chun Tat Shum is Research Assistant Professor in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at The Open University of Hong Kong. His areas of research cover migration and refugee studies, globalisation and multiculturalism, and African diaspora and culture.

Routledge Series on Asian Migration

Series Editors: Yuk Wah Chan (City University of Hong Kong), ­Jonathan H. X. Lee (San Francisco State University, US) and Nicola Piper (The ­University of Sydney, Australia) Editorial Board: Steven J. Gold (Michigan State University, US), David Haines (George Mason University, US), Pei-Chia Lan (National Taiwan University), Nana Oishi (University of Melbourne, Australia), Willem van Schendel (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Biao Xiang (­University of Oxford, UK), Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore) 1 Racism and Resistance among the Filipino Diaspora Kristine Aquino 2 New Chinese Migrations Mobility, Home, and Inspirations Edited by Yuk Wah Chan and Sin Yee Koh 3 International Migrants in China’s Global City The New Shanghailanders James Farrer 4 Asylum-seeking Journeys in Asia Refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok Terence Chun Tat Shum

Asylum-seeking Journeys in Asia Refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok

Terence Chun Tat Shum

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Terence Chun Tat Shum The right of Terence Chun Tat Shum to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-55192-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-14786-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

Contents

List of illustrations Preface

vii ix

1 Introduction 1 2 Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok: a historical perspective 35 3 Constructing journeys: the making of exits and entrances 46 4 Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok: identity, exclusion, and marginalisation 75 5 Prolonged displacement and negotiating “home” in Hong Kong 110 6 Prolonged displacement and negotiating “home” in Bangkok 142 7 Conclusion: a journey without destination? 168 Bibliography Index

179 193

List of illustrations

Maps 3.1 Exile routes to Hong Kong 66 3.2 Exile routes to Bangkok 66

Figures 5.1 Main entrance of Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong 114 5.2 People remitting or receiving money through Western Union in Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong 114 5.3 A South Asian food stall in Chungking Mansions where many refugees gathered 115 5.4 One popular meeting point for Africans and South Asians in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong 116 5.5 One refugee’s illegal housing on the rooftop of apartment building in Sham Shui Po 120 5.6 Refugees accompanied some visiting traders to Hong Kong International Airport 124 5.7 Refugees’ demonstration against the unfair screening mechanisms in Hong Kong 134 5.8 African refugees cooked and shared traditional African food at home 136 6.1 Street stalls in Pratunam Market, Bangkok 144 6.2 African clothing shop and African restaurant in Pratunam Market, Bangkok 144 6.3 Wat Mahamariamman in Silom-Pan Roads, Bangkok 145 6.4 Khlong Toey Market, Bangkok 146 6.5 Areas around Soi Arab in Nana, Sukhumvit, Bangkok 146 6.6 Refugees were lining up for collecting food and socialising with fellow refugees in a church in Bangkok 153

Preface

We live in turbulent times. The current global refugee population is the highest on record since the Second World War. In 2016, approximately 65 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide. In particular, continued violence and warfare against civilians in numerous fragile states has given rise to a higher level of anxiety of serious physical harm, leaving many people being unable to secure the minimum conditions of human dignity. For those affected by such challenges, some chose to relocate domestically, while others flock to neighbouring states. By the end of 2016, over 20 million displaced people decided to move from their dangerous homeland and sought protection in a foreign place. When they did, they became refugees. Moving across international borders and forcing their ways into the developed world has long been a survival strategy for many refugees seeking safety and a better life abroad. During the European refugee crisis of 2015, global headlines regarding a young Syrian boy who attempted to reach Greece and was found lying face down on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey delivered an extremely important message to the rest of the world: from danger at home to danger at every stage of seeking refuge in a foreign place, the asylum-seeking journeys carrying people to safety are dreadfully dangerous. Many refugees undertake multiple perilous journeys before arriving in the receiving society, and countless people have died while attempting to cross from one country to another. Notable, those who successfully reach the host society receive limited tangible assistance and protection. Moreover, many become trapped with a slim chance of resettlement. Coupled with the stresses facing all refugees, they experience multiple forms of insecurity. Their plights have caused a dramatic upturn in international concerns over asylum-seeking journeys and global refugee regimes. As such, this is not merely a humanitarian issue, but also a political one. Asylum-seeking has long been the subject of academic and policy discussions in the Western world. However, this process of migration for safety should not be viewed as a primarily Western issue, as many other regions, such as Asia, have also witnessed the influx of a large number of refugees. Due to the various sociocultural and political contexts of different countries, refugees can experience vastly different realities in their displacement from one region to another.

x Preface Asia is now the most essential region for asylum, receiving refugees from both within and outside of the continent. The Asia and Pacific region is host to approximately 3.5 million refugees worldwide, and the population of urban refugees continues to rise across the region. However, Asia is a “black hole” for refugees, since most states are not signatory parties to the 1951 “Convention Relating to Status of Refugees” (the 1951 Refugee Convention) and its 1967 Protocol. Therefore, some Asian governments do not recognise refugees. In Asia, Hong Kong and Bangkok are two major first asylum ports for refugees originating from countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In the second half of the 20th century, Hong Kong and Bangkok experienced the world’s most significant refugee waves between the 1950s and the late 1990s. Despite decades-long problems, Hong Kong and Bangkok are not full signatories of the 1951 Refugee Convention, so neither recognise the status of refugees nor protect them. Many refugees are trapped in limbo for years, with little chance of resettlement. This ethnography focuses on asylum-seeking journeys in Hong Kong and Bangkok. In particular, it examines the process and events of the asylum-­ seeking journey itself, as well as the social worlds of urban refugees. This study is the result of a decade of research and observations into urban refugees in two major first asylum ports in Asia. Between 2008 and 2017, the number of refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok has increased by approximately 15% and 20%, respectively. Over these years, I was a volunteer for different non-governmental organisations that dealt with refugee issues in both cities. My first interaction with a refugee was on a summer afternoon in 2008. I met George for the first time in an English language class organised by a refugee service centre in Hong Kong. He was a Sri Lankan who had been staying in Hong Kong for two years. After the class, he spoke at length about himself and his fears about what was happening to him. What I then knew was that Bangkok and Hong Kong were the destinations he had on his mind when he decided on where to flee. At last, he flew to Hong Kong. His wisdom, resilience, courage, and never-give-up attitude inspired me. It was on that afternoon that I began to keep notes, and this is where my research journey began. In the following year, I made an exploratory trip to Bangkok, visiting a refugee service centre there. Since then, I have met, spoken with, and had tea with hundreds of refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Their stories and experiences deeply captured my heart. I witnessed the governments of these two places responding to refugees by tightening up humanitarian assistance and asylum procedures, and increasing immigration control. The way refugees are perceived in public discourse and media as an invading force has provided governments with the justification to take whatever measures they deemed appropriate to safeguard their borders. The majority of refugees have been waiting for many years to be resettled in the West, and many currently remain trapped in Hong Kong or Bangkok, haunted by terrifying memories of loss and seduced by a longing for resettlement and stability. Hong Kong and Bangkok are places

Preface  xi of limbo where refugees simply wait. Facing a multitude of challenges and difficulties, I personally witnessed how refugees struggled to survive and manage their everyday lives. During the countless hours I spent with them, I wondered how they make sense of their lives as refugees. What plans do they have for future? How do they perceive home and settlement? Asylum-seeking Journeys in Asia attempts to provide a voice to refugees’ unique migration experiences, thereby contributing to the academic debate regarding asylum-seeking journeys, the life-changing meaning of displacement, and urban refugee livelihoods in an Asian context. Starting and finishing this book has taken me on a challenging but fruitful academic journey. I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the hundreds of refugees who shared their migration stories and experiences with me over the years. I am particularly indebted to my core refugee informants, who not only provided me with valuable information and connections to others, but also offered me friendship, company, and emotional support during my extended ethnographic fieldwork. This book primarily evolved from my doctoral thesis, and I am grateful to the academic training obtained at the Department of Asian and International Studies in the City University of Hong Kong. Special thanks should be given to my thesis supervisor, Chan Yuk Wah, as well as other faculty members at the Department, including Paul Cammack, Nicholas Thomas, Federico Ferrara, and Justin Robertson. I am also grateful to David Haines for his scholarly comments on my doctoral thesis. I also extend my gratitude to the two anonymous readers for their careful reading and thoughtful suggestions. The refugee activists and scholars in Hong Kong and Bangkok are phenomenal. I warmly thank Jonathan Harland, Lisa Lee, Paul Bottrill, Julee Allen, Hafridra Wong, and Jonnet Bernal at the Centre for Refugees, Christian Action; Brian Barbour, Christine Lin, Stephanie Jones, and Jocelyn Lala-an at Justice Centre Hong Kong; Jill Raymont at the Vine Church; Cosmo Beatson at Vision First; Camy Lok at the Hong Kong African Association; Fr. John Murray, Aumphornpun Buavirat, Boonyarat Songpanit, and Udomsin Khamnark at the Bangkok Refugee Centre; Medhapan Sundaradeja, Michael Timmins, and Tong Sakulborirak at Asylum Access, Thailand; Anoop Sukumaran and Julia Mayerhofer at the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network; Niroshan Anadaraja at the Tamil Refugees Community in Thailand; and Supang Chantavanich at Chulalongkorn University. My postdoctoral fieldwork would not have been possible without the support of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. The work described in this manuscript (research conducted in Hong Kong between 2017 and 2018) was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (UGC/FDS25(16)/ H05/16). I thank May Fung and Kenneth Tong for their research assistance. The revision stage of the manuscript was given institutional support by Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong and the School of Arts and Social Sciences at The Open University of Hong Kong.

xii Preface I believe that the comparative approach to the study of refugees may provide a better understanding of the fundamental features common to different societies, and why current social arrangements take a certain form in one society but not in others. Following the outbreak of the European refugee crisis, the topic of asylum-seeking journeys received increased attention in the West, particularly the question of: what experience do refugees go through on their journeys? In order to better conceptualise asylum-seeking journeys, I began the task of manuscript revision. I am certain that a comparative book on the very human tale of seeking refuge, particularly in an Asian context, might have some resonance. With its Asian focus, I see this book as a humble attempt to both complement and provide a useful contrast with those studies in the West.

1 Introduction

I left home in 2003. When I was in the car, heading to the airport, my whole body went numb because I was escaping from my government. My memory suddenly flashed back to the time when I was tortured by a government official is a dark room, screaming loudly for help. When they hit my private parts with an iron bar, I felt my life was over. I had to go to somewhere else for safety. But where should I go? My godfather told me to go to China, then to Hong Kong. I definitely had no idea where Hong Kong was. For safety, I simply took his advice. Upon departure in the airport, I had a small bag with me. I just followed the people, going through the immigration desk. I pretended to be confident and calm when standing in front of the officer. But deep down, the feeling was like I was drowning in the sea and had no idea what to do or where to go. In the aircraft, many questions popped into my mind: where am I going? How will it be there? What will happen to me after landing? What should I do next? As I continued to think about the answers, the aircraft continued flying to a strange and unfamiliar place. Although it was only a 15-hour journey, I felt as though it took me 15 years. Now, it’s 2018. I didn’t even know why I ended up in Hong Kong. This journey is definitely long for me. Although I am safe now, my experience in Hong Kong is a big disappointment in my life. Fifteen years have really passed since my arrival, and immigration hasn’t decided my case yet. The feeling is like I am hopelessly waiting for something that’s never going to happen. My life here is very tough. There is too much suffering here. It is too painful. As a Christian, I have hope in God. I pray for my future. I know that God is always with me. That’s the only hope I have at this moment. This is the only way I can get peace of mind. But when I see my story from the other side, I don’t feel happy at all. I have cried so many times. I have no opportunity here. I have been questioning myself over the years why my life is like this. Perhaps the only answer to this question is that I can’t go anywhere else.

In this narrative, a 40-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who I will call Alex, describes his migratory experience from his home country to Hong Kong. This is not merely a personal account of

2 Introduction migration; rather, it is a story about the fear, uncertainty, frustration, and disorientation common to refugees worldwide. In the present era, the causes of displacement—persecution, conflict, racism, and destitution—have not changed greatly. What has changed is the number of people fleeing their homes, indicating a chronic state of instability in the world. The number of people escaping their life-threatening homeland country and seeking protection in a foreign place has grown sharply from 8.4 million in 2005 (UNHCR 2006) to over 20 million in 2015 (UNHCR 2015). In 2017, Asia hosted 3.5 million refugees from around the world (UNHCR 2017). Alex is a member of the refugee population in Asia. He was displaced from his home country due to political persecution. Without a doubt, the decision to flee was difficult to make under conditions of extreme stress and anxiety. However, he finally decided to embark on an individual journey in search of asylum in Asia. What happened along the way must have generated meanings for refugees, and imposed certain emotional impacts on them as well. Alex’s narrative demonstrates the tension present in the moment between exit and arrival, as well as the perception of endless possibilities, in which Alex’s emotions range from anxiety and insecurity to calm and expectancy. On reflection, Alex said that he had devised a plan of action by interacting with different people and things during the process of escape. His recollection clearly offers some clues regarding his practices and embodied experience of cross-border movement. Fleeing abroad is not merely a matter of crossing the border at an immigration checkpoint. In order to successfully escape from a country, refugees must fashion themselves and perform appropriately when interacting with different people and things throughout the journey. How they should perform during the escape process is determined by the mode of travel they choose. This performative aspect of cross-border movement provides some clues regarding what it feels like to be a refugee. From the moment of arrival in the receiving society, refugees face a wide array of challenges related to money, accommodation, food, and medical services. Moreover, they must go through lengthy screening and resettlement mechanisms, which are widely described as the most depressing episode of refugees’ life stories. Alex has been staying in Hong Kong for 15 years. Regrettably, Hong Kong Immigration Department hasn’t decided his case yet. I remember having a number of tea gatherings with Alex. Every time we met, Alex always kept a close eye on his mobile phone, afraid that he would miss a phone call from the Immigration Department. “What time is it now, brother?” he asked me one afternoon when we met. “It’s already 6 pm”, I answered. “Oh. That means no good news today again”, he lamented. Alex has been interviewed by the Immigration Department officers for many times. “Your case is still pending” is a common response from the authority to refugees. This current situation in Hong Kong is also occurring in other Asian societies. Asia is now the most essential region for asylum, receiving refugees from both within and outside of the continent. Notably, over two-thirds of the

Introduction  3 refugee population in Asia are hosted in urban areas (UNHCR 2016). Many refugees are trapped in Asian urban cities for long periods of time. In this region, Hong Kong and Bangkok represent two major first asylum ports. However, both governments are not full signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention; thus, they neither recognise the status of refugees nor protect them. Alex is one of the many urban refugees in the region. In Hong Kong and Bangkok, refugees like Alex are collectively labelled as “illegal immigrants”. They are routinely denied fundamental rights such as the right to employment, education, and accommodation. Furthermore, humanitarian assistance in both places remains limited. Due to the lengthy screening process and increasingly restrictive resettlement requirements of the West, many refugees become stuck in Hong Kong or Bangkok for years, with little chance of third-country resettlement. The increased securitisation of migration has led to the emergence of a global phenomenon—prolonged displacement (Doná 2015). According to Doná (2015: 68), prolonged displacement is different from the term “protracted refugee situations” commonly used by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which “defines a distinct legal status (refugee) and temporal framework (five-year period)”. Doná argues that the protracted refugee situation fails to address the new transnational context of prolonged transit that refugees experience in the age of securitisation (Doná 2015: 68). Instead of using the state’s perspective, the concept of prolonged displacement uses a people-­c entred approach focused on spatial, temporal, emotional, and relational qualities (Doná 2015: 68). In the context of prolonged displacement, the internal feelings and beliefs of refugees, such as terror, fear, and a sense of disorientation, can significantly affect their process of identity reconstruction in the host society. Most refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok experience forced immobility for extended periods of time. Indeed, the USA and Western Europe are the main resettlement destinations for refugees in these two places with Canada and Australia also providing a sizeable number of places annually. However, their chances of resettlement have been further limited after Donald Trump, President of the USA, signed an executive order halting all refugee admissions in early 2017, while Western European countries tightened immigration controls following the refugee crisis of 2015. Over 14 years, Alex never managed to leave Hong Kong, and his dream of resettlement to the USA seems out of reach. Although he has been trapped in limbo for years, he is situated in a moving social environment in which he manages to mobilise resources to support him through social networks. Being immobilised does not mean that Alex lives in suspended space and time. Rather, he has had different everyday life encounters that involve an array of people, things, and material engagements—both local and transnational. The embodied experience of being a refugee in a first asylum port has continuously shaped and reshaped his life goals in this transitory stage of his journey. Alex seems

4 Introduction to understand that asylum-seeking is a life-searching journey, and that this process is by no means as simple as walking across international borders, which no doubt requires more sophisticated studies that must seriously consider the physical, symbolic, and mental elements of the journey ­(Benezer and Zetter 2014). Analysing the methods, processes, and embodied encounters of refugees can provide a clear picture of the most significant processes of “becoming” or “being” a refugee, which has largely been neglected in refugee studies to date (Benezer and Zetter 2014). Echoing Benezer and Zetter’s (2014) emphasis on the importance of the journeys of asylum seekers, this book investigates the actual asylum-seeking processes from individuals’ homelands to either Hong Kong or Bangkok. Specifically, this book explores the social, political, economic, and psychological processes involved in “becoming” or “being” a refugee. It illustrates the actual events of the asylum-seeking process, from home to destination, and their embodied encounters. One major goal of this book is to develop the concept of “asylum-seeking journeys”. I do this by highlighting not only the movement of refugees in the following chapters, but also their embodiments and feelings when experiencing states of both mobility and immobility at different stages of the asylum-seeking process. In doing so, my aim is to connect refugees’ physical journeys to their inner-world journeys, making it possible to recognise and assess the differential values of the people and things entangled in the social space of circulation and exchange, as well as the influence of the actions and perceptions of refugees across time and space. In particular, this book provides an outline of programmes of action assembled by refugees, wherein the material world and refugees collide during the asylum-seeking process, thereby generating new circumstances, experiences, and meanings.

Refugees and migration Globally, over 65 million people are displaced from their home countries by persecution, war, conflict, and human rights violations (UNHCR 2017). Over 22 million of these people become refugees who have been forced to move across international borders in search of protection (UNHCR 2017). Refugee migration is one of the most difficult challenges facing the international community, and scholars have long recognised the need for establishing a research agenda on refugee studies. Their central contributions are to advance the concepts and theories for the study of refugees. Notably, the existing research on refugee migration is broadly divided into three areas, which can be generally categorised as “causes of displacement”, “consequences of exile”, and “legal and institutional challenges”. These areas offer significant building blocks towards understanding of refugee migration. However, these approaches, I argue, have limitations. Herein, I outline these three categories and their inherent weaknesses, suggesting “asylum-seeking journeys” as an alternative way to frame refugee experiences.

Introduction  5 First, “causes of displacement” literature emerges from the desire to understand push and pull factors in the asylum-seeking context. There has been considerable effort among researchers to examine the determinants of refugee migration from as early as the 1980s. Researchers devised the argument that globally, the state fragility of the home country is currently the most prominent cause of displacement pushing civilian populations out of their homes (Betts and Collier 2017). Fragile states are most vulnerable to internal and external shock, which, due to a lack of legitimate institutions, results in vulnerability to endemic conflicts and crises (Zetter 2010). According to Zetter (2010), state institutions may be captured by the elite, with consequent persecution of opponent groups within civil society. Fragile states also frequently demonstrate an inability to withstand economic collapse, leading to conflict and violence. When state fragility manifests into mass violence, people flee their home countries. Moreover, other literature focuses on the pull factors that determine the choice of destination country. Neumayer (2004) examined why some Western European countries attracted more refugees than the other countries, and argued that the asylum seeker policies of destination countries and how welcoming destination countries are perceived to be are the determinants impacting the decision-making process. Perceptions of destination countries’ acceptance of refugees (Toshkov 2014), the economic state of the host society (Hatton 2011), and the existence of diaspora and immigrant communities at the receiving end (Koser and Pinkerton 2002) are also the determinants that draw migratory flows from one end to another. A significant proportion of the literature identifies some “enabling” factors that serve to facilitate refugee migration. Such factors include the ease of travel and relaxation of visa requirements to specific destination countries (Monsutti 2010), the availability of smuggling services in the country of origin (Shum 2014), and overseas diaspora populations with the ability and resources to assist others in their communities around the world to migrate (Koser and Pinkerton 2002; Dorai 2011). These factors affecting the decision-making processes highlight the complex nature of refugee migration. One of the greatest weaknesses of the push-pull framework has been its abstraction from wider communal and structural conditions. The majority of studies have argued that people escaped from their home country through various modes and methods immediately after discovering that their lives were in danger. However, this approach lacked focus on the underlying communal and structural contexts within which the asylum-seeking process begins and unfolds—what triggered refugees’ aspiration to leave their home country? There is a strong need to use a holistic approach to understand how cross-border movements occur. To move is to do something, and moving involves making a choice within the opportunities and constraints of society and geography (Cresswell and Merriman 2011: 5). Cresswell (2011: 162) states that “all forms of mobility have a physical reality, they are encoded culturally and socially, and they are experienced through practices”.

6 Introduction Unfortunately, refugee studies scholars have rarely worked on this important aspect of the asylum-seeking process. As such, this book aims to address this research gap. Refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok have been forced to flee their home countries due to a variety of reasons. My intervention here is more modest, and not primarily aimed at identifying and verifying the causes of displacement. Instead, I ask how the asylum-seeking process from homeland to host society unfolded for individuals. In particular, this book uncovers how refugees’ aspiration to flee, out-migration preparation, and embodied experience of cross-border movements were shaped by their varying access to resources, information, and networks—both locally and transnationally. Second, the “consequences of exile” have become an increasingly important element of discussion in refugee studies. This category primarily draws upon literature examining the impacts of refugees on host communities and homelands. Much of this work builds upon cost-benefit analyses of forced migration, which examine the question of whether refugees represent a “burden” or “benefit” for host societies (Betts et al. 2017). Some case studies have demonstrated that refugees can boost labour supply, which results in reduced salaries for the local population (Zetter et al. 2014). However, some research has also shown that refugees are not a “burden” to host societies, and that they have the capacity to help themselves economically, and subsequently contribute to their host and home countries (Betts et al. 2017). Besides examining the economic lives of refugees, another research trajectory tends to examine the social and cultural aspects of refugee lives. A growing number of studies have explored the issue of identity in exile, the impact of forced migration on women and children, their reception, integration, and settlement in host societies, and the impact of return migration on nationhood (Zetter 1999; Chan 2011; Chan and Tran 2011, Vecchio 2015, 2016). In the last decade or so, much research has focused on the refugee diaspora and transnationalism (Van Hear 2009), and has delved into how refugees live in transnational social spaces within which numerous interactions and transactions appear across homelands-hosting societies-distant countries (Shum 2014). However, the primary weakness of this strand of research is that it primarily concerns those who settled in the West, with little acknowledgement that many refugees remain trapped in the places of asylum in Asia. The traditional view of refugee migration dictates that refugees coming from the poor developing countries have happily settled in Western societies. However, the actual asylum-seeking process—the medium connecting sending and receiving societies—remains largely ignored (Benezer and Zetter 2014). Refugee migration is a form of migration wherein those involved construct the journey as “a period in itself, with specific meaning and significance for the rest of their lives” (Benezer and Zetter 2014: 299). In particular, events occurring along the way generate meanings for and have imposed certain psychosocial impacts on the migrants. According to Benezer and Zetter (2014), the study of the effects and meaning of journeys

Introduction  7 represents an important area of research, as it can shed new light on “the expectations, the challenges and often the dysfunctional reaction” (Benezer and Zetter 2014: 304) that refugees appear to display in receiving societies. Therefore, moving beyond the dichotomy between “sending” and “receiving” societies, I seek to develop a theoretically informed approach to understanding what occurs between “before” and “after”. As such, this book examines the meanings of asylum-seeking journeys from the refugees’ perspectives, and how the physical and psychological suffering experienced on such journeys induces personality changes among refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Third, the “legal and institutional challenge” category was primarily developed by legal scholars and international organisations. One perspective within this stream that has gained considerable attention is how to count and define refugees (Hathaway 2007). A number of studies have been devoted to examining the policies of countries of origin, host governments, and responses from international organisations such as UNHCR and World Bank towards refugee flows. This primarily corresponds to intense debates on how to differentiate “real” refugees from “economic migrants”. This cluster of research is mainly centred on aid-related issues in emergency or crisis situations (Harrell-Bond 1986; Karadawi 1999). Legal and institutional responses to refugee migration, such as the studies on the fairness and transparency of resettlement mechanisms, also emerged as a research focus in this field (Sandvik 2011). The primary weakness of this stream of research includes the tendency to study how laws govern refugees rather than exploring how refugees’ lives are shaped by such policies and regulations, and how refugees make sense of and find meanings in their lives under existing institutional constraints. As this review demonstrates, the existing research and findings on refugee migration are fragmented, unsystematic, and lack conceptual clarity ­(Benezer and Zetter 2014). This is due to practical concerns related to tackling the root causes of displacement in refugee-producing countries, and policy concerns related to determining refugee status and determining how to aid the integration of recognised refugees into settlement societies in the West. As Castles (2003: 25) notes, the research on refugee migration “is often policy-driven: that is, its research questions, methods, and even findings are shaped by the political interests of governments and funding bodies”. In particular, the absence of research examining refugee migration as a social process wherein human agency and social networks play a crucial role (Castles 2003) has hindered our understanding of global refugees and relevant intervention modalities (Benezer and Zetter 2014). This book is an ethnography of the entangled displacement and security-seeking behaviour propelling refugees’ aspirations for transnational movement. Specifically, this book focuses on actual asylum-seeking processes from refugees’ homelands to either Hong Kong or Bangkok by highlighting the roles of refugee agency, networks, and the embodiment of experiences. One major goal of this book

8 Introduction is to move beyond the dichotomous approach of the push and pull models in Western-centric forced migration studies to the consideration of the cultural processes of “becoming” or “being” a refugee in an Asian context.

Why journeys matter As previously stressed, the existing literature on refugee migration has tended to look at the two ends of the asylum-seeking process. However, the events that occur “in between” this “before and after”—asylum seekers’ actual journeys—have received relatively little scholarly attention. Refugee studies research seemingly has not recognised journeys as a phenomenon or life event deserving of analysis (Benezer and Zetter 2014). A significant exception is the study of Gadi Benezer. In The Ethiopian Jewish Exodus (2002), Benezer examines the process and events of the journey for Ethiopian Jewish who settled in Israel in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Benezer’s analysis focuses on the individual as well as the social impact and meaning of the journey, arguing that the journey is a life-changing experience for refugees. The book is written largely from an interdisciplinary perspective, informed by sociology, anthropology, psychology, and oral history for the examination of the psychological impacts of displacement, how the refugees responded to loss on the journey, and how the journey created a profoundly life-changing experience. Benezer’s work also demonstrated the meaning of the journey, which subsequently became a central element in the formation of this group’s identity. On their journey, they were considered to be more Jewish since they managed to preserve their Jewish identity. They also saw themselves as brave people who revealed their inner strength on the journey, as demonstrated by their resourcefulness, their courageous acts in saving lives, and their travel through dangerous areas. These factors corresponded to the Ethiopian core value of govez (courage). This particular group of refugees also identified themselves as people who have acquired the status of “sufferers”, which are those who have suffered greatly “in between” (i.e. before they could gain access to Israel society). Meanwhile, they viewed some experiences during the journey as preparation for what they were going to encounter in Israel, such as cultural adaptation, changes in the structure of roles within the family, emotional separation from their home country, and their strong Jewish identity with the additional dimension of Israeliness (Benezer 2002). They perceived their arrival in Israel as a return, and “viewed themselves as a part joining its main body to become a ‘whole’ again” (Benezer 2002: 179). Benezer’s book highlighted the journey of Ethiopian Jewish as a meaningful group event. Following Benezer’s classic publication on refugee journeys in 2002, the significance of journey research was particularly salient for over a decade due to the increasing international concern regarding human smuggling and trafficking (Benezer and Zetter 2014). Thereafter, different legal and policy-oriented research on how to combat irregular migration emerged.

Introduction  9 Journeys framed as a life-changing experience scarcely appear as the main theme of research projects. However, it is a well-known fact that refugees undertake journeys that are often long, complex, and life-threatening. There are a number of examples of such journeys: from the mid-1970s to late 1990s, the Vietnamese boat people were forcibly displaced from their home country due to political coercion and persecution. These people undertook dangerous and fatal sea journeys to different first asylum ports in Asia such as Hong Kong and Bangkok (Hitchcox 1990). More recently, Syrian refugees have fled to Europe due to civil war. Many first escaped to Turkey, where they paid smugglers to help them make a dangerous crossing to the Greek island of Kos in small inflatable rafts. Once landed in Greece, they made their way north on foot or by rail, passing through Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary bound for Austria, Germany, France, the UK, and other Western European countries. Another example involves the Rohingya refugees who fled violence in Myanmar due to ethnic cleaning. Many paid fishermen for a short sea journey to cross the Bangladesh-Myanmar border through the Bay of Bengal. Many drowned when the fishing boats they were on overturned in stormy weather. All of these journeys to asylum are widely known to the public, and some are discussed briefly in highly personal oral accounts (e.g. Yazbek 2015). However, they lack a systematic analytical framework to examine what actually occurred throughout the journeys, and what the psychosocial impacts of such journeys are. As such, a holistic exploration of the processes involved in “becoming” and “being” a refugee is certainly important. Understanding the journeys to asylum is important for creating an opportunity to rethink refugee migration based on an agency of change model rather than victimhood. Notably, a research gap exists regarding refugee migration in the context of an agency of change model. In their publication, Benezer and Zetter (2014)—two famous scholars in refugee studies—have highlighted this gap and how research on the cross-border movement experience can move forward. They mapped research directions in what they call “journey studies”, and argued that researchers should explore the lived experience of journeys by exploring the starting point and destination of the journey, the underlying drivers of the journey, the process of the journey, and the characteristics of people on the move. This research framework can offer significant insights into “the physical and mental representation of the journey” (Benezer and Zetter 2014: 305). Recently, a number of studies have begun to follow the conceptual directions proposed by Benezer and Zetter in 2014. For example, Kaytaz (2016) studied Afghan migrants who were studying, living irregularly, or seeking asylum in Turkey between 2011 and 2013. She argued that journeys could be theorised both as a form of narrative and as an analytical tool. She theorised journeys as narratives of long periods of immobility punctuated by shorter periods of travel. Studying journeys as narratives allows us to understand them in a manner other than the traditional dichotomous presentation of journeys

10 Introduction which have a defined beginning, end, and period. In her research, Kaytaz (2016) proposed the concept of “the circular journey”, in which informants must sometimes move back and forth crossing borders to avoid deportation, which demonstrates that journeys are not linear or defined by a period of travel, thereby making journeys rather uncertain. She also detailed the condition of journeys to Turkey, including the routes, difficulties, and challenges encountered by refugees, as well as the interactions between refugees and smugglers to illustrate the subjectivity of experience related to borders. Varying access to smuggler networks and prices gave rise to different treatments—and thus different experiences. Kaytaz (2016) also highlighted the negotiation between refugees and smugglers, indicating refugee agency and empowerment during the journey. Moreover, her research informants were also found to accumulate social capital acquired through journeys such as labour, linguistics skills, social networks, and opportunities such as jobs, all of which would be useful or increase their autonomy upon arrival in a host country. Furthermore, Iqbal (2016) highlighted the importance of journey experiences for young refugees on their lives, and how they differ from that of adults. He suggested that the journey experience stayed with refugees and remained powerful throughout their lives. Moreover, he aimed to determine how young refugees negotiate their daily lives within the context of seeking asylum. First, through the narratives of young asylum seekers, Iqbal (2016) highlighted the uprooted nature of refugee journeys. Many young asylum seekers had to suddenly depart following a decision made by their parents and relatives, which underscored the temporal rhythms underpinning processes of being uprooted. Young asylum seekers did not know what was occurring when they left their homes, and they had no autonomy in the process of determining their departure and arrival. Second, many young people were reluctant to discuss the process of being uprooted, which may hinder their asylum claim. Iqbal suggested that they were also reluctant to discuss the journey as some telling process was also a painful narrative for the young people themselves, and indicated the temporal and spatial reconfiguration of their journeys. Iqbal (2016) also observed senses of precarity, confusion, and darkness (most often metaphorically) in the narratives of journeys. However, with the help of agents and smugglers, refugees can establish a dependent and trusting relationship beyond trading, exploitation, and criminal activity. Young refugees demonstrated that they created a variety of anchors for themselves despite being physically uprooted or experiencing the uncertainty that came from becoming a refugee. These anchors included moral and spiritual anchors (religion helping young people to cope with difficulties during journey, and a faith in God providing them with a sense of purpose and direction), physical anchors (receiving refugee status as a sort of physical anchoring, which indicated that they could remain in the UK and that their journeys had come to an end), and temporal anchoring (the hope of receiving refugee status in the future).

Introduction  11 This book joins recent works in refugee studies that examined various aspects of asylum-seeking journeys (Benezer and Zetter 2014; Kaytaz 2016; Iqbal 2016; Crawley et al. 2018). Like many of these works, this project traces the actual happenings of asylum-seeking journeys from homeland to host-land. Rather than being European-centric, this book seeks to serve as a starting point for building a research agenda on asylum-seeking journeys in Asia. Its central contribution is to advance the existing conceptual framework for understanding Asian experiences. The narratives of refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok can strengthen our knowledge regarding the processes, events, meanings, and impacts of journeys, which might further enhance our understanding of “who they are” and the cultural process of “becoming a refugee”. In this sense, it is intended to be part of a ­concept-building exercise and a means to draw greater interest from scholars in Asian migration.

Understanding asylum-seeking journeys What makes asylum-seeking journeys different from other forms of migrant journeys are the specific, possibly unique, processes of “becoming” or “being” a refugee. These processes entail transformative experiences to refugees with special meanings. Analysing such journeys and the narratives of refugees in particular could offer valuable insights regarding “the processes of identity formation, adjustment and transition, and settlement and integration for refugees” (Benezer and Zetter 2014: 314). “Asylum” pertains to “fulfilling a duty of rescue”, which “should involve meeting immediate needs and then returning people to normality as quickly as possible thereafter” (Betts and Collier 2017: 6). Rescue, autonomy, and the route out of limbo are three things that refugees should be entitled to expect (Betts and Collier 2017). Regrettably, the majority of refugees worldwide, including those in Hong Kong and Bangkok, are currently not receiving all of them—some refugees undertaking these journeys have been left stranded. “Journeys” are generally understood as highly intensive events, and as a link between leave-­taking and settling that are registered as a distinct period and experience within the life history of the individual (Benezer 2002; Kaytaz 2016). Following this broad definition, “asylum-seeking journeys” can be broadly defined as a process of leaving and arriving to refugee populations who are fleeing danger and aspiring for security that is deeply charged with emotions. The “asylum-seeking journeys” I conceptualise in this book attempt to convey both the physical and mental representation of the journeys among refugees who aspire for rescue, autonomy, and a route out of limbo within a larger global and transnational social field (Faist 2000). It highlights actual happenings in the asylum-seeking process, from home to host societies. ­“Asylum-seeking journeys” are a lived process that entails physical, spatial, and temporal characteristics (Benezer and Zetter 2014). This contention departs from the existing scholarship on forced migration studies,

12 Introduction which has led us to think of asylum-seeking as a linear, one-way physical movement from a home country to a physical destination. In contrast, this book highlights asylum-seeking journeys as ongoing security-seeking projects and practices that involve the states of mobility and immobility, and multidimensional movements of people, things, ideas, and emotions across space and time. This book suggests three conceptual pillars collectively suggesting that asylum-seeking journeys can be thought of as having specific social experiences in physical, relational connections, and mental dimensions. These pillars include (1) refugee agency and social networks, (2) transnationalism and refugee diaspora, and (3) refugee embodiment and emotional encounters. Refugee agency and social networks In order to seek protection as an asylum seeker or a legally recognised refugee, people must embark on a journey that brings them outside of their homelands. However, the ability to exercise one’s right to seek protection under the international convention has eroded over time, particularly after the European refugee crisis, which was primarily caused by the enactment of various restrictive mechanisms to prevent people from reaching a host society to exercise such a right. Nevertheless, over 22 million of people have undertaken journey by the end of 2016 that takes them to a foreign place designated as safe, where they can file their protection claim based on persecution, torture, and/or human rights violations. Once outside their home country, and before obtaining legally recognised status and or legal immigration status, they are not citizens of the host country, yet they are unable or unwilling to be residents of their country of origin. This places them in a liminal position. The safe society in which an asylum claim has been made is not necessarily a place in which a refugee feels safe. For instance, many host countries and cities such as Hong Kong and Bangkok are not signatory parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which demonstrates the host governments’ reluctance to take legal responsibility for the protection of refugees. Moreover, signatory states in the West have tightened refugee resettlement policies on the basis of national security. As a result, many refugees are trapped in first asylum ports such Hong Kong and Bangkok, and do not feel safe and secure at all. Johnson (2012) argued that one should not perceive a journey as a simple linear physical movement from one place to another. In fact, journeys entail both mobility and immobility. The periods of mobility and immobility on a journey represent times of negotiation, facing difficulties, and navigating around or through them. In this sense, the journey is a process of becoming or being, rather than a mere passage from one country to another. Moving across international borders and seeking protection in a foreign place can be perceived as a form of agency, whereby migrants engage in creative problem-solving and make changes in how they respond to challenges.

Introduction  13 They escape from a home country that has proven unable or unwilling to ensure the fundamental human rights of their own citizens and that hinders their movement. As such, they must find methods of mitigating constraints when making exits and entrances. In host societies, they face new regulatory and sociocultural environments, and these structural environments present both challenges and opportunities for the refugees to survive. Refugees are not passive and grateful victims. Instead, they are active agents who can apply their agency—their skills, networks, and aspirations—in order to transform structural constraints into opportunities. As Innes (2014: 266) states, refugees both “resist borders (by transgressing them without acknowledging them in the normalised legal forms) and creating borders, as borders are solidified visually by states as a symbolic contestation to migrants transgressing them”. Asylum-seeking journeys can be understood as a process in which refugees seize opportunities and overcome barriers to seek asylum overseas. Therefore, actualising the journeys can be thought to have the capacity to overcome various barriers throughout the entire a­ sylum-seeking process. More often than not, refugees make use of their own social networks—both local and transnational—to advance their lives. The important role of agency and network in migration has widely been recognised by scholars in academic discussions. In his groundbreaking work, Koser (1997) examined the role of social networks in the asylum cycle, focusing on the decision to migrate, the choice of destination, and adaptation to the host society. He argues that “social networks are indeed important throughout the migration of asylum seekers” (Koser 1997: 604). However, the lived experiences of the asylum-seeking process—spanning the trajectory from home country to destination—remain undescribed. This book demonstrates how the process of escape is initiated and actualised, creating a context for both individual agency and network operations. It relates to why and when refugees decided to flee their homelands, their decision-­making processes, and the methods and mechanisms they use with the assistance of social networks for making exits and entrances. To date, the majority of work on migrant agency has focused on how rights are accessed by people who are excluded from political rights by host states. This book extends this research by examining refugee mobility in practice. Specifically, it explores the acts of the journey to seek asylum in Asia. It remains important to note that the idea of asylum-seeking journeys might change as each journey unfolds. For example, with the assistance of his godfather, Alex identified Hong Kong as a destination while on his journey. After arriving in Hong Kong as a refugee, he relied heavily on his social networks to cope with life in this foreign place. However, he continued to feel insecure due to his hope of resettlement being nearly depleted. Therefore, the asylum-seeking journey—the period of uncertainty and the feeling of homelessness—­ continued after having reached the place that he had initially set out to reach. While journeys have typically framed as a linear process from one place to another, I argue that a journey is a performative process and an ongoing

14 Introduction search for a feeling of “being at home”. This contention departs from much scholarship on refugee studies, which has led us to think of asylum-seeking journeys as the result of a physical departure from one’s homeland and, in turn, to think of refugees settling happily in the West. In contrast, this book highlights the experiences of asylum-seeking in Asia, and entails both mobility and immobility on such journeys. Specifically, it focuses on what is actually occurring on the ground. In this sense, this book offers an exploration of the performative aspects of asylum-seeking journeys—agency and networks—among a particular group of refugees situated in the first asylum ports of Hong Kong and Bangkok. In the chapters that follow, I demonstrate how these refugees exercise their agency and networks to actualise their transnational migration project and to cope with experience of prolonged displacement in these cities. Transnationalism and refugee diaspora Experiences of international migration often result in the formation or expansion of new local and transnational connections. This phenomenon is often explained by migration studies scholars using the concept of transnationalism (e.g. Portes et al. 1989; Faist 2000). Overall, increased international migration and the advancement of technology have made it possible for migrants to easily establish and maintain transnational social networks in one form or another. This, in turn, has contributed to the establishment of “transnational social spaces” (Beck 1999; Faist 2000) in which the social relations of migrants are no longer confined within the borders of ­nation-states. Rather, their social worlds span above and beyond nation-­ states. Anthropologists such as Linda Basch, Cristina Blanc-Szanton, and Nina Glick Schiller have made influential contributions to the discussion of transnationalism and international migration. In their works on migrants from the Caribbean and the Philippines living in the USA, Basch and her colleagues argue: We define ‘transnationalism’ as the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together societies of origin and settlement. We call these processes transnationalism to emphasize that many immigrants today build social fields that cross geographic, cultural and political borders. (Basch et al. 1994: 7) Ironically, transnationalism is a contemporary phenomenon that has significance for all types of migrants. However, in his research of Kurdish refugees in Europe, Wahlbeck (2002) argued that there are some variations between ordinary migrants and refugees in the form and content of transnational social relations. In his article, Wahlbeck quoted Kunz (1973: 130) “it is the reluctance to uproot oneself, and the absence of positive original

Introduction  15 motivations to settle elsewhere, which characterises all refugee decisions and distinguishes the refugee from the voluntary migrants.” These distinctive relationships, as Wahlbeck (2002) argued, are manifested as political activism oriented towards the homeland. Therefore, the concept of transnationalism is not precise enough to describe the specific refugee experiences that are significantly different from those of ordinary migrants. He suggested that the concept of diaspora should be used because it could offer a better conceptual framework to understand refugees’ specific transnational social relations, which, with reference to the definition presented by Safran (1991), include their collective memory of their homeland, the alienation and discrimination they experience in host societies, their wish to return to their country of origin, their collective commitment to the restoration of their homeland, and their transnational social networks (Wahlbeck 2002). The concept of diaspora has attracted scholarly debate in migration studies since the 1990s. Vertovec (1999: 1) defined the diaspora as any population which is considered “deterritorized” or ­“transnational”— that is, which has originated in a land other than the one in which it currently resides, and whose social, economic, and political networks cross the borders of nation-states or, indeed, span the globe. Diasporas have often been depicted as a set of social spheres (Safran 1991), a mode of typology (Cohen 1997), a distinct social form, consciousness, and a mode of cultural production (Vertovec 1999). Some scholars have even considered the diaspora as a condition or process (Brah 1996; Anthias 1998). Furthermore, Butler (2001: 194) argued that “rather than being viewed as an ethnicity, diaspora may be alternatively considered as a framework for the study of a specific process of community formation”. In this book, the use of the term “diaspora” conforms closely with the perspectives of Vertovec (1999) and Butler (2001). This approach raises some important questions, such as how the refugees—despite their various national origins—actively create refugee diasporic communities in Hong Kong or Bangkok through different local and transnational social networks. Specifically, I am interested in how the “triple diaspora space” (Van Hear 2003, 2006)—the relationships between homeland, country of first asylum, and those more distant countries of asylum and resettlement—is operated and sustained, as well as whether the formation refugee diaspora fosters the empowerment or disempowerment of refugees. Broadly speaking, I am concerned with refugees’ efforts to remake and re-world their lives in the particularly active contact zone of transnational flows they are situated in. Refugees can be found living in a transnational social reality, and do not live in a situation in which localities have disappeared. In fact, they live in a “glocalised” (Robertson 1995) social reality where both local and global forces exist side by side and reinforce each other. How exactly, I ask, do the refugees live in this transnational social space while stranded

16 Introduction in Hong Kong or Bangkok? By focusing on what I call the “transnational space of asylum”, I expand on the practices of refugees in the process of seeking protection in the first asylum ports, and their utilisation of social networks to advance their lives. In using the diaspora concept, this book does not take structural context lightly. Rather, it explores how the local structures of Hong Kong or Bangkok, such as the immigration policies, asylum-seeking arrangements, and xenophobic opinions among the local populations, affect refugee communities. Comparisons between Hong Kong and Bangkok can shed light on whether these refugee groups share the same or different social and economic positions in different host societies. This brings us to a discussion on how the structural context and unequal power relations of host societies in which the refugee identity has developed. The identity of “refugee” not only signifies a person’s lack of legal status that entitles him/her to international protection, but they are also “signified as stupid, misfits, ignorant, poor and uncivilised” (Kumsa 2006: 242). Labels are identity markers, and Wood (1985: 1) first stated that “labelling is a way of referring to the process by which policy agendas are established and more particularly the way in which people, conceived as objects of policy, are defined in convenient images”. Zetter (1991: 44) added that “labelling is a process of stereotyping” and that these labels were so powerful that they can prescribe needs to those being labelled. Worldwide, refugees are often branded as helpless victims in public discourse. As Du Bois (1994) pointed out, “a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others”. The problem with this “double consciousness” is that refugees may consequently internalise these attributes that they have never thought of before. While the label of “refugee” has been widely used as an identity marker by mainstream society—and even by those being labelled—I turn my attention to the agency that this group of migrants have in masking their label/identity of “refugee”. Identity is fluid and has multiple meanings. Identity is the result of the negotiation of individual conditions, social context, relationships, and institutional frameworks (La Barbera 2015). Therefore, identity is better described as something that people “do” rather than something that they “have”, as a process rather than as a property (Jenkins 2008). A vast number of studies have demonstrated that the patterns of identification among migrants vary greatly, ranging from identification with one’s country of origin, religion, or mother tongue, to their receiving country, neither, or both (Berry 1997; Roccas and Brewer 2002; Schwartz et al. 2008; Ramelli et al. 2013). This book joins this particular scholarly discussion. Specifically, I delve into how refugees respond to the structural constraints upon their agency and self-determination. Critical to this discussion is how the refugee diaspora, regardless of the nationalities, ethnicities, and religions, functions in exile. As I shall show in this book, the structural constraints that challenge the legitimacy of the presence of refugees have resulted in the formation of collective consciousness that becomes enabling and empowering.

Introduction  17 Refugee embodiment and emotional encounters People embark on asylum-seeking journeys to seek security beyond their homeland. Dominant security studies have theorised security as a concept that focuses on the sovereign state and its corresponding reproduction of categories of power and legitimacy (Innes 2014). At its core, security studies, as an area of inquiry, takes organised war and violence as its focus. Critical and feminist security studies scholars have argued that the conceptualisation of security should be broadened, which would offer it the potential to move away from the focus on war and conflict, which merely represents one type of insecurity or existential threat (Innes 2014). In her studies regarding the experiences of seeking asylum in Greece, Innes (2014) offers an alternative approach to examine security. She focuses on how people seek security beyond their homeland, arguing that security-seeking is a process rather than an object to be gained, and that “the practice of seeking security in lived experience reveals security as a performative concept” (Innes 2014: 264). She proposes the idea of “performative security” to illustrate how security might be produced by security-seeking actions—from border crossing to seeking protection in the host society—as performed by refugees as opposed to the state. This book elaborates on the idea of “performative security” as a set of corporal acts for seeking personal safety as well as a set of practices aimed at ensuring survival. Through highlighting the performative aspect of asylum-seeking processes, I hope to humanise refugees by focusing on their agency in search of security beyond their homelands. Examining security as experienced by the refugees throughout their journeys to asylum requires both state-centric and human-based conceptualisations of security. State-centric security focuses on the unit of a sovereign state and its corresponding reproduction of the categories of power and legitimacy (Innes 2014). The flight for refuge occurs when a society ceases to provide protection for its citizens, who subsequently determine that their lives are in danger (Betts and Collier 2017). In order to search for security outside their country of origin, people transcend different international borders by using legal and/or illegal means. As I will show in Chapter 3, they must perform as either legitimate tourists or smuggled migrants when crossing borders and immigration checkpoints in order to evade barriers and control by individual governments. These are corporal acts that challenge state authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty at the ground level. From the moment of arrival in the host society, refugees may find themselves safe; however, new circumstances present an array of new challenges, including a lack of income and employment, food, education, and medical assistance. However, refugees develop highly innovative responses to these challenges, and their engagement in creative problem-solving and changing how they respond to difficulties in host societies can offer some insight, as some people might seek security where it is not provided by the host government or international organisations. In this sense, asylum-seeking journeys can be

18 Introduction understood as a process of seeking security. Refugees might have different security concerns at different stages of their asylum-seeking journeys. In a host society where refugees are deprived of human rights, the concept of human security outlined in the 1994 Human Development Report provides an alternative analytical perspective on security by viewing the human or ­individual-specific forms of potential insecurity: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, and political security. As Innes (2014: 268) stated, “the concept of human security establishes a nexus between individual security, state security and the security of the international system.” In this sense, human insecurity refers to a material deficiency in one of the aforementioned categories. Human security is achieved by identifying what people lack, and providing them with the necessary material goods. However, conceptualising security in this manner creates security “as a static and objective concept” (Innes 2014: 268). It also assumes that people are passive individuals. Another major drawback to this approach is that it “cannot account for differing experiences of security according to identity, social and cultural attachments, and geographic location” (Innes 2014: 268). This book elaborates on this particular approach. Specifically, I draw on Innes’s notion to highlight human security “as a process, performed in actions and negotiations, and understood as a performative concept” (Innes 2014: 268). By embarking on the road to becoming mobile subjects, refugees manifest their desire for security through various corporal acts throughout their journeys to asylum. I aim to illuminate how refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok, as people without state-based identities, negotiate, produce, and perform security as it is acted. Moving across international borders to seek protection in a foreign place is not merely a movement from one place to the other. Rather, the physical practices of border crossing and coping with new life in the host society is a highly materialised and emotional undertaking (Burrell 2008). Following this performative approach, I argue that the body is a vital site of identity construction and materialisation, particularly with regard to the notion of security in asylum-seeking journeys, as the refugee body serves as a marker of and platform for the search and construction of security outside their homeland. In the chapters that follow, I highlight the relationship between the figure of the refugee and the idea of security. Specifically, I am interested in how the refugees are subjected to regulation and control by the government in Hong Kong or Bangkok, the UNHCR, and social organisations (Foucault 1977; Agamben 1998) and how they use body to reproduce, constructs, and resist notions of identity and difference. In other words, this book explores how the idea of “security” is communicated through refugees. Studying “refugee embodiment” holds a mirror to culture, since human beings are all embodied beings (Shilling 1993; Synnott 1993; Turner 1994). Mind and body are inseparable, and the body is not only the centre of perception, but also the centre of subjectivity. Through active engagement

Introduction  19 with the world, the body performs and enacts cultural norms and practices (Crossley 1995). Refugee migration is a form of human displacement that involves compulsion and emotions. Understanding the emotions of refugees can offer better insights into the social, economic, political, and experiential complexities of asylum-seeking journeys and belonging (Svašek 2012). According to Svašek (2012: 3), emotions are “dynamic processes through which individuals experience and interpret the changing world, position themselves vis-à-vis others, and shape their subjectivities”. People are neither a closed container of passions nor an entity that merely reacts to outside forces. Rather, people are “mobile, multiple, relational beings-in-the-world that [are] captured by his or her surroundings, engaging with past, present, and future situations” (Svašek 2012: 3). In the case of asylum-seeking journeys, refugees interact with their human and non-human surroundings, which generate emotions such as fear. Fear is felt and played out through embodied social action. Fear is an emotion which is “individually experienced, socially constructed and culturally shared” (Riano-Alcala 2008: 2), and often accompanies the entire asylum-seeking journey and is expressed as an embodied memory. According to Riano-Alcala (2008: 2), fear “is also a sensory awareness of the past” that is actualised in the refugees’ interactions with people in the receiving society. Following Riano-Alcala (2008: 3), I consider fear in different forms, “from the literal, individually felt emotion resulting from life-threatening incidents, to the more abstract expressions evoked by a sense of disorientation and anxiety about the uncertain present and future”. In the context of displacement and change, the internal feelings and beliefs of the refugees—such as terror, fear, and a sense of disorientation—can affect their process of identity reconstruction in the host society. Identity is individual and collective, and it “relates to people’s concepts of who they are, of what sort of people they are, and how they relate to others” (Hogg and Abrams 1988: 2). Identity also “refers to the ways in which individuals and collectives are distinguished in their social relations with other individuals and collectives” (Jenkins 1996: 4). Numerous variables such as society, culture, politics, and law play a vital role in identity formation. In refugee migration, a person who was formerly a legal citizen of a country is now a “refugee”, which can have a significant impact on that person’s identity and self-concept. One major factor affecting a refugee’s evolving identity is place (Brun 2001; Holt 2007). Some studies also determined that the feeling as outsiders in both the homelands and the host society also influences the identity of refugees (Zetter 2007). This is largely due to the existing legal infrastructure and policy arrangements in the receiving society, such as classifying refugees as illegal immigrants and depriving them of their basic human rights. Apart from legal distinctions, some scholars (e.g. Robinson and Rubio 2007) argue that the sense of “otherness” is also apparent in daily interactions between refugees and local people in the host society. Such feelings are often intensified after the refugees experienced terrifying

20 Introduction events in their homeland and during their asylum-seeking journeys. Both the Hong Kong and Thai governments consider all refugees as “illegal immigrants”, and refugees are often negatively portrayed as passive victims and welfare-­dependent individuals in media reports and public discourse. Due to lengthy screening procedures in both places, many refugees become stuck in limbo for years with a slim chance of resettlement. While remaining in Hong Kong or Bangkok, they receive very limited humanitarian assistance from the respective host governments. Based on the given context, this book also examines the ways in which refugee self-identify: whether they continue to base their identity on their country of origin, whether the change from citizen to refugee was apparent to them, and what effect, if any, the “refugee” label had on this group of “unwanted migrants”. Memory is a cultural practice, which is “a system of action that relates to a domain of knowledge and a locus of experience” (Riano-Alcala 2008: 3). Memory is also a product of experience. In asylum-seeking journeys, the axis of memory is an important “form of action through which people involved make sense of the past, present and future” (Riano-Alcala 2008: 3). Refugees do not consider Hong Kong or Bangkok as their preferred destination. Some even did not know they would arrive in these places when leaving their homelands. Due to their “illegal” status, refugees in Hong Kong or Bangkok received very limited humanitarian assistances from the respective host governments, and many have become trapped in limbo for years with little chance of being resettled. As such, what plans do they have? This book aims to address the relationship between memory, fear, and asylum-seeking journeys as a way to advance our understanding of how refugees make sense of their refugee experience and reconstruct their lives in a first asylum port. It asks critical questions including: how do the refugees make sense of experiences that can be overwhelmingly dehumanising? What is the meaning of the asylum-seeking journey from the perspective of refugees? How do they interact with the local people of Hong Kong or Bangkok? How does the fearful experience of the journey and its meaning affect their daily encounters with their host society? What is/are the factors influencing whether their journey experience became traumatic or resulted in personal growth?

Urban refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok Over half of the world’s refugees now live in urban areas. They anonymously live in the cities. Indeed, urban cities present challenges and dangers to these refugees. On the one hand, they must find ways to lead sociocultural and economic lives in a new society. On the other hand, they may be vulnerable to exploitation, arrest, detention, or discrimination. In order to explore urban refugee experiences, this book focuses on two first asylum ports: Hong Kong and Bangkok. These two urban case studies are intended to be representative, since they exemplify two asylum-seeking models in the Asian region, where most governments have not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Introduction  21 Common among all, Hong Kong and Bangkok experienced the world’s most significant refugee waves between the 1950s and late 1990s, which included the immigration of Chinese, Indochinese, and Burmese refugees. Mass flights were largely a 20th-century phenomenon in Hong Kong and Bangkok, encompassing complex sociopolitical issues for the world community. The intensity and range of these earlier refugee flows was great because the numbers of refugee involved were large (e.g. the year 1979 brought over 68,000 Vietnamese boat people to Hong Kong (Chan 2011: 6)), and the migratory patterns lasted for several decades. Moreover, the sudden mass flow of refugees to Hong Kong or Bangkok had prompted worldwide concern regarding the refugee situation in the region. For example, between 1975 and 1997, Hong Kong received the second largest number, around 200,000 Vietnamese refugees (Chan 2011: 5). International resettlement started in 1980. A list of 29 countries, including the USA, Canada, Australia, and most countries in Europe, had participated in the resettlement schemes (Chan 2011), producing the most geographically widespread refugee diaspora in the second half of the 20th century. Because Hong Kong and Bangkok are two of the most popular tourist destinations in Asia with easy-to-meet visa requirements, refugees can now “easily” enter these two places. Rather than coming on makeshift boats on massive scale, similar to the Vietnamese boat people three decades ago, today’s refugees primarily arrive at international airports similar to any ordinary tourists. However, the current pattern is more complex than earlier refugee waves because modern refugees use air travel to flee to Hong Kong and Bangkok on an individual basis, and many pass through various states prior to arriving in these two places. Initially acting as tourists with “valid” passports, they subsequently seek asylum protection by overstaying their visas. There are strong linkages between temporary and permanent migrations, and since Hong Kong and Bangkok became two of the most famous tourist destinations in Asia, their easy-to-meet visa requirements have not only facilitated tourists travelling in and out of the region, but also offered favourable conditions for the formation of both “legal” and “illegal” migration networks. Nevertheless, some refugees currently flee to neighbouring countries on an individual basis illegally via land and sea routes, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees who sneak across national borders to Thailand, as well as African and South Asian refugees who enter Hong Kong from Mainland China in small groups by wooden boats at night. The continuous influx of refugees from over 40 countries has made Hong Kong and Thailand regional processing hubs for refugees, and this behaviour has generated a new era of refugees in Asia. Despite the decades-long problems and the massive scales of populations seeking protection, governments in Hong Kong and Thailand have not acceded to the 1951 Refugee Convention. At the turn of the 21st century, these two urban cities have become desirable first asylum destinations for refugees from African, Middle Eastern, as well as South Asian and Southeast

22 Introduction Asian countries. However, with regard to asylum-seeking arrangements, these two places are different in some respects. As I will explain, the Hong Kong government adopts a lenient approach when dealing with refugees, whereas the Thai government uses a harsher approach. My aim is to shed light on how refugees construct their livelihoods differently in response to the particular institutional contexts of being urban refugees in either Hong Kong or ­Bangkok. In Hong Kong, 5,899 people sought protection from the Hong Kong government by the end of 2017. In Bangkok, there were 8,900 people seeking protection from UNHCR Thailand. Due to the lengthy screening and resettlement processes, many refugees may get stuck in these two urban cities for years with little chance of being resettled. Most of them find themselves in so-called “prolonged displacement conditions”, a people-­ centred approach that focuses on the spatial, temporal, emotional, and relational qualities of refugees (Doná 2015: 68). One of the misfortunes of such conditions is that refugees are often “trapped” without right to work and a range of other entitlements such as access to education and healthcare services. Another misfortune is that the stress and worry of living in prolonged displacement conditions has a negative effect on refugees’ well-being. Post-­ migration stress significantly influences the emotional well-being of refugees. In the absence of chances to return home or permanently integrate into the host society, the refugees must find ways to cope with both material and emotional challenges. Although Hong Kong and Bangkok’s treatment of refugees are far from perfect, these two cases are especially useful to explain how certain problems encountered by refugees are perceived, solved, and coped with. This book highlights a number of factors beyond individual preferences and traits which facilitate and limit refugees’ agency in their journeys to asylum.

Border governance and the politics of security in Asia Border governance is both a practice and a concept. As a practice, border governance involves the ability of governments to enforce regulations and to deliver national defence and public security services aimed to protect state sovereignty (Fukuyama 2013). As a concept, border governance entails both “border” and “governance”. In forced migration studies, governance involves different local and international actors such as immigration officials, the UNHCR, and the International Organisation for Migration, all of which are involved in regulating the movement of refugees across international borders. Therefore, border governance is a process involving a number of actors due to security concerns and political interests. From the perspective of national interests, borders are simply defined as fixed lines in a given territorial space dividing sovereign states (Mbembé and Rendall 2000). Among geographers, borders are defined as transition zones between different societies and centres of power (Medeiros 2015). The works of anthropologists such as Turner (1977) and Douglas (1966) focused more

Introduction  23 on the symbolic borders and border crossings. They treated borders as a ritual and performance. Crossing national borders can be described as a ritualised process that moves border crossers into a liminal space in the new society before they are able to join its societal structures. Turner’s concepts of liminality have had some applicability in forced migration studies regarding border crossings and experiencing the in-between position, as well as in challenging the dominating social order through the liminal position (Gilsennan Nordin and Holmsten 2009; Wilkinson 2010; Andrews and Roberts 2012; Cocker 2012). According to Turner (1977: 108–111), the in-between position can develop into a more permanent position for some individuals. The governance of borders in the sense of who comes in and who goes out unavoidably develops a dichotomy between those who are to be included, considered “desirable”, and those who are excluded as “undesirable” (such as refugees). This is particularly true for refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok, where they often spend years trapped in limbo without legal status. They are categorised as “unwanted” immigrants. What is occurring in Hong Kong and Bangkok today is also occurring in other parts of the world. Various labels have emerged over the past 30 years, including “spontaneous asylum seekers”, “illegal asylum seekers”, “bogus asylum seekers”, “economic migrants”, “illegal migrants”, “trafficked migrants”, and “overstayers”. Although these terms differ, they convey an image of marginality, dishonesty, threat, unwelcome migrants, and “wasted lives” (Zetter 2007). Although Asia accommodates over half of the refugees on earth, few Asian states have acceded to the international refugee regime. Despite the problems and the size of the population seeking protection in this region, few Asian states have signed the Refugee Convention, and even fewer have taken the further step of actually implementing the Convention. Even among the signatory countries that have implemented the Convention to some degree, few have effective, fair, and comprehensive laws and policies designed to protect refugees. In this book, I focus on asylum-seeking journeys from homelands to Hong Kong or Bangkok, and argue that the prevalent construction of refugees as victims and “undesirable illegal immigrants” misapprehends the agency demonstrated by refugees. My intervention here is to reveal refugee agency at border crossings and their experiences within host societies. Neglecting refugee agency substantiates the power of the government to “secure” international borders and govern transnational movements, and obscures the contested politics of mobility and security evident in negotiations between consulate and immigration officers, travel agents, smugglers, migrants, police officers, UNHCR workers, and other actors. These ground-level direct encounters demonstrate a new mode of seeking security that moves beyond a state-centric approach (Innes 2014; Mainwaring 2016). This book examines how refugees find room to manoeuvre in negotiating security when crossing borders and within host societies. It approaches the asylum-seeking journeys to Hong Kong or Bangkok as a complex local

24 Introduction and transnational web of relations and embodied experience in which the refugees navigate mobility and negotiate immobility with diverse actors. In the chapters that follow, I offer the lived experiences of asylum-seeking processes in which refugees directly engage with these global systems, encountering the practices of regimes that work to control cross-border movements and the security of the host societies. By focusing on the voices of the marginalised as the centre of this ethnography, this book uses a bottom-up approach to reveal alternative, powerful accounts of global migration politics that engages fundamental questions of exclusion and marginalisation, and of power and resistance (Johnson 2016).

The fields and fieldwork In forced migration studies, access to refugees living in urban cities represents a major challenge for researchers. This difficulty largely stems from the question of “who is a refugee?” Unlike the refugees who live in camps where they can be easily identified by their physical presence within a fenced off “controlling institution” (Hitchcox 1990), urban refugees are highly “mobile” and live in cities like any ordinary citizens. As such, it often remains difficult for researchers, with the status of an outsider, to directly approach the targeted community and seek its participation in his or her research activities. In most cases, the medium of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and religious organisations were used to gain access to the field. Participating side by side with refugees and humanitarian workers at NGOs and churches is a good starting point for researchers to gain insight into the day-to-day experiences, options, and constraints facing informants in the field. In my opinion, NGOs and religious organisations are the best places to build and develop research relationships. For this book, I decided to approach the local NGOs and churches individually as a researcher, and immersed myself as a volunteer in the activities and meetings of these organisations. Between 2008 and 2018, I volunteered for a number of NGOs and churches in Hong Kong and Bangkok that provide humanitarian services and in-kind assistance to refugees. The NGOs and churches where I worked in Hong Kong include Christian Action Centre for Refugees, Justice Centre Hong Kong, Refugee Union, and the Vine Church. Hong Kong is a small and densely populated city in Southern China. Its background is unique, having both a colonial history and special administrative status in the People’s Republic of China. Hong Kong consists of four main parts: Hong Kong Island, where financial and government offices can be found; the Kowloon peninsula, the most populated area in the territory, where many tourist sites and shopping areas can be found; the New Territories, an area that connects with the Chinese border and is home to over half of Hong Kong’s population; and various outlying islands, including Lantau Island, where the international airport is located.

Introduction  25 Christian Action Centre for Refugees is located on Chungking Mansion’s 16th and 17th floors (E Block) in Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon). Chungking Mansions is “the haunt of South Asian merchants, African entrepreneurs, Indian temporary workers, African and South Asian asylum seekers, and penurious travellers from across the globe” (Mathews 2011: 1). In fact, many refugees do not live in Chungking Mansions, “but come intermittently to the building, although Chungking Mansions and the surrounding area remains the social centre for many” (Mathews 2011: 171). This is one of the main reasons why Christian Action’s Centre for Refugees is located in this building. Christian Action’s Centre for Refugees has been filling a large gap in humanitarian services by providing some assistance to refugees such as milk and diapers for babies and toddlers; emergency shelter; emergency cash grants and clothes; bedding; kitchen appliances, utensils, etc.; food; clothes; and other daily necessities. In addition, Christian Action Centre for Refugees is an important source of educational, psychosocial, recreational, and spiritual support. They also run a food programme that provides free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to refugees from Monday to Saturday. Justice Centre Hong Kong is an organisation located in Sai Ying Pun (Hong Kong Island) that provides pro bono legal advice to asylum seekers who have filed a protection claim application with UNHCR Hong Kong/Immigration Department. The casework procedures provided by Justice Centre Hong Kong include registration (basic biodata and an appointment scheduled with an interpreter), intake (a detailed intake questionnaire to elicit whether there is a prima facie case), screening (in-depth interviewing and research to determine whether Justice Centre Hong Kong should offer representation, and then to schedule the work), and representation (preparing testimony, legal submission, and supporting documentation, interview preparation, attendance at screening interview, and supplementary submissions). Refugee Union is a community-based society that was established by a group of refugees in Hong Kong. Its office is located in Sai Ying Pun, and it bears the mission to empower refugees in Hong Kong by releasing useful information and donations to claimants, as well as mobilising them to fight for their own rights. They also organise activities, such as festival gatherings and tutoring sessions to children to facilitate solidarity among refugees. The Vine Church is a vibrant community based in Wan Chai (Hong Kong Island). Their refugee ministry provides assistances to refugees such as transport allowance, utilities and food allowance, counselling, and rental assistance. The African fellowship and the Asian fellowship meet on Thursdays and Wednesdays, respectively, for a time of worship. In Bangkok, I also gained access to the field through working as a volunteer for two NGOs: Bangkok Refugee Centre and Asylum Access, Thailand. Bangkok is the capital city of Thailand, which is situated at the heart of mainland Southeast Asia, sharing the borders with Laos, Cambodia, Burma, and Malaysia. Thailand’s modern history differs from the tumultuous history of its neighbouring countries because Thailand is the only

26 Introduction Southeast Asian country that had avoided the intrusion of colonial rule and subsequent upheavals of decolonisation, thereby providing favourable political conditions for seeking refuge in the region. Bangkok is the capital city, lying in the Chao Phraya Delta of Central Thailand, and is also one of the country’s 76 provinces. In this book, Bangkok refers to Bangkok City rather than Bangkok Metropolitan Region (comprising five adjacent provinces of Bangkok City), unless otherwise specified. Bangkok has a total of 50 districts that serve as administrative subdivisions under the authority of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. Sutthisan is a residential area located in the eastern side of the city centre. Apart from a couple of high-rise apartment blocks along Sutthisan Winitchai Road (a main road in Sutthisan), this area is dominated by low-rise dilapidated three-storey structures, where many refugees and asylum seekers live. Grocery stores, motorbike repair shops, convenience stores, pawn shops, and food stalls can be found on the ground floor of these old buildings. Both Bangkok Refugee Centre and Asylum Access, Thailand are located in Sutthisan in Huai Khwang District in Bangkok. Bangkok Refugee Centre is operated by the Catholic Office for Emergency Relief and Refugees, a part of Caritas Thailand, which is the social development and pastoral outreach branch of the Thai Catholic Church. Although it is operated by Catholic Office for Emergency Relief and Refugees, Bangkok Refugee Centre is also facilitated and supported by UNHCR Thailand in providing services to urban refugees in Bangkok. Bangkok Refugee Centre offers four different services. First, it provides financial assistance or subsistence cash allowances. The subsistence cash allowance is provided to those who have been determined as persons of concern by the Protection Unit of UNHCR. All asylum seekers requesting a subsistence cash allowance will be subject to needs, vulnerability, and home assessments. The monthly subsistence cash allowance is intended to cover the basic survival needs of refugees such as food, housing, and other important personal necessities for a limited period of time. Second, basic medical and healthcare services are offered by a medical services supervisor, a clinical nurse, and a medical services officer. Serious and complicated medical cases that require hospitalisation or in-­ patient or specialised treatment are referred to designated/approved public hospitals and clinics. Third, Bangkok Refugee Centre provides educational assistance to refugees and asylum seekers. This organisation has limited funds to cover matriculation and other fees for refugees and asylum seekers at primary and secondary public schools, vocational schools, and monthly transportation allowances. Children under 18 are entitled to educational assistance in a local Thai school near the refugees’ residence. Moreover, Bangkok Refugee Centre also runs mathematics as well as English and Thai language lessons for refugees and asylum seekers aged between 6 and 17. Refugees residing far from Bangkok Refugee Centre will be assisted to enrol if accepted by private language institutions such as English and Computer

Introduction  27 College Bangkok. Preschool classes for children aged from three to seven and other recreational activities are also organised by Bangkok Refugee Centre. Fourth, the social service unit of Bangkok Refugee Centre is responsible for conducting interviews, needs, vulnerability, and home assessments for those seeking financial assistance. Other services include home visits, prison and detention centre visits, counselling and therapy sessions, the provision of advice and information on problems arising from house searching, as well as employment, financial, psychological, physical disability, and social adjustment difficulties. Asylum Access, Thailand, formally a project of the Human Rights and Development Foundation in Thailand, provides legal counsel and representation to urban asylum seekers in their screening proceedings. Similar to Justice Centre Hong Kong, the casework procedures provided by Asylum Access, Thailand include registration, intake, screening, and representation. Being in the social world of refugees In August 2008, I made a smooth transition to serving as a volunteer English teacher at Christian Action’s Centre for Refugees. For one day a week, I taught intermediate English conversation to a group of six refugees. That class marked the beginning of this research project. I met George, my first refugee informant, for the first time in that class. This 20-year-old boy told me that he had been staying in Hong Kong for two years. He travelled all the way from Sri Lanka to Hong Kong alone. After the class, we had a casual chat at the centre. He talked at length about himself and his fears about what was happening to him. When we were talking, I saw there were about ten refugees waiting to see their caseworkers. George met his Somali refugee friend who was in the queue for his appointment with caseworker. George then introduced me as his teacher to this Somali man. Since then, most refugees I met in this organisation came to call me “teacher”. My first encounter with refugees raised some core questions in this project: what were their reasons for embarking on an asylum-seeking journey? What was their chosen final destination upon departure? What happened on the journey? What are the survival strategies enabling refugees to cope with their life in a new city? What plans do they have for the future? This first English language class marked the beginning of this research project, and I also began to write and keep detailed field notes. In order to deepen my involvement in the refugee world, I volunteered for different NGOs and churches. I served as a volunteer caseworker at Justice Centre Hong Kong and a volunteer Cantonese teacher at both the Vine Church and Refugee Union. My voluntary work within these organisations afforded me the opportunity to interact with both the refugees and the staff. As such, I came to know a large number of refugees, many of whom later became my informants. My volunteer work in these organisations proved to

28 Introduction be essential in establishing trust, rapport, and good relationships with refugee informants. My duties in the organisations involved teaching refugees English and Cantonese conversations, helping the staff members of NGOs in organising some social events such as World Refugee Day and the refugees’ talent show, conducting a small-scale survey on their refugee service programmes, assisting lawyers in handling refugee claims (which included interviewing refugee claimants), conducting legal research, preparing asylum seekers for screening interviews, and attending the interviews with asylum seekers. My participation in these activities helped me to establish friendly relationships and trust with my potential informants, and created a favourable environment in which I could later conduct interviews and informant observations. Informant observations were conducted in order to complement or reinforce in-depth interviews and to gain informants a better understanding of their lives. In addition to volunteering for the NGOs and church, and paying repeated visits to my informants’ homes, I joined tea gatherings for refugees in Chungking Mansions, assisted informants in finding accommodation, and accompanied them to shop in night market. In some cases, I also went to church and mosque services with them, among other social, cultural, and political events, such as meetings organised by the African community, cultural performances organised by local social organisations, traditional marriage ceremonies, and street protests. These were also important field sites for me, as they were sites and activities where the refugees interacted socially among each other and with people outside the refugee community. My enthusiasm for conducting a comparative research study on asylum-­ seeking journeys between two cities in Asia was somewhat triggered by my countless conversations with George. When George told me his migration story later, I knew that Bangkok and Hong Kong were the destinations he had on his mind when deciding where to flee. One day, he asked me, “Teacher, do you know that besides Hong Kong, many Sri Lankans also fled to Bangkok?” Out of curiosity, in December 2009, I made an exploratory field trip to Bangkok. Its main purpose was to explore the field, getting to know the most important people, organisations, and their networks. I spent two weeks with Bangkok Refugee Centre, assisting the project manager in reviewing the curriculum for the English and Mathematics courses of their Education Unit. This exploratory trip was very valuable for making contacts and identifying potential informants in Bangkok. During my stay, I discovered that South Asians including Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, and Indians were the dominant refugee groups in Bangkok. I chatted with some of them, who later became my core informants. I kept in touch with them by phone, through WhatsApp messages, and on Facebook. Before I started my intensive fieldwork, I flew back once every six months for volunteer work at Bangkok Refugee Centre, performing administrative duties and conducting home visits to refugees.

Introduction  29 Field methods Over the course of my fieldwork, which comprised preliminary fieldwork and network building (2008–2010), I conducted a 12-month period of intensive interactions with informants in Hong Kong (January–December 2011), followed by a seven-month residence in Bangkok (late December 2011–July 2012), annual return visits to Bangkok (2013–2018), and intensive fieldwork in Hong Kong (2012–2018). Throughout my experience in the field, I benefited from being positioned as a “member” of the refugee community. Although I had no blood relationship with them, I was quickly embraced by the refugees I met in Hong Kong and Bangkok as a “brother”. I was even given an Arabic name Jamal (meaning beauty) by my Muslim refugee informants in Hong Kong. “You have a beautiful mind, teacher. Not many Hong Kong people want to know our stories”, said Roger, a Somali refugee, when explaining why they called me Jamal. Admittedly, some of this had to do with my high level of participation and appearance in the field, and with the way I shared in their daily challenges and emotions over the years. This ethnography records what I heard, saw, and experienced in the field. I describe this approach, which is similar to what Constable (2014) calls an “ethnography of everyday life”. In her study of Indonesian and Filipino migrant mothers in Hong Kong and their Hong Kong-born babies, Constable adopted the “critical phenomenological approach” proposed by Willen (2007) to stress the importance of exploring “migrants’ modes of being in the world” and how their lives are shaped by laws and policies (Constable 2014: 41). She argued that this approach, with its focus on everyday life, articulates well with public anthropology and ethnographic approaches that illuminate the subtle and complex processes through which policies not only affect everyday lives but are also approached or grappled with by migrants as they struggle to find logic, meaning, and humanity in what often appear to be heartless bureaucratic procedures and policies. (Constable 2014: 41) My aim is for this study to examine the journeys to asylum in Hong Kong or Bangkok, the everyday life of refugees, how their lives in Hong Kong or Bangkok are shaped by the immigration policies, asylum-seeking arrangements, and screening and resettlement procedures, and how refugees make sense and find meaning in their lives in limbo. As noted previously, the 2008 English language class at Christian Action Centre for Refugees in Hong Kong and 2009 volunteer work at Bangkok Refugee Centre served as my entry point into this field. At the beginning, I introduced myself and my research to my refugee students and refugee volunteers. However, most of them did not trust me over the first few months. As a Chinese, I had been wrongly assumed by the refugees to be

30 Introduction an undercover police or immigration officer. However, the staff members of NGOs showed much curiosity and interest in what I was planning to study in this project. I was heartily assisted by these people, as they passionately showed me their work and helped me establish links with some refugees, who then became my core informants. I handed out my name cards to the refugees, showing them my school life photos and giving them my mobile phone number. I deeply believe that research relationships are about give and take. In the field, I always told the refugees to feel free to contact me if they ever needed help—especially when they had communication problems with local landlords. Trust was built as with every day that we chatted, ate, and spent time together. I also put a great deal of my own time and energy into the volunteer work at the NGOs by helping staff members organise and distribute donations to refugees, among other activities. Fortunately, after the first three or four months, the refugees began to share their personal stories and problems with me. Thereafter, I was introduced to more refugees and met some others by attending their social gatherings. My core informants subsequently put me in touch with some other NGOs and religious organisations that also provided legal and humanitarian assistance to refugees. Later, I was introduced to more refugees and humanitarian workers through these networks. When I conducted intensive fieldwork, I spent most of the day time with the refugees. I conducted structured “asylum-seeking journey” interviews with a total of 180 refugee informants that typically lasted approximately two hours, but occasionally lasted for three hours. I also had informal conversations and discussions with different groups of refugee informants during many tea gatherings over the years. I interacted with refugees in the neighbourhoods where they lived, in shopping centres, at cafés and restaurants, in the wet markets, in parks, in night markets, and in churches and mosques. Moreover, I accompanied refugees in finding accommodation and to many appointments with NGO workers and officials. I also visited some refugees in public hospitals or clinics when they were sick. I often visited their homes and had countless meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) with them. I also attended numerous birthday parties and marriage ceremonies that held in restaurants or homes, and I went to many advocacy and fund-raising activities for NGOs and churches. My ability to speak four languages is an indispensable asset, as the majority of my refugee informants could speak English, and some informants (refugees and humanitarian workers) in Bangkok could speak Mandarin, Cantonese, or Thai. This allowed me to easily engage in discussions and conversations with informants without the need for interpreters. Moreover, when my refugee informants had communication problems with local people, I acted as an interpreter and mediator to resolve problems, through which I could understand more about local attitudes towards the refugee community. When I returned home at night, I kept in touch with refugees by phone calls, WhatsApp messages, and on Facebook.

Introduction  31 Although my main research focus is on refugees and I spent countless hours with them, I also had opportunities to interact with and interview many staff members of NGOs, religious organisations, international organisation, lawyers, human rights activists, and legislative council members. Government officials—including those involved in social welfare and ­i mmigration—provided valuable written information through emails, as they were unwilling to discuss matters face-to-face. Archival research materials such as government documents, UNHCR papers, newspaper reports, books, and journal articles were also invaluable. Each day, I immersed myself in the stranded world of refugees. After a few months or so, I became aware of the “pain” of ethnographic practices, both physically and mentally. As the research processes unfolded, the contours emerged as I traced informants across multiple sites that turned out to become relevant in the light of research questions regarding their everyday struggles. My research journey was also shaped by my personal networks as the research processes unfolded. Day by day, I travelled to different geographic locations in Hong Kong or Bangkok in order to make sense of the daily lives of asylum seekers. Hot and humid weather in Hong Kong and Bangkok during summer time made me very tired. Most of the time, I struggled to stay late at night to write down what I observed, aware of the intra-city travel experiences always sapping all of my physical energy. As the months went by and I got to know more refugees, I carried more and more their stories with me. During the day, I visited them at home in buildings that were mostly derelict. They preferred to spend their time in their stuffy rooms with boredom and inertia. They told me their stories of persecution, rape, murder, terror, arrest, and detention. I have always put myself in their shoes and conducted interviews as if we were friends discussing life matters. In most cases, their terrifying migration experiences deeply captured my heart. Before I went to sleep, I listened to their stories again and wrote about them in interview transcripts (I used a digital recorder to record the interviews). I value the richness of individual stories and experiences, though I do not take their confidentiality lightly. Following anthropological convention, I have used pseudonyms in this book. As I repeatedly listened to their recorded stories to accurately transcribe field notes for precise coding, I felt depressed and frustrated for some time. As a lone researcher, there is limited opportunity to talk through my feelings with colleagues when performing sensitive qualitative research of this kind. Meditation eased much of my negative emotions throughout my research journey. No doubt, this habitual practice provided me a safe “space” to focus and redirect my thoughts. Reflecting on my fieldwork experience, I came to realise why my refugee informants always said religious practices of prayer were so important in their prolonged displacement experience, which was fully charged with frustrations and disorientation. It is because prayer and meditation can bring peace and even some degree of personal healing. Journeys are always relational and embodied, and this research journey gave me an acute sense that,

32 Introduction within this emotionally charged terrain, people (including researchers) must possess self-care strategies for feelings of frustration and depression to be unloaded.

Use of terminology, languages, and currencies An intense debate continues regarding how to differentiate “real” refugees from “economic migrants” (see, for example, Richmond 1994; Van Hear 1998; Castles 2003; Cohen 2007; Hathaway 2007; Van Hear et al. 2009); this book adopts the concept of “refugees” and “refugeeness” proposed by Malkki (1995) and adapted by Al-Sharmani (2003) and Grabska (2006), which serves to demonstrate the difficulty of making a rigid distinction. The term “refugees” in this book refers to those individuals who are seeking protection in Hong Kong or Bangkok. It conceptualises the terms as a complex and dynamic “process of becoming…a gradual transformation, not an automatic result of crossing of a national border” (Malkki 1995; Al-Sharmani 2003). As advanced by Grabska (2006: 290), the term “refugee” should not be understood exclusively in the context of the country of origin experiences that “forced” people to flee their homelands and, hence, generated a sense of loss (in terms of protection, social networks, and material property). Rather, by perceiving refugees as experiencing “refugeeness” or being in the state of “refugeeness”, this approach reveals the dynamic aspect of the concept, whereby one becomes a refugee not only by escaping violence and persecution and crossing an international border, but also by going through the refugee experience in the country of asylum, as part of evolving processes, relationships, networks, and experiences. (Grabska 2006: 290) Such an approach can provide a better understanding of the life courses of populations in transit, as these are defined by the experience of forced migration. This book uses the pinyin system for Romanising Chinese words and uses the Thai alphabet in the text. HKD, the Hong Kong dollar, and THB, the Thai Baht, are the currencies often referred to in this book. In 2012–2013, the exchange rates for these currencies were HKD7.75 per US$1 and THB 32.5 per US$1.

Organisation of the book Asylum-seeking journeys to Hong Kong or Bangkok are the central theme of this book. In this book, the journey is examined based on two themes: physical and inner-world journeys. The chapters that follow illustrate the patterns, processes, meanings, and psychosocial impacts of such transnational

Introduction  33 movements from refugees’ homelands to Hong Kong or Bangkok. The book first explores the patterns, practices, and routes of cross-border movements (Chapters 2 and 3). It then elucidates their embodiments and feelings when refugees experience the states of both mobility and immobility at different stages of the asylum-seeking process (Chapters 4–6). This introductory chapter has highlighted the importance of studying migrant journeys in order to understand the social, political, economic, and psychological processes involved in “becoming” or “being” a refugee. The current chapter is followed by six additional chapters. In Chapter 2, I offer a brief historical overview of refugee migration patterns in Asia over the second half of the 20th century. My contention in this chapter is that a changing pattern of asylum-seeking has occurred in Asia. While the period from the 1950s through to the 1970s was an era of “mass flight” of refugees caused by war, revolution, and decolonisation, the contemporary asylum-seeking pattern has shifted to one of individual journeys in search of asylum, many of which involving periods of prolonged displacement with little chance of either third-country resettlement or local integration. Chapter 3 provides a micro-level analysis of the process of individual escape by highlighting the desires and strategies fuelling the transnational movement of refugees. A special focus is placed on the zone of determinacy between refugee aspiration and its actualisation as an embodied experience of transnational refugee movement. In particular, this chapter highlights the skills and sensory perceptions of the individuals in making exits and entrances across national borders. It also demonstrates how refugee migration is practised, experienced, and embodied. Furthermore, it illustrates actual events of the asylum-seeking process from refugees’ homelands to Hong Kong or Bangkok, as well as the cultural process of “becoming” a refugee. In Chapter 4, I discuss the government projects of “governing” asylum seekers in Hong Kong and Bangkok, including the legal processes of exclusion and marginalisation. In this chapter, I attempt to address how host governments and the UNHCR govern refugees in Hong Kong and ­Bangkok. This chapter also delves into the institutional mechanisms of “making” a refugee in the two places. Host government immigration policies and ­asylum-seeking arrangements play a fundamental role in the coping process of refugees. Hong Kong and Thai governments have the same immigration stance, which is that they consider all refugees in their territories to be illegal immigrants. As such, refugees become socially, economically, culturally, and politically marginalised. However, with regard to asylum-seeking arrangements, the two places are slightly different in some respects. When dealing with refugees, the Hong Kong government adopts a lenient approach, whereas the Thai government uses a harsher approach. This chapter focuses on the immigration policies and asylum-seeking arrangements of these two receiving societies. A comparison between the two societies makes it possible to study the impact of different institutional structures on refugee communities.

34 Introduction From situating myself in the social world of refugees, Chapters 5 and 6 offer ethnographic details of prolonged displacement and “making a home” in Hong Kong and Bangkok (discussed in separate chapters). In Chapter 5, I discuss how refugees in Hong Kong survive in liminality, and how—despite their various national origins—they actively create a refugee community in the context of marginalisation and exclusion as it exists in Hong Kong. This chapter uses Hong Kong as a case study to examine the embodied experience of living through liminality. Specifically, it focuses on neighbourhood, work and employment, religious and cultural practices, and refugee community. This chapter examines a range of homemaking strategies that refugees employ in geographical and temporal immobility, including day-to-day practices and the meanings refugees give to the places they inhabit, as well as refugees’ memories of and imaginations of idealised homes. Chapter 6 builds upon the theme of Chapter 5 concerning how refugees in Bangkok survive in liminality, and how they actively create a refugee community in a foreign place. I attempt to examine how the liminal life and homemaking practices of refugees in Bangkok are different from those of refugees residing in Hong Kong. Chapter 7 attempts to draw together the central themes of this book by comparing asylum seekers’ experiences in Hong Kong and Bangkok, and then proceeds to advance a scholarly discussion of homemaking in the context of asylum-seeking journeys.

2 Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok A historical perspective

Hong Kong and Bangkok have rich history of immigration and have long been destinations for refugees. Before unpacking the journeys to asylum of contemporary refugees, this chapter first attempts to situate asylum-­ seeking journeys within their historical context. This is important, because it suggests that asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok is not a new phenomenon. These two Asian cities experienced three prominent waves of refugees—Chinese, Indochinese, and Burmese—in the second half of the 20th century. The massive and continuous movements of these earlier waves of refugees across countries within the region, and to other parts of the world, attracted worldwide media attention, and featured strongly in political and policy debates between 1950 and 2000. However, it is worth nothing that these movements did not generate the same sense of “waves”, as seen in relation to more recent asylum-seeking journeys to Hong Kong or Bangkok. In order to better understand the asylum-seeking landscape of these two places, I argue that we must first understand the history of refugee movements. Herein, I offer a brief historical sketch on the pattern of journeys to asylum from the 1950s through to the 1990s. In doing so, my aim is to highlight the changing asylum-seeking patterns observed in Hong Kong and Bangkok at the turn of the 21st century.

Chinese immigrants and Vietnamese boat people seeking asylum in Hong Kong Chinese immigrants Most Chinese immigrants who entered Hong Kong between 1945 and 1947 were returnees who had lived in Hong Kong prior to the Japanese occupation. They fled to Mainland China to avoid the chaos that occurred during Japanese control. When Britain resumed its rule in Hong Kong following the Japanese surrender, many returned to Hong Kong. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War and established a new government. They defeated Kuomintang, which subsequently relocated to Taiwan and assumed power over the “Republic of China”. This change of political

36  Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok regime in China led many Kuomintang officials, soldiers, and supporters to seek an escape from Mainland China. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party launched several political movements, such as land reform, the Anti-rightist Campaign, and the Great Leap Forward. These campaigns increased the numbers of Chinese fleeing to Hong Kong. The influx of Chinese refugees to Hong Kong led to an unprecedented crisis, resulting in the so-called “Chinese refugee problem”. Some refugees later returned to China or emigrated to Taiwan and other countries, but many chose to remain in Hong Kong. In 1954, the total population of Hong Kong reached 2.25 million—a fourfold increase since the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War in mid-1946 (Peterson 2012: 7). In order to prevent the massive influx of Chinese people, the Hong Kong colonial government had enacted the Immigration Control Ordinance in 1949 to “control the entry into, exit from, and movement within the colony of persons not born therein” (Kwan 2007). The colonial government introduced a “quota system” on 1 May 1950 that set an entry limit approximately equal to the number of people leaving the territory (ibid). However, in 1962, many Chinese refugees poured into colonial Hong Kong, fleeing from the famine that resulted from Mainland China’s Great Leap Forward in the so-called “May Exodus”. The mainland’s relatively loose border system, particularly in Guangdong province, facilitated the substantial inflow of escapees (ibid). Thereafter, negotiations between China and the Hong Kong colonial government were conducted regarding the influx of Chinese refugees, and Guangdong authorities began to restrict the outflow of refugees after 24 May 1962 (ibid). In November 1974, the Hong Kong government introduced the “Touch Base Policy” that granted identity cards to Mainland Chinese who had already reached the urban areas of Hong Kong, which granted some illegal immigrants the rights of residence. The “Touch Base Policy” was “effective in reducing the number of illegal immigrants over the following few years, when less than 1,800 illegal immigrants were arrested each year” (Chan 2008: 159). Overall, only approximately 6,600 illegal immigrants evaded arrest and were granted residence (ibid). However, the situation changed dramatically in 1978 when China began its economic reform and Open Door Policies. Notably, the number of illegal Chinese immigrants into Hong Kong surged from 8,400 in 1977 to 197,600 in 1979 (ibid: 160). The colonial government abandoned the “Touch Base Policy” on 24 October 1980, when the nature and scale of the influx of migrants was perceived to be eroding improvements in the living standards that Hong Kong citizens had been working very hard to achieve. Mainland Chinese who reached Hong Kong on or before 23 October 1980 were allowed to register for a Hong Kong identity card over a grace period of three days (24–26 October 1980), and a total of 6,952 Chinese immigrants registered with the Hong Kong authority before the cut-off time (Wu and Inglis 1992). However, those who arrived on or after 24 October 1980 were immediately repatriated.

Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok  37 Vietnamese boat people The Vietnamese boat people saga occurred in Hong Kong between 1975 and 2000. It began with an initial group of 3,743 Vietnamese boat people who arrived in Hong Kong on board a vessel named Clarea Maersk, which docked in May 1975. To accommodate these refugees, open centres were established to provide shelter to 11,544 Vietnamese who arrived in Hong Kong that year (Chan 1995). When the Vietnamese government announced a policy to “expel the politically and economically ‘unassimilable’ ethnic Chinese population” in 1978, a total of 6,609 Vietnamese refugees fled to Hong Kong. Due to the deterioration of relations between Vietnam and China over border disputes in 1979, the number of Vietnamese boat people to fleeing to Hong Kong jumped to 68,748 (ibid: 380). The refugees’ intention to flee was seldom questioned at that time, since 73% of arrivals were ethnic Chinese (ibid: 354). In June 1979, then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asked the United Nations to organise an international meeting to solve the Indochinese refugee problem (Robinson 1998: 51). Notably, the large numbers of Vietnamese refugees arriving after 1979 were largely motivated by famine conditions in North Vietnam and rumours regarding refugee policy changes (Hitchcox, 1990: 98). In 1982, the Hong Kong colonial government implemented a “humane deterrence” policy, with new arrivals being indefinitely detained in closed camps until resettlement to a third country was permitted (Hitchcox, 1990: 97). Two different types of closed camps existed. According to Hitchcox (1990), the first was a walled-in prison-like closed camp with harsh accommodations, which largely housed ethnic Vietnamese and “troublemakers” from different camps. Closed camps of the second type were located on offshore islands and mostly accommodated ethnic Chinese refugees and a few ethnic Vietnamese asylum seekers awaiting transfer to other camps. However, these camps were run in a relatively relaxed manner. Following the launch of the closed camp policy, total refugee arrivals dropped slightly to 7,836 in 1982, and ranged between 1,112 and 3,651 annually from 1983 to 1987 (Chan 1995: 380). The USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia became the primary resettlement countries for the Vietnamese boat people who arrived in Hong Kong. The average resettlement rate was approximately 3,000 per year throughout the 1980s (Chan 1995: 380). In 1986, the US government reduced the Orderly Departure Program, and the number of refugees increased again in 1987. In total, Hong Kong accepted approximately 15,000 refugees, mainly ethnic Chinese-Vietnamese, before the 1988 screening policy was implemented (Chan 2011: 7). In the first five months of 1988, the number of Vietnamese boat people arriving in Hong Kong increased to more than 5,000 (Chan 1995: 381). In the same year, the Hong Kong colonial government announced the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) screening policy, declaring that all Vietnamese boat people who arrived in Hong Kong after 16 June would be

38  Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok locked in detention centres and treated as illegal immigrants unless they were processed as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention. Therefore, those determined to be non-refugees were repatriated to Vietnam. The CPA attempted to encourage asylum seekers to return to Vietnam by giving them a $240 “integration grant” and $50 in spending money from the UNHCR (Whitney 1998: 7). The colonial government determined that Vietnamese boat people who arrived in Hong Kong after the cut-off date tended not to be motivated by political or racial persecution, and were therefore unlikely to qualify as genuine refugees under international law. According to Chan (1995: 381–382), 47,389 people were screened under the CPA, with 5,515 being accepted as refugees and 41,874 being screened out as non-refugees or illegal immigrants. International non-governmental organisations, lawyers, and scholars identified a list of flaws in the screening procedure, including the lack of adequate legal advice and assistance, as well as the denial of the right to have counsel present during screening interviews. However, the Hong Kong colonial government and UNHCR continued to ignore such criticisms (Chan 2011: 10). The CPA screening policy was launched at the height of anti-Vietnamese sentiment among Hong Kong citizens. Although the Hong Kong colonial government generally adopted a hard-line attitude towards illegal migrants from China, Vietnamese boat people were handled quite differently (see Chan 2011: 10). The major difference in the treatment of these two groups was the presumption that all undocumented migrants from China were illegal migrants. Chinese migrants were not accepted as refugees, and were invariably deported back to China the day after arrest. Although the Vietnamese boat people were detained, all were subjected to the screening procedure that determined whether they were true refugees. Notably, all Vietnamese boat people were accorded automatic resettlement in a third country until 1988. In 1988 and 1989, Hong Kong accommodated over 53,000 Vietnamese boat people, with over 20,000 arriving in 1991 alone (Chan 2011: 8). Under pressure from the Chinese government to solve the Vietnamese boat people issue before 1997—when Hong Kong’s sovereignty was to be returned to China—the colonial government and UNHCR conducted voluntary and involuntary repatriation and resettlement procedures, respectively. However, the legitimisation of “forced” repatriation was a fundamental criticism of these efforts, as they established a precedent and demonstrated the increasing power of the colonial government in “denying refugee status to the vast majority of displaced people” (Cunliffe 1995: 289). In addition, Hong Kong made a secret bilateral agreement for the forcible return of boat people to Vietnam (Loescher 2001: 261), with even the UNHCR not being informed. Consequently, on the “12th of December 1989…. heavily armed Hong Kong security guards forcibly deported to Hanoi 51 screened-out Vietnamese refugees” (ibid.). In fact, this screening policy generated significant resistance from the Vietnamese refugees in detention centres and camps. The Hong Kong mass media frequently reported extensive violence in the camps; for

Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok  39 example, on 3 and 4 February 1992, a total of 24 Vietnamese boat people were killed and 114 injured in a fire at Shek Kong Detention Centre (Chan 1995: 384). Thereafter, Vietnamese boat people were classified as violent. The term Yuht Naahm Jai, which literally means “Vietnamese boy”, was commonly used by Hong Kong people as a derogatory label that conveyed the negative views they held towards the Vietnamese, who they viewed as a violent, undesirable, and uncivilised group. By the end of 1996, the number of Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement had fallen to 6,872, and this figure decreased to 1,200 by the end of 1997 (Law 2011: 128), the year when Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese authorities. Refugee camps were subsequently closed. When the last refugee camp in Tuen Mun (Pillar Point) closed in 2000, over 2000 Vietnamese who remained— but were not entitled for resettlement—were given Hong Kong residency for local integration (Chan 2011). After over a decade of “settlement”, many Vietnamese ex-refugees (mostly women) in Hong Kong married local men and had their own children. However, these individuals lacked a strong sense of belonging to Hong Kong society due to local discrimination and their strong emotional ties to their homeland. Meanwhile, some repatriated Vietnamese boat people returned to Hong Kong through marriage migration in search of modernity and a better quality of life (Chan 2011).

Indochinese and Burmese refugees to Thailand Indochinese refugees Three decades ago, Thailand was alone among the countries of asylum in Southeast Asia in bearing the burden of hosting all three Indochinese refugee populations (UNHCR 2000: 91). Within six months of the fall of Saigon, 88,682 refugees had been registered by Thai authorities, including 57,070 highland Lao (62%), 26,172 Khmer (30%), and 5,707 Vietnamese (6%) (UNHCR 2000). As a result, a total of 20 camps were established during the second half of 1975 to accommodate these refugees. Between 1975 and 1995, Thailand accommodated a total of 359,930 Laotian refugees, 237,398 Cambodian refugees, and 160,239 Vietnamese refugees (UNHCR 2000: 98). The flow of Indochinese refugees into Thailand began in May 1975 after Pathet Lao forces took Vientiane. In the eight years that followed, over 300,000 Laotians crossed the Mekong River into Thailand (UNHCR 2000). Two groups of Laotian refugees emerged: “hill tribe Lao” and “lowland Lao”. The former group was predominantly Hmong, who traded opium to lowlanders in return for rice. The revolutionary war in Laos interrupted this traditional trade, and the USA took advantage of the situation by recruiting Hmong as Special Forces soldiers to fight the Pathet Lao (UNHCR 2000). By 1975, the Hmong had become dependent upon the USA, and with their departure from the region, the “hill tribe Lao” were left without any economic foundation (UNHCR 2000). They also feared reprisals from the

40  Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok newly established Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Consequently, 10,000 Hmong fled to Thailand (UNHCR 2000: 97). Furthermore, deteriorating economic conditions during the late 1970s and the imposition of forced labour and collectivisation of agriculture collectively contributed to the outflow of the “lowland Lao”. This group of Laotian refugees was detained in Ban Vinai camp, which opened in 1975 and was administered by the Ministry of Interior (Songprasert et al. 1988). Nearly 50,000 lowland Lao entered Thailand in 1978, and approximately 25,000 entered in each of the following two years (Songprasert et al. 1988). In 1976, Laos reached an agreement with the Thai government to accept the return of refugees. Repatriation first occurred in 1980, when 193 lowland Lao returned home (UNHCR 2000: 98). The inflow of Laotian refugees had started to slow by the end of 1970s. However, some Lao fled to Thailand due to fears of being incarcerated in re-education camps. Meanwhile, others left due to the loss of political, economic, and religious freedoms. Thus, in 1983, Thailand opened a new camp for lowland Lao, Na Pho—a relatively open camp—and placed all new arrivals there (UNHCR 2000). The camp offered limited services, survival-­ level rations, and no access to resettlement. This arrangement, referred to as “humane deterrence”—keeping access open, but closing the door to resettlement while limiting camp facilities—seemed to affect the exodus of lowland Lao. As a result, lowland refugees dropped from 29,000 to 3,200 from 1980 to 1982 (UNHCR 2000: 99). However, because Laotian arrivals climbed again between 1983 and 1984, the Thai government implemented a screening policy at the border in 1985. By the end of 1986, of the 7,000 Laotians who had been interviewed, approximately 66% had been approved as refugees (UNHCR 2000: 101). This recognition rate increased to 90% by 1989 due to pressure from the US government to raise resettlement numbers for the Hmong (UNHCR 2000: 101). Others returned Lao voluntarily, and all Laotian refugee camps had closed by 1993, with the exception of Na Pho. Cambodian refugees entered Thailand immediately following US withdrawal from Indochina, and approximately 17,000 had arrived in Thailand by the end of 1975 (Songprasert et al. 1988). This exodus eventually declined because the Pol Pot regime had successfully sealed its border to prevent further flight. When the Khmer regime was ousted by Vietnamese occupying forces in January 1979, a major exodus to Thailand began. Approximately 34,000 Cambodians escaped into Thailand from 1975 to 1978, with another 20,000 and 170,000 fleeing to Laos and Vietnam, respectively (UNHCR 2000: 92). Notably, the supervision of Cambodian refugees fell under the direct jurisdiction of the military Supreme Command, and all Cambodian refugees were contained in closed-camp conditions at Khao I Dang. At the beginning of 1980, Khao I Dang was home to over 100,000 Cambodians, and at the end of the year, this number peaked at 140,000 (UNHCR 2000: 93). Since 1979, the UNHCR has been responsible for Khao I Dang and other holding centres for Cambodian refugees (Muntarbhorn 1992). Thailand’s

Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok  41 attitude towards Cambodian refugees has often been interpreted as negative and hostile. A special policy was used to address Cambodian refugees, whereby those arriving before December 1982 (“KD” status) were eligible for resettlement in third countries and understood to be exempt from relocation to the border (ibid: 129), while those arriving between January 1983 and August 1984 (“FC” status) could also be resettled, though at some later date (ibid). Those arriving between August 1984 and September 1985 (“RC” status) were issued ration cards but were not eligible for resettlement unless they had close relatives in the two aforementioned groups (ibid). Those who came to Khao I Dang after September 1985 were subject to relocation to the border camps, where third-country resettlement was impossible (ibid). Between 1975 and 1992, over 150,000 Cambodian refugees in Thailand were resettled overseas, including 150,000 being resettled in the USA (UNHCR 2000: 97). However, from March 1992 to May 1993, more than 360,000 Cambodian refugees were repatriated to Cambodia (ibid). Then, Kao I Dang was officially closed on 3 March 1993. South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnamese forces on 30 April 1975, causing a stream of Vietnamese beginning to leave. Those who left between 1975 and 1977 included members of the middle class, peasantry, and the Saigon military (UNHCR 2000). Their reasons for flight included harsh treatment and the “re-education” of those associated with the old regime, deteriorating conditions at home, food shortages, drought, floods, and a desire to avoid military service in the border clashes Vietnam was experiencing with Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia (ibid). Unlike the Laotian and Cambodian refugees who entered Thailand via land routes, Vietnamese refugees fled to Thailand via both land and water routes. Between 1975 and 1979, a total of 25,723 Vietnamese arrived by boat, while 14,666 Vietnamese refugees escaped overland (UNHCR 2000: 98). When Vietnamese boat arrivals escalated dramatically in 1979, boat “pushbacks” became routine, and thousands of Vietnamese may have perished at sea as a result (Songprasert et al. 1988: 66). Meanwhile, many Vietnamese boat people became vulnerable to local pirates in the Gulf of Thailand. The UNHCR estimated that nearly half of women in the vulnerable age group (11–40 years old) who embarked from Vietnam could expect rape or abduction before reaching southern Thailand (ibid). The number of boat people arriving in southern Thailand decreased after 1985, as most Vietnamese refugees tended to land along the coast of Trat and other eastern provinces (Songprasert et al. 1988). Thus, the number of Vietnamese on the eastern coast increased dramatically since the area was closer to Vietnam and a safer place to land than the southern provinces. However, the significant influx of refugees into Thailand’s Trat province from Cambodia’s Kong Island led the Thai government adopting additional tough measures, including the denial of asylum to any refugees arriving in Thailand via Kong Island after 1987, and depriving them of the right to resettlement in third countries (Muntarbhorn 1992).

42  Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok Before 1988, the Vietnamese boat people were generally granted temporary refuge in Thailand because the resettlement countries used broad criteria for offering them resettlement as a priority group (ibid). However, with an increasing number of cases being rejected by resettlement countries in the mid-1980s, and a substantial rise in arrivals in 1988, the Thai government adopted an interdiction policy of refusing even temporary asylum for Vietnamese nationals (ibid). From 1986 to 1988, those who walked across the Thai-Kampuchean border were housed in a section of the Khmer refugee camp at Site 2 (near Aranyaprathet), and then were transferred to Phanat Nikhom in Chonburi Province if they were accepted for resettlement (ibid). Boat people were taken directly to Phanat Nikhom, from which they applied for refugee status. This led to the CPA, a screening mechanism adopted in 1989 to determine the refugee status of Vietnamese arriving on and after the cut-off date of 14 March 1989 (ibid). Screening was conducted under the CPA, and those awaiting screening as well as others who had achieved refugee status were kept at Phanat Nikhom camp (ibid). Those who were screened out were transferred to Sikhieu camp. In 1990, approximately 12,700 Vietnamese refugees arrived to Thailand by boat, while 1,600 arrived by land (ibid: 127). Burmese refugees In 1984, the western border of Burma was predominately controlled by the Shan, Karenni, Karen, and Mon ethnic nationalities, which had established de facto autonomous states. Notably, these autonomous states had never been under the control of the Burmese government or occupied by the Burmese army. The government and army had only three access points: at Tachilek/Mae Sai, Myawaddy/Mae Sot, and Kawthaung/Ranong (The Border Consortium 2013). The ethnic nationalities raised taxes via the substantial black market trade between Thailand and Burma, which paid for their governance systems, armies, and social services. At that time, Burma depended heavily on black markets. The ethnic communities imported everyday necessities into Burma, and exported natural resources into Thailand, including timber and cattle (ibid). The Karen National Union (KNU) had been in rebellion for 35 years, and had been gradually pushed back towards the border since the mid-1970s. The KNU temporarily sent thousands of refugees into Thailand during the dry season, who would return during the rainy season when the Burmese Army withdrew (ibid). In 1984, the Burmese army launched a massive offensive to maintain its front-line positions, and did not withdraw in the rainy season (Lang 2002). Consequently, approximately 10,000 refugees who had been sent into Thailand could not return (The Border Consortium 2013). From 1984 to 1994, the Burmese army launched annual dry season offensives by overrunning and taking control of new areas, building supply

Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok  43 routes, and establishing new bases (ibid). Due to these army invasions, members of many ethnic groups became refugees and fled to Thailand. In 1988, the Burmese people rebelled against the military regime, with millions taking part in mass demonstrations (ibid). Students and monks played prominent roles, with Aung San Suu Kyi emerging as their charismatic leader. The demonstrations were crushed on 18 September, with thousands being killed on the streets. Approximately 10,000 student activists fled to the Thai-­ Burmese border, and the first alliances were established between ethnic and pro-­democracy movements (ibid: 124). Offices were established at the KNU headquarters in Manerplaw, and over 30 small “student” camps were established along the border. In 1990, the State Law, Order, and Restoration Council conducted a general election that Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) overwhelmingly won (ibid). However, the NLD was not allowed to take power, and elected members of parliament were imprisoned or intimidated. Some fled to the border to form a government in exile, further strengthening the ethnic democratic opposition alliances at Manerplaw. By 1994, the total number of refugees increased to 80,000 (ibid: 124). With the assistance of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Association, the Burmese army attacked and overran the KNU headquarters at Manerplaw in January 1995 (Lang 2002). The Burmese army was able to overrun all KNU bases along the Moei River, thereby allowing them to take control of this important central section of the border with Tak province (The Border Consortium 2013). Although the Burmese army and Karenni National Progressive party had a short-lived ceasefire agreement in 1995, the army eventually overran all of their bases in 1996, taking control of the border opposite Mae Hong Son province (ibid). In 1997, the army launched a significant dry season offensive, overrunning the remainder of the Karen-controlled territory south to Prachuap Khiri Kan. Over the course of three years, the Burmese army had effectively overrun the entire border. Ethnic nationalities no longer controlled any significant territory, and the number of refugees had increased to 115,000 (ibid: 124). The remaining student camps had now all been forced to move into Thailand, and most of their numbers were integrated into refugee camps. Once the Burmese army had control of the former ethnic minority territory, it launched a massive village relocation plan aimed at bringing the population under military control and eliminating resistance. In total, over 3,700 ethnic minority villages were destroyed between 1996 and 2011, affecting more than 1 million people (ibid: 124). In January 2011, the registered population in nine refugee camps was 97,956, with an additional 50,000 unregistered people waiting for their status to be determined (ibid: 124). In 2012, at least 400,000 internally displaced persons remained in the rural areas of Southeast Burma (ibid: 124). Recently, many non-state armed groups have agreed to ceasefires with the Burmese government, which was elected in 2010. Since then, conflict in Southeast Burma has decreased.

44  Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok

The asylum-seeking pattern—from mass flight to individual journeys In his research on refugees, Kunz (1973) argued that the majority of refugee flight patterns conformed to either an anticipatory refugee movement or an acute refugee movement. Anticipatory refugees arrive at the country of immigration having fled their homelands before the deterioration of a military or political situation preventing their orderly departure. Such refugees are typically well prepared, are somewhat familiar with the language of the host country, have some funding, and are being informed about the ways by which they could re-enter their professions in the country of settlement. Conversely, acute refugee movements arise from great political changes or the actions of armies. Refugees flee either en masse or, if their flight is obstructed, as individuals or small groups. Their main purpose is to reach safety in a neighbouring or nearby country that would offer them protection. As demonstrated in the previous sections, mass flights were largely a 20th-century phenomenon in Asia, largely caused by war, revolution, and decolonisation. The changes that accompanied the end of the Second World War in Asia brought waves of intense regional asylum-seeking journeys, largely undertaken by Chinese, Indochinese, and Burmese refugees. According to Kunz (1973), these three waves of refugees were classified as acute refugee movements. They were impelled by immediate fear, and often accompanied by shock caused by a sudden turn of events, with their distress being frequently augmented by hysteria. The intensity and range of these earlier refugee flows was great due to the number of refugees involved being large (i.e. several thousand in each group), and the migratory patterns lasting several decades. Moreover, the sudden mass flow of refugees to different neighbouring countries or cities had prompted global concern regarding the refugee situation in Asia. For example, during the Indochinese refugee saga, 29 countries including the USA, Canada, Australia, and most countries in Europe received Vietnamese refugees (Mignot 1995: 95), producing the most geographically widespread refugee diaspora in the second half of the 20th century. At the turn of the 21st century, the “push” motives for refugees became overwhelming, as potential refugees found themselves experiencing acute displacement in their homelands. However, unlike earlier refugee waves in which refugees fled on a massive scale, contemporary refugees travel individually in search of asylum, primarily due to a combination of tightly controlled exit channels and “restrictive” emigration/immigration barriers (i.e. travel documents and visa requirements) being erected. With the rapid development of transportation networks in this era of globalisation, places around the world are within the reach of all. Many physically isolated communities are now connecting with other societies. In earlier waves of refugee migration, escape methods were overwhelmingly through sea and land, which limited the travel distance. Over the past 20 years, air travel has superseded the oceangoing ship as the primary means of international refugee

Asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok  45 migration. Air travel transforms prospects for today’s potential refugees, who can flee to areas far from their homelands on an individual basis and take their flights through first asylum ports. The diversity of refugees in Asia has also increased significantly over the past two decades. Compared to earlier refugee migration waves that were mainly intra-regional, today’s refugees residing in Asia come from countries both within and outside the region. As the next chapter will show, current escape modes are essentially fragmentary in nature, and the size of groups involved in each escape is small. Moreover, these escapes are characterised by planned, prepared, and sometimes secret actions. Many of these individual journeys in search of asylum involve periods of prolonged displacement with little chance of either third-country resettlement or local integration.

3 Constructing journeys The making of exits and entrances

With all of my documents on hand, I travelled to Bangkok at the end of 2011 to begin my seven-month research journey. In the arrivals hall of Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport, I was waved forward by an immigration officer to his desk. He took my passport and casually flipped through the pages with all of my stamped Thai tourist visas from previous leisure trips. His fingers stopped moving when he saw my student visa to Thailand on a page. He then immediately checked the information I wrote on my arrival card, and inquired in a very serious tone, “Why do you come here with a student visa this time?” All of a sudden, I felt scared because it was the first time I faced this question posed by an officer in the airport. But I knew what I wanted. I needed to gain entry to Bangkok. This incident resonated so much with the migratory experiences of my informants in the field that it suddenly made me aware of the importance of using appropriate words and attitudes when dealing with immigration officials. I took a deep breath and tried to explain my status as a student studying migration in Bangkok. He asked with a raised eyebrow, “Migration?” In a friendly tone, I added, “There are many migrants and cultures in Bangkok. I like this place.” While the officer was still checking the pages with visa attachments, I told myself to “keep faith”, hoping no more questions would follow. After a minute or so, the officer asked me to look at the camera for a photo, and proceeded to stamp my passport. He gave the passport back to me with the reminder, “don’t overstay, have penalty”. Bangkok and Hong Kong represent two major migrant and tourist destinations in Asia, with many people coming and going every day. As I later learned from refugees, possessing valid travel documents such as passports and visas did not guarantee entry to either Hong Kong or Bangkok. For them, lessons learned from their successful experiences at different checkpoints involved the use of appropriate exchanges and interactions with officials. I had been telling my refugee informants about my encounter with the immigration officer in Bangkok airport, when Bruce, a refugee from Central African Republic, said, “I had the same experience. I was so scared that I almost peed when I was standing in front of the immigration officer in Hong Kong.” Bruce was speaking from his own asylum-seeking journey

Constructing journeys  47 experience as an individual traveller to Hong Kong via China four years prior. At the immigration checkpoint of the Mainland Chinese-Hong Kong border, “they [immigration officers] asked me many questions in English, such as why I came to Hong Kong”, he said. Bruce had a valid passport, a Chinese tourist visa, a small suitcase, and five English letters on his mind— UNHCR. If he answered the officer with these five English letters, he knew he would certainly be sent back to his home country. “I was scared and confused. My English was bad at that time, so I just answered ‘tourist’— pronounced in the French way”, he explained. Bruce was one of the many refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok who had been successful in exits and entrances. Like most refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok, Bruce embarked on an individual journey in search of asylum. In order to make smooth journeys, refugees are required to produce convincing embodied performances at foreign airports and other points of entry. As Bruce concluded from his own success, “as a refugee, giving a good impression to officials is important.” These strategies for asylum-seeking have involved more than a simple movement from one place to another; as this chapter will demonstrate, refugees’ concerns revolved around the accumulation of money, travel documents, their rights and entitlement to refuge, and most importantly, their capacity for bringing those things overseas in direct, embodied encounters with foreign officials. “Constructing journeys”, the title of this chapter, refers to the cognitive sphere of refugees. Asylum-seeking journeys largely begin before people start moving abroad. The anticipation of events (Kunz 1973) that could inflict physical harm and suffering produces a form of “mental separation” (Benezer and Zetter 2014: 306) from the place of origin. Many refugees experienced exile while remaining in their home towns due to their normal livelihood being contested. To construct an asylum-seeking journey, the refugees had to go through what I call a “stage of hesitancy”, which refers to the process in which refugees weigh the pros and cons of seeking asylum in a foreign place. They face the dilemma of personal safety by staying with their beloved ones in their home towns. More often than not, as this chapter will show, refugees hesitated when making the decision to flee. “Constructing journeys” also refers to the practices of the asylum-seeking processes, which take place from their homes to overseas. This chapter attempts to build a subtle, micro-level analysis of the process of escape by highlighting the desires and strategies fuelling the transnational individual journeys of refugees. Specifically, I am interested in exploring the zone of determinacy between refugee aspirations and their actualisation as an embodied experience of cross-border movements. Escaping from their respective home countries did not occur quickly, and the process often consisted of obstacles that made their asylum-seeking journeys more difficult. In the remainder of this chapter, I will demonstrate that refugees’ success was not simply related to their capacity to leave their home countries, but, more importantly, it was about the actions one was able to perform when encountering authorities at

48  Constructing journeys various border checkpoints. What struck me about the narratives I heard during my fieldwork were not just their complicated exile routes, but also their modes of escaping their homelands, which that involved an array of people, things, and embodied engagements that collectively created their transnational spatial stories of “becoming a refugee”.

Drivers of displacement—an overview People seeking refuge are fleeing danger. Generally, civilians may need to seek asylum overseas when their home society collapses into mass violence (see Betts and Collier 2017). Many of the refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok are fleeing mass violence in chronically fragile states in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Before unpacking individual asylum-seeking journeys, I first offer some context with respect to the countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia from which the refugees in this book originate, as well as the conditions that have propelled them to flee. In West African nations such as Guinea, Liberian, Sierra Leone, and Mali, conflicts have been a major driver of displacement. These conflicts are related to nation-state-building processes and struggles over the control of power and resources, which often revolve around language, ethnicity, and religion (Fresia 2014). Moreover, tensions between political parties have also arisen from the militarisation of the political sphere or the numerous post-election crises (Fresia 2014). In the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa, forced displacements have been inextricably linked with anti-colonial struggles for independence and the post-colonial process of nation-building. First, previous colonial and post-colonial political boundaries brought together different cultural groups, and the dearth of carefully crafted power-sharing arrangements engendered violent conflicts (Kibreab 2014). Second, colonial powers typically pursued a “divide and rule” policy that eroded the prospect of building united post-colonial states such as in Burundi and Rwanda (Kibreab 2014). Third, colonial powers did not affect the structural transformation of economies in the region, which created an urbanised population and working class that is separated from the means of production (Kibreab 2014). Collectively, these factors forced millions of people to flee their homelands. In the Middle East, the borders between countries have remained porous since the establishment of nation-states in the region, which has facilitated refugee movements. Although there has been a high degree of movement throughout the subregion, the official tolerance of these nation-states towards the “outsiders” is limited. Middle Eastern countries generally exclude marginalised populations from the right to have a right (Hanafi 2014). Moreover, these countries have developed policies that define who is inside or outside the nation, thereby producing a huge number of non-citizens and stateless groups (Hanafi 2014). Notably, recent uprisings across the Middle

Constructing journeys  49 East and North Africa have triggered mass displacement and mixed migration flows within and from Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria. The case of Syrian refugees is particularly crucial. Anti-government demonstrations began in March of 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. However, peaceful protests quickly escalated after the government’s violent crackdown, and armed opposition groups began fighting back. A countless number of people have been killed, cities have been destroyed, horrific human rights violations became widespread, and the economic livelihoods of civilians have been badly damaged. Millions of Syrian refugees fled to neighbouring countries and Europe, which triggered Europe’s “migration crisis” in 2015. In South Asia, conflict represents a major cause of displacement, which largely affects vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities, as well as oppressed castes and classes. When Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948, it immediately passed an act that denied citizenship to one of the two distinct groups of Tamils in the country: the Indian Tamils (Banerjee 2014). After the Sri Lankan Freedom Party came to power in 1956, new legislation was enacted that would make Sinhala the only official language, which enraged the Tamils, who subsequently prepared to combat this repression. As a result, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was created. This conflict between the government and LTTE displaced a massive number of Tamils. In Nepal, an internal armed conflict between the Communist Party of Nepal and the government of Nepal in 1996 had resulted in more than 10,000 Nepalese losing their lives. Despite an end to the conflict, many Nepalese were unable to return to their homes. Pakistan is another refugee-producing country in the region, with conflict between Muslims and Christians, as well between Sunni Muslims and Ahmadis being the major drivers of displacement. Pakistan is the only Islamic state to have officially declared that Ahmadis are non-Muslims. As a result, Ahmadis have been the target of many violent attacks in the country, which have forced Pakistani Ahmadis to flee the country. Pakistani Christians have also regularly been targeted with violence, and some of their homes were set on fire by outraged Muslims. Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws have often been manipulated to persecute minorities such as Christians. As a religious minority, a countless number of Pakistani Christians have been killed. This anti-Christian atmosphere in Pakistan has propelled many Christians to flee. In Southeast Asia, political conflict and repression represent the root causes of large refugee outflows from countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. Moreover, displacement has also been catalysed by ethnic conflict, religious persecution, and famine (Mcconnachie 2014).

The process of becoming a refugee We all live in a state of becoming. Becoming holds the notions of potential and growth, and of transformation and self-actualisation. For the refugees like Alex, this state of becoming—from being a citizen in his home country

50  Constructing journeys to becoming a refugee in a foreign place—is more specific and unique. In the context of displacement, refugees all live in an ongoing process of responsive actions within an unstable and changing social environment in which constraints and opportunities to flee might both unexpectedly emerge and rapidly disappear. This also adds to the notion of being—a sense of future that depends on social networks. Like many refugees, Alex believed that he would be physically safe if he could flee his home country. He had worked out solutions to his predicaments by actively searching for options with the assistance of social ties. With a focus on refugee practices related to a wider web of relations, this creates an insightful lens through which to understand asylum-seeking practices on the ground. The process of becoming a refugee is understood as a dynamic asylum-seeking experience that entangles the distant futures one aspires to with instant decision-making. As such, unpacking this process of becoming can help us to better understand the dynamics underpinning cross-border movements to Asia, allowing us to rethink why and how refugees move. Deciding to flee People migrate for complex reasons and often have mixed motivations for doing so (Castles and Miller 2003). In the context of forced migration, factors including conflict, oppression, and a lack of jobs induce people to migrate (Castles 2000). For the refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok, their principal migration drivers were closely linked to the prevalent political, ethnic, and religious conflicts within their respective countries that put their lives in danger. Political problems in the country of origin were critical factors in cases where refugees were directly engaged in political activities or had family members involved, thereby indirectly threatening the safety of these refugees. Norman is a Sri Lankan refugee, and was the president of the United National Party—a political party in Sri Lanka. He was mainly responsible for organising campaign work, and assisted a party member in running a parliamentary election campaign. One day, a group of people from the People’s Alliance, the Sri Lankan ruling party, came to Norman’s house. They hit Norman and his father and verbally threatened Norman, telling him to stop working for the party. The gang also damaged many items in Norman’s house. Although Norman reported the incident to the police, police officers assaulted him with a gun in the jail because he had attempted to file a claim against the dominant political party. Norman then sought legal assistance from a lawyer in Sri Lanka. Thereafter, an individual from the People’s Alliance verbally threatened Norma’s father at his house, stating that they would kill Norman if they learned that he was taking legal action against the party. Norman’s father did not take the threat seriously, as he thought that they would be safe with the case filed at the police station. However, people from the ruling party later surrounded Norman’s house. They dragged Norman’s father out and beat him. When Norman returned home, the gangs beat him

Constructing journeys  51 for 15–20 minutes with swords, knives, and iron bars. Norman and his father both collapsed. People from the ruling party assumed they were dead, so they fired their guns towards the sky and left the village. Later, Norman’s neighbours took Norman and his father to the hospital. The tension between dominant and minority ethnic groups in a country also serves as a motivation for people to flee. The discrimination and life-threatening incidents experienced due to being a member of a minority group, such as police oppression and violence, as well as fear stemming from their different ethnic backgrounds and views, were evident in many refugees’ reasons for leaving their countries of origin. Adam, a Somali, had been working as a salesperson in his country for ten years, since he was 12 years old. He met his wife through his job. However, both his and his wife’s parents opposed the marriage. Adam’s wife’s parents were particularly angry because Adam belonged to an ethnic minority, whereas Adam’s wife came from the ethnic majority. Adam and his wife experienced multiple life-threatening incidents due to their ethnic differences. Adam’s wife’s parents physically attacked Adam almost every day, particularly after they learned that their daughter was pregnant. The parents stated that they would kill Adam. Adam’s wife also faced similar life-threatening experiences from her own parents. Her parents hit her several times, even when she was pregnant. They so seriously injured her on one occasion that she was sent to the hospital for medication. Conflicts between Sunni Muslims and Ahmadis, as well as persecution between Muslims and Christians, are prominent in refugee-producing nations. Indeed, there are two ways in which a state can attempt to control religious activity and restrict religious freedom within its borders. First, a government can use the full force of the state by, for example, passing laws and arresting or harassing worshippers and religious leaders. Second, a government can encourage or allow social pressure to mount in an attempt to create difficulties for members of a religious minority community to practise their faith. Social and state pressures on religious freedom often work in tandem, mutually reinforcing one another. While many refugees were unlawfully detained or kidnapped, some stated that their families had been arrested or killed due to their religious practices. Furthermore, a number of women were sexually abused. Sandy is a married Egyptian refugee who was subjected to religious persecution in her home country. Sandy’s family is Christian, and a Muslim boy claimed that Sandy’s son hit him at school in 2009. The boy’s father was a police officer who subsequently arrested Sandy’s husband and took him to the police station. The police officer physically attacked Sandy’s husband with a leather belt. A scar was still visible on his right forearm. Sandy’s husband was detained in prison and was not released for several months. Sandy then sent her son to another school. However, this Muslim boy switched to the same school. One day, a group of Muslim men came to Sandy’s house, stating that they wanted to buy a plot of land that Sandy owned, but offered her much less than it

52  Constructing journeys was worth. Sandy refused because the Muslims said they wanted to build a mosque there. Later, when Sandy was on her way home after work, she saw a group of men working on her land with wood and machines. Sandy did not talk to them and instead reported the case to the police. However, the police officer did not pursue the case any further. Two days later, Sandy was on a minibus. The driver suddenly drove to a field in a suburban area, where he and another man dragged Sandy to a small hut and raped her. The men told Sandy that it is her punishment. Sandy recognised that these two men belonged to the Muslim group who had previously come to purchase her land. She was frightened after the incident, and went to the nearest hospital to seek medical assistance. However, Sandy did not tell the doctors in the public hospital what had occurred. A few days later, Sandy felt sick. She saw a doctor in a private clinic and told him about the rape incident. Sandy was worried that her daughter would also be raped by the Muslims if her family remained in the country. Thus, Sandy and her family fled Egypt. Refugees discussing their reasons to flee always pointed to their experiences of death, personal injury, disappearance, and various types of incapacity resulting from political, ethnic, and religious conflict that disrupted the human capabilities of refugees and their families via attacks on their psychological, economic, and physical well-being. Refugees felt fearful due to being terrorised and threatened with death before fleeing their homes. In general, these acts of violence included verbal assault, physical harm, kidnapping, arbitrary detention, illegal home searches, sexual abuse, and murder. Moreover, many of them personally witnessed their parents or siblings being shot in the streets by dominant political parties, ethnic groups, or religious communities in their home countries. Their immediate family members sustained physical injuries as a result of the conflict, including injuries stemming from beatings and being shot. Rape was another proximate cause that prompted refugees’ decisions to flee. For instance, what Sandy feared most was the vulnerability she would experience by remaining in her home country. Already subordinated in the realms of politics, religion, ethnicity, and gender, refugees were further marginalised in their local communities in the midst of conflict. Their human capabilities and assets shifted, coming under contestation in ways that caused them to construct the temporal dimension of their journey separately from the spatial dimension. In their cognitive sphere, refugees were “mentally displaced” from their homes, simply because they did not feel secure there. As I discovered, at this stage, the refugees began to produce a form of “imaginative” journey to their new place/country of destination. For instance, when government officials beat Alex with an iron bar, he felt that his life was over, and that he had to go to elsewhere for safety. “But I had no idea where to go to”, he described. Although Alex did not start moving at that point, his asylum-seeking journey actually commenced at the moment that the idea of escape came into his mind. He began to discuss the issues with his godfather, who subsequently offered him advice on how to solve problem.

Constructing journeys  53 The stage of hesitancy and internal displacement Following changes in their capabilities, physical and financial resources, as well as the failure of their respective governments’ protection, the refugees did not immediately escape from their home country. Rather, they first attempted to cope with the challenges. Coping strategies included borrowing money from family and friends, hiding, and avoiding walking in the streets and in areas where they would be spotted by the government and dominant ethnic and religious groups. Because the refugees deployed a sequence of coping strategies over time, their decision to flee was reached gradually. Indeed, local mobility was a common coping strategy prior to embarking on asylum-seeking journeys overseas. An overwhelming majority of the refugees were in hiding for periods of time ranging from several days to several months, either in different towns and cities in their home countries or in neighbouring countries. Wasa, a Pakistani refugee, aired his frustration when he explained his emotional conditions after moving from his village for two weeks. That time away from his wife and children was the most difficult time in his life, and he cried many times. He could not eat or sleep. He was up half of the night, tossing and turning. In one conversation, he explained, “One thing about being lonesome is that I think too much about my wife, children, and family, especially when there isn’t much else I can do.” During the internal relocation process, refugees such as Wasa had a strong desire to return to their home towns as soon as it was safe to do so. No doubt, relocating to various places in their home country stemmed from their desire to be close to their home town. Wasa’s story is a good example of this point, as he clearly demonstrated his strong sense of attachment to a locality (i.e. his wife, children, parents, relatives, and neighbourhood) being sufficient in preventing him from moving outside Pakistan. Instead, Wasa chose to relocate to cities that provided him with the time and space to temporarily escape from the conflict, as well as the opportunity to assess his personal circumstances and opportunities for a possible return. While in hiding, Wasa continued to discuss his situation with various people in an attempt to find a solution to his problem. These connections were made by countless phone calls and text messages. In fact, the reason for such temporary internal relocation and mobility was that the refugees were indecisive. A central dilemma was that they wanted to save their own lives, though their attachment to a certain locality was largely sufficient in preventing them from fleeing their homelands. Internal mobility seems to be a common mechanism that refugees used to balance these two factors: they could be temporarily safe from conflict while remaining in their homeland, so that they could “easily” return to their home villages within a short time span. From a practical perspective, the refugees did not have the time to take many personal belongings and sufficient money with them for long-distance travel. All they could do was run from town to town in order to save their lives. Buses and free passenger

54  Constructing journeys vehicles were the primary modes of transportation in these short-distance travels and relocations. Such internal migratory patterns recall the behavioural model of migration, which states that “the perceived attractiveness or perception of residential desirability of alternative locations is a critical element in the decision-making process of migration and a critical determinant of migration and its direction” (Ritchey 1976). At this stage, staying put was the refugees’ first preference. Keller (1975) and Hitchcox (1990) both argue that in forced migration, there is often “a process of hesitancy and indecisiveness as people reluctantly face the shattering realisation that they must leave their homeland, probably never to return even if they wish to do so” (Hitchcox 1990: 67). The stage of hesitancy among the refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok is exemplified by their internal mobility patterns. Deciding to cross the border After Norman and his father were discharged from the hospital, they secretly returned to their house. However, the threat of violence against Norman continued. Norman’s father asked him to move to other city for a while in the hope that he could eventually return back to his home town when it was safe. Unfortunately, widespread and intensifying human insecurity disrupted his livelihood, even though he had relocated to a city hundreds of kilometres away. Norman reiterated that moving from city to city had become riskier, and that the conflict had intensified from receiving verbal warnings and being subjected to illegal home searches to having his father’s grocery store destroyed, being physically attacked, and having a death warrant issued against him. Although Norman migrated from northern to central Sri Lanka, it seems that he could not escape the conflict, as the situation increasingly worsened. With financial and social resources—two intervening factors influencing migration decisions (Lee 1966; Clark 1989)—offered by his father, Norman was persuaded to flee Sri Lanka. Many researchers examined the effects of conflict on migration and have generally found a strong connection between the two (Lundquist and Douglas 2005; Engel and Ibanez 2007; Ibáñez and Velez 2008; Alvarado and Massey 2010). As argued by Richmond (1994), emigration is determined by a precipitating event that disrupts the normal functioning of the system and thus destroys the capacity of a population to survive under the prevailing conditions. The precipitating events in this study included outbreaks of conflict and the institution of ethnic or religious policies that destroyed informants’ houses or threatened their lives and livelihoods. Richmond (1994) assumes that people decide to leave their countries when they experience precipitating events. Thus, the existing literature limits our understanding of how conflict influences the likelihood of internal and international migration (Bohra-Mishra and Douglas 2011). In their research on how armed violence during a period of civil conflict in south-central Nepal influenced migration patterns, Bohra-Mishra and Douglas (2011) argued that violence and conflict affect migration differently

Constructing journeys  55 at different levels of intensity. The odds of emigration are lower in cases of low to moderate levels of violence, and only increase as violence increases. That is to say, unless violence reaches a certain level, people are more likely to remain in their home countries. Notably, findings stemming from the ­asylum-seeking experiences among refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok are similar to those of Bohra-Mishra and Douglas (2011). However, apart from conflict intensity, I argue that the extent of conflict represents another major factor. The refugees expressed that the precipitating event (conflict on the basis of political, ethnic, and religious divides) had intensified and spread from their home towns to various locations in the country, once again putting their lives in danger despite having relocated to other cities and towns in their home countries. Moreover, their desire to flee increased when their family members secured sufficient resources (money, information, and assistance) through their social networks and organisations, which ultimately resulted in families persuading the refugees to leave. In situations characterised by high levels of conflict, the refugees stated that they saw no option but to flee. Under conditions of extreme violence, threats to safety were perceived to exceed the risks of travel to a new and unfamiliar overseas destination. One cannot easily forget the important role of social networks in the ­journey-making process. The refugees sought advice from friends and others in their social networks on how to seek asylum overseas. Messages were sent back and forth through phone calls. Of all the parties involved (e.g. fathers, mothers, elder brothers, and sisters), senior household figures were often the most persuasive migration decision makers. By using their social networks, family members provided the refugees with information about destination countries and possible migratory routes and methods. While the refugees were in hiding, their family- and friendship-based social networks thus appeared to have been the most important and immediate sources of information and support. The typical variables used by refugees to select destination countries included: the ease of entry; cost of travel; whether the refugees, their family, and friends had their own family or friends who had already journeyed to these potential destinations; and concerns related to the human rights conditions and humanitarian assistance available in the host society. One principal reason why the refugees seemed likely to attach more weight to the information disseminated by family and friends is that these were trusted information sources. Their close bonds with family and friends made the refugees believe that they were more likely to identify the information that was of particular relevance to them than other sources. These initial bonds offered immense practical support to the refugees based on trust and obligations (Coleman 1988). Gathering exile funds Regarding the issue of mobilising financial resources, “the most important thing”, according to Roger, a Somali refugee, “was that you had to utilise

56  Constructing journeys your networks in your community and show that you were a reliable person.” Roger’s mother spent a total of US$4,000 to hire a smuggler who sent Roger outside Somalia. Roger’s mother sought financial assistance from her friends and relatives in various villages to amass the necessary funds to purchase the services of meditators. Roger’s mother borrowed US$3,000 from various family members and friends. When she exhausted her circle of relatives and friends, she expanded her network by borrowing from more distant and unknown money lenders through the personal ties of Roger’s uncle. One day, his uncle took Roger’s mother to a grocery store in a village where they met a money lender who owned the store. Roger said, “My mother told me that she felt threatened when she walked into the store because it was her first time borrowing money from money-lenders.” Roger’s uncle talked to the money lender, asking for US$1,000. The possibility of debt repayment was the main concern of the creditors. Since the money lender was a business partner of Roger’s uncle and because he knew that Roger’s mother would remain in Somalia, “he trusted that my mother would repay the debt”, Roger said. “Actually, I felt shameful because I could not do anything about this at that time.” After Roger left Somalia, his mother worked various jobs to repay the debt. Roger said that his mother spent approximately one week gathering US$4,000 from her relatives, friends, and the money lender. Most refugees were expected to spend large sums of money on their exile journeys. In this study, approximately one-third of the refugees were in charge of their mode of transportation. They consulted their family or friends, and knew where they wanted to travel to before they contacted travel agents to buy airline tickets. According to them, round-trip airfare from South Asia to Bangkok or Hong Kong costs between US$500 and US$600; from Africa to Bangkok or Hong Kong between US$1,000 and US$1,200; and from the Middle East to Bangkok or Hong Kong approximately US$800. The remaining refugees purchased the services of smugglers, who then arranged the trips. People heard about smuggling services by word of mouth in their neighbourhoods. The smuggling experiences of informants will be further discussed later in this thesis. Here, I am to highlight that, in addition to paying a smuggling fee (from US$ 2,000 to US$ 5,000 per person), the smugglers often asked for additional service charges, ranging from several hundred to US$1,000, once the informants arrived in Hong Kong and Thailand. Moreover, refugees usually had approximately US$100–US$400 cash in their pockets for living expenses after arriving in Hong Kong or Bangkok. Although the refugees were not economically worse off at home, they expressed that they needed to borrow money to finance their trips, particularly those who did not know anyone in Hong Kong or Bangkok who could sponsor them after arrival. For those who were in hiding prior to departure, family and friends became the main sponsors who arranged and paid for their trips. Exile funds comprised refugees’ own financial resources (e.g. savings and jewellery) and money from their family and friends (local and overseas).

Constructing journeys  57 Apart from local sponsorship, the refugees also contacted their friends and relatives in Western countries such as Europe and the USA for possible financial assistance to their journeys through international telephone calls. While residing in conflict zones, the telephone represented a device used by the refugees not only to establish transnational social bonds with family and friends, but also to secure exile funds from their overseas contacts. Foreign loans usually ranged from one to several thousand US dollars. Their overseas friends and family transferred money to the refugees either through major banking companies or through other financial institutions such as Western Union, which offers person-to-person money transfer. The advantage of using person-to-person money transfers, according to Norman, was that it avoided bank account surveillance by local governments and/or dominant ethnic or religious groups. To collect remitted money, refugees went to the office in the designated payment location and presented the transaction security code and a photo identification document. Obtaining travel documents and permits People who are smuggled into countries by land and river routes attempt to find shortcuts in the formal bureaucratic departure process by bribing state agents to approve exits from and entrances into the country. However, travellers who attempt to become “lawful” are required to pass through a rite of passage in which they must interact with state authorities at immigration offices, foreign consulates, and immigration checkpoints. This involves a process of formalities, such as filing an application for passports and visas and attending in-person interviews. Foreign consulates have different formalities and document requirements for travel document applications. For instance, Kitty, a Rwandan refugee, said that the US consulate in Rwanda required people to provide proof of no criminal record for tourist visa applications, whereas the Chinese consulate had no such requirement. As people subject to arrest or persecution in their home countries, it is nearly impossible for asylum seekers to obtain such documentation from their home governments. Since the primary aim of informants was to escape from their homelands, their general tendency was to tactfully approach those foreign consulates with fewer documentary application requirements. Nevertheless, these formalities meant that the informants had to abide by certain disciplinary standards (filing forms, attending interviews, and paying passport and/or visa fees) to make themselves eligible for travel across state borders. Travelling abroad, particularly for those seeking asylum overseas, was not merely a matter of “crossing the border” at an immigration checkpoint. Rather, the informants had to “fashion” themselves as legitimate tourists by obtaining the relevant travel documents (passports and visas) from various state authorities. This process recalls the idea of “an extended zone of crossing”, advanced by Chu (2010), which involves “a procedural trajectory of hurdles through which one could gain passage and, in turn, achieve legality

58  Constructing journeys only by engaging in a series of ritualised exchanges of paperwork and narratives with various state bureaucrats and inspectors”. Chu described the techniques of coordination and arrangement that create the appearance of an ontological divide between the outside and an inside, between material form and meaning, and between physical reality and representations as “enframing practices” (Chu 2010: 118) in immigration and travel procedures. These practices can be observed “through the staging of inside and outside, inspector and inspected, and through the various bureaucratic hoops and checkpoints set up for those seeking legal passage” (Chu 2010: 118). While some of the refugees in this study had passports before they decided to flee, the majority passed through an “extended zone of crossing” after experiencing conflict, in which they presented themselves as legitimate tourists to immigration departments and foreign consulates. It was not just the informant, but also various state agents, such as immigration officers, foreign consulates, and airport security inspectors, who “were enlisted through the immigration process to routinely enact the ‘reality effect’ of lawfulness in travel” (Chu 2010: 118). States imposed various documentary and procedural requirements on immigration and travel document applications. In their quest for legitimate travel, the refugees had to obtain and complete paperwork with various state agencies. I discovered that the usual procedure for obtaining travel documents was as follows. The refugees usually asked their families or friends to collect and submit passport application forms. Once they obtained their passports, the refugees applied for tourist visas from foreign consulates with low documentary requirements. In-person interviews were not required for most of the applicants, although a number of them required to attend visa interviews at foreign consulates. The interview questions for tourist visas varied, though consulate officers typically asked them the following questions: what is your purpose for travel? How long will you stay? Where will you stay? Do you have any family or close friends who live there? How much do you expect this trip to cost? The informants who bought smuggling services could bypass this “extended zone of crossing” because the smugglers completed all of the paperwork and obtained the travel documents for them. Kitty explained her experience in handling this “procedural trajectory of hurdles” in filing passport and visa applications, fashioning herself as a legitimate tourist. To travel overseas, Kitty had to apply for passports and travel permits from the Department of Immigration and the Consulate of People’s Republic of China in Rwanda. She first filled out passport applications, which her friends took to the passport office while Kitty was in hiding. Her friend was a travel agent in Rwanda and knew someone who worked at the Immigration Department in Kigali, the capital city. This social connection with a state officer allowed Kitty’s applications to be processed without much investigation. Two weeks later, Kitty collected the passport from her friend. Kitty then applied for a tourist visa to China. According to Kitty, her elder brother’s failed attempt to

Constructing journeys  59 obtain a tourist visa from the German embassy prompted her to apply for a visa from a country that does not recognise human rights. China was her first choice after reading about human rights issues there. Kitty’s travel agent friend also agreed that Kitty should apply for a tourist visa to China due to its lax visa application requirements. Before visa applicants are legitimately allowed to visit foreign countries as tourists, standardised paperwork demands including application forms, photographs, and bank statements, among others, must be met, thereby requiring applicants to affirm their place within what Anderson (1991) coined the “classificatory grid” of ­nation-states, which proves that they “belonged here, not there”. This “state project of legibility” (Scott 1998) demanded that the informants demonstrate to state agents that they were eligible for tourist visas by submitting paperwork. Therefore, Kitty read the visa application form carefully, making sure to provide accurate information. When answering the question, “Major purpose of your visit”, Kitty checked the box “Tourism”. The Chinese consulate demands that all visa applicants provide itineraries for their stays in China on the application form. With the travel book provided by her travel agent friend, Kitty supplied the names of major tourist sites that she learned about from a book, imagining that she would actually be travelling there for sightseeing on her five-day trip. Kitty signed the form under the declaration section, agreeing to bear all of the legal consequences for the authenticity of the information and materials she had provided. With over three years of experience in handling visa applications, Kitty’s travel agent friend practised some typical questions the embassy staff would likely ask in the interview with her, such as: what is your purpose of visit? How long will you stay in China? Where will you stay in China? Kitty memorised all of her answers. A few days later, she went to the Chinese consulate for visa applications. She dressed nicely and took her travel book with her. Although Kitty looked calm, she felt scared. “I was afraid the officer knew I wanted to seek protection there rather than going there as a real tourist!” she said. While waiting in the office, the image of her brother, who had been arrested in the consulate, appeared in her mind. Nevertheless, Kitty believed that her high level of preparedness regarding her paperwork and interview would produce success. Kitty gave her application to the counter officer, who immediately asked her the purpose of her visit to China. Kitty was well prepared for this question. She confidently said, “Sightseeing in Guangzhou”. Kitty then opened her travel book, pointing to different tourist sites that she told the officer she wanted to visit. The officer looked at her while Kitty was still happily describing her trip. Kitty added, “I read the news about Guangzhou’s Asian Games on the internet before. The place is so nice and the country is nice too!” The officer then checked her air tickets to Guangzhou and flipped through the passports. The officer asked, “Where will you stay in Guangzhou?” Kitty showed him a fake hotel confirmation letter issued by her travel agent friend. Within one minute, the

60  Constructing journeys officer stamped Kitty’s forms. With a smile, he told Kitty to “Come and get the visa in two days”. Upon obtaining the necessary travel documents and permits, most of the refugees attempted to go through the regular channels, from filing applications to attending interviews with state authorities. However, the informants risked attracting the attention of the authorities through this process. Such was the case for Kitty’s brother, who was caught by the German consulate. Therefore, an overwhelming majority of refugees chose to travel to countries with lax visa requirements. Indeed, many of them travelled to Hong Kong and Bangkok by obtaining tourist visas on arrival. However, before passing through immigration checkpoints in destination countries, refugees such as Kitty had to fill out landing/immigration cards. For the question “the purpose of visit”, they checked off the box “sightseeing” in order to present themselves as ordinary tourists when officers at the immigration checkpoints asked why they were visiting. The above cases illustrate that providing personal information and signatures, checking boxes on forms, and answering questions at foreign consulates or immigration checkpoints were disciplinary practices requiring acute awareness on the part of the informants. The officials demanding an accurate application or immigration card information captured the performative aspect of inscription in the production and exchange of travel documents and permits. Although some informants relied on smugglers to take care of the paperwork and obtain travel documents, they still had to fill out and sign the arrival card during immigration checks in Hong Kong and Bangkok. As such, the act of filling out bureaucratic forms required the refugees to provide coherent and convincing narratives not only to obtain travel documents, but also to convince immigration authorities during in-person encounters. Having mobilised the necessary exile funds and personal networks to reach the immigration checkpoints, the refugees’ tasks were then to translate their socio-economic resources into what Chu (2010: 131) called “legal creditability”, which is a “standard based on performance ideals such as narrative rationality; the external consistency of personal story, paperwork, and ‘known’ facts; and the appropriate display of embodied affect”. When standing in front of an immigration officer at checkpoints, the refugees displayed confidence and ease as legal travellers. However, they were uneasy about the personal information they had provided on their arrival cards and during their in-person performances. Kitty repeated the Chinese travel itinerary she had provided on her visa application to present a coherent and convincing narrative of herself to the immigration officer at Guangzhou airport. She identified herself as an ordinary tourist, even though her real intention was to seek asylum in Hong Kong. This can be considered as an act of self-imposing identification, which demonstrates a clear example of the close link between inscription and performance in immigration procedures for one’s legitimate claim to exist and cross borders.

Constructing journeys  61 Learning travel skills For most refugees, English is not their mother tongue, and many of them lacked a solid grasp of this language. However, decent command of a few English sentences helped some of them pass as legitimate tourists at the port of entry in Hong Kong or Bangkok. Roger, a Somali refugee, attended a travel skills training session in a Somali house provided by the middleman of his smuggling service (trainer) prior to departure. The trainer told Roger that they would travel to an English-speaking country, and that the immigration officer in the airport would ask him questions about his travel. To a group of four travellers, the trainer briefly described the trip and immigration procedure (each of them would travel with a smuggler who would help them pass through immigration counters before entering the luggage claim areas). In this training, Roger and his “classmates” were taught simple dialogues for travel, such as “where is the toilet?” and “where is luggage claim?” When the immigration officer asked the purpose of the visit, the trainer asked Roger and his “classmates” to stay calm and confident by replying, “I’m visiting my uncle for a holiday. I will stay with him for five days and we will stay in ‘this’ [use your finger to point the hotel’s name on the landing card] hotel.” Because the middleman and the actual smugglers had to ensure that the smuggling process would be carried out smoothly, Roger and his “classmates” were asked to practise the travel skills until they gained some level of confidence in facing airport immigration inspectors. In addition to mastering one’s travel documents, learning basic travel language was another way of displaying a strong commitment to emigrating. The refugees’ self-consciousness regarding the impression they made upon arrival at the destination airport concerned not only their travel itineraries and question-answering skills, but also their dress. “Dressing well is a form of manner, especially because we travel by plane”, said Mat, a Pakistani refugee. Mat and his wife bought some new clothes in Pakistan a few days before departure. No tourists, he reasoned, would travel by plane wearing old, torn, and dirty clothing. “Dressing bad will attract suspicion among airport gatekeepers”, Mat added. Mat learned this from his neighbour’s first failed attempt to travel to Malaysia to seek refuge. His neighbour had no previous knowledge of the “dress code” of legitimate air travellers. On his day of departure, he dressed untidily with a pair of torn shoes. In addition to his suitcase, he carried a large nylon bag that contained many of his personal belongings, including photos of his family. His appearance attracted the attention of a Pakistani immigration officer, who interrogated him about the purpose of his travel. He was detained for several hours and missed his flight. In fact, many informants expressed to me that they attempted to act and dress like tourists when leaving their homelands. The reason was simple. They wanted to avoid interrogation by immigration officers. On the day of departure, Mat and his wife dressed in new casual clothes (T-shirts, jackets, and jeans) and brought with them two simple

62  Constructing journeys suitcases with some clothes and basic personal hygiene items to look like ordinary tourists. Roger’s trainer also provided him and his “classmates” with new clothes (jeans and a jacket) to make them look like air travellers. For the refugees smuggled via land and river routes, they were also taught travel skills by the smugglers, such as hiding in bushes and cargo, wearing dark-coloured clothing, and travelling with backpacks. The combined physical and performative aspects of presenting as ordinary tourists or smuggled people helped the refugees minimise or even prevent encounters at immigration checkpoints. This relates to the material culture of travel, from travel documents, and permits to travel language, style of dress, and luggage, which, when combined, supported their performance in travelling abroad. Emotional departure Even if the refugees had obtained all of the necessary travel documents from relevant authorities in their home country, they had to manage their actions and emotions appropriately in order to achieve successful exits and entrances. When asked about their journey to Hong Kong and Bangkok, the refugees all expressed that it was very difficult. Nevertheless, they had managed to handle their emotions and learn tactics in order to survive their journey. Shirley, from the Philippines, noted the following: So the last day, my son and I went away from home secretly at midnight. I was scared, but I needed to stay clam because I was with my son. I could not make any mistakes at any step. I didn’t tell my parents we were leaving. I just contacted my friend in Manila. We took a bus to Manila where I met my friend. She then put us up at her home for a day. She then showed me the way to the airport. I brought my son to the airport on the following day. Airports are capsules of emotion. From joyful reunions to heart-breaking separations, airports see it all. For refugees such as Shirley, the airport was definitely a place where they felt sadness and fear. When passing through the departures gate, they knew that they would be separated from their family, friends, and neighbourhoods for an unavoidably long period of time. In the case of Zic from Chad, however, this separation was permanent. Zic told me that he received a phone call from his close friend when he was in the departure hall waiting for his flight to Hong Kong via Addis Ababa. In a second, Zic’s face stiffened with dismay. I asked him what his friend said. He told me that his family members were killed a few days after he left his home town. When the words “family members” came out of his mouth, I could see his eyes suddenly looked red. He could no longer hold the heartbreak. I could see the tears welling up in his eyes, and as they began to roll down his cheeks, he explained how guilty he felt in a shaking voice,

Constructing journeys  63 I was in the restricted area. I couldn’t do anything. I miss my family, my son, my brother. I lost all of them. All of the things. As a man, I could not protect my family. I lost everything in my life. Travelling under such conditions made one “feel totally uncomfortable”, Zic noted. When he interacted with the immigration officers at Chad airport, Zic had mixed feelings. On the one hand, he felt relaxed because he could be safe after leaving Chad. On the other hand, he felt nervous and sad because he lost his family, and he would soon have to let go of the place where he grew up. Nevertheless, he prayed to God when standing in front of the immigration officer, and felt relief after passing the security check. Over his 17-hour air journey to Hong Kong, Zic could not eat or sleep at all. He was too worried about what would happen to him after landing. Apart from feeling worried, many refugees confessed that they were lost and confused when they talked to the immigration officers in Hong Kong or Bangkok due to language differences. Bruce is a good example of this scenario. He comes from Central African Republic—a French-speaking country. Bruce told me that the immigration officer in the airport asked him many questions in English. However, he admitted that his English language proficiency was low at that time, so he did not fully understand what they asked. This feeling of uneasiness during cross-border movements has also been experienced by the refugees who fled with their smugglers. Whether they were travelling by land or plane, the smuggled refugees had no control over their journeys with regard to the time frame for departure and mode of travel. They were always obedient to the smugglers, who instructed them on what to do and how to do everything throughout their whole journey. This made the experience of going abroad seem even more chaotic, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. When sharing his journey experiences, Robert—a Pakistani refugee—described how bad his feeling was in transit. He fled with a group of Pakistanis to Hong Kong via China. Before reaching the land border between Pakistan and China, the smuggler instructed them to keep quiet and to avoid impatiently crowding and jostling while waiting for their turn with immigration officers. Robert had many overseas travel experiences before. But this was his first time walking across a land border with a group of smuggled people. He was particularly nervous about this kind of scrutiny. In order to ensure that he would not arouse suspicion among officers through his bodily conduct, he stood at the back in the group and observed how the others behaved while waiting his turn. What he feared most was that some improper behaviour could derail his chance for a successful exit and entry. “The other people always said yes to the questions posed by the officer”, Robert explained. When the immigration officer checked his passport, Robert was scared and his legs were numb. But he knew he needed to control his fearful facial expression. “He checked my visa form and asked

64  Constructing journeys whether it was my name. I answered ‘yes’. He scanned my face against my documents. I kept smiling and the officer, then finally stamped my passport”, Robert described. Arriving in Hong Kong or Bangkok Perhaps one of the most revealing stories of successful entrance was told by Ben, a Somali refugee, who was smuggled to Hong Kong. Not long after I began my fieldwork, I had a home dinner gathering with a group of Somali refugees. That night, the English television channel showed the movie The Terminal—an American movie about an Eastern European man who becomes stuck in New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport terminal when he is denied entry into the USA. When I was watching the movie with a Somali man and his wife, Ben suddenly joined us and took the empty seat next to me. He talked to me in a low voice, “Teacher, this is not just a movie. This is a real story.” Later, Ben told me that he had a similar experience in the Hong Kong airport. Ben travelled to Hong Kong with his smuggler. They arrived in Hong Kong at midnight. At the arrival hall, the smuggler excused himself, claiming that he needed to go to the washroom. The smuggler gave Ben his passport and asked Ben to wait for him. “This was my first time traveling overseas. I trusted him. I waited for him for an hour. But, of course, he didn’t show up.” Ben described his experience to me in an angry tone. He attempted to pass through the immigration checkpoint with his passport. However, he was denied entry because the officer suspected that he was using a fake passport. He was locked in an interrogation room for an entire night. While he was being temporarily detained, officers asked the purpose of his visit. Ben told them he was afraid to go back home and needed protection. The refugees arrived in Hong Kong or Bangkok through various entry points. Their first experiences when encountering the host society varied, and were largely dependent on whether they had local contacts or possessed prior knowledge what they should do next upon arrival. In general, most of them did not understand what refugee status was, or how and where to file their refugee claims. They knew about the process for claiming asylum from different parties. Those who had no local contacts, like Ben, were advised by immigration officers on how to file their protection claims. This group of refugees in Hong Kong were first transferred to the detention centre, where the officers advised them to approach certain NGOs for legal advice and humanitarian assistance. Another group of refugees who had friends and relatives in Hong Kong or Bangkok were first welcomed by their local contacts at the airport. Then, they brought the refugees to prearranged accommodation and subsequently provided information on how to claim protection. One group of refugees who had no local contacts but had conducted some research regarding the process of claiming asylum prior to departure was self-reliant upon arrival. At the airport, they asked taxi drivers to bring

Constructing journeys  65 them to the neighbourhoods predominantly made up of their own racial group. For example, the taxi drivers in Hong Kong would bring African and South Asian refugees to Chungking Mansions. In Bangkok, the taxi drivers brought African refugees to Phra Ram 9 or Pratunam, South Asians to Silom, and Middle Eastern refugees to Nana. The group of refugees who entered Hong Kong or Bangkok illegally from neighbouring countries were informed of their options by other refugees or social workers while wandering the streets, markets, or parks during their first few days or weeks in Hong Kong or Bangkok.

Mapping the exile routes to Hong Kong and Bangkok Many, if not most, ethnographies incorporate maps of description. Ethnographers always pay close attention to the ways their informants move through space (Murchison 2010: 131). This may involve examining daily movements between neighbourhoods or larger-scale experiences associated with moving across countries. In forced migration, one might argue that the cultural process of becoming a refugee is made possible only by the unique spatial characteristics of the asylum-seeking journeys, such as the specific modes of transportation and unique routes and networks. I believe that maps can be powerful visual representations of the ethnographic records of transnational journeys. Here, I also use maps to capture the importance of space and movement in the context of asylum-seeking journeys by mapping different routes and modes of exile from homelands to Hong Kong and Bangkok. Throughout my fieldwork, I realised that world map has been used broadly among refugee communities to explain to different people the geographical location of their home country and how far it was away from the city in which they were trapped. Even in the screening interviews, officers often drew sketch maps on papers in order to systematically identify the sequence of events in each asylum-seeking story they heard. In fact, there is no typical trajectory that refugees used to move between locations, since the routes were determined by many factors such as time, resources, and networks. An analysis of the asylum-seeking stories included in this study illustrates that—as shown in Maps 3.1 and 3.2—it is possible to draw a typology of the main trajectories. Direct air routes Many African and South Asian refugees entered Hong Kong and Bangkok by air. Travelling to Hong Kong and Bangkok via direct air routes requires substantial financial and social resources. They possessed passports and visas upon arrival, and some even purchased the services of travel agents and smugglers through their own networks. The travel agents and smugglers offered a range of services, from document preparation to the complete organisation of the journey. In the latter case, smugglers accompanied refugees

Map 3.1  Exile routes to Hong Kong.

Map 3.2  Exile routes to Bangkok.

Constructing journeys  67 on their trips to Hong Kong and Bangkok. For refugees coming from West and Central Africa, they stopped over at countries in East Africa such as Ethiopia and Kenya for a transit flight before flying to Hong Kong. Currently, there is a group of Indonesian and Filipino refugees in Hong Kong who initially travelled there by air to work as domestic helpers. While staying in Hong Kong, some of them had love affairs, mostly with African or Pakistani men, and became pregnant. These women were afraid to return to their home country since pregnancy outside of marriage is religiously unacceptable. As a result, they sought protection by filing protection claims with the Hong Kong Immigration Department, which then switched their statuses from domestic helpers to refugees. The Middle East routes Middle East routes are used by Africans to move to eastern locations, such as Hong Kong and Bangkok, and these routes are either used for short term or as a transit point. The United Arab Emirates often served as a transit point for the African refuges. This group travelled either alone by air or with their smugglers to Hong Kong or Bangkok via Dubai. For instance, Jip, a Somali refugee, hired a smuggler for US$3,100 to assist her in leaving the country. The smuggler promised to take her to Europe. Jip flew with the smuggler to Bangkok via Dubai. When they arrived in Bangkok, the smuggler took her to a hotel near the airport. On the following day, the smuggler brought Jip to Pratunam, a clothing market in central Bangkok where African businesspeople converge. The smuggler then asked Jip to stay there alone, saying that he needed to go to the mosque to pray. However, the smuggler never returned, and Jip was left on her own. Furthermore, the refugees from Iran, Iraq, and Egypt also used Middle Eastern routes to reach Hong Kong and Bangkok. James left Iran in 2006. He travelled to Syria and remained there for three years before fleeing to Thailand in 2009. His brother-in-law arranged travel documents for him because his brother-in-law had previously travelled to Thailand for business. He then informed James that he should go to an Arabic area in Nana, Bangkok, where James could seek assistance from Middle Eastern businessmen. Illegal land and river routes Refugees from China, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia entered Thailand illegally via land routes. This group of people usually spent several days travelling. Because Laos and Cambodia border with Thailand, the refugees from these two countries either snuck over at night or walked across the borders by bribing immigration officers. The Vietnamese refugees usually travelled with smugglers to Bangkok via Cambodia. Many of them bribed officers at the border to pass through immigration checkpoints. On the Thai side, the Vietnamese refugees waited behind a local market before being squeezed

68  Constructing journeys tightly against one another or hidden under cargo in vans, trucks, or cars destined for Bangkok. Moreover, the Chinese refugees walked across the Chinese-Burmese border with a smuggler, who then arranged a boat trip on the Mekong River to transport them to the Golden Triangle before being put in a van or on a motorbike to Bangkok. The Vietnamese were smuggled to Hong Kong through China. They first entered Guangxi province in China via land routes with tourist visas. Once they arrived in China, they were transferred to Shenzhen or Shanwei by bus, where the refugees were asked to hide for a short period of time before being put on a small boat to illegally enter Hong Kong. The smugglers charged each person HK$8,000–HK$10,000 for the smuggling service. Routes via neighbouring countries of first asylum ports Prior to arriving in Hong Kong, many African refugees first entered Guangzhou—­the capital of China’s Guangdong Province—via air travel. There is a glut of West African traders in Guangzhou. Many African informants explored contacts within the African community at the Tianxiu building and surrounding area for social and financial purposes. Recent research has found that the majority of community members in the area are from West African countries, such as Nigeria and Ghana (Bodomo 2010). The presence of this group of businessmen, coupled with easy-to-meet visa requirements, has attracted many asylum seekers from Africa (particularly West Africa) for various purposes. During their stays in the community, some informants worked for the African businessmen for money, while others, with information provided by the Africans in Guangzhou, explored ways to travel to Hong Kong. In fact, many South Asian refugees (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, and Sri Lankan) also travelled to Hong Kong via China due to the relative ease of entering the country. This group of African and South Asian refugees spent from several days to several months in Guangzhou before continuing on towards Hong Kong through either legal or illegal channels. With tourist visas that permitted them to stay in Hong Kong from 14 days to 3 months, some informants travelled to Hong Kong by taking the Guangzhou-­Kowloon through train, while some refugees took a bus from Guangzhou to Shenzhen—a city in southern Guangdong Province that borders Hong Kong. Thereafter, they were led at night by mainland Chinese smugglers to remote places along the coast and crossed to Hong Kong illegally, usually on small boats. The African refugees in Bangkok had personal ties with Somali university students living in Malaysia, primarily in Kuala Lumpur. Because they are Muslim, many of the African refugees were granted visa-free travel to Malaysia for 30 days. They took direct flights from Africa to Kuala Lumpur, where they stayed with their Somali friends for a short time, usually one or two weeks. They subsequently travelled to Bangkok illegally by bus.

Constructing journeys  69

Smuggling and “legitimate” air travel: the different embodied experiences of asylum-seeking journeys Smuggling and “legitimate” air travel represented the two main modes of transport that the refugees in this book used to travel to Hong Kong and Bangkok. Smuggling involved the methods of air and land/river transportation. The Somali refugees commonly used air smuggling to travel to Hong Kong and Bangkok, whereas Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees largely used land and river smuggling methods to escape to Bangkok. Meanwhile, the refugees from South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa fled to Hong Kong and Bangkok by way of “legitimate” air travel. In various social gatherings during the course of my fieldwork, the refugees described their embodied differences in smuggling and “legitimate” air travels. Indeed, their descriptions were less about the issue of legality or financial cost than about their sense of control over their experience of mobility. Massey’s (1993) term “differentiated mobility” illustrates the concerns of refugees that mobility is about the uneven and unequal positioning of different groups and persons in relation to various flows and movements. “Legitimate” air travellers, such as Kitty and Mat, had full control over their travels. On the contrary, the smuggled refugees had little or no control over their embodied mobility, including the time frame for departure from their home countries and their arrival abroad. In fact, the refugees who relied on air smugglers to arrange their asylum-seeking journeys typically had just as little control over their itineraries as those who were smuggled via land and river routes. For instance, the Somali refugees all claimed that there was no control over the duration, route, or destination of their air travels. Prior to departure, the smugglers promised to bring them to Europe or Australia, where settlement was possible. However, upon arrival in Hong Kong or Bangkok, the refugees realised that their smugglers had cheated them. Consider the experience of Roger. His mother purchased the services of a smuggler at US$4,000. However, Roger did not know exactly how his trip would turn out, including which route he would take, how long he would be in transit, or his final destination. Only one thing was certain: “My smuggler promised to bring me to Europe”, Roger said. After Roger learned that his smuggler was a former refugee who had obtained legal status in the UK and had been operating a smuggling business in Kenya—transferring Somali clients to Turkey, Greece, and other European countries via Sierra Leone and Dubai—for three years, Roger confided, “let me tell you brother, I had a clear vision at that moment that I would successfully arrive in Europe just like my smuggler who landed there five years ago.” On the day of his departure from Somalia, Roger felt nervous because it was his first time travelling overseas, and it was not for pleasure but to seek refuge in a foreign country. By dressing and acting like ordinary tourists, Roger and his smuggler successfully passed through airport immigration control with counterfeit passports and bribes. They left Somalia for

70  Constructing journeys Hong Kong via Dubai. On the plane, although Roger could breathe a sigh of relief, he was worried about what would happen to him after landing. He could not sleep at all on the flight. In fact, his imaginary trajectory had led him to Europe. Roger strongly believed that the aircraft would bring him there safe and sound. Upon arrival, the smuggler excused himself, claiming that he needed to buy a phone card. He asked Roger to wait for him in the restricted area of the arrival hall after taking away his passport. Roger stayed there for a half hour, but the smuggler never returned. Roger was terrified and nearly cried. An immigration officer approached him, asking for his identity documents. Without any documents to prove his identity, Roger was brought to an office room in the airport where he was interviewed by nearly ten people. It was through being asked by the officers all day about his reason for visiting Hong Kong that Roger learned that he was in Hong Kong. His dream of Europe was gone. The feeling of disorientation over their embodied mobility was a common complaint among the smuggled refugees. Those who were smuggled via land and river routes had an additional complaint about their travelling conditions. For example, the Chinese refugees travelled to Bangkok via land and river smuggling routes. For them, Bangkok seemed easier to enter and to obtain asylum in since their smuggler had assisted many Chinese Falun Gong members to flee to Bangkok over the previous three years. Most of them were granted refugee status and had been resettled in third countries. The smuggler, according to one refugee, was a former refugee who lived in Burma with his Burmese wife. To travel to Bangkok, Uncle Hwa and his family (his wife, daughter, and son) met the smuggler in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southwest China, where they were placed in a small van and driven to the Chinese border. Uncle Hwa recounted his sense of uncertainty about the long road trip. The whole family was packed into a small van without air conditioning. They felt the dank heat inside. Uncle Hwa said he felt tired and uncomfortable during the nearly ten-hour road trip, particularly because of the bumpy road surface that prevented him from sleeping properly. When they arrived in the suburb, the smuggler led them through a forested area that night, near the Chinese official checkpoint. All of them had lit torches in their hands, carefully checking every step they took to ensure that they did not fall off of a cliff. The smuggler then illegally snuck them across the Chinese-Burmese border by foot through a path where there was no border control. On the Burmese side, Uncle Hwa and his family waited behind a local market before being squeezed tightly against each other and hidden under cargo on a cargo ship travelling on the Mekong River to the Golden Triangle. Uncle Hwa said that he and his family could not easily forget the darkness and the feeling of disorientation from being trapped inside the cargo ship for nearly five hours. Inside the ship, Uncle Hwa and his family could not see one another clearly. They could only sense the physical presence of the others in the darkness by constantly rubbing one another’s

Constructing journeys  71 shoulders during the bumpy journey down the Mekong River. When they arrived in the Golden Triangle, the smuggler put Uncle Hwa and his family in touch with two Thai people who facilitated their land travel the following day. The entire family slept in a small hut in a village for one night. “It was a very terrifying experience because we didn’t know what these Thai people would do to us at night time if we were all asleep. So we did not sleep, and we waited for the morning to come”, Uncle Hwa said. In the early morning, Uncle Hwa and his family were put on two separate motorbikes and driven to a small town in northern Thailand. The family was subsequently put into a truck and driven to Thonburi, Bangkok, where many Chinese people live. This was also the place where the smuggling service ended. After evaluating the physical and mental hardship associated with their mode of travel, the smuggled refugees felt that their embodied travel experiences were qualitatively different from those using “legitimate” air travels, such as Kitty and Mat. From preparing travel documents, to planning travel routes and transit times, to choosing airline companies and destination countries, they all had a certain amount of control over their experience of mobility. Furthermore, the narratives of their escape and border crossings illustrate different embodied experiences of mobility. The mode of transportation was more than a simple device used by the travellers. Rather, something like an aircraft, a truck, or a ship actively shaped the refugees’ sensorially and symbolically in their asylum-seeking journeys. When the material properties of travel cultures and travelling bodies collide, its various properties are exchanged and transformed with new meanings through what Chu (2010) describes as the “chain of mediation”. Air travel—with its own chain of mediators, from airport and in-flight services to air tickets, passports, and visas—endowed travellers with confidence, superiority, determination, and comfort. In contrast, land and river smuggling—with its own chain of mediators, from dank heat and darkness to bribes and being left paperless—produced feelings of inferiority, disorientation, anxiety, discomfort, and helplessness in refugees. In this book, qualitative difference in the embodied experiences of mobility somehow shaped the beliefs of the refugees regarding how it feels to be a refugee. Reflecting on their physical and emotional experiences, the refugees smuggled over land and river routes tended to describe themselves as “real refugees”. They believed that being a “real refugee” embodied feelings of discomfort, disorientation, and helplessness during their physical movements across international borders. Those refugees who travelled by air should not be perceived as “refugees”, Uncle Hwa said. “The people on a plane feel comfort. We are ‘real refugees’ because we physically sensed the pain and discomfort from the road, truck, forest, cargo ship, and motorbike when we moved from home to here.” Mobility is not only differentiated by a sense of physical movement of who can and cannot move (Massey 1993), but is rather an embodied experience determined by the mode of transport and the types of things that mobile subjects do when they move. Different asylum-seeking routes and methods

72  Constructing journeys have generated different embodied experiences of cross-border movements among the research participants, which produced a range of perceptions on what it feels like to be a refugee.

Negotiating borders and insecurity on the journeys This chapter has attempted to sketch a more on-the-ground account of how asylum-seeking journeys began by highlighting the physical and emotional aspects of transnational movements from homeland to Hong Kong or Bangkok. As I discovered, achieving the goal of “becoming a refugee” abroad was not only about meeting bureaucratic requirements such as possessing valid travel documents, though such forces certainly shaped peoples’ migratory routes and experiences. Notably, many “illegal” efforts and alliances were activated in the process—some bribed immigration officers in the sending countries, while others bypassed immigration checkpoints and entered the host society through illegal means. No matter what mode of transport the refugees took, they were all well aware of the techniques and embodied signs that could help them to successfully enter a host country. Moreover, they had to “fashion” themselves as either legitimate travellers or smuggled individuals throughout the entire escape processes. More importantly, they had learned that every step towards the goal of seeking protection overseas required struggle, resilience, and persistence. This strong awareness was one example of their incredible commitment to the goal of seeking asylum abroad. I argue that this highlighted awareness towards the goal of seeking asylum overseas lies at the root of performative refugeeness. Actively seeking refuge involves the subjective negotiation of experienced and performed identity, which Malkki (1992) refers to as “refugeeness”. She argued that being a refugee and the experiences of seeking asylum did not necessarily denote a negative identity, but could rather come to stand for “a sign of the ultimate temporariness of exile and of the refusal to become naturalised” (Malkki cited in Häkli et al. 2017). The intention is to foreground the practices through which refugees can mobile agentic capacities and portray political activities (Häkli et al. 2017). In line with Häkli et al. (2017), I understand that becoming a refugee can be viewed as the condition of a possibility for political agency based on the capacities of refugees to become attentive to their positions and shared grievances, to raise awareness of inequalities and injustices, and, ultimately, to mobilise individually and collectively. The actions of border crossing from homeland to Hong Kong or Bangkok particularly focus on the politics of performance and how the refugees involved in these journeys may—each in their specific ways—seek to contribute to successful exits and entrances. Exiting in response to unbearable repression and persecution, I argue, is an expressive form of political acts against the legitimacy of their home government. In the context of a growing number of fragile states coupled with increased global opportunities for mobility, many chose to move (Betts and Collier 2017). The underlying factor that

Constructing journeys  73 triggered their aspirations to flee was lack of security in their homelands. They fled because they simply could not secure the minimum conditions of human dignity in their home countries. The asylum-seeking journeys of refugees are thus purposive, since they intended to seek havens (Betts and Collier 2017) overseas. Throughout their journeys, although they used the words “afraid”, “worried”, “confused”, “sad”, and “panic” to describe their physical movement across various borders, the refugees mentioned in this chapter demonstrated their capacity to resist the institutional domains they encountered, such as those related to documentary requirements in visa applications as well as the basic level of bodily conduct and proper conversations at airport security control. I value the agency role of refugees, but I do not take structural constraints lightly. In fact, refugees do not act freely. This is particularly true after they file for refugee claims in the host society. They are moulded by the demands set by the institutions and organisations that provide them with assistance. As Zagor (2014) argues, refugees are a “site of governmentality, techniques for production, discipline, and domination of the subject” (Zagor 2014: 326). Merely focusing on the agentic capacity of refugees runs the risk of neglecting the factors that constrain their autonomy and shape their asylum-seeking experiences. I seek a more careful balance between elements that facilitate and hinder the autonomy of refugee subjects as political agents. At the moment of arrival in Hong Kong or Bangkok, the asylum-seeking journeys did not end as a simple physical event. Rather, the journeys continued with the ritualised process of being a refugee in the host society— crossing cultural and linguistic zones, filing a refugee claim, going through screening mechanism, and awaiting third-country resettlement. However, this process may not be completed rapidly. While most host governments in Asia are reluctant to provide settlement and local integration, resettlement countries in the West collectively offer resettlement to less than 1% of the world’s refugees (Betts et al. 2017). This implies that the asylum-seeking journey in Asia is a liminal zone—refugees in this region face periods of prolonged displacement with little chance of either third-country resettlement or local integration. The tragedy of prolonged displacement is now widely acknowledged and condemned. During their stay in Hong Kong or Bangkok, the refugees experienced a wide array of challenges and constraints. Over the course of my fieldwork, the refugees always described not having enough food to eat and lacking proper accommodation after arrival. In this way, they experienced more material insecurities, showing that their presence in Hong Kong or Bangkok did not automatically make them feel more secure. From experiencing physical insecurity in the country of origin to economic and material insecurity in the host society, identity represents an important part of this process. Upon arrival, they relinquished their legal identity based on their country of origin and took on the bureaucratic identity of refugee. In Hong Kong and Bangkok, from the perspective of the respective governments, all refugees are illegal immigrants. Thus, they

74  Constructing journeys are deprived of the most basic fundamental human rights such as the rights to employment, education, and freedom of movement. Refugee issues are primarily of humanitarian concern. These rely upon the international community to collectively deal with the “root causes” of displacement in order to restore refugees’ sense of security. However, the global prevalence of prolonged displacement, particularly in Asia, demonstrates that refugee issues encompass political and security concerns. The failure of states and international organisations to collectively resolve conflict and devise durable solutions has left most of the world’s refugees in limbo. This poses a policy challenge in terms of how prolonged displacement situations can be both prevented and resolved. Many refugees—including those in Hong Kong and Bangkok—have skills, qualifications, and a desire to work and contribute to society. Yet, as the next chapter will show, the existing governance structures of host societies often obstruct this. Such liminal situations have been described as a “waste of humanity” (Smith 2004). Sometimes, it remains a question of which is more important: humanity or legal identity?

4 Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok Identity, exclusion, and marginalisation

On 28 December 2017, Hong Kong immigration authorities arranged a chartered flight to send 68 unsuccessful refugees and illegal immigrants back to Vietnam. A few days later, news had reached the refugee community in the form of a newspaper headline. It was a day of debate and discussion among those in the refugee service centre regarding the refugee identity problem in Hong Kong. Karl, a Filipino refugee, showed us the news report stating that, in the future, authorities would consider chartering flights to send back illegal immigrants who were unwilling to leave. Karl said abruptly, “We are not illegal! We have ID!” The others also began to air their frustration regarding how unfair it was to label them as illegal immigrants. The topic of identity was all they wanted to talk about in my Cantonese language class in that week. Karl asked me to teach them the pronunciations of “identity” (shen fen) and “identity card” (shen fen zheng). Suddenly, Moses, a refugee from Central African Republic, raised his hand and told us that the “Hong Kong police had no idea about my shen fen (identity)”. People in the group, including Karl, were surprised. They all turned their faces to him, expecting to hear something that they did not know. Moses continued to explain his encounter with an officer in the police station who asked for his ID when he was filing a police report to establish a record of his lost wallet. Moses said, “I showed him my immigration paper (recognisance paper) from the Immigration Department. He looked at me with puzzle eyes and asked, ‘What is this? This is not an ID. Do you have ID card or passport?’ I then told him I had no ID card.” As Moses tried to continue his story, Karl interrupted him and pointed at him with his index finger. It looked like he was about to give Moses a serious lesson. He said angrily and loudly, No! You are wrong. We have ID [emphasis added]. The immigration paper (recognisance paper) is our ID [emphasis added] card. This paper (recognisance paper) is our only ID [emphasis added] here. The police must know. This is our refugee identity. Moses affirmably replied, “Their meaning of ID is different from ours. For them, ID is an identity card or passport. For us, our ID is a piece of paper.”

76  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok As Moses attempted to further discuss this with Karl, Karl simply pushed his chair away and causally excused himself from the room with a quick final remark, “No, this is not correct.” The arguments between Karl and Moses sent a ripple through the refugees in the room, some of whom shook their heads, while others began to whisper into each other’s ears. They had clearly touched a nerve by highlighting the identity and social status of refugees in Hong Kong, and the different interpretations and understandings between officials and the refugees themselves. Moses’ sharing surprised everyone in the group, including me. Karl was not the first person to suggest that the recognisance paper issued by the Hong Kong Immigration Department was the key identification document for refugees. He was, however, the most explicit in pointing out that their refugee identification document was equivalent to, and had the same legal status as, an identity card or passport. Not long after the debate, Karl and I had a further discussion regarding refugee identity. He showed me his recognisance paper and asked me, “This paper has my photo, my nationality, and identification number. I use it when I see a doctor, an immigration officer, or get assistances from organisations to prove who I am. So is it not a real ID?” Yet, as I learned much later in my fieldwork, identity and social status also turned out to be a concern among the refugees in Bangkok. When I asked refugees in Bangkok what their major everyday life problem was, no response was repeated more often than the threat of police arrest due to a lack of valid identification document. The immigration police officers in Bangkok did not consider the UNHCR paper as a valid identification document, and many of them had no idea what refugee was. Yet there was no denying that identity and identification documents often topped the list of everyday life challenges facing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok. For them, identity and identification documents in the forms of identity cards or passports could certainly open up numerous life opportunities, such as getting formal jobs. After sharing the story of her police arrest experience in Bangkok with me, Nancy, a Sri Lankan refugee, always reminded me that “with ID, we can do anything [emphasis added]”. Undoubtedly, refugees in both Bangkok and Hong Kong remained self-conscious of their political classification as “refugees” without legal status under the local administrations. But how are refugee identities and experiences determined by the governance structures in these two host societies in Asia? What are the consequences experienced by people who are given the bureaucratic identity of refugee by a local authority? As a region that has seen a considerable influx of refugees at the turn of the 21st century, the East Asian and Southeast Asian regions display great variation in terms of the refugee protection and related mechanisms of governmentality, both in theory and in practice. To date, there are only seven signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention in the region: China, Macau, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, East Timor, and the Philippines. Although Hong Kong and Bangkok are two major destinations for those seeking

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  77 asylum in the region, they are not signatory parties. The categorisation of migrants operates most obviously in formal and administrative terms, and people are grouped according to the rights and benefits they are granted by the governments in which they live. In examining government migration control practices, we must identify particular forms of legal status, since these are of paramount importance in determining individuals’ rights in the receiving societies. For example, under the laws of Hong Kong and Thailand, only two categories of migrant are recognised, “legal” and “illegal”, which are determined by the possession of an identity card or passport (or the lack thereof). Because refugees often do not possess valid identity cards or passport, they are categorised as “illegal”. This “illegal” status is of great significance in understanding official government responses to asylum-seeking activities. Bearing the bureaucratic identity of refugee, this group of people are socially, economically, culturally, and politically marginalised in the host society. This chapter examines some of the contested dynamics of refugee governance structures in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Of particular interest here are the processes and mechanisms involved in the active exclusion of ­refugees— that is, how immigration policies and asylum-seeking arrangements constrain refugees’ autonomy, and how they shape their ­asylum-seeking experiences. A governmentality perspective focuses upon the government technologies, which are the complex of mundane programmes, techniques, documents, and procedures that activate a particular mode of governance with respect to refugees. In this chapter, I will outline how this ritual process of categorisation operates in both Hong Kong and Bangkok. Herein, I argue that these two places are, in some respects, slightly different with regard to asylum-seeking arrangements. When dealing with refugees, the Hong Kong government adopts a lenient approach towards governance, whereas the Thai government uses a harsher approach. Given the fact that social phenomena such as asylum-seeking journeys never recur in the same form, comparative studies can assist us in making sense of the observed variation, thereby capturing the principles of both similarities and differences. In other words, a comparison of the refugee governance structures between Hong Kong and Bangkok enables us to identify the divergent formation ­asylum-seeking experiences in Asia, and ask why some developed in similar ways while others did not.

Refuge and governmentality in Hong Kong Although Hong Kong has long been classified as an immigrant society, the government maintains an immigration policy that discriminates against certain groups of migrants, such as refugees. Hong Kong’s immigration arrangements for refugees can be traced to the colonial period (ending in 1997), in which the UK exercised its entitlement under colonial clauses in the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol to refrain from applying

78  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok those instruments to Hong Kong, citing the colony’s “small size and geographical vulnerability to mass illegal immigrants” (Mushkat 1997: 87). At the time of the return of sovereignty to China, the People’s Republic of China declared that all treaties that had been extended to Hong Kong by the UK, and only those treaties, would remain in effect. However, this did not include the Refugee Convention, which the British had never extended to Hong Kong. The People’s Republic of China was party to both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, yet the Chinese government did not invoke the colonial clauses following the handover in 1997. China’s exclusion of Hong Kong is based on the federal clauses under Article 41 of the 1951 Refugee Convention and Article 6 of the 1967 Protocol. These clauses limit the obligations of a “Federal or non-unitary State” by restricting a central government to operate within its constitutional competence. The central government has no obligation, but it is obliged to commend the Convention and Protocol to relevant subnational authorities. Furthermore, Hong Kong has been a signatory to the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) since 9 December 1992, and the Immigration Department of the Hong Kong government engages in interrogation screenings on CAT claims. The UNHCR Hong Kong was responsible for implementing the entire Refugee Status Determination (RSD) scheme, and administered the screening procedures and resettlement programme. These two main and overlapping screening systems created two categories of people seeking protection in Hong Kong: torture claimants and refugees. Since 3 March 2014, the Hong Kong government has been using a new screening mechanism, called the unified screening mechanism (USM). This mechanism is used to screen all claims lodged by people who do not have the right to enter and remain in Hong Kong on the basis that removing them to another country would expose them to risks of torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment and persecution. Torture is defined under the CAT, while torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment is defined under Article 3 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance, and persecution is based on the principle under Article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention. The USM is independently operated by the Hong Kong government. This mechanism “combines 1) torture; 2) cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; and 3) persecution claims in one go” (Justice Centre 2014: 6). Refugees are lumped under the classification of “non-refoulement protection claimant”. The substantiation rate has remained near zero due to inadequate knowledge, training and strategic planning, cultural bias, and pressure to process cases quickly (SCMP 2015). This unjust screening mechanism has strictly reduced the chances of applicants being granted a status. The security bureau of the Hong Kong government has stated that Hong Kong maintains a liberal visa regime to facilitate the convenient travel of bona fide visitors and businessmen (Legislative Council Hong Kong Special

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  79 Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government 2006). Nationals from approximately 170 countries and territories enjoy visa-free access to Hong Kong for stays ranging from seven days to six months (Legislative Council HKSAR Government 2006). As such, only travellers from only 48 countries need visas to visit Hong Kong (Legislative Council HKSAR Government 2006). The authority claims that a proper balance is maintained between the facilitation of genuine visitors and the need to safeguard the integrity of Hong Kong’s immigration control, and Mathews (2011: 170) argues that Hong Kong has “a relatively more open visa regime”. Furthermore, Sassen (1996) argues that global constraints force many states to lessen immigration control, and identifies two main external restrictions on state sovereignty: economic globalisation and the rise of an international human rights regime. Increasing economic connections across territories have created a condition of push and pull for people on the periphery that seek entry into the core economies. Additionally, the emergent international human rights regime protects migrants regardless of their nationality, which restricts the discretion of states towards aliens. Finally, Sassen concludes that economic and political globalisation “reduce[s] the autonomy of the state in immigration policy making” (Sassen 1996: 98). In Hong Kong, economic restructuring towards the service industry, including trade, finance, and tourism, has led the government to maintain a liberal visa regime to attract and facilitate businessmen and tourists from around the world. I asked my refugee informants, “Did you have a visa for Hong Kong? What kind?” With the exception of those who entered Hong Kong illegally from China on makeshift boats, most informants reported that they had tourist visas upon entry. There is no doubt that the tourist visa is simply an “admission ticket” for refugees to enter Hong Kong through legal channels. The purposes for staying in Hong Kong vary. While some refugees genuinely fled to Hong Kong for protection due to persecution at home, there are others who left their homes for the sake of economic gain (Mathews 2011: 173). Moreover, Hong Kong is a signatory party to different international human rights treaties. Legally speaking, the current human rights regime protects people, including migrants, independent of their nationality, thereby limiting the discretion of states towards aliens. In such cases, refugees could easily pass through immigration barriers in Hong Kong and seek protection from relevant authorities either during their legal stays in Hong Kong or when they become visa overstayers. Immigration detention centres as spaces of exception The current influx of refugee from Africa and South and Southeast Asia began in the early 2000s, with the majority of refugees entering Hong Kong legally (on tourist visas). As such, they file their refugee claims by overstaying their visas. When they first arrive in Hong Kong, they learn that they must surrender themselves to the Immigration Department to receive minimal

80  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok humanitarian assistance as well as a permit to stay (recognisance paper) temporarily in Hong Kong. However, they must wait until their tourist visa has expired before they can file a claim. Some refugees were advised by members of the refugee community, while others heard about this arrangement from lawyers and social workers. The refugees need to be detained while the Immigration Department investigates and verifies their cases before they issue a removal order on refugee applicants. The asylum-seeking protocol in Hong Kong requires refugees to go through a process of mandatory detention to be eligible to receive monthly rental allowance and food services from the Hong Kong government. All the refugee informants reported that they were detained at the Castle Peak Bay Immigration Centre. However, detention periods varied from one case to another. In this regard, a question was posed to the Immigration Department for the purpose of this study: “How long does the Immigration Department usually detain visa-­ overstayers in Hong Kong?” The Immigration Department did not offer a clear answer. Instead, it said: There is no definite answer to your question as the detention period varies from one case to another, which hinges on the confirmation of the identity and nationality of the illegal immigrants and completion of repatriation formalities after the discharge of the illegal immigrants from prison. Other considerations will be whether there is any impediment related to the illegal immigrants in Hong Kong, such as legal litigation under process. The Immigration Ordinance of Hong Kong legitimises the detention of refugees. This means that it is lawful to put them in detention centres. The use of detention structures against refugees has increased considerably during recent decades, and has included the use of interrogation zones in airports and detention centres in the territory (Fassin 2001), both of which are spaces of exception “where regimes of police prevail over regimes of rights, although some space is generally left to the rule of law via the minimal presence of nongovernmental organizations” (Fassin 2001: 219). In Hong Kong, many refugees possess valid visas and passports upon entry. For the sake of seeking protection, they must be locked in the Castle Peak Bay Immigration Centre, where they are under the full control of immigration officers without the presence of non-governmental organisations and refugee lawyers. Mandatory detention is widely criticised as illegitimate and a violation of human rights (see, for example, Bhagwati 2002; Ozdowski 2002; and Johnson 2007). In Hong Kong, Article 28 of the Basic Law—which is the ­m ini-constitution of Hong Kong—protects people from being arbitrarily or unlawfully arrested, detained, and imprisoned. However, all of the refugees in Hong Kong were detained without a trial. One Pakistani refugee aired his frustration in this regard: “I did nothing wrong. I am not a criminal. Why was I locked in the detention centre?” This bureaucratic arrangement shows

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  81 that the authority has violated the fundamental rights of refugees. Just as important, beyond mandatory detention, is the diminishing self-worth of ex-detainees. While some refugees consider themselves to be nothing, others consider their status to be even worse than that of pets, as Hong Kong law protects animals (Daly 2009). A number of them even view themselves as trees in Hong Kong. Roger, a Somali refugee, described his experience: I just realised that all trees in Hong Kong have numbers on their bodies. The number is written on a small plastic paper. You know what I am thinking? I am just a tree because I also cannot move and have my number. I have a UN number. According to the Immigration Ordinance, refugees are then required to submit, in their own language, a written personal statement which clearly states the reason(s) for seeking asylum in Hong Kong before the Immigration Department issues a temporary identity document for the applicant to remain in Hong Kong. However, this document does not legalise the stays of refugees. This document is called a “recognisance paper”, which is a bureaucratic tool that governs the everyday life of refugees in Hong Kong. The use of recognisance papers to discipline the “illegals” Following detention, which serves as a punishment for breaking Hong Kong immigration laws, refugees are given identity papers (called recognisance papers) issued by the Immigration Department—a plastic sheet that all refugees must carry for identification purposes, which prevents them from being jailed again for overstaying their visas while their refugee applications are pending. These document holders can temporarily stay in Hong Kong. However, this document symbolises the “illegal” status of refugees in Hong Kong because it is nothing more than a proof of recognition by the Hong Kong government that the refugee is an offender for overstaying their visa. The paper allows refugees to receive basic assistance from the Hong Kong government. However, they are not granted any rights and can still be charged for overstay. The criteria for release of the recognisance are as follows: “(a) whether the person concerned constitutes a security risk to the community; (b) whether there is any risk of the person absconding and (re)offending; and (c) whether removal is not going to be possible within a reasonable time” (Civic Exchange 2009: 13). Directors of Immigration or immigration officials generally have the discretion to grant or refuse permission to land or remain in Hong Kong under Sections 11 and 13 of the Immigration Ordinance (Cap. 115). Furthermore, Part IIIA, Section 13A of the Immigration Ordinance (Cap. 115), gives immigration officials with the discretion to enable a Vietnamese refugee “to remain in Hong Kong as a refugee pending…resettlement elsewhere”. At this time, Section 13A remains unchanged. However, the term “refugee” in this section was simply a

82  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok statutory description of those Vietnamese refugees who were provisionally allowed to remain in Hong Kong; it is not related to the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol. The recognisance paper clearly states that the refugee must report to an Immigration Officer of the Deportation Section once a week; otherwise, the refugee must pay the Hong Kong government HK$4,000 as a self-surety. A Pakistani refugee recounted his encounter with an immigration officer about the recognisance paper. One time, he forgot to bring his recognisance paper on the reporting day. He asked the immigration officer if he could just check his identity record on the computer. The officer turned him down and said that he had to show his paper to prove his status. The story shows that the refugees’ right to remain in Hong Kong temporarily depends on the presence or absence of the paper itself. It would seem that “status inheres in papers, not persons” (Coutin 2003: 33). Indeed, the recognisance papers are important identification documents for refugees in Hong Kong. The verbal argument between Karl and Moses at the opening of this chapter clearly highlights the identity struggle experienced by refugees in Hong Kong. And, as most refugees knew, in order to be subjected to bureaucratic controls, they must perform certain institutionally accepted behaviours in their everyday life, such as reporting to immigration officers on time and carrying their proof of identity (i.e. recognisance paper) with them at all times. Karl once told me that he felt uncomfortable if he forgot to carry his paper with him when he was outside. Documents have often been described as disciplinary and classificatory technologies that render subjects “legible” (Scott 1998) to state power (Torpey 2000). Through its association with the ambiguities of the liminal status of refugees, the documents (in this case, recognisance papers) become an object of intense fear, anxiety, and subordination. Identity documents have often been characterised as a powerful indicator of status denial. Throughout the course of my fieldwork, many refugees told me how they had made multiple attempts to access local facilities, such as public libraries, and had undergone multiple rejections by officers who informed them that they had no valid identification documents, such as a Hong Kong identity card or a passport. Moreover, refugees are repeatedly warned by immigration officers in their regular reporting sessions that they are not allowed to work (even voluntary work) due to their status as refugees. The deprivation of rights, image of dependency, and feeling of shame In Hong Kong, refugees are deprived of all fundamental human rights, which have far-reaching impacts on their livelihoods and psychological conditions. The right to work was one of the defining themes to emerge from conversations and interviews with the refugees. Under the Hong Kong Immigration Ordinance, refugees do not have the right to work during their stay in Hong Kong. If they work, they risk jail time. However, the right to employment is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  83 and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. The denial of this basic fundamental human right has made a countless number of refugees suffer from stress and depression. Depriving refugees of the right to work significantly contributes to miserable life experiences in Hong Kong, and is also linked to struggles in obtaining accommodation and food. International Social Service Hong Kong Branch (ISS-HK), an NGO selected by the Social Welfare Department of the Hong Kong SAR government, provides humanitarian assistance to refugees. Each month, refugees receive a rental allowance of HK$1,500 and HK$750 for each adult and child, respectively, paid directly to their landlord. Rental deposits are a maximum of HK$3,000 or an amount equivalent to two months’ rent, whichever is the less. Furthermore, property agent fees are HK$750 or an amount equivalent to half of the monthly rent, whichever is the less. In addition, a utility allowance of HK$300 per month is provided, as well as a transportation allowance from HK$200 to HK$420 per month (Legislative Council HKSAR Government 2017). Hong Kong has always ranked as one of the world’s most expensive cities (Economist Intelligence Unit 2017). With this amount of money, it is nearly impossible to find decent accommodation in Hong Kong. While most refugees live in cramped units in old residential buildings without a lift, some live in tiny subdivided flats in various low-income districts. The monthly rent is expensive, ranging from HK$3,000 to HK$8,000. Single refugees such as Amy, a refugee from the Philippines, found it difficult to find a room with the limited rental allowance provided by the government. Many refugees have been homeless for years. As I found out, homeless refugees felt shame in telling others they were homeless in Hong Kong. One day, we talked about the typhoon that hit Hong Kong a week prior. I asked Amy whether her room had a water leakage problem, which was a common complaint among refugees during the rainy season. Amy chuckled embarrassingly. Venus, a friend of Amy, overheard our conversations. She came closer to me and whispered in my ear, “She doesn’t have a home.” Later, Amy told us that she has lived in a park in a major commercial area with another woman refugee for years. They live in makeshift cardboard shacks with a million-dollar view of skyscrapers and flats that sell for millions of Hong Kong dollars. Every day, the people of Hong Kong stared insolently at them when they walked past their cardboard shelter in the park. “I cry every day. It looks like I am a beggar”, Amy told me. In fact, it is common to hear refugees describe their feelings of shame during their stay in Hong Kong, as they consider themselves unproductive and unable to financially support their family members back home. This feeling of shame always comes with feelings of being controlled by the Hong Kong government, which triggers their low self-esteem. Undoubtedly, refugees treasure the importance of work—especially those who had promising jobs back in their home countries. Many of them worked in professional fields such as engineering, legal, banking, medical, social services, and academia,

84  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok while some had their own businesses. They often stressed that being able to work is what makes a person useful and valuable. However, they are deprived of right to work in Hong Kong simply because of their refugee status. One day after the Cantonese class, I had a chat with Edmond and Alice, refugees from Egypt and Uganda, respectively, regarding my busy work life. Edmond said, “You are lucky, teacher. You can work. I miss my work so much [he nodded].Without work, you die. You can’t feel yourself. The people around you do not respect you.” This sense of low self-esteem was typically manifested in discussions regarding the identity of refugees in Hong Kong. Alice couldn’t agree more about what Edmond had said. In fact, she argued: …at the moment you cannot work, you become a beggar. Everything, even a small thing like this, you beg. Even a tissue, you beg. Even…five dollars, you beg. Even two dollars, you have to beg. Even one dollar, you have to beg. We are begging for anything. So this is a very big difference. Refugees are labelled as illegal immigrants, economic migrants, and sex workers. Being refugee is not a crime. My life changed. I worked in an office for money in my country. I left my country because of personal problems. This is not the end of my life. Feelings of shame are commonly observed in refugee families. Specifically, since the role of the father as a breadwinner is to take care of his children, fathers resented that the denial of right to work not only puts their lives to destitution, but also deprives them of their dignity as a productive human being, forcing them to rely on assistance from others. Through living under extreme poverty, refugees suffer from various physical and psychological illnesses. For example, Edmond has a chronic daily headache problem. He cannot sleep well at night unless he takes painkillers or sleeping pills. Hatred fills his entire body. He expressed his anger towards the Hong Kong government: The government has no heart. If it had heart, it could feel someone’s feelings; but here, no. No mind, I mean no thinking. Why do people come here [Hong Kong]? It is for a better life. If not for the political or war problems, we wouldn’t come. If immigration kicks us out, I will take the officers to Egypt. I will show them around. Apart from accommodation, another daily problem stemming from the lack of right to work is access to food. “No work, no money, then not enough to eat”, Alice said. With the recognisance paper, refugees are given an electronic card with HK$1,200 per month available for food purchases at designated supermarkets. How to wisely spend this money in a city with such a high cost of living represents a major challenge to refugees. At the beginning of the month, when the food card is deposited with full amount of subsidy, Edmond told me that they could have a full meal. By the end, they were down to just

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  85 half of a meal. Refugee complaints of injustice regarding the food provision service are typically an indictment against the Social Welfare Department and ISS-HK officials that impose limitations on what they can buy from supermarkets. Koby and Alice shared their negative supermarket shopping experience with me. Koby has been living in Hong Kong for 17 years. He has a Filipino wife and four children. During Christmas time, he wanted to buy a chocolate gift box for his children. He presented the box to the cashier who then put away his chocolate gift box after knowing that Koby wanted to use his food card to pay the bill. The gift box was only HK$19.9. He stressed that he could afford the price and asked why he could not buy it. The cashier said that it was policy, and his purchase was finally rejected. The cashier said to him, “The policy is that you cannot buy it with this card. You have to live under limitations.” Koby was absolutely annoyed by this experience, especially because there was a long queue behind him when he was arguing with the cashier. He was not angry with the cashier, but rather with the government. He touched his heart and said, “I am also a human. I am also ashamed when I am standing there.” He said it was totally ridiculous to restrict him from buying a chocolate gift box. Alice joined our conversation after hearing Koby’s story. She said, “It’s true. It’s true. Even some food and daily necessities, we cannot buy.” She told us that she could not buy a chicken and a bottle of gas for her cooker with her food card. She also felt ashamed in front of a group of Hong Kong people whenever she was rejected by the cashier with this simple sentence, “You cannot buy it with this card.” Arguments against the denial of basic human rights for refugees stem from the fact that this type of asylum-seeking arrangement creates and reinforces the image of passivity and dependency among refugees. In Hong Kong, there has been a huge amount of news coverage on refugee issues over the years. Chinese newspaper coverage can be categorised as follows: abusing the USM system, a group of economic migrants, unwanted bogus refugees, abusing the humanitarian assistance system, and wasting Hong Kong taxpayers’ money. The entire scope of news coverage reinforces the image of this group of people as “dependent individuals”. However, I argue that the so-called “dependency of refugees” actually derives from the removal of their social, political, and economic coping systems. While humanitarian assistance is acknowledged here as an immediate relief from destitution, the reason why refugees are portrayed as dependent individuals and system abusers in public discourses and media platforms is due to the structural constraints that refugees are subjected in Hong Kong. The refugees I spoke with throughout the years all expressed that they were willing to economically, socially, and culturally contribute to local society. However, due to the disruption of their basic human rights as a result of the label of “refugee”, which equates to “illegal immigrant”, they are forced to rely heavily on the minimal humanitarian assistance available to them. One afternoon, I visited the home of Mimi, an Indonesian refugee. She was checking the school bag of her seven-year-old daughter. She found a

86  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok form, scanned it briefly, and noted the “play group” fee of HK$60 being charged by the school. She immediately took a pen and put a cross in the box provided—indicating that her daughter would not be attending—before placing the form back into her daughter’s school bag. Living under poverty, refugee parents like Mimi worry about not only their daily living, but also the education of their children. Mimi aired her frustration, We need to pay school fees first, and then the government pays them back. Reimbursement takes a long time, and we are not allowed to work. How do we have enough money to pay this and that? HK$60 for play group is a luxury thing for us. I feel so sorry for my daughter. No money, no education for children. Under the current education policy of Hong Kong, the government has no obligation to provide free education to non-local students, including refugee students (Education Bureau HKSAR Government 2015). According to The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s Response to the List of Issues raised by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child-Part I in 2013, the Education Bureau of the HKSAR government allows torture claimants, refugees, and asylum seekers under 18 who hold a form of recognisance to temporarily receive education in Hong Kong on a discretionary basis, taking into consideration the circumstances of each case (including age and whether their removal may occur in the near future). This stipulation indicates that refugee children in Hong Kong can attend schools (including kindergarten), subject to the approval of the authorities. Refugee parents must submit an application to the Education Bureau or to the schools directly, and their applications are referred to the Education Bureau for assessment. The Bureau officials then seek comments from the Immigration Department on whether the refugee children in question should be allowed to attend schools in Hong Kong (Education Bureau HKSAR Government 2015). After receiving confirmation from the Immigration Department, the Education Bureau informs the schools that they must admit these refugee children or identify schools for them (Education Bureau HKSAR Government 2015). The Initiation Programme is an integrated programme provided by the Education Bureau as an alternative mode of support for children (including refugee children) who have recently arrived in Hong Kong. The programme recruits children aged 6–18 years, from Primary 1 to Secondary 3 levels, before they join mainstream schools. The class size is approximately 20 students, and this all-day programme mainly covers English and Chinese languages, learning skills/study skills, personal development, social adaptation, and cultural subjects. After spending six months in the programme, the Education Bureau places children who complete it into suitable primary and secondary schools. Furthermore, a block grant is provided to public sector schools upon application. The rate of the grant, similar to other grants allocated to schools by the Education Bureau,

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  87 is adjusted at the beginning of the academic year, if necessary. Since September 2016, the rate of the grant has been HK$3,597 per child at the primary level and HK$5,331 at the secondary level. In Hong Kong, there are three local schools operating in the Initiation Programme. For the period between March and May 2016, 288 children were admitted to the mainstream schools (Education Bureau HKSAR Government 2017). Some refugee children obtain a fee remission (for kindergarten) from the Education Bureau, while others receive financial assistance (for primary and secondary schools) from the Student Financial Assistance Agency (Beatson 2015). However, refugees need to pay for tuition fees, uniform fees, and book fees, as well as other miscellaneous costs in advance, which the government may pay in the form of a reimbursement. However, many refugee parents aired their frustration to me by stating that reimbursement is a lengthy process, and that the money always came in late. They worried greatly about the education of their children, because school teachers always gave them verbal warnings that their children would be banned from attending school if they could not settle school fees on time. Consequently, many children had no choice but to drop out of school due to a lack of money. Mimi told me that she needed to pay school fees for eight months, but she could only afford six months of payment. She said, “The teacher tells me they will kick my daughter out anytime if I don’t pay money on time.” Lengthy screening mechanisms and prolonged anxiety Hong Kong has been a signatory to the 1984 CAT since 9 December 1992, and the Crimes (Torture) Ordinance was enforced in January 1993. The convention remained in effect in Hong Kong’s postcolonial period, and the Immigration Department of the Hong Kong government engages in interrogation screenings on CAT claims. According to HKSAR government’s statistics, there were 5,800 claimants under Article 3 of the CAT in 2012 (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government 2012). The number of new torture claims received in 2009, 2010, and 2011 was 3,286, 1,809, and 1,432, respectively (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government 2012). In the same period, the Torture Claims Appeal Board received 109, 460, and 766 appeals, respectively (SCMP 2013b). Claimants mainly came from countries in South or Southeast Asia, including Pakistan (30% of all claims), India (20%), Indonesia (14%), and Bangladesh (11%) (HKSAR 2012b). From December 1992 to 31 March 2013, the Immigration Department received 12,409 CAT claims, with six substantiated and 4,348 still being processed (SCMP 2013a). Under Article 3 of the CAT Convention, a person cannot be deported to a home country where they are at serious risk of torture, based on the principle of non-refoulement. The Hong Kong Court has ruled that Hong Kong is obligated to screen potential deportees to ensure that there is no risk of torture upon deportation. When refugees are in the detention centre, they are

88  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok asked by the officers if they want to file torture claims at the Immigration Department. The Hong Kong Immigration Department engages in torture screening to determine whether protection is warranted under CAT. There have been more than 12,000 applications since 1992, when Hong Kong began applying the Convention (SCMP 2013b). Hong Kong only introduced a torture claim screening mechanism in 2004. The system was enhanced in 2009 after a Court of Final Appeal decision in Secretary for Security v. Sakthevel Prabakar in 2005. The court identified three necessary considerations: (1) the torture claimant should be given every reasonable opportunity to establish his or her claim that he or she would be in danger of being subjected to torture, (2) the claim must be properly assessed by the Secretary for Security, and (3) the Secretary for Security must give reasons for any rejection. The CAT screening system is governed by Part VII of the Immigration Ordinance (Cap. 115). After lodging a claim at the Enforcement and Torture Claim Assessment Branch of the Immigration Department through the completion of a questionnaire, the claimant is asked for an assessment interview. In most cases, the interviews last for an entire day. The case officer then assesses the case based on the information obtained and delivers the outcome of the application. If the application is rejected, the claimants can file an appeal against the first instance decision, and the adjudicator’s decision is final. The applicant will be deported back to his or her country of origin if the appeal decision is still negative. Although successful CAT claimants will not be deported, they are not recognised by any legal status or given any additional rights. Furthermore, it would appear that those who are protected under CAT may still be deported later if it is determined that there is no longer a risk of torture in their home countries. The Department had evaluated over 3,000 torture claims and rejected 2,224 cases as of 31 August 2012 (Vision First 2012), and 159 claimants were removed between 2010 and 2012 (Vision First 2012). Hong Kong’s current acceptance rate is only 0.03%, compared with a 20% recognition rate in most democracies (SCMP 2013b). Since 1992, only three people have been successfully protected under the CAT by the Hong Kong government (SCMP 2013b). In 2007, it was reported that “just 7 immigration officers are officially processing claims made under UN’s Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), while 19 have been temporarily borrowed from other units” (Daly 2009: 1). The first claim was approved through judicial review in court in 2008, while the second and third cases were accepted in March and April 2013, respectively. With the Immigration (Amendment) Ordinance 2012, the Hong Kong government has developed a statutory framework for the screening of CAT claimants to comply with its obligation under the CAT Convention. On 21 December 2012, the Court of Final Appeal released a judgement ruling that, in addition to torture claims, Hong Kong has an obligation to offer protection to those facing the threat of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  89 Before the implementation of the USM, UNHCR Hong Kong was responsible for implementing the entire RSD scheme and administering the screening procedures. According to UNHCR Hong Kong, there were 750 RSD claimants (152 recognised refugees, 597 asylum seekers, and 1 stateless person) in 2012 (UNHCR 2012c). UNHCR Hong Kong engages in RSD and must seek resettlement to a safe third country as the only durable solution available for identified refugees in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government has apparently shirked its responsibility for RSD and passed it off to UNHCR. UNHCR Hong Kong claims to grant refugee status to only 10% of applicants per year (Hong Kong Refugee Advice Centre 2010) compared to the global recognition rate of 85% in 2010 (RSD Watch 2010). From the government’s perspective, refugees are considered illegal immigrants or overstayers. The Director of Immigration permits UNHCR-designated refugees to remain in Hong Kong pending resettlement. Under the screening systems of both UNHCR and the Hong Kong government—upon which refugees in Hong Kong rely—the process of obtaining refugee status, as shown above, is relatively long. As examined above, there are two main screening systems (under UNHCR and the Hong Kong government) that refugees in Hong Kong rely on for obtaining a chance for resettlement. Most refugees had no experiences in the CAT or RSD systems before. However, through the assistance of NGOs, co-ethnic friends, and other “experienced” refugees, they can make use of the two systems to prolong their stay in Hong Kong. Many would file in applications through both systems in different sequences until they exhaust every means of striving for a “status”. The following passages illustrate the six key scenarios: 1 They came to Hong Kong and worked illegally in different regions (such as Kam Tin and Sham Shui Po) without applying for protection. Once they were arrested by the police or immigration officers, they immediately applied for CAT claims to seek protection. One Indian refugee told me that he was told by his Indian businessman friend in Hong Kong that he did not need to go to a police station to surrender. Therefore, he worked illegally in Yuen Long. One evening, a police officer asked for his ID. He showed the officer his passport, but his visa had expired two months prior. As a result, he was arrested by the police officer. 2 They only applied for CAT claims after they were released from the detention centre in Hong Kong, as rumours had spread among the refugee community that processing took a long time. Furthermore, they knew that they could receive the same basic assistance (rental allowance and food bags) as UNHCR’s RSD applicants. One Pakistani refugee told me, “I just apply for a torture claim. I can get the same benefits, what’s the point of apply at UNHCR?” 3 They only sought protection under UNHCR system. An African refugee said that when he arrived in Chungking Mansions, he was told by his African businessman friend there that there was a UNHCR Hong

90  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok Kong office where he could apply for protection. He went and declared himself. He said, I want to be resettled to a Western country. For those who only apply for a CAT claim, they just want to stay in Hong Kong. What’s the point in staying in Hong Kong? We can’t get legal status here! 4 They filed their refugee claims at UNHCR Hong Kong after their CAT claims were rejected. One Pakistani refugee said angrily, the government did not assess my case in detail. They didn’t ask me enough questions, but rejected me. I can’t go back, and I will die if I return to my country. Therefore, I am applying for a refugee claim at UNHCR and hope that they will protect me. 5 They turned to the CAT system to make their claims after their cases were rejected by UNHCR Hong Kong. 6 They applied for both CAT and refugee claims at the same time. The purpose of highlighting these six scenarios is to demonstrate the complexity and overlap of the two existing screening exercises in Hong Kong. Although the two mechanisms were conducted by different authorities, the Director of Immigration relied on UNHCR’s determination for asylum assessments. The two overlapping regimes (CAT and RSD) were largely built on compatible policy objectives that were based on common principles of humanitarian concern, which were designed to offer protection to individuals who have fled their home countries. However, the prescribed practices (rules) of the regimes were in conflict, which means that the international institutions fail to complement and enhance each other. According to Young (1996), these overlapping regimes imply that the functional scope of one regime protrudes into the functional scope of the other regime. As such, this overlap of functional scopes between the CAT of the Hong Kong government and the RSD of UNHCR has hindered efforts to reach effective institutional responses to refugee issues. Thus, refugee migrants are subjected to unfair and inefficient screening mechanisms. Genuine claimants are rarely identified, and many become stuck in limbo for years with a slim chance of being resettled. Refugee lawyers have raised concerns over the fairness and efficiency of the current screening regimes, and have put the case before the court. On 26 March 2013, the Court of Final Appeal handed down a judgement calling for the government to screen refugee claims independently rather than primarily relying on UNHCR’s RSD in its decision to deport claimants. With these overlapping regimes, lawyers and refugee advocates have criticised this dual, parallel system as confusing, inefficient, and susceptible to abuse. The existence of two independent but overlapping systems may even “encourage abuse of the process since claimants who avail themselves of both are generally allowed to remain in Hong Kong for longer periods of time” (Loper 2010: 413). Philip Dykes, a representative of the bar association,

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  91 said that “the existing system is stupid and inefficient and a waste of money” (SCMP 2013c). A legislator in Hong Kong also believes that there must be some flaws in our screening procedures in identifying genuine claimants (SCMP 2013c). Without a unified system that would adjudicate all claims for protection, the refugee migrants, according to a refugee lawyer, “can’t be blamed for making sequential claims” (SCMP 2013c). In light of the aforementioned court judgement and persistent pressure from lawyers, scholars, and refugee advocates, the Hong Kong government finally integrated the two systems and implemented USM on 3 March 2014. Administered by the Immigration Department, the USM is a lengthy screening process. By the end of 2017, 5,899 people were seeking protection under this mechanism in Hong Kong. While most refugees have undergone this ritual process for four to five years, some refugees like Alex have been waiting for decisions for over a decade. Resettlement is never automatic, and it can take many years. The waiting becomes almost too painful. Alex described his life in Hong Kong over the past 14 years as being “psychological torture” to him. As time passed, he began to grow anxious. No doubt, the refugees I spoke with are desperate to leave Hong Kong due to the ability to sustain their economic livelihoods being stripped away alongside their self-worth as independent and productive human beings. They all looked very frustrated and helpless whenever I asked for updates on their cases, and some of them even cried in front of me. They expressed that if they had a choice, they were willing to return back to their home countries. However, they have no choice at all due to a high risk that they will be harmed by their respective governments, local ethnic groups, or religious bodies if they return. Alex said, “The life here is terrible. No one wants to become a refugee.” Pressure has mounted on immigration officers in recent years due to the rapid growth of people arriving in Hong Kong and claiming protection, while the authority has turned away as many protection claimants as they reasonably can. Furthermore, the 2017 repatriation exercise generated rumours and anxiety within the refugee community suggesting that this exercise, if adopted as common practice, would imply that larger groups will be simultaneously deported in the near future. Refugees are currently waiting in fear of repatriation. This prolonged feeling of anxiety is more severe among refugees who have family members living in Hong Kong. For example, Fey—an Indonesian woman—came to the office of the Refugee Union with her three-year-old son seeking advice. Her husband is a Pakistani refugee. Both Fey and her husband’s cases were rejected by the Immigration Department. They wanted to appeal, but the Legal Aid Department rejected their applications. Fey was worried that if she was deported, she might never see her husband again. She was hopeless. “They [immigration officers] don’t know about my country. They do nothing, all reject”, she said angrily. She really had no idea what to do next. When speaking about being “sent out”, tears came to her eyes. She said her husband begged the immigration officer, “please let our kids finish kindergarten. Sir, it is ok for you to send us to my

92  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok country or my wife’s country, but please send us together. (She choked) This is the most important. Together—not separated.” Many of the refugees have no courage left, having consumed it all over their long, frightening journeys to a foreign place. They currently remain trapped in limbo, experiencing prolonged immobility. The refugees I spoke with are highly stressed under the screening mechanism because they must undergo enormously complicated bureaucratic procedures and lengthy interviews. “Whenever immigration calls, we need to go to their office immediately. If we are late, they will close the file”, Alice commented. Every time they attended screening interviews, they were re-traumatised because they were repeatedly asked by the officials to explain their stories in detail. Stress accumulated whenever they were challenged by officials who stated their stories lacked credibility. While they are waiting, they are stressed about potentially missing letters or phone calls from the immigration officers; they are scared of being imprisoned if they do something wrong. Moreover, they also worried when there is no news, but they also worried when there is news; for example, Fey received news that her case was rejected. Their lives are full of uncertainty, and they do not know if or when they will be deported. If deported, they have no idea what to do next. The refugees I know have become highly anxious and stressed in their day-to-day lives. Ada from Uganda described her feelings over the past seven years: From the time I came to Hong Kong in January 2011 until now, almost every year, every year, and even every month, I am under stress just because of the screening. Every month I need to sign at immigration. If you don’t sign, you commit a crime. That is another stress. If you forget one day like this, you feel like you are criminal. It affects us psychologically. We can feel it ourselves. And then we also need to go to screenings, go to duty lawyers, go to hearings, juridical reviews, and legal aid. All of these things they are making us too stressed. Whenever we go there, we feel too much stress. It’s as if we committed a crime, and are living a criminal life. We are always living under stress.

Refuge and governmentality in Bangkok Thailand has the largest number of refugees in Southeast Asia. Refugees who reside in the urban part of the country (mainly Bangkok) come from around the world because it has a prosperous tourist industry, and Thailand has relatively easy-to-meet visa requirements. Moreover, Thailand has no domestic laws or even administrative mechanisms that specifically govern the status or the protection of refugees in Bangkok. Although the Royal Thai government adopted a new constitution in 2007 that confers certain rights and freedoms upon people in Thailand, including freedom of movement, freedom of abode, freedom of religion, the right to the process of justice, the right to education, and the right to receive public health services,

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  93 the constitution does not extend to refugees. In Thai legal infrastructure, several domestic laws and regulations govern immigration: the Immigration Act of 1950, as amended by the Immigration Act of 1954 and the Immigration Act of 1979 (“the Immigration Act”); the Alien Registration Acts of 1950, 1952, and 1954; the Nationality Act of 1965, as amended in 1992; the Alien Employment Act of 1978; the 1979 Law on the Categories of Work Not Permitted for Aliens; and the 1979 and 1985 Laws on Employment and Activities in Which Aliens Can Engage. However, refugees are not governed and protected by these laws. Under the Immigration Act of 1979 and other immigration-related legal instruments in Thailand, no reference to the word “refugee” exists because, from the government’s perspective, it would imply Thailand’s accession to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. To avoid the legal implications of the word “refugee”, the word used in official Thai discourse is Pou Opayop ( ไม่พบคำ�), which refers to any individual “who escapes from dangers due to an uprising, fighting or war, and enters the Kingdom in breach of the Immigration Act” (Clause 3, Regulation concerning displaced persons from neighbouring countries, Ministry of Interior, as cited in Muntarbhorn 1992: 8). The term “Phu Lee Phai” (ผ ลู ้ ี ้ภัย) has widely been used to refer to such persons in the public and media. However, because Thailand is not a signatory party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the Thai government still refuses to use the term “refugee” and does not acknowledge such persons as refugees. As such, there is no social welfare provision or human rights protection for those that would normally be entitled to refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention. Within the Immigration Act of 1979, “displaced persons” are classified by immigration terminology as illegal immigrants because they do not possess proper identity documents. This term primarily refers to the people who live in UNHCR refugee camps (i.e. Burmese refugees). The main difference between the two terms is derived from an individual’s date of arrival. Those who arrived in Thailand up to 1979 are considered “displaced persons”, while those who entered after 1979 (with the exception of Cambodian asylum seekers arriving between 1975 and 1979) are considered “illegal immigrants” (Muntarbhorn 1992). Notably, these “displaced persons” enjoy more freedom and are entitled to more protection and welfare services from the Thai government than “illegal immigrants”. However, they are still required to remain in refugee camps within the Thai-Burmese borderland. Section 4 of the Immigration Act of 1979 also defines them as aliens who are not Thai nationals, and lists 11 categories of aliens who are not permitted to enter Thailand. Since the rights of refugees are not protected under existing Thai domestic laws, all refugees in Bangkok are subject to the provisions of the Immigration Act, which state that all non-Thai nationals entering Thailand without permission are considered illegal aliens and are therefore subject to arrest, detention, and deportation. According to Section 12 of the Immigration Act of 1979, the country prohibits the entry of people without

94  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok passports, identification documents, or visas, who do not have means of support to enter Thailand, are not vaccinated, or who are considered to be a danger to the nation. Indeed, refugees fall within one or more of these provisions under Section 12: Having behaviour that would indicate possible danger to the public or likelihood of being a nuisance or constituting any violence to the peace or safety of the public or to the security of the public or to the security of the nation, or being under warrant of arrest by competent officials of foreign governments. Often, refugees have already been arrested by officials in their home countries for political, religious, and ethnicity reasons. Therefore, pursuant to Section 12, they are prohibited from entering Thailand. However, Section 17 of the Act offers the Minister of the Interior discretion, with cabinet approval, to allow illegal aliens—refugees, in this case—to remain in Thailand under special circumstances. “The persons of concern” was a special term used by UNHCR Thailand to address Burmese students who fled to Thailand during the 1990s. According to Huguet and Punpuing (2005: 12), the Thai government uses this term to refer to “urban asylum seekers and refugees because Thai law makes no provision for identifying persons as refugees”. Currently, under the provisions of the Immigration Act, the term “persons of concern to UNHCR” refers to all asylum seekers and refugees in urban areas. The government has given temporary asylum to these people, who are allowed to remain in Bangkok pending resettlement. The frequent amendments to relevant legislations and policies, as well as the language used to denote asylum seekers, are strategies used by the Thai government to restrict or permit the presence of certain racial and ethnic groups, depending on time and political circumstances. Notably, Virag (2002: 1) stated: What is most interesting concerning the process of according refugee status is the political sensitivity with which the Thai government treats individuals and their associated social group in relation to Thai national security. The criterion of time of arrival, country of origin, ethnicity, and the overall manner in which an “asylum seeker” was perceived by the nation was calculated in relation to their political sensitivity. This not only demonstrates the relative nature of how an individual acquired his or her status but also illustrates the significance that the Thai authorities attribute to maintaining national security and sovereignty. In Bangkok, refugees are not legally permitted to work or to receive minimum daily support for their basic living needs. Unlike the government of Hong Kong, the Royal Thai government does not provide any assistance to refugees in Bangkok. Before 2016, those whose refugee status has been recognised by UNHCR Thailand receive a small amount of food and a

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  95 subsistence allowance from the Bangkok Refugee Centre (BRC), an implementing partner of UNHCR Thailand that provides some education, social welfare, health, and vocational training services. A monthly subsistence allowance is the main financial resource for urban refugees in Thailand. Under UNHCR Thailand’s policy, a single refugee is entitled to receive THB 2,000, a couple can receive THB 3,000, a family with one child is given an additional THB 800, and the maximum monthly subsistence allowance for a family is set at THB 7,000. Additionally, monthly pocket cash allowances of THB 250 are offered to refugees and vulnerable asylum seekers in detention and in prisons. However, a new UNHCR humanitarian assistance policy was implemented in 2016. The UNHCR now only helps those refugees recognised as extremely vulnerable in Bangkok. Extremely vulnerable individuals may include female-headed households and single children. Vulnerability is assessed on a case-by-case basis, which is subject to rigorous assessments by the BRC officers. Thailand is a signatory party to various international treaties on human rights, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its First Optional Protocol, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. As such, the Royal Thai government is obliged by the international human rights treaties that “guarantee” the freedom of movement and entry of aspiring refugees who enter as tourists (see Sassen 1996). This obligation restricts the discretion of the Royal Thai government towards migrants, which results in an increasing number of refugees who are able to bypass immigration control and subsequently seek protection in Bangkok. Street arrests and home raids Physical security is one of the key aspects of protection, is critical to human development (see Thomas 2001), and ensures the safety and human dignity of migrants. Physical security should include both objective and subjective elements, including security from the objective loss of property or physical damage along with the fears that hinder social relations in the local community. Notably, many refugees in Bangkok were subject to street arrests and home raids by immigration police followed by indefinite detention despite the fact that they had registered with UNHCR Thailand as asylum seekers and refugees. Not only did they lose their “homes”, but they were also left with major fears about the police. All who register with UNHCR Thailand are given a certificate that indicates to the Thai authorities that they are an asylum seeker under the protection of UNHCR, which should offer the individual some protection. This is the wording that is printed on the certificate: This is to certify that the above-named person, a national of [name of asylum seeker’s country of origin], is an asylum seeker whose claim for refugee status is being examined by the Office of the United Nations

96  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok High Commissioner for Refugees. As an asylum seeker, (s)he is a person of concern to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees and should, in particular, be protected from forcible return to a country where (s)he claims to face threats to her life or freedom, pending a final decision on her refugee status. Any assistance accorded to the above-named individual would be most appreciated. On the certificate for recognised refugees, there is a similar wording. It reads: This is to certify that the above-named person has been recognised as a refugee by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, pursuant to its mandate. As a refugee, (s)he is a person of concern to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and should, in particular, be protected from forcible return to a country where (s)he would face threats to his life or freedom. Any assistance accorded to the above-named individual would be most appreciated. However, in many cases, the authorities in Bangkok do not respect such documents because, in Thailand, there is no legal framework that offers or recognises documents for refugees. As such, this group of “unwanted” and “illegal” immigrants is subject to arrest on the streets and in their homes. Vijavat Isarabhakdi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that the increasing number of urban refugees “is a big problem for us” (Human Rights Watch 2012: 99). Law enforcement officers, such as immigration police, have little flexibility in dealing with the problem because Thai law does not acknowledge urban refugees and basically treats them as illegal. Vijavat Isarabhakdi added, “The authorities feel that they have to abide by the immigration law. They need to carry out arrests. Otherwise, they would be neglecting their duties” (Human Rights Watch 2012: 99). Immigration police conduct raids and arrests on refugees in their homes, often violating rights in the process. From January to December of 2013, there were five incidences of arrest, and the immigration police raided the domiciles of 125 refugees and asylum seekers who were then transferred to a detention centre. Kelvin, a Sri Lankan refugee who had been staying in Bangkok since 2009, described his experience with the immigration police as follows: I usually stay at home because I am afraid of the threat of police arrest. I was checked by police a couple of time when I finished shopping at Big C Supermarket nearby. I remember one time the police asked for my ID but I forgot to bring my UNHCR paper on that day. I then asked the police officer to follow me back home. When the police arrived in my place, the police officer not only checked my ID, they also checked my auntie. We stayed together. After checking our papers, the officer asked, “You all are refugees?” I said yes. We were safe at that time because the

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  97 police only checked our IDs, not asking for money or arresting us. But a week later, the same police officers knocked on the door. This time, they checked not only our IDs, but they also asked for THB 5,000! We told them about our poor situation that we did not have any money left. But the officers insisted. I therefore gave him THB 500. They left with unhappy faces. Security is an important concern among the refugee community in Bangkok. Within this structural environment, refugees must employ various tactics to avoid police arrest. Meg, another Sri Lankan refugee, had been living in Thailand since 2009. Meg’s room was located on the third floor of a building. In order not to be arrested by the police, Meg left his shoes on the balcony next to his room door. He said this was a strategy used to avoid raising the suspicions of police officers. Police officers usually knocked on the doors of residential buildings to conduct identity checks early in the morning (approximately 7:00 to 8:00 a.m.). If police officers found shoes left outside the door, it meant there was somebody inside the room. In addition to placing their shoes away from the doors to their rooms, the refugees had to remain silent inside their rooms when the police officers knocked heavily on their doors. Sometimes, co-ethnics living in the same neighbourhood notified others about the presence of the police. One Sri Lankan refugee told me that one time when the police were checking in his living block, he was so scared that he jumped out from the balcony on the second floor and escaped, breaking his arm in the process. Immigration detention centres as spaces of exception Refugees in Bangkok who are swept up in raids or unable to pay fines and/or bribes when they are apprehended on the streets by the immigration police are very likely to be sent to Immigration Detention Centres (IDCs) as “punishment” for their “illegal” stays. Pursuant to Section 55 of the Immigration Act of 1979, people who come from countries that do not border Thailand can spend years in indefinite detention in an IDC until they are able to pay for the expense of their own deportation. In 2011, 385 persons were arrested and transferred to an IDC, and 177 persons were bailed out from IDCs with assistance from NGOs (UNHCR 2012b). As of 31 August 2012, 53 refugees and asylum seekers, including 15 children, were in detention (UNHCR 2012a). According to Section 62 of the Immigration Act of 1979, anyone who enters Thailand without authorisation “shall be punished by an imprisonment not exceeding two years and a fine not exceeding 20,000 Baht [approximately US$600]”. Section 81 of the same act also states that any foreigner who “stays in the Kingdom without permission or with permission expired or revoked shall be punished with imprisonment not exceeding two years or a fine not exceeding 20,000 Baht, or both”. Thailand has also signed various international treaties on human rights issues, such as the

98  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its First Optional Protocol, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention on the Political Rights of Women, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. From a human rights perspective, Thailand should extend its obligation under all of these treaties to all persons within Thai jurisdiction, including asylum seekers and refugees. There is no doubt that refugees are also human beings who are entitled to the same rights and freedoms as the citizens of the host country, and their rights should be properly protected by the Royal Thai government. However, Thailand has inconsistently implemented the provisions that have been ratified in these treaties through its domestic legislation. The Royal Thai government prefers to use its discretion to manage refugees. In one particular study, Collewet (2012) argued that the conditions of detention in an IDC amount to inhuman and degrading treatment, which is compounded by potential breaches of international law relating to arbitrary detention and indefinite detention. I asked Susi, a Sri Lankan refugee who was locked in the centre with her family members for one year, about the condition of the IDC. Susi shook her head and waved her hands immediately. “Oh! No. It’s terrible!” she exclaimed. Susi said she stayed with approximately 400 people in a small detention room. All of the detainees had to sit and sleep on the floor. Because the room was packed, arguments and fighting often broke out. During these arguments, some detainees threw daily items and food at each other. Susi was scared, so she kept silent all of the time. During the day, she played with the children or read books in the room. Sometimes, she went to the common room to watch TV. When they had appointments with psychologists or lawyers in the detention centre, all of the detainees had to wear orange T-shirts imprinted with the Thai words (ผ ต ู ้ อ้ งกัก), which means “Person who must be detained”. This orange T-shirt arrangement was introduced to distinguish between visitors and detainees after a detainee escaped from an IDC three years ago. Indefinite detention without trial is an obvious breach of human rights treaties, which the Thai authorities are obligated to uphold. Due to poor detention conditions and the crucial language barrier (many detainees cannot speak Thai or even English), some refugee detainees died in IDCs. Susi said that she stayed in a room where a woman detainee lay on the floor for an entire day. This woman could speak neither English nor Thai. Susi determined that this woman did not look well, and spoke to the guard in English to ask for medical assistance. Once the doctor arrived, Susi held the female detainee’s body up to help the doctor conduct a medical examination. The doctor then told Susi that she could not hear a heartbeat anymore. Susi was shocked. “She was not breathing! It was my first time holding a dead body in my hands! This is an unforgettable and

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  99 bad experience”, she told me in a shaking voice. The reason for poor conditions among IDCs is suggested in Section 54 of the Immigration Act of 1979, which states “the expense of detention shall be charged to the alien’s account”. This interpretation indicates that it is the detainees’ responsibility and not the government’s to meet their basic needs in a detention centre. In her analysis of the limbo of indefinite detention, Butler (2004) made reference to Foucault’s assertion that “governmentality” serves to vitalise the state with diffuse formations of power that grant it the power to intervene in the daily lives of citizens. The state can thus exercise its power of sovereignty and governance through “petty sovereigns” at the local level. In Bangkok, the “petty sovereigns” in this case are immigration police, who enact territorial sovereignties through documentary practices, resulting in refugees encountering unpredictable disciplinary powers. When they are swept up in raids or unable to pay fines and/or bribes when apprehended in the streets, they are sent to an IDC for indefinite detention. Inside the detention centre, refugee detainees are not only placed under the full control of immigration, but also subjected to poor living conditions. This can be understood as a space of exception (Fassin 2001) where the regimes of governance override the regimes of human rights. According to one refugee in Bangkok, the bail amount ranged from THB 50,000 to THB 100,000, which was obviously unaffordable to asylum seekers and refugees. Many of the detainees had to seek financial help from businessmen or religious organisations to pay their bail to be released from detention. Unlike the asylum-seeking arrangements in Hong Kong, refugees in Bangkok are only required to surrender to Thailand’s Immigration Bureau once their resettlement dates have been confirmed by UNHCR Thailand. Approximately one week prior to their departure for resettlement, the refugees must surrender to the Thai Immigration Bureau. They will be detained and then summoned to court for their illegal stays. They must then pay an overstay fine before being released. The UNHCR screening mechanism: uncertainty is the certainty In Bangkok, UNHCR Thailand administers the RSD mechanism according to the RSD Handbook, first issued in September 1979 in response to the request of the member states of the Executive Committee of the High Commissioner’s Programme, which provided information concerning accessions to the international refugee instruments. The handbook is intended to guide UNHCR staff in applying the definition of a refugee. In addition to the RSD Handbook, the UNHCR issued guidelines and codes of practice for staff to follow when conducting RSDs at local offices worldwide. In September 2005, the UNHCR published the RSD Procedural Standards. These standards had been issued internally to UNHCR field offices in 2003. Each UNHCR local office is responsible for developing operating procedures to implement these standards, which represent the most authoritative and comprehensive policy statement by the UN refugee agency regarding its own RSD procedures.

100  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok Each local UNHCR office is responsible for implementing the procedures to ensure the quality and efficiency of its own RSD processes. Unit 1 of the RSD Procedural Standards identifies several core standards of due process for the RSD mandate. These include access to UNHCR staff and RSD procedures; identification of and assistance to vulnerable asylum seekers; non-discriminatory, transparent, and fair procedures; the timely and efficient processing of applications; the hiring of qualified and supervised staff; organisation-wide consistency on procedures that define substantive rights throughout the RSD process; and policy consistency. In principle, UNHCR field offices should follow these core standards when conducting registration, screening, and appeal processes. The registration interview reviews the claimants’ basic information, biographical information, reason for leaving their country, and reason(s) why they cannot return. The UNHCR uses the information provided during the registration interview to prepare questions for the RSD interview, to determine whether the client meets the refugee definition and whether the client is being truthful. The claimants will then be called to attend RSD interviews with an eligibility officer. The interview aims to gather detailed information about the claimants, their reason for leaving their country, and the reason(s) why they cannot return. Even if the claimants have already discussed these issues during the registration interview, they may be asked to discuss them again in greater detail during RSD interviews. Their personal narrative is evaluated in relation to the larger political context from which the protection claim emerged, such as the human rights situation in the country of origin. At the heart of the interview is a comprehensive effort to determine credibility and consistency. The RSD Handbook, paragraph 205, stipulates the following: 205 (b) (iii) the examiner should assess the applicant’s credibility and evaluate the evidence (if necessary giving the applicant the benefit of the doubt), in order to establish the objective and the subjective elements of the case. After the interview, the eligibility officer completes the RSD assessment form, and the officer—usually a protection officer who does not conduct the RSD interview with the claimants—reviews the quality of the submission with reference to various internal UNHCR materials and documents. The nature of the human rights violation and whether it satisfies the definition of a refugee according to the 1951 Refugee Convention determine whether the UNHCR accepts or rejects the case. The claimants then receive a written notification of the RSD decision. The files of the newly recognised refugees will then be transferred to the resettlement unit at the UNHCR. Rejected claimants can file appeals of the decisions, and an appeal interview may be scheduled. The claimants will again be notified of the appeal results in writing. Cases of claimants who are rejected on appeal will be referred to the procedures for file closure. These files can only be reopened with reliable

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  101 evidence of a significant change in the personal circumstances of the claimants or if the UNHCR receives reliable and new material evidence indicating that the claim may have been improperly decided. As Unit 4.3.3 of the RSD Procedural Standard clearly states, “applicants may be accompanied by a legal representative during the RSD interview” (UNHCR 2005: 4–7). Additionally, in the training module on conducting interviews, the UNHCR states that “the presence of a legal representative or other counsel who is familiar with the refugee criteria and local jurisprudence and the applicant’s claim, is helpful not only to the applicant but also to the interviewer” (UNHCR 1995: Chapter 2). In Bangkok, no one who had an RSD interview with a UNHCR eligibility officer had the right to legal representation, to review the documents collected by the eligibility officers, or to review information on the asylum seekers’ files that were used in making a decision. The refugees must wait for weeks, months, and even years without an answer from UNHCR Thailand. If the refugee’s RSD claim is unsuccessful, the individual receives a standard rejection letter indicating that the case had been rejected because the claimant did not fulfil the criteria as a refugee pursuant to the 1951 Refugee Convention, either because of a lack of credibility or inconsistent information. In Unit 6.2 of the RSD Procedural Standard, it states that the notification of a negative RSD decision letter should include “the reason why the accepted facts do not make the Applicant eligible for refugee status” (UNHCR 2005: Chapter 6). Both as a caseworker and during the course of my fieldwork, I encountered numerous rejected cases. I observed the practices of the UNHCR in providing reasons for a rejection, and there was an absence of substantive and reasonable explanations. For instance, the reason for rejection in one case was a lack of consistency. The letter stated: The information you provided on relevant and important points of your claim is not consistent. In the first interview, you mentioned the colour of the refrigerator being blue. However, in the second interview, you said the refrigerator was green. In another case, the UNHCR rejected the claim by stating simply, “this case does not amount to a well-founded fear of being persecuted.” For the refugees in Bangkok, the lack of substantive explanations effectively ruled out the possibility of identifying inappropriate steps that had been taken and filing appeals on strong and persuasive grounds. Many of them remained confused about the specific reasons for their rejection and the screening process in general. One Sri Lankan refugee angrily said, “What a funny organisation. They reject my case with only one sentence by saying my case does not amount to well-founded fear of being persecuted!” In most cases, when rejecting claims on the grounds of lacking credibility or information consistency, a reason was not provided to refugees in their interviews, nor were they given any opportunity to respond. This is a clear breach of both

102  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok the RSD Procedural Standards and common notions of procedural fairness, natural justice, and due process. In paragraph 199, the RSD Handbook states: While an initial interview should normally suffice to bring an applicant’s story to light, it may be necessary for the examiner to clarify any apparent inconsistencies and to resolve any contradictions in a further interview, and to find an explanation for any misrepresentation or concealment of material facts. Untrue statements by themselves are not a reason for refusal of refugee status and it is the examiner’s responsibility to evaluate such statements in the light of all the circumstances of the case. Johnny showed me his UNHCR Notification of Reasons for Decision letter. The UNHCR rejected his case on credibility concerns, stating: You did not provide sufficient details of your claimed nationality and place of origin to establish that you are a national of Somalia and resident of Mogadishu. Moreover, your statements in relation to the incidents with Al-Shabaab, which you described during the interview, were vague and lacked specific detailed information. Johnny, a Somali refugee, had no legal assistance to prepare for the interview, and had no previous experience in an interview setting. In his RSD interview, Johnny established that he is a Somali by providing as much information as he could about his home town. Although his petition was rejected based on the lack of credibility of his Somali identity as well as his residency in Mogadishu, neither of these concerns were noted during the interview process, nor was he given an opportunity to respond. Critically, UNHCR officers often conduct screenings and assess cases without proper reference to the RSD Handbooks or RSD Procedural Standards. One crucial problem here is that the UNHCR often uses information from confidential sources, such as reports from protection officers in the asylum seeker’s country of origin. Notably, the UNHCR does not allow outsiders access to these internal reports. However, many refugee claims are rejected on the basis of these internal UNHCR documents, which are inconsistent with publicly available materials prepared by human rights organisations and governments. To put this into perspective, this pattern has been observed for approximately two-thirds of appeal cases filed by Sri Lankan asylum seekers that were rejected by UNHCR Thailand between January and May 2012. It appears that UNHCR Thailand rejected their appeals by referring to UNHCR reports, which stated that human rights conditions in Sri Lanka had improved and conflicts between LTTE and the Sri Lankan Army had stopped. However, numerous reputable country of origin information reports—including those of the United Kingdom Home Office and Human Rights Watch—argued that human rights conditions in Sri Lanka

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  103 remained unfavourable to former LTTE members. Moreover, refugee lawyers and UNHCR personnel conduct country of origin information searches through RefWorld, which is a database produced by UNHCR’s Centre for Documentation and Research. This database contains massive amounts of information that is useful for RSDs, such as current country reports, national legislations and case laws, and UN resolutions and reports. While the UNHCR makes this database publicly available, there are two versions of RefWorld—one for internal use containing protection reports and internal UNHCR documents, and one available to the public. This scenario raises the following important question: how can negative RSD decisions made by the UNHCR be challenged if the background information is not made available? In Bangkok, UNHCR screening is definitely a lengthy process. After refugees register themselves at the UNHCR Thailand office, officials do not conduct first instance interviews with them within a short time span. Rather, many of them are scheduled for interviews two years after registration. While they wait, refugees must rely on themselves, always hiding, knowing that if they were picked up by the immigration police without papers they might be detained or deported. Also, they all understand that they may have to wait—perhaps for years—for UNHCR screening interviews and decisions. Meg, a Sri Lankan refugee, accepted that he would find no work other than some occasional days as a volunteer in different social organisations where he received some transportation subsidies. As a refugee in Bangkok with no papers, he could not officially work. Over the years, he concentrated on one thing: resettlement. However, as time passed, refugees like Meg always began to grow anxious. Meg is a recognised refugee, but he had already waited for over four years for his promised resettlement in the West. Many of them suffered from serious mental health illnesses such as depression. Some cannot sleep properly without taking sleeping pills. It has become the norm for many of these individuals to become stuck in Bangkok, where they are recognised, protected, or accepted refugees. The Royal Thai government may never sign on to the Refugee Convention. However, it does not make refugees disappear. The human rights issues concerning their everyday livelihoods prevail, such as no right to employment. In January 2017, the Thai Cabinet proposed the establishment of a national screening mechanism that would cover urban refugees and provide them with the right to work during the screening process. Although it has not yet been approved and enacted in domestic law, this proposal demonstrates that there has been a change in the Royal Thai government’s attitudes towards the asylum-seeking issue.

The categorisation, identity, and marginalisation of refugees The category of “refugee” refers to individuals who are claiming asylum in a host society. Seeking protection means establishing a formal relationship with the host government, in which an identity needs to be reformulated

104  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok in order to fit with both local and international legal definitions (Ordóñez 2008). The host government plays an important role in the migrant categorisation and identification process, as local immigration policies shape not only who are welcomed, but also the quality of life experienced by migrants. However, when the authorities of the host society tighten policies aimed at monitoring, controlling, and curbing certain forms of migration, this creates a hierarchy of migrant desirability. As a result, different categories of migrants are granted different degrees of freedom and entitlement. For the refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok, their lives and experiences are certainly dependent on their “illegal” migration status. Thus, the question of refugees in both places can be framed and examined under the theme of exclusion and marginalisation. Furthermore, the marginalised existence of refugees in both places is defined by the immigration policies that curtail levels of self-determination and categorise them as “illegal” immigrants. Identification and categorisation is a matter of meaning, and meaning always involves interaction (Jenkins 2004: 4): “they” can only be identified as refugees in relation to “us” as “citizens”. Moreover, similarity and difference are central elements in this relational model of identity and categorisation. Jenkins (2004: 23) suggests a way to understand identity as “the dialectical interplay of processes of external ascription and internal self-definition”. This highlights the codifying nature of categorisation, as developed by authoritative institutions (i.e. the host government as the identifier who has the material and symbolic resources to impose categories) (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). In the case of refugees, their lack of legal immigration status makes them subject to the structural processes of segregation that result in alienation. In Hong Kong and Bangkok, refugees are framed as a special category of people with special problems requiring special solutions. This is manifested in detention arrangements that involve mandatory detention, home raids, and street arrests. The conditions of temporary stay are poor, and many of them are forced to live in dilapidated shelters or buildings. Additionally, their mobility is closely monitored and restricted via mechanisms of regular reporting to immigration and UNHCR offices as well as home visits from refugee service caseworkers. Employment is strictly prohibited, and a separate humanitarian system (i.e. subsistence allowances and food provisions) is in place, which limits food consumption levels and participation in social life. From the governments’ perspectives, these policies and arrangements are legitimised as appropriate and rational responses to the “burden” of unwanted migration. Although the Hong Kong government started to take up the screening procedures under the USM in 2014, the authority explicitly stated that people recognised under persecution grounds according to the definition of the 1951 Refugee Convention will not be granted refugee status: The commencement of the USM does not affect the HKSAR Government’s position that the Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol have

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  105 never been applied to Hong Kong and our firm policy of not determining the refugee status of or granting asylum to anyone. (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government 2014) Following the implementation of the USM, when the Hong Kong government addresses asylum-seeking issues in official documents, they always begin with this background information: The United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (the Refugee Convention) has never been applied to Hong Kong. The Government has always maintained a firm policy of not granting asylum and not determining or recognising refugee status of anyone. Claimants who lodged a non-refoulement claim to resist removal from Hong Kong will not be treated as “refugees” or “asylum seekers”. Regardless of the outcome of their non-refoulement claim, their immigration status as illegal immigrants/overstayers will not change; they are not permitted to reside in Hong Kong. (Legislative Council 2017) The official homogenisations of refugees as “illegal immigrants” or “overstayers” in Hong Kong and Bangkok reinforce the misunderstandings of their special status shared by the local population, thereby justifying their marginalisation. This negatively alters the social world of refugees and their experience of living in it (Jenkins 1994). Moreover, it highlights the power of others to shape their everyday experiences via classificatory systems of differentiation. Migrants always represent a challenge to the myth of the nation-state, with its obscure borders, national sovereignty, and notions of identity and belonging. The “illegal” status of refugees in both places means that ethical responsibilities towards this group of people come to be further overshadowed by the perceived threat that “they” now pose to “our” sense of identity. By using this perspective of similarity and difference, refugees are considered an abnormality, drifting but not belonging (Malkki 1995). Since refugees have come to be viewed as a threat to the national order of things (Malkki 1995), their existence and identity becomes unwelcomed and undesirable in the host societies, feeding into the discourse of “deserving” and “undeserving” of the Hong Kong and Thai governments. The categorisations of refugee are mostly constructed in this manner, which pertains to protecting “our” interests and needs over “theirs” (Kushner 2003). In the context of asylum-seeking in Hong Kong and Bangkok, the categorisations of refugee are indisputably disempowering.

Anxiety as tactic for refugee governance What is happening to refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok today is also occurring in different hosting societies worldwide. As the global economy

106  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok undergoes a process of globalisation and cross-border movements of people are increasingly less restricted, the governments of refugee-receiving societies are suffused with anxiety. The host governments, according to Bauman (2000), need to blame someone for the fragmentation, dislocation, and insecurity of late modernity. More often than not, this blame is targeted at the stranger next door (Bauman 2000: 8), notably the refugees, who are always viewed as a threat to the national interest and security. In forced migration, while anxiety is often perceived as an individual problem facing refugees, I argue that anxiety should be understood in two ways: (1) anxiety as a symptom of displacement and uncertain future in an increasingly chronic global political order, and (2) anxiety as a tactic of governance by the authorities to ensure compliance. At the turn of the 21st century, it seems that our global social and political reality has entered an “era of anxiety”—especially after the 9/11 attack—either in the form of what Zizek (2010) calls “living in the end times”, or as a discourse of exception where various political measures are implemented to battle external threats, such as US President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim attitudes and fears. Anxiety is a fundamental condition of our political and social existence. Highly unstable and allegedly insecure times escalate public anxiety, which is then turned into a governing strategy through various forms of control and governance. As previously mentioned, security and economic stability have become key concerns in political discourse in Hong Kong and Bangkok regarding refugee migration, and are often used as a justification for making different political decisions in order to halt refugee inflows. For example, at a press conference after his 2016 Policy Address, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung ChunYing said, “Hong Kong will unilaterally withdraw from an international convention on torture if it is needed” (SCMP 2016). This proposed policy aimed to address the problem of “fake refugees” in the city, who were allegedly abusing the system. Some pro-government legislative councillors also suggested that the government should place refugees in a closed camp to deter “fake” refugees. The Security Bureau of HKSAR government explicitly stated that security and economic stability are their major concerns when dealing with refugee issues: The situation of Hong Kong is unique comparing to many other countries or places in the world. Being a small city with a very dense population, a relatively long coastline, a well-developed transportation network, a good economy with ample job opportunities, and a need to maintain a liberal visa regime to facilitate genuine visitors, Hong Kong is particularly vulnerable to the ill-effects of illegal immigrants who purport to come and stay here for economic reasons. There are plenty past and current examples that human smuggling syndicates will take advantage of any sign, however tenuous, of potential relaxation in the HKSAR’s attitude towards illegal immigrants to mislead would-be migrants into believing that they may seek to enter and remain here. We

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  107 do not see any change to the circumstances of Hong Kong that justify a departure from our position of not applying the Refugee Convention to Hong Kong. (HKSAR Government 2015) By referring to refugees as “illegal immigrants”, the Hong Kong government is blaming the intrusion of this group of unwanted migrants who are all abusing the system, while also hiding the complex reasons why refugees set out on these journeys in the first place. It encourages Hong Kong people to view refugees with suspicion, rather than as people in desperate need of protection. Consequently, it intensifies the anxiety of the Hong Kong people towards this group of migrants. Most importantly, it serves the government’s political interests to use the term “illegal immigrants”, relinquishing it from obligations under the international human rights law. In Bangkok, the Thai government attempts to create a dreadfully anxious environment in order to deter potential refugees from coming to the city, while forcing those who cannot cope with a painful life in Bangkok to return to their country of origin. Refugees in Bangkok are seen as external threats that endanger national security. In order to protect themselves from what it perceives as external threats, the Thai government undermines refugee protection. For example, their policies include no financial or food assistance to refugees, while current legalisation promotes street arrests, home raids, and indefinite detention for those who are unable to produce valid visas or ID cards during checks by immigration police. As a result, these refugees all live in a state of fear and uncertainty. Anxiety plays a vital role in both the policy formation and implementation processes. Not only are policies and asylum-seeking arrangements implemented from the top-down, but, often, there exists a desire among the local populations to exclude and marginalise refugees, who are considered threats to local neighbourhoods. This mindset is commonly achieved by using various stereotypes to negatively portray the image of refugees in cities through various local media channels. For example, local news reports described refugees as “bogus refugees” who are not victims of persecution rather economic migrants. Refugees have also been labelled as notorious criminals, a threat to social security, and a financial burden society. Some local news reports described refugees as a “bogus refugee army”, “South Asian Corps”, “a cancer”, “a refugee harbour”, and “sin city” to exaggerate their number and danger to society. Moreover, refugees are often regarded as the culprits for all manner of crimes, from robbery to drug dealing, to sexual assault. The deliberate anti-refugee discourse chosen by the Hong Kong and Thai governments is one that feeds negative media portrayal, dangerous stereotyping, and intolerance. In the context of asylum-seeking, the governments of Hong Kong and Bangkok act as an “anxiety apparatus”, since the rejection of recognising refugee status under the international law alongside pressures enacted to deter potential refugees, increasing immigration detention and repatriation, and

108  Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok the implementation of prolonged screening and resettlement mechanisms have arguably contributed to a gradually anxious landscape in which to seek asylum. In addition to the everyday life pressures facing the refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok—such as employment, finance, and ­education— prolonged displacement presents particular challenges for them, including fear, uncertainty, and a feeling of powerlessness—all of which contribute to a fatalistic attitude among refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok regarding whether justice is available to them. Anxiety was one of the significant themes to emerge from the interviews. Prolonged anxiety appeared to be a symptom of asylum-seeking journeys within the context of increasingly restrictive immigration and resettlement controls. Due to the low substantiation rate, the refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok felt hopeless regarding their chances of successful resettlement. Many refugees even expressed that, in the worst-case scenario, they would unwillingly return to their home countries, as they faced little choice in Hong Kong or Bangkok. The major reason for this was that they could no longer bear the poor situation they were experiencing. One refugee from Uganda said: I’m not valued like a person who has value in the community or in a society. I feel…like I don’t fit in the community, the society. I feel I am discriminated against. I feel generally like an outsider, that there’s discrimination towards asylum seekers in areas, different areas. Different areas—I can’t mention everything. So that’s it. And I feel…If I am given a chance to ask what I need, I can…I can put forward what I need for my life. I can say what I need for my life in that case…Even if they listen. Even if they listen, what will they—what are they going to do? It is nothing…. However, the refugees all appeared anxious when talking about returning home. Their preflight experiences made them extremely worried about their safety if they ever returned. For those refugees who decided to stay in Hong Kong or Bangkok, prolonged anxiety has led to the feeling of subordination and stress in their everyday lives, and—in some serious cases—mental health problems. Ironically, anxiety can be seen as a symptom of displacement in an increasingly unstable global environment, which influences the psychological conditions of refugees on an individual basis. What emerged among the refugees was a kind of anticipation based on uncertainty: an engagement with the future structured around worst-case scenarios, based on questions such as: what if I am arrested? What if I am detained? What if I am separated from my family? What if I am deported? On the other hand, anxiety can be understood as a method of refugee governance. Refugees governing themselves through their responses to anxieties and uncertainties point to how the construction of a refugee subject is predicated upon anxiety. Anxiety can be conceptualised as a tactic of governance: fuelling compliance, striving for “good” performance in the bureaucratic procedures,

Governing refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok  109 and the creation of obedient refugee subjects. Thus, anxiety becomes a strategy of governance as well as a strategy of self-governing. This subtle governance put refugees in uncertain and insecure positions, and they subsequently behave themselves. Refugees are often negatively viewed and discriminated against. Their subordinated social position coupled with their lack of immigration status in the host society makes it difficult to access formal official support networks. Instead, they must develop their own networks and work harder to access channels of support by drawing heavily on individual and collective resources. Although this group of “unwanted” migrants in Hong Kong and Bangkok occupies a liminal space, their loss of agency can be helped by a political reaction, whereby refugees become social actors who are conscious of their state and act consciously. According to Arendt (1978), conscious actors are individuals who intend to bring about action, an idea that has been further discussed in the literature on ethnic and diasporic consciousness (Portes 2000). In the analysis of refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok, consciousness is a property of their social relations, and is formed around an understanding of the social distance that separates refugees from the dominant local population (see Castles and Davidson 2000). As discussed in this chapter, the governments’ restrictive immigration policies and asylum-­ seeking arrangements have brought refugees together in the collective experience of marginalisation. However, it is this collective self-understanding of this marginal existence that develops into a collective solidarity, embodied in the form of refugee diasporic communities. These communities offer a wide range of services, information, and support, as well as sociocultural spaces for refugees to come together within the host society. As the next chapter will show, the structural forces that challenge the legitimacy of refugee presence have resulted in the development of a refugee consciousness that, to a certain extent, becomes socially empowering and transformative. Central to this refugee consciousness in asylum-seeking journeys is a readiness to engage in building networks and communities that may help to rebuild life and negotiate “home” in prolonged displacement conditions.

5 Prolonged displacement and negotiating “home” in Hong Kong

Susanna, an Indian refugee, was praying in the hall alone when I arrived at the church. I sat down next to her. She opened her eyes and remained silent for a couple of minutes. She looked nervous. As I tried to make sure she was fine, I threw in some friendly talk: “How are you sister? Are you alright?” She was biting her lips. Her voice trembled as she spoke, “Not good. I am scared because I need to go to immigration this afternoon.” She told me that she cried a number of times at home that morning because she had a strong feeling that the immigration department would close her case this time and send her back to India soon. “Lack of credibility” was stamped onto her file as a reason for rejection. She was on appeal, waiting for the decision. The anxious feeling was not new to her over the past ten years. As time had passed, she began to grow increasingly anxious about her future. However, she knew that she needed to manage her emotions well. Therefore, she came to the church once a week and talked to pastors, her friends, and most importantly made prayers to God. “I am feeling a bit better now after praying, but I am still scared. Can you go with me?” Susanna asked. On our way to the immigration department, Susanna got lost even though she had been to the office many times. “I am so confused now. We need to be there on time. What should we do?” she asked. Many times, she heard from her refugee friends that if they were late for an appointment, their cases would be closed. I then immediately comforted her by showing her the correct direction to the office. We arrived at the office on time. After a short waiting period, the immigration assistant led our way to the interview room where Susanna was given a consent form regarding a psychiatric check-up that she agreed that the immigration department could pass on to the health department. The interpreter explained the content of the consent form to Susanna in Urdu. Susanna looked serious and respectful to both the immigration assistant and the interpreter. She consistently replied to the interpreter, saying “understood” in Urdu and “yes sir” in English to the immigration assistant. We left the office after Susanna signed the form. Susanna looked relieved after the meeting. In the lift lobby, Susanna bumped into her Indian refugee friend who was weeping in a corner. Susanna talked to her in Urdu

Home in Hong Kong  111 for a while. They hugged each other before saying farewell. Later, Susanna told me that her friend’s case was closed after several attempts for appeal. Susanna felt sad because, ten years ago, it was this woman who helped Susanna make new friends in Hong Kong. Not only that, the same woman was a source of information for most of the informal work Susanna performed over the years. Her friend’s case did not faze Susanna, she told me, because she knew her God would protect her. “Hong Kong is a very peaceful place to stay. I really thank God bringing me to Hong Kong, though it is not easy to live here” she added. After numerous years spent in Hong Kong, alongside increasingly restrictive resettlement requirements by Western society, refugees like Susanna believed it was now more difficult than ever to make a successful exit to third-country resettlement. Based on her ten-year journey in Hong Kong, Susanna concluded that she hoped to stay in a place that could ensure her safety and security. This chapter explores the context of asylum-seeking journeys in Hong Kong. In particular, it examines how refugees like Susanna navigate their lives in prolonged displacement, and how their life plan is shaped and reshaped by their everyday life encounters. As I will demonstrate, the sociopsychological realm is an important characteristic of the asylum-seeking journey (e.g. cultural and mental characteristics). The journey in a host society such as Hong Kong includes the crossing of cultural zones unfamiliar to the refugees, which impose a significant impact on individuals’ well-being. This is because “alienation” is clearly highlighted in their everyday life encounters with the local population, which may reinforce feelings of fear and insecurity. Susanna’s story clearly illustrated that struggling to survive in a foreign place for an extended period of time without legal status could generate mental problem. In the following pages, I hope to highlight the ways that refugees cope with and negotiate the uncertainties of their journeys through honing in on survival skills and minimising feelings of fear and frustration while remaining “stuck” in Hong Kong. As Benezer and Zetter (2014: 306) have observed, “arrival at their first destination is not necessary the end of their journey.” Many refugees have spent years trapped in Hong Kong with a slim chance of third-country resettlement, and answering questions concerning the physical end of their journeys is the ultimate goal of this chapter. The physical end of the journeys I discuss here primarily concerns what can be described as “home” to refugees who are in prolonged displacement. Specifically, my aim is to shed light on their re-evaluation of the experience of asylum-seeking journeys that occur when expectations do not meet reality.

A stranded journey in Hong Kong Currently, many refugees worldwide find themselves in prolonged displacement. One of the tragedies of many such prolonged displacements is that

112  Home in Hong Kong refugees are often trapped in urban cities for an extended period of time without the right to work, or lack access to education and good-quality healthcare. In Hong Kong, for example, refugees move from their homelands to this host society without the right to work, and they receive very minimal protection and formal assistance. The UNHCR has been working hard to find durable solutions, such as voluntarily return, resettlement, and integration for refugees on their asylum-seeking journeys. However, the trend I see emerging in the daily lived experiences of refugees is a “stranded journey” that can be defined by a number of distinct elements. Namely, the prolonged processing times of protection claims contribute to the marginalisation and subordination of refugees, who are already excluded from economic and social participation. In their everyday lives, refugees must negotiate the possibility of deportation and the anxiety this reality brings. Their dependence on a limited humanitarian system not only limits their choice of living conditions and food consumption, but also—through rental allowances being transferred directly to local landlords and food assistance being provided in voucher form—brings their “illegal” immigration status directly into the public domain, which has led to exploitation, abuse, and discrimination for many over an extended period of time. In this difficult context, refugees must manage their own emotions in everyday life encounters. Asylum-seeking journeys are particularly significant in the life experience of refugees, and their arrival at Hong Kong certainly does not mark the end of their respective journeys. Neither integration nor resettlement programmes have brought durable solutions to refugee predicaments in Hong Kong, but have instead resulted in a period of prolonged displacement and liminality in the majority of cases. However, this stranded journey is not an empty act suspended in space and time between homeland and the resettlement country. Instead, it is highly materialised, networked, and emotional undertaking. As I will demonstrate in this chapter, refugees are social agents who not only move within their social environments, but are also shaped by the ways in which the social environment moves them. With regard to Hong Kong overall, various sites exist with a high concentration of refugees and ethnic minorities, which—when combined—form the social world of local refugees. Such sites include Chungking Mansions and Sham Shui Po. These are, as I will discuss in the following pages, “the sites of the stranded world”, where refugees navigate and negotiate challenges as well as opportunities in an effort to move towards viable futures while experiencing prolonged displacement. Chungking Mansions Chungking Mansions is located on Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon), which is Hong Kong’s major business and tourist district. First opened in 1962, this dilapidated 17-storey structure is filled with cheap guesthouses, retail and wholesale businesses, and restaurants (see Figures 5.1–5.3).

Home in Hong Kong  113 In his study, Mathews (2007: 169–170) described the complex functions of Chungking Mansions as follows: There are some 90 guesthouses and 380 businesses in the building, including food stands, sellers of mobile phones, watches, electronic items, clothing, and many other goods sold retail and wholesale. Approximately 4,000 people on any given night stay in the building, a cramped area of 100 meters squared, rising 17 stories. Probably 10,000 people pass through Chungking Mansions each day from over a hundred countries. Entrepreneurs and temporary workers go there seeking business opportunities, and tourists from across the globe seek cheap rooms. Every day, people from different countries walk in and out of the building, address money issues in its money exchange shops, gather in its food stalls, bargain at its mobile phone counters, use computers in its internet cafes, and wander its corridors. Once you approach the entrance of Chungking Mansions, some African and South Asian tailors and copy-watch salespersons will come up to you and say, “Sir, you want to make suit? I can give you discount” and “Sir/Madam, do you want to buy watches? I have Rolex. It is cheap and nice.” Meanwhile, workers from guesthouses and restaurants will ask people if they are looking for cheap guestrooms or tasty Indian curry. After passing through these groups at the building’s entrance, one will be in “the midst of Chungking Mansions’ swirl” (Mathews 2011: 9). People from an extraordinary array of societies interact with one another there. Africans in sportswear, hip-hop fashions, or suits hold conversations. Pakistani men eat curry and watch television in front of the food stall counters. Somalis chat loudly around the corner. Indonesian and African women look at clothes. Hong Kong Chinese and South Asian shopkeepers sell a variety of things, such as phone cards, DVDs, haircuts, backpacks, luggage, electrical plugs, and sport shoes. On the first floor, South Asians and Africans pack mobile phones outside the shops. Tourists from different parts of the world in T-shirts, jeans, or traditional clothing drag their luggage to and fro. Africans leave Chungking Mansions with suitcases packed with clothing or mobile phones. Long lines of people with different skin colours wait at the elevators, bound for different guesthouses and restaurants. The guesthouses are largely owned by the Hong Kong Chinese, with Africans and South Asians working there illegally. Many refugees visit Chungking Mansions every day. Mathews (2011) roughly estimated that there are 300 refugees in or around the building at any given time during the day. With the diversified ethnic networks in the building, refugees from different countries can easily mingle with their co-ethnics, with such objectives as finding accommodation or borrowing money. They visit Chungking Mansions to work, network, or seek assistance on Chungking Mansions’ 16th and 17th floors (Block E), which house the first drop-in refugee service centre in Hong Kong and non-governmental organisations such as Christian Action.

Figure 5.1  M  ain entrance of Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.

Figure 5.2  P eople remitting or receiving money through Western Union in Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong.

Home in Hong Kong  115

Figure 5.3  A  South Asian food stall in Chungking Mansions where many refugees gathered.

Sham Shui Po Sham Shui Po, a working class area two miles north of Chungking Mansions, is situated in the north-western part of the Kowloon Peninsula. Sham Shui Po has been densely populated since the 1950s. It is one of the poorest districts in Hong Kong, and is full of old residential buildings. Sham Shui Po is a popular neighbourhood for low-income people, mainland Chinese immigrants, and ethnic minorities, including refugees, because rent there is slightly cheaper than in other Hong Kong districts. Sham Shui Po is famous for its abundance of cheap goods, such as food, clothing, and electronics (see Figure 5.4). Apliu Street in Sham Shui Po is the most famous electronics flea market in Hong Kong, and is open from noon to midnight every day. A wide array of items can be found in this flea market: common electronic items such as batteries and electrical extension sockets, home audiovisual equipment such as TV sets, household electronic items such as home lighting and home phones, telecommunication devices such as mobile phones and walkie-talkies, antique watches, old coins, second-hand books, and classic records. Many Hong Kong Chinese, mainland Chinese immigrants, ethnic minority groups, and tourists from around the world visit the market every day to search for cheap, new, and second-hand items. In Sham Shui Po, there is also a second-hand electrical appliance market. The market is situated across four parallel streets in Sham Shui Po. This area is also characterised by a busy food market and hawking activities of various types in the daytime. While walking along the streets, one can see people buying and selling food, clothing, and daily necessities from the stall keepers. Some South Asians and Africans chat around the corners. Many refugees go to the food market around 5 p.m. to purchase discounted food. The second-hand electrical appliance market opens at around 4 p.m. every day. Trucks loaded with electrical appliances move around the market. At around 5 p.m., different groups of South Asians and Africans begin setting

116  Home in Hong Kong

Figure 5.4  One popular meeting point for Africans and South Asians in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong.

up informal stalls for their bosses. After the hawkers close their stalls at around 6 p.m., second-hand economic activities begin, and they are busy from 7 to 10 p.m. every night. South Asians, Africans, and mainland Chinese choose and purchase products from stall to stall, whereas some workers transport different items across the streets with trolleys before loading them onto trucks, which then travel to various destinations outside Sham Shui Po. Refugees work illegally as porters and hawkers in Sham Shui Po’s second-­ hand electrical appliances market. Some go to the electronic appliances markets to buy cheap new goods and second-hand items for themselves or to trade. These markets financially support Sham Shui Po’s grassroots population, including Hong Kong Chinese, mainland Chinese, and migrants and refugees from different ethnic groups.

Refugees and networks Social capital focuses on social networks that exist between the people and characteristics of those networks, the strength of ties, and the extent to which those networks foster trust and reciprocity. The main idea of social capital is that social networks matter. These networks play a crucial role in the stranded journeys of refugees, as they provide access to power, information, knowledge, and capital in addition to other networks (Elfring and Hulsink 2003). It is not uncommon for refugees and regular migrants to cluster together, forming co-national or ethnic, religion, or continental ­A frican networks of interconnected individuals who search ways to complement one another. The main challenge for those desiring more local social capital is how to build it. For the refugees, their generally high level of sociability allowed them to easily access these support networks and communities after arrival. Roger, a Somali refugee, had never been to Hong Kong. Over lunch in a restaurant at Chungking Mansions, he confided to

Home in Hong Kong  117 me that he was extremely worried about where to live upon arrival. Roger articulated this as a problem for his feeling of insecurity. After his release from Hong Kong airport, he was instructed by the immigration officers to go to Chungking Mansions. Roger said, “They told me I would know what to do when I got there.” Roger took a bus to Chungking Mansions. He said, “I was shocked when I saw so many Africans in the building.” He dragged his suitcase all along the corridor on the ground floor filled with money-changing stores and people from different nationalities. He spotted one African man standing alone in front of a phone call store, checking his mobile phone. At this point, pan-African identity was a crucial signifier. Roger linked his feeling of insecurity to the experiences of Africa. Roger described his feeling to this African man by saying that he came from Somalia because of civil war, which happened all the time in African history. He was smuggled by an agent who then abandoned him in Hong Kong airport. Roger described having nowhere to live or sleep after arriving in Hong Kong, attempting to portray that he experienced more material insecurity even after fleeing his home country. In most cases, those longterm regular migrants and refugees sympathised with the newly arrived refugees, and assisted and advised them. As I later learned from them, the long-term regular migrants and refugees shared a common understanding of the subordinate social status of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. This obligation stemmed not so much from any legal requirement, but rather from a moral commitment or even national/ethnic/religious duty that made them feel morally responsible for newly arrived refugees in the foreign society of Hong Kong. Josh, a Somali refugee, was smuggled to Hong Kong on a small boat from Shenzhen, China. At the time, Josh did not know where to go, so he followed three other smuggled Pakistanis to catch a minibus. Josh met an African man on the minibus. He told Josh that he had travelled to Hong Kong from Ghana for business. The Ghanaian businessman asked Josh where he wanted to go. Josh stayed silent for a few seconds before replying, “I don’t know. I just arrived.” The Ghanaian businessman then told Josh to go to Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui. He said to Josh, “You can meet many Africans in that building. They will teach you what to do next.” He also showed Josh how to get there. When Josh arrived in Chungking Mansions, he met a Nigerian businessman outside a grocery store. He asked Josh why he had travelled to Hong Kong and where he wanted to go. Josh was so scared that he could not answer him properly. The Nigerian businessman knew that Josh was frightened, so he invited Josh to stay with him in a hostel in Block B of Chungking Mansions for a night. On the following day, the Nigerian businessman took Josh to Christian Action, where Josh had a short discussion with a social worker. The social worker explained to him the asylum-seeking procedures in Hong Kong. At Christian Action, Josh also made his first Somali refugee friend, Andrew, who had fled to Hong Kong five months earlier. Because Josh was homeless, Andrew invited Josh to stay with him for a few days.

118  Home in Hong Kong Upon arrival in Hong Kong, many refugees stayed in the guesthouses in Chungking Mansions (single rooms with attached toilets at these guesthouses generally cost between HK$100 and HK$150) either on their own or with visiting businessmen. Those refugees who did not have any pre-existing social networks in Hong Kong had experienced extended periods of sleeping outside in the parks, under footbridges, or outside of the Star Ferry Terminal—one of Hong Kong’s iconic tourist sites. Alexander, a Nigerian refugee, was homeless for a week after his arrival and slept in a park. One night, Alexander was approached by an outreach social worker, who told him to seek help from Christian Action at Chungking Mansions. Because Alexander is a Muslim, he resisted taking charity from a Christian organisation. A few days later, Alexander was arrested due to his lack of legal identity documents. At the detention centre, the immigration officer suggested to Alexander that he went to Christian Action after his release, as the staff there would tell him what to do next. “At that time, I was thinking once again what Christian Action was. Is it a religious organisation for religious purposes? Since I was homeless and had no money left, it doesn’t matter if it is Buddhist Action or Muslim Action, I have to go there for help”, Alexander said. Pooling resources and mutual dependence Most refugees did not live at Chungking Mansions but went there intermittently for various purposes. One purpose was to go to Christian Action to obtain food and financial assistance. Christian Action provides a social space for refugees to establish and expand their networks to benefit their livelihoods. On the first few days after his arrival, Josh relied heavily on the African networks he developed at Christian Action for practical help. He was keen to find a focal person who could help him make connections with people similar to himself. Andrew, a Somali refugee, was the person Josh was looking for. They exchanged phone numbers on the day they met at Christian Action. Andrew repeatedly told the social worker there that she had to help Josh because they were “brothers”. Throughout the course of my fieldwork, I observed that the refugees often referred to the fellow refugees as “brothers” and “sisters” even though they were not biological siblings. The strong sense of brotherhood and sisterhood among refugees of various background and social status corresponds to Coleman’s (1988) argument that refugees’ social capital inheres within tight, multiplex bonds of trust and obligations. Andrew introduced Josh to fellow African refugees in a South Asian restaurant on the ground floor of Chungking Mansions. Whenever Andrew had any social gatherings with other African refugees, Josh was invited to join. Andrew also advised Josh that he should surrender to the Immigration Department so that he could receive basic social assistance from the government. After being discharged from the detention centre, Andrew and Josh found a new room and they became roommates.

Home in Hong Kong  119 Andrew referred Josh to a refugee-claim lawyer at the Justice Centre—an NGO that provides pro-bono legal advice to refugees in Hong Kong—to help him with his refugee application. Establishing friendship with Andrew facilitated a smoother coping process for Josh. Finding a place to stay in Hong Kong, according to the refugees, was their most difficult task, not only due to discrimination from the Hong Kong Chinese but also due to their own limited financial resources. The value of the rental allowance (HK$1,500) from the government was paid directly to landlords, as mentioned in the previous chapter, and is grossly inadequate considering the high cost of housing in Hong Kong, where average monthly rent for a private flat surged 5.4% from HK$35.10 to HK$33.30 per sq. ft in the second half of 2016 (SCMP 2017). This brings the asking rent for a typical 450 sq. ft flat in the city to HK$15,800 per month (SCMP 2017). I often visited the homes of refugees, who mostly lived in small and poorly furnished accommodations in low-income districts such as Sham Shui Po and Yuen Long. Many of them lived in buildings with informal tenancy agreements. Some of them had to share small and crowded kitchens and toilets with as many as six other tenants. Moreover, it is not uncommon for refugees to live in illegal housing on the rooftops of apartment buildings in dwellings built of tin (see Figure 5.5). A number of them even lived in small rooms without windows and kitchens, and had to cook inside their rooms. “What kind of room do they expect to get with only HK$1,500! The rental of a small room in Hong Kong normally costs HK$3,000”, a property agent commented when I was accompanying the refugees to look for rooms in Sham Shui Po. In order to secure a better place to live, many refugees like Andrew and Josh pooled their rental allowances to obtain and share better accommodation. However, options were limited. After a month of searching, Josh finally found a small room in Sham Shui Po to share with Andrew. They had to share a small toilet and kitchen with four households in the same flat. In their room, there was only a bunk bed and a small corner table. While awaiting a decision on their protection claim, refugees in Hong Kong like Josh and Andrew exist in a limbo-like state, with very little validation of their existence. Nevertheless, this short-term mutual need for each other—in the context of accommodation—legitimises them socially. I argue that this sense of mutual assistance and dependence is developed based on a collective understanding of the dreadful lived experiences of asylumseeking journeys and existing socially as a refugee in a first asylum port. The willingness of refugees to offer assistance to each other becomes the basis for their development into collectives in the form of a refugee diaspora. Expanding networks Roger joined a ready-made circle of Somali friends when he arrived in Hong Kong, but later became aware of the limited assistance that his co-national

120  Home in Hong Kong

Figure 5.5  One refugee’s illegal housing on the rooftop of apartment building in Sham Shui Po.

network could actually offer. After living in Hong Kong for a few weeks or months, Roger began to expand his national-specific networks within or in the vicinity of Chungking Mansions, such as the Kowloon Mosque and Islamic Centre, which is a five-minute walk from Chungking Mansions. Christian Action in Chungking Mansion was a place where the refugees established and expanded their networks to advance their livelihoods, and the organisation also offers free meals to registered clients Monday through Saturday, with approximately 150 meals being served on those days. The centre is aware of cultural and religious concerns, and serves mostly chicken and vegetable dishes rather than pork or beef. For refugees such as Roger, Christian Action is not just a place to get a free meal, but also a platform for interacting with other people, regardless of their nationalities, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. On Sunday afternoon, the Hong Kong-based NGO Vision First subsidises the lunches of 60 registered refugee clients for up to HK$25 per person at a South Asian ground-floor food stall in Chungking Mansions. This food stall, consisting of six small tables, gathers together African, South Asian, and Middle Eastern refugees, particularly on Sunday afternoons. Roger was a registered member. He and his fellow African refugees treated the South Asian proprietor in a friendly manner, shaking hands and asking him to put more rice and curry on their dishes. The proprietor, however, served them normal portions and told them, in a comical tone, that they were getting fat and that they should eat less. These interactions were generally in English. The conversations between them lead either to friendship, debates, or trivial arguments. After lunch, around 5 p.m., Roger went to the Kowloon Mosque with his Muslim African friends. By praying in the Mosque four times a day, Roger made new friends with Pakistanis

Home in Hong Kong  121 who then became his football mates. “They are also refugees, so we have something common. The most important thing is that they know many things about Hong Kong and many of them can speak Cantonese”, Roger said. Nonetheless, Roger maintained close contact with his Somali refugee friends, thus demonstrating that social bonding and bridging is far from being mutually exclusive, as Putnam (2007) argues, and can coexist between cultural backgrounds. In sharing the same “refugee” identity in Hong Kong, refugees from different countries were aware that mutual dependence was important, and that managing one’s behaviour was more beneficial than avoiding “outgroup” interaction. Different refugee groups have their own religious practices, with Islam and Christianity being the two main religions observed in the refugee community. These two religions view God and religious practice somewhat differently. In order to successfully establish “out-group” networks, refugees had to behave in a more socially acceptable manner. Avoidance was their method for reducing religious conflict. One Christian refugee told me, “We seldom talk about religion in front of the refugees of different religions. Otherwise, we must argue. I learnt this social skill to deal with other religions after I came to Hong Kong.” Roger was aware of the importance in expanding his networks, and he attempted to bond with others based on common interests. On Wednesday nights, the Muslim Africans (including Roger), Hindu Indians, and Christian and Muslim Pakistanis played football in Sham Shui Po. After the games, they chatted and had drinks together in a nearby park. They talked about the football teams they supported and discussed the football matches they had watched on television. During the summer of 2018, they watched the FIFA World Cup together after their weekly football games. When people of various religious backgrounds interacted with one another, their members seldom differentiated themselves according to religion. The nexus of transnational social networks The support networks of migrants—including refugees—are not limited to local networks, and they may spread over a wide geographical area, generating different transnational ties (Portes 1995). As Kelly and Lusis (2006) argued, emotional support from migrants’ co-ethnics (such as family) is sometimes sought not through local networks, but rather through transnational communication. The informants in Hong Kong used text messaging, cheap international phone calls, emails, and other online communication (such as Facebook and Skype) to maintain close connections with family and friends in their homelands. The refugees were active agents in transnational webs of information sharing. Notably, the uncertain nature of being a refugee puts an emphasis on the dissemination of information regarding constantly shifting opportunities and risks (Al-Ali et al. 2001: 630). That is, information exchange includes details about conditions and prospects in

122  Home in Hong Kong the refugees’ homelands and other countries, spanning a global landscape of risks and chances to consider. The refugees always spent most of their time at Christian Action and various internet cafes, chatting with their family and friends through social networking systems such as Facebook and Skype. These transnational virtual communications not only provide emotional support and maintain contact with home (Kelly and Lusis 2006), but also act as means for the refugees to collect information from their friends and family in their homelands to make future plans. Janet, a Sri Lankan refugee who had been staying in Hong Kong for six years, chatted with her daughters in Colombo at least once a week either through the internet or by phone to receive updates on the political situation in Sri Lanka. “A substantial number of refugees had made risk assessments”, she said, comparing the situations in refugees’ respective homelands and Hong Kong. She eventually decided to return home voluntarily after spending countless years in limbo. The refugees also used such information networks for their refugee claims. I met Josh one day at Christian Action. He was sitting in front of a computer doing multiple things at once: chatting with a man on Skype, reading online news, and writing something on a piece of paper. Later, I learned that his refugee-claim lawyer had asked him to conduct some internet research on his home town to support his refugee status application with UNHCR Hong Kong. The refugees also disseminated information to family members or close friends in their home towns. For those seeking protection in Hong Kong, such people appeared to be a nexus for potential refugees in their homelands. For example, Eric, a Somali refugee, maintained close connections with his aunt and wife through approximately two international telephone calls per week. Eric told me that they updated one another on current situations in their respective locations during these telephone conversations. After several months, Eric could sense from their conversations that his aunt and his wife were in danger, and he persuaded them to move to Hong Kong. Because UNHCR had recognised Eric as a refugee, his aunt and wife would have a better chance of obtaining refugee status and resettlement if they filed their refugee claims in Hong Kong together, according to Eric’s lawyer in Hong Kong. In 2011, Eric called his travel agent friend in Somalia, who arranged travel documents and transportation for his aunt and wife to flee to Hong Kong. Eric had become a migration middleman who provided both financial and informational support in sponsoring his family to flee overseas. As such, he became an active social agent who acted as a recruiter, linking Somalis to Hong Kong. This is evident in cases where national-specific networks provide reciprocal assistance to people from the same country or to people with whom members of the network have a “cultural similarity”. Transnational remittance transfers are also an integral component of what Van Hear (2009) terms a “transnational relief and social welfare ­system”—through which significant resources are channelled from relatively

Home in Hong Kong  123 prosperous domains within the diaspora to provide support for less affluent and more vulnerable refugees (Van Hear 2009: 184). Friends and relatives living in Western countries and homelands act as alternative money sources for the refugees in Hong Kong. Remittances range from several hundred to a thousand or more Hong Kong dollars each time. In Hong Kong, Western Union—a global money transfer agent—is the most popular money transfer agent among the informants. I accompanied Timothy, a Pakistani refugee, to collect his remittance from Western Union one day. Timothy told me that he had received a financial sponsorship of approximately HK$1,000 from his family or friends every month. When his overseas money providers confirmed by text message or telephone that the money had been transferred, Timothy collected the money from a store at Chungking Mansions. Upon collection, Timothy had to present his recognisance paper to the staff, filling out a money collection form with the sender’s name, the country from where the money was sent, the amount of the remittance, and the transaction record number. Timothy sometimes tracked the status of the money transfer on the internet, keeping a close eye on his transnational money inflows. Unlike “formal” money transfer services conducted through global banking companies such as Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank, the cash-cash transmission service offered by Western Union does not require Timothy to have a bank account in Hong Kong. This form of low-end global money circulation increases Timothy’s access to financial resources abroad and helps him to be constantly linked with his Pakistani friends and family thousands of miles away. For those informants who earned money, they occasionally remitted money home through Western Union to help their families financially. Within the refugee community, these low-end exchanges are not merely financial transfers but also engender vital sociocultural networks and relationships across international borders. The refugees also served as nexuses for their co-diasporic members abroad to explore business opportunities in Hong Kong. Instead of providing direct business-related services such as packing goods, one group of informants provided local tourist information and personal assistant services to visiting traders in exchange for money. As Mathews (2011) mentioned in his book about Chungking Mansions, many African traders seek their fortunes through low-budget transnational trade across Africa, Hong Kong, and China. The African traders usually stayed in Hong Kong for two or three days before or after their business trips to China, mainly Guangzhou, and the refugees served as their personal tour guides of the city (see Figure 5.6). Clifford, a refugee from Niger, told me that when he confided his financial problems over the phone to his home-town friends approximately three years ago, his friend connected him with African businesspeople who wanted to do business in Hong Kong and China. Clifford was then able to earn money by providing them tour guide services. Through countless long-distance telephone calls and web chats, his friends at home provided Clifford with the traders’ arrival information. Clifford said that he usually welcomed one

124  Home in Hong Kong or two traders each month. Clifford recalled that he once had to collect a female trader from the train station early in the morning. He had to carry two heavy suitcases for her and show her a guest house in Chungking Mansions that he had verbally booked for her a few days prior. Upon arrival, the trader paid the room rent in cash. Clifford said that this trader had concluded her business trip to Guangzhou and stayed in Hong Kong for leisure for three days before returning home. During her stay, Clifford brought her to Sham Shui Po, where cheap wholesale goods are sold. He also took her to various tourist spots for sightseeing and shopping. Clifford showed the visiting traders Hong Kong and Chinese culture by, for instance, teaching them how to use chopsticks—although he himself had not himself mastered the skill after five years in Hong Kong. In return, the traders updated him on the situation back home. In his book, Mathews (2011: 61) noted that the African traders have global links that spread far beyond Hong Kong—these traders often followed a long and complex path, ranging from their home and neighbouring countries in Asia, to Dubai, to Bangkok, and other Southeast Asian destinations to Hong Kong, to South China, and back again. Clifford said that the traders also shared their travel experiences with him. On the last day of their visits, Clifford was obliged to carry their heavy luggage and accompany them to the airport, where his services ended. Clifford usually received HK$500 from the traders for a three-day trip and HK$800 for longer stays. One day, after sending his African trader friend to the airport, Clifford brought me to the Crossroads Foundation in Tuen Mun (New Territories), a

Figure 5.6  Refugees accompanied some visiting traders to Hong Kong International Airport.

Home in Hong Kong  125 Hong Kong-based global non-profit organisation where he spent time doing volunteer work. Here, I saw many familiar faces, as most of the volunteers were refugees. They receive several hundred Hong Kong dollars as subsidies each time they volunteered. A major service that Crossroads Foundation Hong Kong provides is redistributing Hong Kong’s surplus goods to people in need, both locally and internationally. The refugees help sort, pack, and load donated books, clothes, toys, furniture, and other items into containers that are shipped to developing countries in Asia and Africa. Here I met Jim, a Ghanaian refugee, in a store room. He worked at the Crossroads Foundation two to three times per week. When he was packing items for shipment to Ghana one day, he made a joke by asking me to pack him and ship him home with the cargo. Of course, we did not do that. However, his volunteering experience shows that refugees in Hong Kong, despite being “illegal” and “immobile” migrants, are constantly connecting with people miles away by participating in the transnational flow of people, goods, and resources. The stories of Eric, Timothy, Clifford, and Jim are typical ones, demonstrating that the refugees in Hong Kong have transnational networks, and that their socio-economic relationships and cultural values are constantly evolving in a transnational social space. Money and work The refugees I spoke with arrived in Hong Kong with little more than pocket money (approximately several hundred American dollars) and had fled alleged persecution to a city where they were prohibited from engaging in income-generating activities. During their stays in Hong Kong, they obviously had to purchase food and daily necessities. Because they spend most of their pocket money immediately on arrival, many refugees had no choice but to borrow money from businessmen and their refugee friends. Daniel, a Somali refugee, often borrowed money from either his Somali refugee friends or businessmen in Hong Kong. Daniel said: When I had no money, I borrowed money from some Somali businessmen in Chungking Mansions. I borrowed money from this guy this month, and then I repaid him by borrowing money from another guy. You know, it is a roll. Francis, a Somali businessman, described his money-lending experience with Daniel: He usually approached me for borrowing money every two weeks. He came to me with a sad face, telling me how intolerant his landlord was and how many days he didn’t have enough food to eat. Out of empathy, I usually lent him HK$100 or HK$200. I asked him to write down his

126  Home in Hong Kong name and amount of money he borrowed on a paper as record. Luckily, he could return the money a month later. As Francis saw it, many refugees could not sustain their economic livelihoods by simply borrowing money from friends. “A lot of them work illegally”, he said. Bonding networks can help refugees find employment, and many of them found their way into the informal labour market alongside the many regular migrants that procured various jobs around the city, ranging from sales work to various forms of manual labour. At Chungking Mansions, South Asian refugees worked in food stalls and in restaurants as shop keepers and waiters, while African refugees worked in guesthouses, mobile phone shops, and clothing shops. One Nigerian refugee said that the phone dealer gave him HK$30 to pack phones into boxes. If he brought in customers, the dealer would give him HK$2 per phone. When refugees worked in the shop, they usually sat outside the shops when there were no customers. They pretended to be “customers”. However, when customers arrived, they immediately walked behind the counter and acted as workers. They used this “role-shifting” strategy to avoid inspection by police and immigration officers. By packing, loading, unloading, delivering, and selling manufactured goods such as mobile phones and clothing for transport to developing countries, the refugees made significant contributions to the development of what Mathews (2011) calls “low-end globalisation”. According to Mathews (2011), this microscopic form of globalisation involves a smaller amount of capital compared to formal businesses. This low-end global business is conducted through human interactions by a large group of ethnic minority refugees from developing countries. Some refugees found illegal/informal work through people from different nationalities by utilising their bridging networks. With the assistance of a Pakistani refugee, Roger took on a job as a clothing salesperson working on the sidewalks outside Chungking Mansions. In addition to Roger, many African and South Asian refugees passed their time outside Chungking Mansions, working among the copy-watch vendors and tailors, who were Hong Kong Chinese and South Asian residents. The refugees recruited customers, mostly foreigners and tourists, on Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon), Hong Kong. For this work, they would receive between HK$1,000 and HK$2,000 per month as compensation. However, these activities rendered the refugees highly visible and subject to arrest. However, many of them were skilled at recognising undercover police officers (to quote one informant, “the undercover police officers usually wear a shirt and jeans with a black backpack”), and they move before the officers come too close. Roger told me that in order to address intermittent investigations by police and immigration officers, the refugees formed a voluntary surveillance service comprising a loose network of South Asians and Africans stationed on nearby streets. These volunteers would pass verbal and eye signals to others along the streets if they suspected the presence of police or immigration

Home in Hong Kong  127 officers. In fact, Roger enjoyed working as a “salesperson” on the street. He said that he could spend time not only with his fellow refugees but also with people from around the world, from whom Roger could learn new things about their countries, rendering his life busier and more meaningful. Besides working in Chungking Mansions, many of them have also taken short-term jobs for money. The most typical of these jobs is in the line-up service for buying new iPhones for South Asian and Hong Kong Chinese phone dealers outside the Apple Store. They were asked to join the queue outside the Apple Store before the launch of new iPhones. Some refugees told me that they stayed in line for more than 12 hours to buy five sets of iPhones for HK$5,000 as commission. At some points during my fieldwork, many of them were very busy making and answering phone calls. “Hello, Mr Lau! Do you remember me? I helped you last time. Do you have iPhone buying today?” said Safa, a refugee from Niger, into his phone. I asked Safa how he connected with this Hong Kong Chinese phone dealer. He said that he knew the phone dealers through the network of Pakistani refugees who received several hundred Hong Kong dollars from the phone dealers as commission. To keep track of the launch dates of new iPhones and their new features and functions, the refugees often spent time researching online and sharing the newly acquired knowledge with others. I still remember when Roger was using a feature phone when he arrived in Hong Kong, and I had to teach him how to use his phone. Roger’s knowledge of mobile phones has improved after years of information sharing and online research. Roger has now become my teacher, showing me how to use the special functions on my smartphone. Roger, Safa, and other refugees in Hong Kong embedded themselves in the transnational flow of iPhone businesses between the USA and Hong Kong. Their ability to learn how to use smartphones to “fit in” with this global cultural flow demonstrates the economic relationships and cultural values that they have developed in the transnational field. Furthermore, other South Asian and African refugees worked as manual labourers in Sham Shui Po. Vecchio (2016) examined refugee engagement in income-generating activities in Hong Kong’s informal economy, which consists of recycling and trading services. Refugees are employed at the lower end of the urban labour hierarchy, which helps the “local resident population with opportunities to generate new or expand current services, to enable their businesses to remain viable” (Vecchio 2016: 4). One evening, Josh and I walked around the flea market in Sham Shui Po after dinner. We walked past a grocery store and saw a number of Pakistanis unloading cartons from the trolley. Josh said he knew one of the Pakistanis in the group. Shortly thereafter, Josh and I met this Pakistani at a second-hand electronics stall located by the stairway of Josh’s living block. They chatted in a friendly manner. The Pakistani man asked Josh, “When do you want me to fix the TV cable for you?” Josh replied, “Anytime when you are free. No rush.” Later, Josh told me that he had met this Pakistani when they were in the detention centre two years ago. Josh recalled that he had nothing to

128  Home in Hong Kong do in the detention centre. Therefore, he chatted with fellow detainees in the living room while watching television almost daily. They talked about their problems back home, and some South Asian detainees discussed their experiences living in Hong Kong. Josh befriended this Pakistani in the detention centre, and the Pakistani told Josh that this was his third time living in Hong Kong. He had been working illegally as a porter in Sham Shui Po. After living in Sham Shui Po for years, the Pakistani offered Josh some advice. For instance, he advised Josh not to walk on the street at a particular time every day because the police patrolled the area at that time. Because Josh was new in town, the Pakistani gave him a small refrigerator for free a few days after being released. He also sometimes helped Josh fix his furniture. In the field, I observed that Africans and South Asians largely interacted with one another in a friendly manner because many became close friends in detention. They helped each other solve daily problems, including finding informal work. Josh introduced me to Ernest, a Pakistani refugee, in the second-hand electronics stall. Later, Ernest told me that he came to Hong Kong in 2006 and again in 2007. He was repatriated to Pakistan both times after being caught by the police for illegal employment. In 2009, Ernest fled to Hong Kong again. He said he only filed a torture claim on his third visit to Hong Kong. “I had no idea about refugee and torture claims before. When I was here, I had to survive. So I worked illegally”, Ernest said. Ernest worked as a porter in a second-hand electronic appliances stall in Sham Shui Po. He began setting up the stall for his Hong Kong Chinese boss at around 4:30 p.m. every day. Ernest usually spent a couple of hours in the early afternoon outside 7-Eleven, a convenience store, with his fellow Pakistanis, interacting with people of different ethnicities. Through this daily social gathering in the neighbourhood, Ernest befriended Thomas, a Pakistani refugee who worked for a trading and recycling business owned by a Pakistani businessman in Yuen Long—a district in the New Territories of Hong Kong where many African and South Asian refugees work illegally in trading and recycling businesses. Thomas bought second-hand appliances from street stalls and shops owned by Hong Kong Chinese or mainland Chinese in Sham Shui Po. He visited the market approximately three times per week, usually from 8 to 9 p.m. As instructed by his boss, he usually bought computing items such as monitors for HK$100 from the stalls in Sham Shui Po. Thomas bought a small number of items every time he visited the stalls and stocked them in a room in Chungking Mansions. When the stock was large enough, he delivered bags of items to trading and recycling sites in Yuen Long. One night, Thomas phoned me asking if I wanted a free ride to somewhere interesting. I helped him load three heavy bags of second-hand electronic goods into a small van in Tsim Sha Tsui. On our way to Yuen Long, we stopped at a building where my informants collected two bags of books from a Christian church. I had no idea where we were going until my

Home in Hong Kong  129 informant opened the iron gate at our destination, where I saw a mountain of second-hand electronic items. The trading and recycling businesses were being operated in a number of depots in Yuen Long. The one I visited, according to Thomas, was the largest. It was about 9 p.m., and there were a number of South Asians transferring items from one location to another at the site. After unloading the bags from the van, Thomas went into the office, where he collected money from his South Asian boss. He received HK$500 (including the van rental at HK$150) that night. According to the refugees, the payments were exploitative. If he worked hard and efficiently, Thomas said he could earn about HK$2,000 a month. Later on, I found out that some of the owners of trading and recycling businesses were ex-refugees who acquired legal status through local marriage. One Pakistani owner told me that recycling was difficult work that local Hong Kong Chinese residents refused to do. “These kinds of work do not require documentation because the job nature is flexible. But it is a hard job. We don’t need refugees to sit in the office from nine to five. They can come and go anytime”, he said. To avoid troubles, the owners did not admit that they were hiring refugees. Rather, they said they were helping refugees and their families to cope with the same difficulties they experienced on arriving in Hong Kong. A substantial amount of research has been conducted on immigrant work under informal arrangements (Portes and Sassen-Koob 1987; Portes et al. 1989; Losby et al. 2002). For example, Peberdy and Rogerson (2003) noted that immigrants engaged in the informal sector are involved in buying and selling, particularly on the street. Migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers can be found in this informal setting, and Kloosterman and Rath (2002: 27) stated that informal economies “provide immigrants—many of whom have difficulties getting access to regular jobs—with better economic opportunities”. In Hong Kong, the refugees were warned every month by immigration officers that Hong Kong law does not allow refugees to work, even voluntarily. Nevertheless, many of them still engage in illegal employment, which serves as a “safety net” for them.

Emotional encounters and negotiating security Asylum-seeking journeys are emotionally charged events. No matter how socialised one was or how many connections one could mobilise, there was still an element of emotional adjustment involved in every effort for making sense of their lives in prolonged displacement. Svašek (2012) defines emotional processes as embodied experiences. The embodied experience “explores physical aspects of emotional experience, in particular the perceptual process of bodily sensation and interpretation, and the interaction of bodies in space” (Svašek 2012: 5). Upon arriving in a new society, all refugees are confronted with local officials and local people. As discussed in Chapter 4, the Hong Kong immigration policy and public discourses

130  Home in Hong Kong construct refugees as “illegal immigrants”, who unavoidably influence the emotional interaction between refugees and local people. As objects of alienation, discrimination, and inquisitive gazes, refugees experience fear, shame, and helplessness. Linda, a Sri Lankan refugee, came to Hong Kong alone when she was 45 years old. One day over lunch in the church, she suddenly frowned, “Now I am old, like my life is finished here.” It was Linda’s birthday. Having stayed in Hong Kong for 15 years, Linda was fed up with her daily life. She further described, in a high-pitched voice, her emotional change from being happy to being sad over the years: Hong Kong is safe. Before, I felt happy here because I had many classes to take, and could get money. Now I can only sleep at home, no work. I cried a lot because life in Hong Kong is too hard. Now I don’t feel good at all. My case was rejected and rejected again. No work, no money. The transportation grant is not enough, only HK$200. Every week, I need to go to immigration in Tuen Mun to sign. The money is not enough. I get up at 5 a.m., take the bus to immigration, sign at 9 a.m., and leave at 9:30 a.m. Wasting my time and money! But I have been doing this for 15 years. I have body pain for years. I cannot sleep properly every night. This is not merely a personal account from Linda; rather, it represents the inner-world journey of refugees regarding emotional changes and adjustments during prolonged displacement, which are common to all people seeking asylum in Hong Kong. For most refugees, they arrived in Hong Kong with a view of seeking safety. Undoubtedly, they obtained physical security by coming to Hong Kong. During the first few months after their arrivals, most of them felt safe and calm. However, as time went by, they suffered from emotional insecurity—a sense of not being settled and safe in Hong Kong. When Linda described how she felt being a refugee in prolonged displacement, she pointed to a lack of money and certainty over her future as two major issues that triggered her feeling of insecurity. Upon being asked about critical life events in Hong Kong that dramatically changed their emotional conditions from positive to negative, all refugees highlighted variables including social isolation, the loss of daily life projects, unemployment, a lack of money, health problems, and their refugee claims being rejected. This corresponds with the professional opinions of medical practitioners in Hong Kong that I spoke with, which believed that social exclusion is the main cause of emotional and mental health problems among refugees. First, refugees are highly stressed when they flee their home countries. Second, they must become accustomed to the new living environment of Hong Kong, where the general public has a discriminative perception of them. Third, refugees have limited and inapt assistance provided by the government, and they are not allowed to work. Alex, a refugee from Democratic Republic of Congo, spoke specifically about the feeling of insecurity resulting from his long-pending refugee claim. He stated:

Home in Hong Kong  131 I did not bring too much negative emotions to Hong Kong. But when I think about how they process my case, I feel totally helpless. I came here when I was young. But I am getting old! 15 years in this cage. It is a big disappointment to me. Fear and shame All refugees fear being deported back to their home countries after their cases are closed. Their fear has grown even more after hearing news reports about deportation exercises being conducted by the Immigration Department. They often wonder whether they will be next. In the field, I noticed that refugees tried to escape being photographed by cameras because they were afraid that their enemies will locate them when the pictures are distributed. The death threats they experienced in their home countries still haunt them, even no one aims to kill or kidnap them in Hong Kong. Some of those suffering are afraid of minor things that are difficult for most to notice. One Bangladeshi refugee said, “Yeah, the only thing is, when I hear a lot of noise, I am little afraid. Before, this wasn’t so terrible. You cannot describe it.” For single refugee women, they are more concerned about their personal safety in Hong Kong. One Indian woman shared her experience with bad landlords and neighbours, which put ridiculous regulations on her such as using the bathroom only during the daytime or at night. Refugees are largely ashamed for being unproductive and unable to pay for their family members’ needs because of the working ban. This type of shame always coalesces in feelings of being limited, and in low self-esteem. Many asylum seekers value the importance of work, especially those who had promising jobs back in their home countries. They often stress that working is what makes a person valuable. In addition, refugees feel ashamed and devalued when using food cards—especially when something goes wrong with their card, thereby drawing other people’s attention. Before seeking asylum, they may be the breadwinner for their family or the boss of a company that people relied on. But now, their dignities have been taken away as they are forced to rely on other people. Furthermore, harsh and reluctant assistance from the government devalues them as outsiders who are not entitled to fair treatment. Hopelessness and helplessness Due to the low substantiation rate, refugees often feel hopeless regarding their futures. Several refugees expressed their willingness to voluntarily return to their countries, as they faced little choice in Hong Kong. The major reason for this was that they could no longer bear the poor situation for refugees in Hong Kong. The emotions experienced in such scenarios can result a variety of mental health problems for refugees. Common mental health issues among refugees that have been identified by medical practitioners

132  Home in Hong Kong in Hong Kong include post-traumatic stress disorder and mood disorders such as depression, anxiety disorder, and stress. Fan Ling, a medical doctor and the chairman of Health in Action—a humanitarian organisation with the vision of eliminating health inequity by working for the underprivileged in Hong Kong—considered social exclusion to be the primary cause of mental health problems among refugees. First, refugees are highly stressed when they flee their home countries. Second, they must cope with the new sociocultural environment of Hong Kong, where the general public has a discriminative perception towards them (Wong et al. 2017). Third, refugees become highly stressed because of the limited and inept assistance provided by the government. Another expert in mental health from the Justice Centre expressed that the causes for mental health problems primarily depend on the context of each refugee. Generally, the loss of qualities that typically define a person are main causes of mental health problems, including the loss of status, community, culture, and employment as well as horrible experiences such as detention, torture, and physical abuse. It has been identified that the sense of fear generated from asylum-seeking journeys to Hong Kong continues even after refugees arrive in Hong Kong for protection. The psychosocial impact of horrific experiences in their home countries and/or their journeys to Hong Kong can become significant, even after they are temporarily “settled” in Hong Kong. This is because refugees in Hong Kong are in a mode of “struggling-for-survival”, and they must solve their everyday life problems. A lack of economic security, coupled with prolonged displacement in Hong Kong and uncertainty regarding whether their claims will be approved, uncovers the trauma these people suffered throughout their respective journeys. The mental health problems faced by the refugee community are considered serious by practitioners, as suicidal thoughts are frequently heard from clients. Moreover, these mental health problems cause physical effects on their bodies such as high blood pressure, headaches, stomach ulcers, insomnia, and body pain without any detectable biological cause. Stress, embodiment, and negotiating security Linda drew attention to the structural constraints imposed on her by immigration officers in Hong Kong. Based on her account, it became clear that these rules limited her ability to assert agency in her stranded asylumseeking journey in Hong Kong. However, Linda did not consider them as dreadful constraints. Rather, her story is informative and representative in regard to how the refugees in Hong Kong maximise opportunities and minimise constraints. This process requires refugees like Linda to carefully evaluate situations and to cope with negative emotional and mental stress by using appropriate strategies. According to the theory of psychological stress and coping, during the coping process, people appraise the actual demands of encounters and their resources for managing those demands (Folkman

Home in Hong Kong  133 and Lazarus 1985). Therefore, the success of their coping effort depends entirely upon the situational demands and available coping resources. Coping has two widely recognised functions: dealing with the problem causing the distress (problem-focused) and regulating stressful emotions (emotion-­ focused) (Folkman and Lazarus 1985). The former is an active coping strategy, while the latter is a passive one. The type of strategy used depends on how the situation is appraised based on individual resources and the external environment. Linda refused the refugee identity of a passive victim who must accept what the Hong Kong government was willing to provide, such as food and money. Over the years, she has felt stressed. To address the source of her stress, she dealt directly with situations by engaging in various public talks, protests, and demonstrations by using the NGO support networks to negotiate her rights. For example, on both 30 October 2012 and 27 April 2013, Lisa and hundreds of refugees, with the assistance of Vision First—a Hong Kong-based NGO—took to the streets to protest against the Hong Kong government’s failed screening process and asylum discourse that categorised claimants as deviant economic migrants (see Figure 5.7). Rallies were organised in support of a fairer screening mechanism and to object to bureaucratic constructs that categorise all refugee claimants as deviant economic migrants. They demand a comprehensive system for the assessment of both UNHCR refugees and CAT claimants. These two demonstrations represented the first two large public protests in Hong Kong by refugees. The protesters intended to push human rights into the political agenda, and attempted to politicise refugee issues in Hong Kong. Without fear of being arrested and detained, Linda also participated in overnight camping on the streets in 2014 to fight for better financial assistance from the government. Since then, Linda has been an active member of Refugee Union, a non-governmental organisation formed by refugees in Hong Kong. Refugee Union aims to empower refugees to selflessly assist each other and actively participate in all matters relating to the life of refugees and the development of the asylum sphere in Hong Kong according to the highest human rights standards. Lisa pointed out, I am already nothing so I am not afraid of anything. All I want is fairness. But I can’t do anything here. I need to protest and fight for our rights. We finally won. We got a new screening system in 2013. Linda’s repetition of “nothing” clearly revealed that she felt frustrated with her prolonged displacement situation. She expressed the passivity imposed upon her by the authority when she was unable to work, which prolonged her psychological suffering due to an inability to take the next step in her life. Although Linda still could not resolve the situation of insecurity and uncertain future, engaging in corporeal protests allowed her to embody an agent of resisting or challenging the process of inscription and subsequent attributions. While each protest organised by refugees in Hong Kong had

134  Home in Hong Kong

Figure 5.7  R  efugees’ demonstration against the unfair screening mechanisms in Hong Kong.

objectives, achieving these goals was secondary to their performative nature. The objective was largely to place attention on communicating their political messages to their target audience (the local population) (Souweine 2005). “It is a way to release stress and let Hong Kong people know more about us”, Linda added. Every month, Lisa attends the monthly meeting organised by Refugee Union. By attending these meetings, Lisa hoped that she could seek emotional support from fellow refugees. Moreover, she also joined their different classes, activities, and public talks, where she could interact with people both inside and outside of the refugee community. Such organisations will often mobilise around refugee issues, among the local population, such as destitution, awareness-raising campaigns, and lobbying the government. I argue that these organisations provide a socio-psychological space to release stress and reclaim collective identity. This collective solidarity is the emergent product of a common fate and experience, and produces a set of dispositions particular to the refugee communities that develop into resources that can be appropriated by refugees. Prolonged displacement in Hong Kong is socially isolating, and the communities formed by refugees (such as Refugee Union) represent an opportunity to rebuild social identity in exile, to reassert individual identity, and to negotiate security through significant campaigning and community activism activities.

Negotiating home in prolonged displacement The idea of home is often used in refugee research as the ultimate goal of asylum-seeking journeys. Refugees experienced their loss of home not only as the loss of a physical shelter or geographical place, but, above all, as the loss of a social world. In this sense, refugees who have fled to other countries can be understood as being in the process of searching for a new home.

Home in Hong Kong  135 Home is considered “an actual place of lived experience and a metaphorical space of personal attachment and identification” (Armbruster 2002: 20), or a place of routine where one feels some semblance of “personal control” (Povrzanovic Frykman 2002: 118). Furthermore, it can be described in terms of identity, as a feeling of belonging and even a “mythic place of desire” (Brah qtd. in Armbruster 2002: 20). The refugees in Hong Kong spent years trapped in limbo, haunted by terrifying memories of loss and seduced by a longing for home. The lesson to be learned from being in prolonged displacement conditions is related to reconstructing their lives with ease, and learning how to reproduce a feeling of “being at home”. Being at home, I argue, is not necessarily a place to go to. Rather, it can be a feeling of safety as an embodied experience that can be reproduced while experiencing prolonged displacement. When a place becomes a meaningful location, it then becomes home. As I observed, the refugees in Hong Kong attempted to make their lives meaningful by bringing resources from the transnational social field. I close this chapter with two stories that demonstrate the typical ways in which individuals structure feelings of “being at home” in Hong Kong. Indeed, through particular “homing” practices, some refugees have managed to generate the necessary spaces wherein a feeling of “homey-ness” emerges. Homeland-based culture and an imagined home To feel comfortable in an unfamiliar place, Chuck, a refugee from Chad, decorated his room with a number of homeland-related cultural items, which included family photos, traditional paintings, a country map, wood carvings, and a traditional cloth. One evening, Chuck asked me to come over to his place for dinner. Chuck and his wife, Heidi, have been staying in Hong Kong for three years. They rented a room of about 100 sq. ft in Sham Shui Po. When I first entered their home, a row of windows spilling warm yellow light first came into my sight. It felt like a cosy home to me. Standing at the door and looking around, there was a microwave and an oven atop a fridge, a shelf for the food and utensils, a tiny toilet, a pile of clothes on two suitcases, a double bed with two pillows and two cushions, an askew wardrobe with two doors, and two plastic cabinets with two televisions on top of them. The entire room was neat, tidy, and bright. The walls were properly painted, and I could identify that it was a Muslim home since Chuck’s white thobe was hung at the window and prayer beads and a prayer mat lay on the carpet. At one corner, Chuck put up some African wood carvings and paintings. Opposite the paintings, I could see a number of family photos on the wall. “My wife and I are alone here, but I feel relaxed and connected to my family when I see the photos. My memory then goes back to the happy times in my hometown”, Chuck explained. Then, Chuck enthusiastically showed me photos of his house in Chad and told me what he usually did in the large living room with fancy sofas and carpets. He also showed me photos of his wife, Heidi, taking fruits from a tree in a garden. “Look, this is my mother

136  Home in Hong Kong and my son. This is my car. We had a good life before”, Chuck described. Though he lamented, “Life is like this, things changed” when he showed us the big difference between his home in Chad and the one in Hong Kong. Heidi used her own hand as a chopping board to cut tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, beetroot, and eggs into cubes. “I did cutting like this when I was in Chad”, she said. No doubt, Heidi was a skilled cook. She then quickly mixed the lettuce, onion, and tomatoes with salt and oil to make a salad. After that, she mixed cubed potato, beetroot, carrot, scallions, string beans, and eggs with salad cream to make the second dish called “ordoeuvre”, which was African-style salad. When Heidi finished heating the okra and beef sauce with a hot plate, she placed two pieces of newspaper on the carpet. Then she put the salad, the Fufu, a staple food common in many countries in Africa, and the okra with beef sauce on the newspaper (see Figure 5.7). We sat on the carpet around the food while Chuck sat comfortably on his bed. Heidi knelt between the food and the gas cooker to cut the fruits. Chuck kindly asked me if I needed a spoon for eating Fufu. I refused because I wanted to try eating with my hands as they did. When I did, Chuck and Heidi both laughed at me because I did not put my fingers deep enough into the Fufu and the sauce. Chuck then showed me the proper way to eat with bare hands. The Fufu was so hot that I thought it was going to burn my fingers. However, Chuck took the Fufu with his bare hands without hesitation. He quickly pinched some Fufu from the plate and immersed the Fufu into the sauce. Chuck looked he really enjoyed this traditional food. “I am tasting home”, he stated happily (Figure 5.8). While we were eating, Chuck gave me a geography lesson of Chad using his smartphone. He showed me some video clips and told me that the difference between Northern and Southern Chad was that people in the North were wealthier and looked like more Arabic. He came from the North and showed me his high and straight nose, and compared people from the South with their “cow-like nose”. Moreover, people in the North mainly

Figure 5.8  A frican refugees cooked and shared traditional African food at home.

Home in Hong Kong  137 ate camels, sheep, and beef, while those in the South ate only beef. I was surprised by the consumption of camels. Chuck said that it did not taste like beef, and that camels tasted better. In the past, they would buy a whole camel and barbeque it at home. The entire family could finish one camel. They also went to the meat market—where only men could go—to enjoy meat with their family and friends. The geography of Northern and Southern Chad was also different in that the Sahara desert was in the North. Chuck then lay comfortably on his bed, supporting his head with a hand, and he began talking about the religions in Chad with their various wood carvings. Through WhatsApp calls, Facetime, and email exchanges on his smartphone, Chuck’s confinement in prolonged displacement transcended his immobility through interacting with friends and family members in transnational spaces. He regularly read online news to keep himself informed about world politics. Additionally, online interactions contributed to maintaining his home in both the past and present. Examples such as the aforementioned story illustrate that homeland-based objects such as family photos, traditional paintings, wood carvings, cloths, and country maps represented both images and physical objects that exist in time and space, and thus they also exist in social and cultural experiences. Despite a clear realisation of the physical presence, the way in which material and presentational forms of homeland-related objects project the “homey” image into the refugees’ minds is noteworthy. When people move, “choices of memory” (Marcoux 2001: 70) are being made. For the refugees in Hong Kong who were displaced from their country of origin and are now trapped in a foreign place, such homeland-based objects provide useful lenses through which to imagine and connect to their home countries. Like most refugees I knew, Chuck decorated his room himself when he first moved in. He got all of the second-hand furniture and cooking utensils from friends and NGOs. Similar to other refugees, he was quick to display his high level of adaptability in making a homey feeling in Hong Kong. What has made refugees develop this sense of belonging to Hong Kong is that the city has always provided them with a safe environment. Although Chuck had no legal status, he could still have the capacity to take control of his life in Hong Kong. Chuck told me that he had a full daily schedule that included attending English and Cantonese languages classes, worshipping at a mosque, doing outdoor exercises, and buying food at the market with his wife. “When I escaped from Chad, I had no choice. But now I have the choice to do what I like”, Chuck admitted. Food and its preparation and consumption are expressive practices through which the negotiation of identity is mediated (Fischler 1988). The embodied practices of food preparation can help maintain and create new sociocultural relations both within and across borders. Food is a key component of people’s culture and is central to our sense of identity as humans. Traditional food preparation and consumption processes offer valuable insights into how we present ourselves, shape our identities, define our

138  Home in Hong Kong membership, and express our connection and/or distance from others (Koc and Welsh 2002). This is especially true in the case of refugees, who must deal with the adaption or resistance to lifestyle changes within host societies. Food involves all of the senses and is strongly tied to memories and feelings of “homey-ness”. Local marriage and legal identity In contrast to Chuck, Safa, a refugee from Niger, had a more long-term strategic plan to secure a sense of security. Safa arrived to Hong Kong from Niger in late 2008. His refugee claim at UNHCR Hong Kong was rejected six months after his arrival. Safa subsequently filed a torture claim with the Immigration Department. However, he has yet to be invited for an interview. He met his first girlfriend in Hong Kong at Chungking Mansions in 2009. She was an Indonesian domestic worker in Hong Kong, and spent time with her Indonesian friends in Chungking Mansions every Sunday. Safa met her while chatting with African friends in a clothing shop. Safa had a verbal agreement with his Indonesian girlfriend that they could not have a baby due to his refugee status. They lived together in a small apartment. A few months later, she became pregnant. Safa was very angry and asked her to move out. His girlfriend cried desperately. Safa said to her, “You don’t move? I move.” Safa then terminated the rental contract with the landlord and moved out. Safa’s girlfriend was unemployed because she had quit her job one week after she met Safa. Nine months later, his girlfriend gave birth to a girl. Later, Safa met a Hong Kong Chinese woman who worked in a fashion boutique in Kowloon. Safa first met her when he brought an African businesswoman to the shop. Safa’s constant visits to the boutique established not only regular business between the African businesswoman and the shop, but also an intimate relationship with the Hong Kong Chinese woman who worked in the shop. She actively approached Safa for dinner and sex. Safa asked her many times, “Are you sure? I am just a refugee. I have nothing.” The woman desperately wanted to have a baby with Safa. Several months later, the woman was pregnant and she gave birth to a boy. Approximately two years later, they married. Throughout the course of my fieldwork, I asked Hong Kong Chinese women why they established intimate relationships with African refugee men rather than Hong Kong Chinese men. One woman said, “African men are loyal to their girlfriends or wives. Hong Kong men like to find second wives in mainland China. So I prefer African men.” This can be explained by refugees’ “illegal immigrant” status, which restricts their mobility in searching for women outside of Hong Kong. The male African refugees I spoke with who have married Hong Kong women are still in the process of obtaining residency and citizenship. They now have dependent visas issued by the Hong Kong Immigration Department and are required to report to the Immigration Department every two months for

Home in Hong Kong  139 visa renewal. Meanwhile, they have applied for a Hong Kong identity card at the Immigration Department, where they were required to provide officers all of their personal information, including a declaration that they were not married to women in other countries. The immigration officers then conducted security checks of the applicants. It normally takes years to process each application because many refugees travelled to Hong Kong using fake passports. Also, it is difficult for immigration officers to check the marital status of applicants because their names do not exist in the database. Whether the male African refugees use local marriage as a survival strategy to obtain residency and identification documents in Hong Kong is a question that puzzles both me and the parents of the Hong Kong women. In a pre-marriage family dinner gathering, the father of a Hong Kong Chinese woman asked my informant, “Do you really love my daughter? Or are you only using her for your own plan?” My informant told the father that he loves her. During my fieldwork interview, I asked the refugees married to Hong Kong Chinese the same question. At first, they replied, “Yes, of course I love her.” Later, I asked my informants in a more direct way, “To be very honest, are you really using the Hong Kong girls so that you can get a legal status in Hong Kong?” They all looked embarrassed. After a while, Safa replied, “Ha! Ha! Well, of course, yes. I use her but she also uses me.” Although Safa did not explain exactly what he meant by “she also uses me”, based on his interpretation and relationship with his wife, I believe he was referring to “using me to have good sex”. After the group discussion, Safa shared his sexual experience with Hong Kong women with me personally, “Man, it is easy to handle Hong Kong women. Just give her good sex.” A question was then posed to Safa: “Back to your story, why didn’t you allow your Indonesian girlfriend to have a baby, but you allowed this Hong Kong woman to have your baby?” Safa paused before answering, “Well, it is because I cannot see my future with the Indonesian girl. But I can see a good future with this Hong Kong girl.” Several months later, I chatted with a group of male African refugees, asking them the status of their Hong Kong Identity Card application. A couple of them replied, It is still pending. When I get my Hong Kong ID and travel document, I will go to America. In my mind, I still think that America is better than Hong Kong because America will have more opportunities for me. I have a number of friends in America, Canada, and Europe. They all have a good life there. Many refugees see legal status as a way enhancing life opportunities for themselves. Not only that, but the identity card gives them a sense of security and belonging to Hong Kong as home. Getting married, as in the case of Safa, is one way to manoeuvre or change their life orientation from resettlement to local integration. Safa received his Hong Kong Identity Card two years after his marriage. One day he phoned me, “Brother, I am so happy!

140  Home in Hong Kong After six years, I finally got my Hong Kong ID. I can find legal work now! I will get my passport soon!” Over the course of my fieldwork, I met many male refugees who spent years trapped in Hong Kong and observed that they sought girlfriends with legal status through different channels, such as online dating websites and introductions by friends. Establishing intimate relationships with women, particularly Hong Kong Chinese women, allowed male refugees to obtain material support and psychological comfort. It is not uncommon to see refugees from South Asia or Africa married to Hong Kong Chinese women as a means of local integration. Safa’s case clearly illustrated how a refugee, after being denied resettlement, pursued integration through local marriage as a way to seek security in his journey.

Towards a meaningful life In this chapter, we have examined various asylum-seeking experiences— from both physical and mental aspects—in Hong Kong, and we have traced the strategies adopted by refugees to make adjustments in their lives. Although the refugees I spoke with were trapped in limbo for years in Hong Kong, I found out that they attempted to make their lives meaningful. Busying oneself in through activities such as training classes at various institutions, working voluntarily or illegally either for non-governmental organisations or in informal labour markets, practising religion in Christian churches or mosques, and organising or joining various outdoor activities and visits can help refugees to find meaning in the confusion and frustration that displacement has created in their lives. Regularly participating in such activities throughout the city helps to structure refugee life in Hong Kong. “We are very busy” is a common description of life in Hong Kong among refugees. Being busy is admired not only as a positive character trait, but also as a constructive way for people to fill their time and to achieve their goals. Thus, staying busy and working towards goals renders displacement more bearable. When keeping oneself busy, the work itself becomes habitual. Habit can effectively act as a coping mechanism in the face of the pain and suffering that one experiences as an asylum seeker or refugee. As argued by Beckett (1954), “Habit is a great deadener” (Vladimir in Beckett 1954: 58; quoted in Rivers 1987). It “is an anodyne, an analgesic, something which seals us off from [the] reality [of] suffering” (Rivers 1987: 122). Habits and being busy are also related to action and practice. The practice not only structures daily life but also gives it meaning. Practice is a way by which refugees can exercise power and agency over their sense of orientation, purpose, and the self. This is an “intersubjective” process according to Munn (1986), who discusses “the relation between the category of action (practices) and that of the experiencing subject, that is ‘the acting self’” (Munn 1986: 14). Munn (1986) also states that this practice-subject dynamic, as identified in this book, is the way in which practice forms “self-other relations and the constructions of self or aspects of self that are entailed in these

Home in Hong Kong  141 relations” (Munn 1986: 14). The formation of self and self-other relations is a continuous one. For instance, the actions related to being a volunteer worker at Kadoorie Farm for gardening ensure that Susanna has a sense of purpose, a role, and value as volunteer worker. She was required to arrive at the farm on time and to finish her assigned tasks properly to receive transportation subsidies at the end of each day. This is also true in other contexts, such as being employed in the informal labour markets, being a helper or student at NGOs and the British Council, and being a religious worshipper—all of these activities provide a mechanism for Susanna and other refugees in Hong Kong to find meaning and direction in their experience of prolonged displacement.

6 Prolonged displacement and negotiating “home” in Bangkok

“You have an interview today. Where are you now? Are you coming or not?” Tom, a Sri Lankan refugee, received a phone call from the New Zealand Embassy officer one afternoon. Tom replied, “What? But I talked to a UNHCR officer several days ago and they said my application had been rejected!” The embassy officer continued, “No, you have an interview today!” Tom was puzzled. On the following day, the New Zealand Embassy officer phoned Tom again to tell him, “Sorry, we checked with UNHCR officer, your case is still pending. We will interview you next time.” Few days later, Tom talked to a UNHCR protection officer who confirmed that his application to New Zealand had been rejected due to his mental problem. “One day before, they [embassy] said I had an interview. But next day, UNHCR officer said my application was rejected. What happened?” Tom said angrily. Over the years, his children had been constantly asking him “when will we leave this country? They [UNHCR and third countries] reject us because you are crazy?” Tom was very angry at himself because he strongly believed that he had spoiled the lives of his children since 2007. To express his anger, one day, Tom soaked himself with gasoline from a ten-litre container in front of the main gate of UNHCR Thailand office and threatened to set fire to himself. A few weeks later, I started visiting him at home so that he could show me how he and his family were coping with their lives. In a low-ceilinged room, this six-person family had one wooden table, a two-seater sofa, one wooden box, two electric fans, and a picnic gas stove for simple cooking. The room was almost entirely dark and stuffy. Tom told me that they seldom left the building for fear of arrest, preferring to spend the years of waiting in this semi-dark boredom. Later, Tom told me that his resettlement application was first rejected by the USA in 2011. He was extremely disappointed about the decision. Since then, his application has been pending for nine months at UNHCR Thailand due to his severe mental problem. In a year, Tom attended a total of 13 appointments with the resettlement officers at UNHCR Thailand. However, each time, he was told his application was pending. “Actually they don’t need to tell me this in person, they can just play a ­recorded message saying this”, he commented sarcastically. The waiting became almost too painful.

Home in Bangkok  143 Among the refugee community in Bangkok, only a few had been called for interviews by UNHCR’s office. In Bangkok, the fates of refugees are determined by the UNHCR. As funds are cut, the number of refugees continues to grow, while resettlement countries become more fearful and restrictive. As a result, thousands of refugees in Bangkok find themselves in prolonged displacement. One of the tragedies facing them is that they are trapped without the right to work or freedom of movement. Many refugees like Tom are at high risk for developing mental disorders. In Hong Kong, as discussed in the previous chapter, refugees are free from street arrests and home raids. Unlike the refugees in Hong Kong, however, the refugees in Bangkok live in a context of tighter regulation by the government and international organisations. In this chapter, I extend the analysis of asylum-seeking journeys from Hong Kong to Bangkok. Bangkok is also a major first asylum port in Asia. Upon arrival, refugees must be self-reliant, as the government does not provide any financial and material assistance to them. The idea of self-­ reliance has been strongly promoted within the refugee community by UNHCR Thailand. Based on my observations over the years, the government is primarily concerned about how to crack down on the existence of refugees in urban areas through street arrests, home raids, and deportation. However, refugees are not absolutely without help in Bangkok. Lawyers, church staff, NGO workers, and social workers—both Thai and foreign—struggle to find solutions to the problems faced by refugees in Bangkok. Lying at the crossroads for refugees flowing from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, Bangkok is a mid-station for refugees—a step on asylum-seeking journey that should, yet unfortunately seldom does, move one from horror to security. Bangkok provides an alternative context for asylum-seeking journeys in Asia. In the remainder of this chapter, I will examine how refugees in Bangkok cope with and negotiate uncertainties in a structural context that is significantly different from that of Hong Kong. In particular, I explore the role of refugee agency in changing institutional constraints into opportunities. Life for the refugees in Bangkok remains challenging, and my goal is here to reveal the similarities and differences in the asylum-seeking journeys in Bangkok compared to those occurring in Hong Kong.

A stranded journey in Bangkok By the time I had a brief visit to Bangkok in January 2018, Tom was still there. For him, this 11-year stranded journey experience is painful, but also highly materialised and networked. While he spent the majority of his time in Bangkok, a wide range of movement in and out of the city—for information, images, money, services, and people—became an important characteristic of his stranded journey. These in-and-out movements took place at various sites throughout Bangkok that housed a high concentration of refugees and ethnic minorities, which, combined, form their social world. These “sites of stranded world” are Pratunam Market, Silom, Nana in Sukhumvit, and Sutthisan.

144  Home in Bangkok Pratunam Market Pratunam Market is a major clothing wholesale and retail market in central Bangkok. The market is located at the intersection of Ratchaprarop and Phetburi Roads in Ratchathewi District. The market includes retail stores targeting visiting traders and outdoor stalls aimed at tourists. Traders from Africa and South Asia often visit Pratunam Market for business. In addition to clothing, shoes, and watches, Pratunam Market houses numerous other businesses, including cargo and freight companies, currency exchanges, food stalls, and the only African restaurant in Bangkok (see Figures 6.1 and 6.2).

Figure 6.1  Street stalls in Pratunam Market, Bangkok.

Figure 6.2  A frican clothing shop and African restaurant in Pratunam Market, Bangkok.

Home in Bangkok  145 Silom, Sukhumvit, and Sutthisan Silom Road is a sub-district and road in Bang Rak District. It is one of Bangkok’s most cosmopolitan streets and also a major financial centre. Further down Silom Road on Thanon (Road) Pan is the most famous Hindu temple in Bangkok, Wat Mahamariamman, known locally as Wat Kaek. Many South Asian-owned shops and businesses exist near the temple, including Indian clothing shops, food stalls, and restaurants. This area is also well known as a residential and commercial centre for Indians and Sri Lankans. Approximately seven kilometres away from Silom lies Khlong Toey, one of the poorest areas in Bangkok. Khlong Toey Market, the largest fresh market in Bangkok, offers low prices on raw meat, seafood, produce, and other items such as clothing and kitchenware. The market supports the grassroots population, including local Thai as well as migrants and refugees (see Figures 6.3 and 6.4). Sukhumvit Road is the longest road in Thailand, and it houses many apartments, villas, restaurants, bars, and clubs. It is also popular among foreign visitors and expats. Soi (Street) 3 and Soi 3/1 of Sukhumvit Road— known as the Nana neighbourhood—are also known as Soi Arab due to the presence of many Middle Eastern businesses, including textile businesses, clothing shops, guesthouses, food stalls, and restaurants (see Figure 6.5). The sidewalk of Nana has become a large market selling diverse products such as luggage, handcrafts, knock-off designer watches, and DVDs. The stalls transform into roadside bars and pubs after midnight. Thai people and many migrant workers and refugees are attracted to job opportunities in this area. Sutthisan in Huai Khwang District is a residential area located on the eastern side of the city centre. With the exception of a few high-rise apartment blocks along Sutthisan Winitchai Road—a main road in Sutthisan—the

Figure 6.3  Wat Mahamariamman in Silom-Pan Roads, Bangkok.

146  Home in Bangkok

Figure 6.4  K hlong Toey Market, Bangkok.

Figure 6.5  A  reas around Soi Arab in Nana, Sukhumvit, Bangkok.

area primarily houses dilapidated three-storey structures where many refugees and asylum seekers live. Grocery stores, motorbike repair shops, convenience stores, internet cafes, pawn shops, and food stalls can be found on the ground floors of these old buildings. Although room rental rates in Sutthisan are higher than those in other areas further from the city centre, many refugees still reside in this area due to the presence of two non-­ governmental organisations that offer them assistance. Bangkok Refugee

Home in Bangkok  147 Centre offers social, medical, and educational services to urban refugees in Thailand, while Asylum Access Thailand provides legal counsel and representation to urban asylum seekers in their RSD proceedings. Urban refugees are usually “dispersed, unenumerated, and unmanaged”, living at the margins of urban society (Marfleet 2006: 40), and refugees living in the heart of Bangkok are no exception. They lead inconspicuous lives and attempt to avoid detection by the Immigration Bureau while awaiting their next move. Similar to those in Hong Kong, refugees in Bangkok are also socially isolated, with no legal right to work. As such, they become marginalised by their illegal status. In Bangkok, neither an asylum seeker certificate nor refugee status documentation—both issued by UNHCR Thailand—serves as a safeguard against immigration arrest, which makes refugees vulnerable to detention. The government has also been known to deport refugees, thereby violating the obligations of non-refoulement under customary international law and international treaties to which Thailand is a signatory party, such as the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In late December 2009, although they possessed UNHCR refugee status documents and resettlement commitments from third countries, a group of 158 Lao Hmong refugees was forcefully repatriated after being arrested in Bangkok and detained for three years in a detention centre near the north-eastern border at Nong Khai (People’s Empowerment Foundation 2010). The lives of refugees in Bangkok are shaped by persistent uncertainty, insecurity, and fear. Due to the government’s strict immigration stance, refugees in Bangkok must secure subsistence and assistance while constantly avoiding immigration officers who may arrest and detain them, or even forcibly repatriate them to countries where they fear persecution. The presence of refugees and ethnic minorities in the aforementioned “sites of the stranded world” assists refugees in Bangkok with coping. As a group of “illegal immigrants” in Thailand, refugees have developed various survival strategies to support each other, including sharing accommodation and information, lending and borrowing money, and offering emotional support. The social networks developed from the experience of displacement and immobility reveal the transnational characteristics of these refugees, who engage in various transnational spaces in which they seek numerous types of assistance. However, stranded as they are in urban Thailand for years, this reliance on the refugee diaspora in Bangkok must be reconciled with wariness, competition, and distrustfulness due to the scarcity of assistance from both the UNHCR and NGOs within the strict immigration context. One way in which the refugees in Bangkok comprehended this process was by differentiating between their close circle of acquaintances and the wider refugee community. Given Bangkok’s harsh immigration stance, this chapter argues that refugees’ lengthy condition of liminality presents them with an unclear future, which sometimes prevents the continuity of emotional attachment and bonding among refugees.

148  Home in Bangkok

Refugees and networks Upon arrival, the existing dense networks of Pratunam Market, Silom, and Sukhumvit become critical initial sources of support for refugees for accommodation, food, emotional support, and asylum-seeking information. While the majority of refugees learned of these sites either through their smugglers or through their family and friends at home, a small number of them learned of them through co-national migrants as they wandered around Bangkok. The refugees in Bangkok, like those living in Hong Kong, possessed a high level of sociability in relation to gaining access to refugee networks. Once at the sites, they actively approached members of their ethnic community in clothing shops, food stalls, and restaurants. In their first interactions, they began with a brief description of themselves, such as the nationality and the reason for leaving their home town. Then, they described their problems, which often include homelessness and a lack of money for food. The more miserably they performed, the easier it was to gain support. When Norman approached a Sri Lankan refugee and the boss of an Indian restaurant in Silom, he told the following story: Brothers, I feel really shy about asking for help. I feel embarrassed, but in this situation I have no choice. I just came here from the airport, and now I am homeless. It is my first time here, and I know nothing about this place. It is raining heavily outside. You see, my clothes are all wet, and nobody can help me. I really don’t know where to find a place to stay. We come from the same country. I beg for your help. Out of sympathy, co-national migrants are often touched by refugees’ stories, and are willing to offer some free food and temporary shelter. Norman aimed to mingle with the fellow Sri Lankans to seek practical support, such as accommodation and food, because he arrived in Bangkok with little more than pocket money (approximately US$100). Since many refugees do not speak English or Thai and were unfamiliar with Thailand, they had to exclusively rely on those who spoke their language and had been in Bangkok longer. During their stays with co-national migrants, the refugees I spoke with were provided with free accommodation and food, in return for which they were required to perform housework, which included washing clothes, cleaning houses, buying food in the market, and preparing meals. In addition, some African refugees were asked to help African businessmen and traders to pack their purchased stocks of clothing, shoes, and other accessories for shipment back to Africa through the cargo and freight companies in Pratunam Market. Meanwhile, co-national migrants informed them about the UNHCR office in Bangkok and how to file refugee claims. Norman told me that before receiving refugee status from the UNHCR, he frequently moved homes, usually every two or three months because—as asylum ­seekers—they had no stable financial resources to pay for rent or

Home in Bangkok  149 food. Also, their co-national roommates were unwilling to provide longterm support due to their own limited financial resources. Norman’s networking skills were far from unique, and such skills are not exclusive to male refugees. After being abandoned by her smuggler in an African restaurant in Pratunam Market, Jip actively approached an African boy for help. She could not hold back her tears and said: Brother, please help me. My smuggler cheated me. I am just a girl, and I don’t have any friends here. We are both Somalis. Allah blesses you. The Somali boy then took her to an African businesswoman. Because the businesswoman was a regular visitor to Bangkok and had been approached by many African refugees in Pratunam Market over the years, she advised Jip that she should file a refugee claim at UNHCR Thailand. She also told Jip where the UNHCR Thailand office is located. While staying with her, Jip was asked to clean the apartment, wash and iron clothes, purchase food from markets, and prepare meals. Most refugees said that they had been eager to locate people with whom they shared common ground, such as refugees from the same countries. Jip was no exception. She explained: When I helped her [the businesswoman] to buy food, I met many Somalis and Africans in the market at Khlong Toey. I talked to them and made friends with them. Most of them were refugees, so we better understood our common problems. Jip admitted that she could not have survived this difficult time without the assistance of her co-national network. After only eight months in Bangkok, Jip had already established her circle of co-ethnic friends at different localities such as markets, grocery stores, and the mosque, where she had made some new refugee friends with whom she could interact. However, her situation failed to improve. Three months later, the businesswoman decided to evict Jip due to her heavy financial burden. She scolded Jip, saying, “You must move out tomorrow because I don’t have enough money to feed you! I can’t buy you food anymore! If you won’t move out tomorrow, I will throw out all your clothes!” Jip then utilised her newly established co-national friendship network. She discussed her problem with two Somali woman refugees living in the same neighbourhood. Both were recognised refugees who had been in the city for one year and were receiving a small amount of monthly subsistence allowance from UNHCR Thailand. These two Somali women agreed that they could temporarily provide Jip with free accommodation and food. Although Jip also needed to perform housework for her two new roommates, she felt more relaxed. “Because we were all refugees, we had more in common”, Jip said. Six months later, Jip was granted refugee status. She then started sharing living expenses, such as rent, food, and utilities, with her two roommates and began to establish a strong sense

150  Home in Bangkok of “sisterhood”. Twice each week, Jip went to the Khlong Toey markets with her roommates to buy food. Jip asked me to accompany them to the market once. At first, I worried whether her roommates would feel comfortable associating with a man due to their religious beliefs. Jip introduced me to her roommates, saying, “This is my friend from Hong Kong. Don’t worry. He is a student and a good guy.” One roommate said to me, “Nice to meet you, brother. You are my sister Jip’s friend, so you are also our friend.” We went to the market at approximately 10 p.m. to buy discounted food. I was surprised to see people of different nationalities, including Thai, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, African, and Middle Eastern people, interacting with each other. Jip’s roommates introduced her to some Somali women in the market. They quickly became friends after spending nearly an hour discussing how to cook Somali food. Jip and her roommates visited the Bangkok Refugee Center the following week to collect their subsistence allowance. By visiting these places with her roommates, Jip had gradually expanded her networks beyond her own neighbourhood. Resource sharing and mutual support Refugees in Bangkok typically reside in neighbourhoods where strong co-national networks exist. The refugees I interacted with throughout the years have settled in six areas,1 where they find rooms to rent in shabby buildings near local markets and/or areas with informal labour opportunities. Newly arrived refugees tend to gravitate to residential areas that have been established by those before them, grouping by household and neighbourhood ties. The close proximity of co-nationals to one another (most lived in the same building or on the same street) facilitates mutual support and resource sharing among them. The refugees and their co-national refugee friends or family members mostly shared the costs of monthly rent (from THB 2,200 to THB 4,500) and utilities (from THB 500 to THB 1,500). However, living conditions were generally terrible, as their rooms were largely dilapidated and unsanitary. I visited Geoffrey, a Sri Lankan refugee, at his home one hot summer afternoon. After passing through a fetid toilet and washing area, I reached a wooden staircase on the ground floor of the building, which led to his room on the second floor. The staircase was narrow, and the hallway was so dark that I could not see the steps clearly. Geoffrey shared a small room with another Sri Lankan refugee. The ceiling of his room was covered with iron plates. The landlord provided them with nothing besides a wall light and some electric plugs. I could feel the intense heat inside the room. Geoffrey shared the first-floor toilet with another two Sri Lankan refugees. Because Geoffrey’s room was tiny and lacked space for cooking, he used his neighbour’s camp stove. At night, Geoffrey and his roommate would unfold a mattress and sleep on the wooden floor. Most refugees’ rooms were poorly furnished. They said that upon arriving in Bangkok, they began searching

Home in Bangkok  151 for discarded clothes and household items because landlords rarely provided tenants with any household items. Norman explained that his sleeping mat, pillow, blanket, and few cooking utensils had been left by his Sri Lankan refugee friends who had resettled to the USA. “I have only bought three T-shirts and a pair of jeans in the past six years”, Norman said. Refugees usually spend their daytime hours at home due to the threat of arrest by immigration police, and Norman was no exception. He usually remained at home doing housework and reading books during the day. At night, Norman often visited his Sri Lankan refugee friends who lived nearby. They ate dinner together, chatted socially, read the Bible, and listened to Sri Lankan music. Dense co-national networks may be spatially dispersed, and linked by language, culture, and nationality rather than physical location (Brimicombe 2007). By interacting with co-national refugees daily, Norman admitted that his bonding within the networks intensified. “We supported each other materially and emotionally as much as we could, but the biggest support was financial”, Norman said. Enlarging networks Although people tend to connect with friends who are similar to themselves (Granovetter 1983; Putnam 2000), the refugees I spoke with realised that mingling with people of the same nationality may not help them advance their livelihoods. For example, Tony, a Pakistani refugee, noted that I like to make friends from different countries. I have some friends from different nationalities. I think what is important is our shared interests and social backgrounds. It is not necessary to only make friends within the same ethnicity. Knowing people from different countries can expand my opportunities. I don’t actually want to get too close to Pakistanis here because they complain about the same problems every day. Sometimes, I feel even more stressed after hearing these. Although informal networks are important, Putnam (1993) also emphasised the significance of community and NGOs as sources of social capital. Many refugees befriended people of different nationalities in these organisations, such as the BRC in Sutthisan, Bangkok. When collecting their asylum seeker certificates, UNHCR’s officers advised the refugees that there was a BRC office in Sutthisan where they could seek help. As a refugee service centre, the BRC also acts as a social space for people who seek protection. Every day, refugees of various national groups congregated together in the centre for different purposes, which included: seeking medical advice; meeting with social workers, psychologists, and lawyers; and attending schools or training classes. Refugees went to the BRC to exchange information, chat, and to receive emotional support. During lunch hours, many of them would gather together with their children in the playground to interact with people,

152  Home in Bangkok which included the Thai staff. They employed different strategies and language skills to interact with people of different nationalities. For example, Tony, a Sri Lankan, greeted African and Chinese refugees differently according to their cultural differences. When some Somalis approached, Tony shook hands with the greeting “Ii warran”, which literally means “How are you?” The Somalis replied by saying, “Kya haal hey”, which means “How do you do?” When Tony saw Chinese refugees, he greeted them by saying, “ni hao”, meaning “How are you?” Tony observed that Chinese refugees seldom greeted each other with a handshake. Tony explained: If you want other people to respect you, you first need to respect others, particularly their cultures. Saying “Hello” and “How are you?” in other people’s language can reduce our social distances. Paula, a Chinese refugee, said, “I don’t think learning about other cultures is a problem. If you are moving to another country, you want to learn something new.” She had a close friendship with a group of Somali girls. During the Chinese New Year period, she brought a box of homemade glutinous rice balls and presented it to her Somali friends and other refugees, explaining the Chinese custom of eating rice balls. After that, her Somali friends told her about halva, a traditional Somali sweet for celebrating special occasions such as weddings. A long conversation about cooking traditional food then followed. I was approached one afternoon by a Sri Lankan refugee who ran a small bakery in the BRC. He skilfully persuaded me to buy his bread, “Come, come. This is Hong Kong bread. It tastes the same as the bread in Hong Kong. Try a little bit.” I then asked him how he knew the taste of the bread in Hong Kong. He replied, “Of course I know, I have some Sri Lankan friends in Hong Kong. We chatted on the phone and they told me. I also went to Hong Kong a long time ago.” Interestingly, when some Pakistanis passed by, I observed that this Sri Lankan refugee described his bread as “Pakistani bread”. People tried his bread, and then a series of friendly conversations began, focusing on his bread. Some Pakistanis asked him not to add too much sugar because the bread in their country was not as sweet as the type he made, whereas the Somalis liked the sweet taste of his bread. By using this tactic, the Sri Lankan refugee could sometimes sell all of his bread within two hours, earning approximately THB 300. Furthermore, on the days refugees collected their subsistence allowance, some would set up stalls in the BRC to sell their own traditional food and products. Some refugees made their own traditional food, such as roti, while others bought food and spices from the grocery stores in Silom or Sukhumvit. They sold these goods to fellow refugees and visitors for a small profit. These economic activities help the refugees establish their own social networks, generate income, and build their social lives in Bangkok. The BRC offers refugees a social space for economic, cultural, and information exchanges. One day, a group of Somalis, Sri Lankans, and Pakistanis

Home in Bangkok  153 was gathering at a corner in the playground. Tony told me that they were discussing their concerns regarding a recent large-scale immigration arrest in Bangkok. They were exchanging information about what they heard, including whom and how many were arrested, and they comforted each other. Other places where refugees interacted with people of different nationalities included Holy Redeemer, St Michael, and St Louis churches. Religious organisations are places for the refugees to worship, gather, exchange information, and interact with people from various ethnic groups. Furthermore, their co-national enclaves in Bangkok informed them that some religious networks offered refugees limited financial and health assistance, ranging from THB 1,000 to THB 5,000. Notably, in order to access these networks, many Muslim refugees converted to Christianity and Catholicism. Wasa, a Pakistani Muslim refugee, asked me whether he should explain his case in detail when submitting a paper “declaration” for religious conversion. Wasa converted to Catholicism a few months after his arrival in Bangkok. Similar to other converted Catholics, Wasa needed to attend Bible-reading classes and mass weekly. “To receive money for survival, sometimes I have to take actions outside my own religion (Islam)”, Wasa admitted. According to a Sri Lankan refugee who worked for the Holy Redeemer Church as a volunteer, there were approximately 400 refugees registered as recipients of the church’s humanitarian assistance. On the first Saturday of each month, the church distributes two kilos of rice and two bottles of cooking oil to the first 110 individuals. Instant noodles and canned fish are then distributed to the latecomers (see Figure 6.6). On the second Sunday of each month, the church provides registered refugees with an allowance of THB 1,300,

Figure 6.6  R  efugees were lining up for collecting food and socialising with fellow refugees in a church in Bangkok.

154  Home in Bangkok which they are entitled to receive for only one year. I often accompanied the refugees to the church on weekends. Although registration began at 10 a.m., over 20 refugees were sitting on the benches in the playground by 9:30 a.m., holding either their UNHCR papers or passports, waiting for the call from volunteer workers. These visits to churches provided the refugees with a relaxed and safe space to mingle with others. In fact, many refugees have become close friends at the church “gatherings”. From local to transnational A comment from Sammy, a Chinese refugee, was fairly typical: “I call my family constantly because international phone calls are cheap now.” Similar to many refugees, Sammy said that his closest emotional and financial support came from his family and best friends at home. Most informants said that they phoned their family and close friends at home at least once a week. Although Sammy found a group of new friends in Bangkok, his parents in China are still his primary source of support and advice. “Parents are the people whom you can trust to give useful advice. I can also tell them anything.” In terms of network analysis, family and close friends at home may play a role as lynchpins (Williams 2006), connecting people within a larger network. By transmitting news and information, a lynchpin can help keep people updated on network developments. While these transnational sources of emotional and informational support were very important, one cannot neglect the significance of transnational financial support from refugees’ homelands. Similar to many refugees, Sammy had been borrowing money from his parents nearly every month. He described his feelings about this fact as follows: We really do not want to borrow money from our families anymore because we have already borrowed so much money over the years. My wife is a tough woman who really does not want to rely on other people, even her family, so she has difficulties now after years of borrowing money. We started feeling embarrassed to ask for money on the phone. However, we still have to borrow or we cannot survive. Another typical characteristic among the refugees in Bangkok was their practice of regularly borrowing between THB 3,000 and THB 10,000 per month from different overseas sources. One Sri Lankan refugee told me that he borrowed from THB 4,200 to THB 4,500 every month from his family in Sri Lanka to cover the cost of living for his seven family members in Bangkok. Co-national friends living in other countries were also targets for refugees in Bangkok seeking financial assistance. A Pakistani refugee named Chris lived with his wife and three children in Bangkok. Since Chris had quite a large family with three young children, the subsistence allowance was insufficient to sustain his whole family. Therefore, Chris had been

Home in Bangkok  155 borrowing THB 8,000–THB 10,000 every month for the past three years from a Sri Lankan businessman friend who now lives in Lebanon. In Bangkok, Western Union is also the most popular money transfer agent among my informants. Norman told me that his father usually remitted THB 3,000 through this low-end global financial transfer service every month. I followed Norman to collect his remittance from Western Union in Silom one afternoon. At the money transfer counter, Norman called his father on his mobile phone, telling him that he would get the money soon. “Dad, I just took THB 3,000 from your wallet remotely”, Norman jokingly told his father. Norman’s example demonstrates that these regular low-level exchanges among refugees are not simply money transfers, but crucial sociocultural connections with people located in different countries. Moreover, Chinese refugees who were Falun Gong practitioners usually gathered together in different tourist spots, such as the Grand Palace, for transnational advocacy, talking to foreign tourists about the history of Falun Gong and their experiences of torture under the Chinese Communist regime. Sammy said, “One time, an Australian tourist asked me whether the American government pays me to disparage Chinese Communism in Bangkok. I laughed and told him that I did not care about bilateral relations. I only care about the relationship between governments and their citizens.” Sammy then began to tell the Australian tourist about Falun Gong and its relationship with the Chinese government. These Chinese refugees also used the internet to maintain connections with Falun Gong associations abroad. They held regular online video meetings with other overseas Falun Gong practitioners, exchanging information regarding the status of Falun Gong practitioners in various countries and organising transnational Falun Gong social movements. They also engaged themselves in editing, designing, and printing paper publications to promote Falun Gong and in order to advocate for greater human rights and an end to Communist Party rule in China. Sammy said, We [Falun Gong members] keep ourselves busy in Bangkok. We need to promote Falun Gong publications by writing reports, printing leaflets, and making DVDs. Then, we distribute these to people here. We also must connect with other Falun Gong practitioners and Chinese democrats overseas every day. By constantly sharing information online and interacting with foreign tourists in Bangkok, the Chinese refugees remain up to date on international affairs. Different refugee groups have their own way of engaging in transnational social fields. For example, Jip and her African refugee friends did not engage in any transnational social movements in Bangkok. Rather, they assisted African businesspeople and traders with packing their purchased stocks of clothing, shoes, and other accessories for shipment back to Africa through

156  Home in Bangkok the cargo and freight companies located in Pratunam Market. They persistently connected with fellow Africans thousands of miles away through the transnational flow of low-end goods. South Asian (e.g. Sri Lankan and Indian) and Middle Eastern (e.g. Iranian) refugees often worked as waiters and cleaning staff at restaurants in Silom and Nana, where they regularly interacted with foreign tourists. Examples such as the aforementioned clearly illustrated that one did not need to physically leave a place to aspire for spatial-temporal extension, since people are currently situated within a larger global and transnational social field. Likewise, refugees could experience transnational life while being trapped in Bangkok simply because their social worlds had shifted through a wide range of movement in and out of the city. Money and work When I gave him some of my leftovers a week before I was to return to Hong Kong in 2012, Arthur, a Sri Lankan refugee, said, “there is no way I can pay you back for everything that you have done for me. I am sure we will meet again soon, but not in Bangkok. I will come and visit you in Hong Kong.” Arthur had a frugal way of life but seldom had enough to eat. The subsistence allowance from the UNHCR was insufficient to cover his monthly expenditure. A few months later, he emailed me to say that he had found work serving customers in a restaurant in Silom. We kept in touch through emails over the years, but we suddenly lost contact in 2017. I had a feeling that he might be resettled to a third country. By the time I made a short visit to Bangkok in early 2018, I bumped into Arthur in a restaurant. He was emotional when he saw me again, albeit in Bangkok, which was certainly out of his control. He told me that he was arrested by the immigration police in 2017 and was detained for about half a year. After bailout, his Sri Lankan businessman friend referred him to the boss of this restaurant, where he worked as a waiter. “The life here in Bangkok is getting more and more difficult. UNHCR changed policy two years ago. No more subsistence allowance to refugees unless the cases are vulnerable”, Arthur stated. Refugees in Bangkok like Arthur often described financial problems as being their most significant concern. An overwhelming majority of refugees said that the monthly subsistence allowance from UNHCR Thailand was insufficient to cover the cost of living in Bangkok. Aaron, a Sri Lankan, complained that the financial and food assistance amount had remained the same between 2008 and 2012. However, the cost of living in Bangkok had increased over the years. He said: When I first arrived in Bangkok, a bag of sugar was THB 12 to THB 13. Now, it is THB 25. For a bottle of cooking oil, before it was THB 20. Now it is THB 40. But the subsistence allowance remains the same!

Home in Bangkok  157 In order to survive, some refugees sold or pawned their gold and jewellery in exchange for money, while others borrowed money from their refugee friends. Norman told me he borrowed THB 5,000 from his Sri Lankan friends one year. When asked how he settled the debts, he shyly explained, “I needed to borrow money from some friends to repay others.” One afternoon, when I saw Norman in Sutthisan, his Sri Lankan friend was giving him a THB 1,000 note. After Norman saw me and introduced me to his Sri Lankan friend, he said: Ha ha, you saw it. I just borrowed money from him. [Norman turned to his friend] I had a good reputation in your mind, right? Three months ago, I borrowed money from you and repaid you very shortly. Norman’s friend added, Yes. Last month, you lent me money because my wife gave birth to a baby, and I needed some money to buy fresh milk. I was so happy you helped. So this time, when you asked, I didn’t think much and lent you money. Besides money borrowing, more than one-quarter of my informants had found work in the informal labour market alongside the many documented and undocumented migrants from Africa and Southeast Asian countries who procured jobs in Pratunam Market, Silom, and Nana in Sukhumvit. The jobs ranged from dishwashing, waiting tables, and cleaning to different forms of manual labour, paying between THB 7,000 and THB 9,000 per month. Some African refugees were employed as labourers in Pratunam Market, helping African businesspeople and traders to transport heavy loads and pack manufactured goods. The Sri Lankan and Pakistani refugees also assisted the owners of South Asian restaurants in Silom with serving and cleaning. Moreover, refugees from the Middle East took jobs waiting tables and cleaning in Middle Eastern restaurants in Nana in Sukhumvit. As an Iraqi refugee, Leslie had been actively seeking a job in Nana. He visited various restaurants, telling the managers how hardworking he was. “I told the bosses I could work two shifts”, Leslie noted. Leslie finally secured a job as a waiter in a Middle Eastern restaurant in Nana. He worked 12 hours a day for six days per week, earning THB 8,000 per month. On his day off, Leslie mainly stayed in his cluttered one-room apartment. His boss treated him well by providing him free lunch and dinner on his working days. As I was eating lunch at the restaurant where Leslie worked one day, police were patrolling the nearby area. Leslie’s boss immediately asked Leslie and another waiter (an undocumented migrant) to stand behind a wooden screen near the kitchen. After the police left, I asked Leslie how often the police patrolled this area and how he avoided police checks. He said, “Quite often, at least once a week because it is a tourist area. So my boss has this wooden

158  Home in Bangkok screen for us to hide when the police come.” Leslie’s experience was far from unique. Many refugees told me that their co-national bosses notified them before immigration police officers approached.

Emotional encounters and negotiating security I argue that asylum-seeking journeys should not be viewed as merely a simple act of human movements from one place to another. Rather, we should also consider the powerful emotional components underpinning the journeys that refugees make to seek asylum. The emotional interactions between refugees and members of local communities are an important part of the ­asylum-seeking experience. More often than not, these emotional encounters determine how refugees make decisions and how they fashion themselves in their host societies. All of the refugees I spoke with agreed that the expiry of their tourist visas was a critical life event in Bangkok that significantly changed their emotional conditions from positive to negative. This is simply because the event officially changed their status from tourist/legal citizen of their country to refugee. And, as the months passed, refugees came to realise that they had no rights to work, that they were subject to threats of street arrest and home raids, and, most importantly, that their first-instance interviews by UNHCR had been scheduled for a date two years after their arrival. All of these factors created disappointment and anxiety among the refugees. Many reported sleep disturbances and nightmares, and all of them spoke of feeling despair and helplessness, and of being unable to concentrate or remember simple things. However, it was clear to the refugees that they had nowhere to go. The asylum-seeking condition in Bangkok did not provide protection for these people; in fact, it both limited and deprived them of it. For refugees in Bangkok, a wide variety of negative emotions were partly caused by the experience of asylum-seeking journeys, including worry, fear, hopelessness, and loneliness. Worry and fear “We all worry. We are anxious about money, family, and the future”, said Sasa, a Pakistani refugee. Sasa worried terribly about her missing family members back in Pakistan. Whenever she saw the only family photo she owned, she could not hold back her tears. Moreover, she could not sleep well and lost her appetite. Over the previous three years, her friends in Pakistan had been helping her to locate her family members at home. However, they failed to do so. “No news is good news. There is a hope they are still alive”, Sasa said with a relaxed facial expression. However, she is not optimistic about everything. Regarding her refugee claim, she looked worried. I asked if she was alright. She smiled and said, “Good. I just worry about my case.” It was clear that she was anxious about her appeal case. I asked if the UNHCR had ever asked her to sign the deportation letter. She looked

Home in Bangkok  159 alert and said, “No. I can’t go back now.” She had made an appeal before, but failed. She then filed another appeal. In a higher pitch, she said, “I am under too much tension now.” Much like the refugees in Hong Kong, refugees in Bangkok are distressed by the threat of detention and deportation, and many refugees claimed that they would be in danger if they returned to their countries. They also worried about their livelihood back in their home countries if they were to be deported back. Hopelessness and loneliness Prolonged displacement conditions triggered feelings of hopelessness and loneliness among the refugees in Bangkok. Flora, a Pakistani refugee, said, “They do nothing, all reject.” She did not know what to do, and many of her friends’ cases were closed. She has been waiting for a decision for four years. Worry, fear and expectations, and being endlessly deferred have become a way of life in the world of refugees in Bangkok. Bangkok is a prison sentence for refugees, who are subject to severe governance by the immigration police on a daily basis. There have been suicide cases, where refugees were unable to wait any longer. Refugees without families always expressed that they felt lonely in Bangkok because they were separated from their families and it was difficult to make true friends in Bangkok. They always locked themselves up in dark tiny rooms for security reasons. Moreover, they could find no one to share their feelings with. Although the refugees could somehow understand each other, they could not help much because they all faced the same type of daily challenges such as lack of food, accommodation, and money, as well as the threat of street arrests and home raids. Sam, an Indian refugee, has been staying in Bangkok alone for approximately two years. He lived in a Thai neighbourhood, where all of his neighbours were Thai. Unfortunately, they always locked their doors and did not talk to him. “Probably because they don’t speak English and I don’t speak Thai”, Sam explained. Sam wanted to learn the Thai language because he was afraid to talk to the local people when visiting the market. Over the years, Sam felt like he was missing something in his life because his family was not there with him. In order to improve their well-being, some refugees turned to medical practitioners for assistance, and were usually diagnosed as “suffering from stress” and subsequently given sleeping pills. Some turned to seek spiritual help from religious organisations, and regularly attended religious ceremonies to achieve peace in their lives. These are the two main approaches adopted by refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok for dealing with their emotions. The emotional encounters of refugees must be understood in the context of the wider forces that impact their individual lives and influence the opportunities to create and maintain affectionate social relationships. The everyday lives of refugees are, of course, influenced by wider sociopolitical processes. This is particularly true for the refugees in Bangkok.

160  Home in Bangkok Stress, distrust, and negotiating security Stress and depression can occur early in the process of becoming a refugee, and these feelings are largely the result of journey-associated losses. Sometimes these feelings occur later, when initial expectations are not met, and when the refugees experience long-lasting obstacles in advancing their lives in the host society due to structural constraints worsened by exclusionary policies and discrimination (Kirmayer et al. 2011). As Hynes (2003: 7) argued, upon arrival, refugees may “mistrust everybody they encounter, including members of their so-called community”. Negative experiences with governmental officials, their smugglers/agents, UNHCR staff, NGO workers, and the host population impact their ability to trust the new environment they encounter. In Bangkok, the level of discrimination encountered, the inability to gain paid employment, the difficulty in adapting to local culture, the threat of street arrests and home raids, and the state of prolonged displacement are all stress factors that hinder “the reconstitution of trust and the regaining of ontological security” (Hynes 2003: 8). The refugees I spoke with often emphasised that their own circle of co-­national friends and relatives was supportive and provided reciprocal practical assistance as well as emotional support. According to Putnam (2007: 137), “norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness” are prerequisites for social networking, and Coleman (1990: 304) argues that “a group whose members manifest trustworthiness…will be able to accomplish much more than a comparable group lacking that trust”. However, my research experience in Bangkok indicates that, over time, refugees developed complex relationships with others in the refugee community that involved various levels of trust. However, people who are not close friends and relatives of the refugees are not generally trusted. Some scholars have argued that the wider migrant community may be perceived negatively as a source of competition, pressure, or even danger over time (Williams 2006). Over the years, I constantly heard refugees gossip about who might be a spy and/ or a member of another ethnic or religious group, subsequently treating such people with mistrust. Some refugees only interacted with specific groups of friends, family, and acquaintances that they distinguished from the wider and more generalised refugee community (see Kelly and Lusis 2006). This behaviour created a binary opposition between particular refugee networks, with wider refugee community networks being often constructed as competitive and even threatening. As Kelly and Lusis (2006) emphasised, tight networks can sometimes lead to exploitation and cheating. Indeed, this binary opposition distinctly emerged in Jip’s narrative as she differentiated her close friends from the general Somali refugee community in Bangkok: After several years here, I now only go out with my close Somali refugee friends living in my village [neighbourhood]. If a new Somali woman

Home in Bangkok  161 asked me to visit her place in another area, I won’t do so because I don’t know her. I am also not familiar with that place. I need to spend money for travel. Most importantly, I am afraid of immigration arrest. I have many friends in this village [neighbourhood] now, so I don’t really need to know new ones in other villages [neighbourhoods]. For Jip, bonding with a tight network of trusted friends in her neighbourhood seemed to limit her from social networking across the greater society, whether with Somalis or non-Somalis. Far from being static, Jip’s co-­national bonding networks are often fluid, changing as her needs and circumstances vary over time (see Morgan 1990). The relationships and networking skills of the refugees changed over time. Vertovec and Cohen (1999) identified diaspora as a social form based on social relationships and collective identity. However, Dufoix (2008) argues that such an interpretation of diaspora embodies some illusions. He noted particular concerns regarding the “illusion of community”, or the notion that those deemed to belong share common interests and thus form a “communitas”. Turner (1977) argues that communitas members have a close emotional attachment to each other because no social distinction exists between members. However, my observations in the field revealed an intensive power struggle among refugees in Bangkok. Tony, a Pakistani refugee, explained this phenomenon in the following way: Of course we like to live together because we can ask for help when we have problems. But we are illegal here. We cannot work legally, and we are also afraid of arrest, so we usually stay at home most of the time. As time passes, the refugee neighbours will start wondering what the guy living next door is doing at home all the time. How can he survive without a job? Where does he get financial support? Then refugees begin to use different ways to intrude on the privacy of others by soliciting information from people. Misperception and mistrust then emerge. We started to have lots of arguments based on half-truths and guesses. Unlike the refugees in Hong Kong, who often gathered together in public areas (e.g. streets and shopping centres), the refugees in Bangkok had to conduct their social, economic, and cultural activities less visibly. This was their way to negotiate security issues in Bangkok. Here, I argue that the hidden operations of social networks change the dynamics of social relationships between refugees over time. The refugee diaspora is not always united over time. Instead, power struggles between members emerge whenever an individual member’s self-interest has been threatened. I often heard that some refugees solicited the personal information of other refugees on behalf of their home governments by exploiting their trust and friendship in

162  Home in Bangkok exchange for financial benefit and safety. One Vietnamese refugee described his experience in the following way: At first, I trusted him because we came from the same country. So I showed him my important documents for assistance with English translation so that I could submit the English version to UNHCR Thailand in support of my refugee claims. I also talked to him about my political problems at home. My family at home later received a threatening message from government officials. They told my family that they had my documents for my refugee claims and they knew where I lived in Bangkok. The officer also said that they would send some undercover agents to Bangkok to catch me. I didn’t show my documents to other people except this guy, so it is obvious that he betrayed us. I also spoke to a Vietnamese refugee who had frequently been accused by his co-nationals of being a spy for their home government. In our conversation, he expressed his own worries and difficulties: My home government also searched for me after I arrived in Bangkok. Our government was very smart because they could check the whereabouts of refugees abroad through our mail and e-mails sent home. Although I used different e-mail addresses, the government could still locate me. One day, I received a message from a government official, asking me to return home or my family who was still in my home town would be in danger. Although I obtained refugee status, my government threatened that I would not have a chance for resettlement if I didn’t follow their instructions. Later, they gave me a secret task to do in exchange for money and safety. I understand English. I have financial problems, and I have been waiting for resettlement for four years. This Vietnamese refugee did not directly admit that he worked for the Vietnamese government by soliciting the personal information of his co-­ethnic acquaintances. My purpose for noting this example is not to determine whether this Vietnamese refugee was a spy or not, but rather to illustrate the exploitation of friendship among refugee communities as well as the distrust and power struggles that occur between them in exchange for safety and security. In addition to helping their governments to solicit information from co-national refugees in Bangkok, some of them also provided contact information and details about others to the Thai immigration police for conducting home searches in exchange for money. One Sri Lankan refugee told me that when he opened the door at home once, he saw a refugee standing beside two immigration police officers who were conducting a home search in his building. “If this refugee didn’t receive money from the police, how he could stand next to the officer during the home search”, he asked. In my experience, refugees in Bangkok seldom revealed their detailed addresses (such as building name and room number) to fellow refugees who were not close friends.

Home in Bangkok  163 They merely shared the street and district. Moving frequently for security and self-protection was also a common practice among refugees in Bangkok. A diaspora implies clear boundaries around those who belong, based on presumed attachment to a “homeland”; however, the construction of an assumed “diasporic community” ignores the dimensions of power based on categories such as class and ethnicity (Anthias 1998), which may serve to divide the “community”. The refugee diaspora in Bangkok was certainly divided. Indeed, diasporic identities are formed not only in relation to the homeland or common experiences of the people they encounter, but also in relation to the societies in which migrants settle and the processes of inclusion and exclusion they experience. In the field, I observed that the refugees I spoke with perceived the experience of being a “refugee” as being more important than their ethnicity or even their national identity in the face of Thailand’s strict immigration arrangements. As illegal immigrants, they were positioned at the bottom tier of social hierarchy in Thailand, and had long been trapped in this limbo. They felt insecure and tense, which limited their capacity for rational action (see Szakolczai 2009). Therefore, suspicion towards each other was common. In fact, social interactions among refugees were full of fear and distrust. This conclusion advances our understanding of refugee diaspora, because a sense of solidarity and a spirit of mutual support among the “communitas” cannot be assumed. Moreover, the spirit of mutual support among a refugee community might collapse when an individual member’s self-interest and sense of security is threatened. They could “betray” their peers for self-protection, as previously described. As such, a feeling of panic has seized this group. One way in which the refugees in Bangkok comprehended this process was by differentiating between their close circle of acquaintances and the wider refugee community.

Negotiating home in prolonged displacement As I argued in the previous chapter, being at home is a feeling of safety that can be reproduced by using certain “homing” practices—even under prolonged displacement. Nonetheless, as the stories of Linda, Chuck, and Safa in Hong Kong demonstrate, it is possible to recreate the feeling of “being at home”. Central to this possibility are the networks of support that refugees have established in the city, as well as the capabilities they possess. While the Refugee Union is one of the arenas where senses of solidarity and resistance are more evident, attempts to reconstruct the feeling of stability and familiarity also occur at the individual level through examples such as local marriage and practising homeland-related culture. Notably, choice is an important element of homemaking practices. The capability of refugees to make choices is influenced by policies towards migration. In contrast to the refugees in Hong Kong, the refugees in Bangkok apparently had fewer options. They had to constantly avoid authorities who might arrest them. While some refugees reported that they had been stopped on the streets or searched at home by the Thai immigration police and made to pay fines or

164  Home in Bangkok bribes, others were even stopped by immigration police outside the BRC on the day they received their subsistence allowance from UNHCR. As restrictive asylum-seeking management practices intensify, refugees in Bangkok must find ways to feel that they are “safe”, at least partially, and such practices must be less visible. Transnational ways of belonging As I learned, practising homeland-related cultures at home through preparing and consuming traditional food, wearing traditional clothing, and listening to homeland-based music had become common ways for those negotiating the feeling of “being at home” in Bangkok. This was not only due to the practice of traditional cultures being involved in imaginative connections with their home country (as illustrated in the previous chapter), but also because those who practised their cultures were aware of the limited choices they had in the context of restrictive immigration structures. Cultural practices that fulfil traditions, especially where there are emotional dimensions, have become very important for the many refugees in Bangkok who risk giving hope and meaning to their precarious lives. For the Sri Lankan refugees, it was important to hold weddings in the Sri Lankan way. When Norman did not have enough resources to fulfil his cultural wish, he called upon the support of his friends in Sri Lanka and London. They discussed the arrangements and details of wedding through WhatsApp and Facetime. His friends travelled all the way from Sri Lanka or London to Bangkok with all of the necessary wedding items to arrange and attend his wedding. Wearing sarongs and eating traditional Sri Lankan food with their fingers at home are good examples of practices that signal or enact an identity, and show a conscious connection to Sri Lanka. For some of his friends and relatives who did not travel to Bangkok, they watched the ceremony online. For Jip, wearing a hijab and fasting became specific identity markers in maintaining a Muslim identity. Every night before she went to sleep, Jip watched Deen Show, an online lifestyle TV channel that has an Islamic ethos and covers a wide range of audience interests. These actions demonstrate how the social and cultural organisation of life by refugees in Bangkok transcends the territorial borders of Thailand. Jip stressed that she needed to follow practices that were known to her and that she did not want to give up. “We were forced to leave home with nothing. The only thing we brought to here was our culture and tradition”, Jip added. Faced with sudden immigration arrest and indefinite detention, the refugees in Bangkok always live with severe anxiety. Nonetheless, they all expressed feeling happiness and comfort when practising homeland-based culture in their houses. This private domain, I argue, is the major physical space where refugees in Bangkok could find ease and comfort. However, this should not be interpreted as treating Bangkok as their home. Over the years, I never heard of anyone claimed that they established a sense of belonging to Bangkok. Language barriers, discrimination,

Home in Bangkok  165 and personal safety were identified as common difficulties when coping with community life. They all preferred to stay at home. Many refugees said that they attempted to exclude themselves from local society for the purpose of self-protection. They were cautious of the police when they were in public. When they were not out visiting friends, praying at churches or mosques, buying food, or meeting with lawyers and social workers, the informants usually spent time at home. “The fear of the unknown” was a major source of negative attitudes from locals towards refugees in Bangkok. A negative set of beliefs or judgements regarding refugees was built upon guesses and suspicions. “The life here is super difficult. I have been here for 11 years, but I always dreamt of my home town. No single image from Bangkok. I am physically here but mentally I am still in Sri Lanka”, said Tom, in an attempt to express his feelings when asked where his home was. “I need to move forward with my life” The lives of refugees in Bangkok are not static, and remain largely entangled in transnational communications, interactions, and emotional attachments that occur with people in Bangkok, the refugees’ homelands, and the resettlement countries. Stranded as they are in Bangkok for years, their life strategies are continuously shaped by new encounters in their everyday lives as refugee living in this first asylum port. As in Hong Kong, instead of aiming for third-country resettlement, many refugees in Bangkok reported that they attempted to “stay” in Bangkok through marriage and creating their own family. As I learnt, many male refugees attempted to establish intimate relationships with local Thai women and with women from their own nationalities. Although marriages between Thai and refugees are not recognised under Thai Law—making local integration impossible—establishing intimate relationships with Thai women or co-ethnic women allowed the refugees to receive both material support and psychological comfort. Tony admitted that after starting a relationship with a Thai woman, his life had changed significantly, particularly after his girlfriend gave birth to a son. As he explained: Before, I had no idea what I should do every day. I just wandered around the streets in Bangkok. But I have found some meaning in my life after getting together with my girlfriend. Now, I have my family with my wife and son. I need to move forward with my life. Other refugees brought partners from their home country. I first met Rex, a Sri Lankan, in 2010—three years after he fled Sri Lanka for Bangkok. He obtained refugee status from the UNHCR in 2009. However, Rex did not receive any updates from the UNHCR regarding his resettlement application over the subsequent three years. Over this period, Rex maintained regular telephone communication with his girlfriend in Sri Lanka. In the

166  Home in Bangkok face of a lengthy resettlement procedure and little hope of resettlement, Rex decided to propose to his girlfriend, inviting her to come to Bangkok and marry him. In 2012, Rex’s girlfriend and her father flew from Sri Lanka to Bangkok for a religious wedding ceremony conducted in Rex’s apartment in Bangkok. Furthermore, Rex’s uncle and aunt—who owned a restaurant in Los Angeles, USA—also flew to Bangkok for his wedding. To celebrate this new page in Rex’s life, his uncle and aunt sponsored him with US$300. After their marriage, his wife worked as a waitress in a restaurant in Silom, earning several thousand Thai Baht every month. What else can I do here in Bangkok? I can’t go back home and I can’t leave! After many years of thinking, I finally found out that what I can do in Bangkok is to get married and create my family. My life has to move on! Rex explained

Dreams of hope This chapter has attempted to offer a detailed analysis of how refugees cope with and negotiate uncertainties in a structural context that does not recognise refugees. By identifying the challenges and constraints of this context, I have also attempted to highlight the emotional aspects of prolonged displacement in Bangkok. The experiences of refugees in Bangkok are similar to those in Hong Kong because all refugees are active agents in solving their own problems. Common among all of the refugees I spoke with is the use of social interactions—both locally and transnationally—as a means to survive in the absence of refugee recognition by the host governments. However, the harsh immigration policy of Thailand results in the threat of police arrests and indefinite detentions restricting the opportunity for refugees to seek out social contacts and illegal/informal work in the country. Although they are physically immobile, they actively develop various survival strategies that demonstrate their lives within a dynamic transnational social space spanning national borders. The refugees’ prolonged displacement experiences in Bangkok are shaped not only by the uncertainty of their future, but also by a sense of persistent insecurity and fear. As I discovered, dreaming about and hoping for a future home beyond the present locality is important for refugees who see no future in Bangkok. This is about their dreams of hope. In his publication entitled Man’s Search for Meaning (1959), psychotherapist Viktor Frankl wrote that in a situation of profound and prolonged suffering and anxiety, hope is what sustains people. For the refugees in Bangkok, their dreams of hope were developed, facilitated, and sustained by the use of information technology. For example, smartphones and computers play a significant role in the construction of virtual homes among the refugees trapped in limbo. Doná (2015) argued that this virtual space allowed refugees to feel virtually part of a home country

Home in Bangkok  167 that they could not physically visit, which formed what she called “imagined virtual communities”, which were similar to Anderson’s imagined community. This virtual space is powerful in the sense that it links the history, memories, and relationships of the subject involved. In refugee-hosting societies such as Bangkok, the construction of imagined futures through technologies is not just a pastime for the refugees, but rather a daily habit for them struggling to cope with the situation of prolonged uncertainty and anxiety. Jip admitted that dreaming of her home country, family, friends, and the outside world became part of her life in Bangkok. These dreams of hope do not merely consist of the construction of future localities, but also the desire to be reunited with the family members that refugees maintain contact with. Despite having suffered in Bangkok through a lack of security and prospects for local integration or third-country resettlement, the refugees I spoke with always dream of a better future in a better place with the people whom they love. While information technologies have opened up new dimensions of possibilities and avenues for understanding and perceiving the world, severe constraints remain for refugees in Bangkok.

Note 1 Due to privacy and security reasons, this book does not list out the names of the living areas of the refugees.

7 Conclusion A journey without destination?

No one wants to be a refugee. Asylum-seeking journeys are unhappy life experiences. Refugees seldom want to leave home, and when they are forced to do so, they dream of the day they can return. This is definitely their long cherished goal. For refugees like Alex and Tom who have been in exile for more than ten years, the best solution is obviously going back to home country, but the home country must be safe. If that is impossible, the second-best option is third-country resettlement. Asked about their future plans, Alex and Tom said things like, “I don’t know my future” or “I feel lost when I think about it”. Alex recalled when he first arrived in Hong Kong; he had a very clear goal in his mind that he would be resettled to the USA shortly. He remained confident that the waiting period in Hong Kong would be short. Over the next three years, Alex worked hard in sharpening his English language skills. He was a devoted Christian, and he believed that Jesus Christ resided in his heart. “God would lead me to the United States very soon”, Alex confided. After five years, without any news from the UNHCR, Alex started to feel disoriented. He had cried so many times and had been questioning why his life was like this. Over the years, with Jesus Christ present inside him, Alex had healed the psychological pains through divine knowledge and powers. He believed that the lived experience of separation, hope, disappointment, and disorientation were all arranged by God. Although he had strong emotional attachment to his home country, he had no courage to return to a place that was not safe at all. He simply waited. He ended up spending another ten years waiting. Alex was not absolutely without help in Hong Kong. Pastors and NGO workers struggled to find solutions to his everyday problems. But what they could not help Alex with in the past 15 years was finding a Hong Kong woman to marry. Alex described his ­asylum-seeking journey in this way: Life in Hong Kong is tough. But when I looked back what happened to me in my home country and the escape processes, the difficulties I have in Hong Kong are small. Although I cannot go back home, I feel at home here because I feel safe now. These ups and downs throughout the years were all unforgettable experiences. I am still searching my way out.

Conclusion  169 Alex’s concluding remark powerfully highlights the internal struggles and emotional encounters commonly experienced by the refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Alex went on to suggest that refugees fled their home countries not only because of the danger they experienced, but also because of the hope to swiftly restore their lives outside their homelands. While many refugees wait several years for resettlement in the West, they become trapped in Hong Kong or Bangkok and are haunted by terrifying memories of loss while being seduced by a longing for resettlement. Notably, Alex’s life plan was shaped by the ups and downs of his embodied experience of the journey—from homeland separation, to hoping for third-country resettlement, to disorientation in limbo. His idea of home has also changed over the years. His asylum-seeking journey, Alex argued, was endowed with meaning, which was a major factor giving him “the strength to overcome the great difficulties on the way” (Benezer and Zetter 2014: 307). I began this book with the recognition that, with the increasing number of refugees and few states being willing to provide protection in Asian regions, we urgently need more discussions about asylum-seeking journeys in Asia. In this book, I have examined how the refugees overcame the challenges and difficulties throughout their individual journeys. In particular, I looked at how they negotiated borders and migration controls (Chapter 3) and how their life plan is shaped and reshaped by their embodied experience of the stranded journeys in Hong Kong and Bangkok (Chapters 4–6). I argued that the refugee agency is integral to their asylum-seeking journeys, which in turn have profoundly influenced their livelihoods, identities, relationships, and future plans. The refugees forged exile paths out of their homelands and made their own way in Asia. At every step, they encountered an array of people and things. For the refugees, the journeys to asylum were not merely bodily movements from one place to another. Rather, border crossing and journey times were all heavily emotionally charged events— frightening, anxious, unsettling, expectant of a new life, reminding of the loss of an old one, disappointment or disorientation. Having spent years trapped in Hong Kong or Bangkok, the refugees attempted to make sense of their liminal lives. As I have shown, the sense of “keeping myself busy” dominated the refugees’ lives in Hong Kong and Bangkok. I argued that “keeping myself busy” by networking with people, attending meetings with lawyers and NGO workers, engaging in informal employment, participating in religious and NGO activities, and even spending time at home can be understood not only as refugees’ survival strategies in these two urban cities but also their resistance to their stranded journey in the first asylum port. In asylum-seeking journeys, first asylum ports such as Hong Kong and Bangkok exist as a zone of “temporary suspension of the rule of law” (Agamben 1998: 169). The stories of refugees in this book clearly illustrated that “refugee” is a temporary and legally unrecognised status in both cities. Hong Kong or Bangkok is never intended to be a permanent home to the refugees. They are only temporary places of refuge. Hong Kong and Bangkok, as

170 Conclusion first asylum ports, are “a time-space of dislocation: a space of displacement and exile, and a time of interruption, waiting, stasis” (Ramadan 2013: 72). I argue that the first asylum port in Asia is intimately bound up with a temporality of liminality and enduring temporariness. Liminality is life at a threshold, a time-space of betweenness, of passage. As Ramadan (2013: 73) points out, “refugee status is an embodiment of this liminal temporality, not a normal life to be lived but an enduring struggle for survival and return to a time and place of meaning.” At the heart of this common habitual practice of “keeping myself busy” lies a central concern over liminal temporality. For the refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok, the stranded journey in the first asylum port is not suspended in space and time between two realities, but is a space of agency and struggle across time and space in which social relationships and formations were re-established and sustained, in which traditional cultures were recreated and performed, and in which identity was reconstructed and negotiated. This is also a space in which future plans were reshaped and navigated.

Interplay of loss and hope in the journeys In conditions of prolonged civil wars or widespread social dislocation and repression, the refugees in this book decided to seek safety beyond their home countries. They are a group of people who are “deterritorised” (Vertovec 1999) and have consolidated themselves in Hong Kong or Bangkok regardless of nationalities, ethnicities, and religions. Enduring relationships with co-nationals or co-ethnics have been developed in transnational social fields of what we call the refugee diaspora (Butler 2001). A diaspora is a dynamic, multipolar global social entity or “polis” spanning both physical space and time (Vertovec 1997; Wahlbeck 2002). To better understand how refugee diasporic communities actually operate in practice across space and time, this book, following the argument of Vertovec (2001), has addressed the literature on social networks, social capital, and transnationalism. Social networks play a vital role in facilitating the coping and community-­ formation processes among refugees in Hong Kong or Bangkok. Refugees’ livelihoods are embedded in complex social networks that determine their access to financial resources and consumption patterns. Yet different national groups have networks that exist to different degrees and scales. For example, Indians, Pakistanis, and Sri Lankans in both cities can easily access more densely connected local networks than Africans because Hong Kong and Bangkok have long-established South Asian populations. Besides local networks, I found that links with co-nationals in homelands and wealthier Western counties also equipped refugees with substantial access to financial, material, and emotional supports. These socio-economic connections exist at both local and transnational levels. Locally, refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok have important socio-­ economic interactions across communities. Refugees were not simply reliant

Conclusion  171 upon interactions with refugees of their own nationality. Rather, they had many cross-national interactions. For example, when it comes to finding informal jobs, Pakistani refugees referred Somali refugees to Pakistani businessmen in Hong Kong. Pakistani and Somali refugees bought bread from a Sri Lankan bakery shop owner in Bangkok. They have been providing support to each other through different local community networks. In Hong Kong and Bangkok, the immigration policies, asylum-seeking arrangements, and xenophobic opinions among the local populations all constrain the lived experiences of refugees. In Hong Kong, language barriers and discrimination have greatly undermined the livelihoods of refugees. Nevertheless, with assurance against refoulement, arrest, and indefinite detention, refugees in Hong Kong are, to a certain extent, able to exercise the type of agency explicated by Swell (1992: 20), in which one is capable of “exerting some degree of control over the social relation in which one is enmeshed, which in turn implies the ability to transform those social relations to some degree”. This situation also demonstrates that the “wider bridging” process among refugees is underway at the community level in Hong Kong. In contrast, refugees in Bangkok, who lack cultural capital (language skills) and live with persistent insecurity, fear, and discrimination, find it difficult to mobilise social capital and engage in “wider bridging”. It has been shown how networks made up of refugees and co-ethnic migrants in Bangkok, to a certain extent, further reinforce social marginalisation. Coleman (1990) and Putnam (2007) both focus on the stability and continuity of social relationships. However, this book argued that it is the dynamism of networks that is particularly relevant to the study of migrants’ social ties, particularly the changing social relationships among migrants over time. The harsh immigration control of the Royal Thai government has shaped the organisation of refugee diasporas differently. The types of relationships that refugees in Bangkok engage in to access social resources have changed over time, from those in which they are supported by people whose motives appear to be almost completely altruistic to those in which refugees have manipulated relationships with other refugees to obtain what they desire and those in which the refugees are themselves exploited by others in return for resources that would help ensure their survival. However, the refugees are not physically forced into exploitative relationships. Rather, in most cases, they feel compelled to enter into these relationships because of an absence of other feasible options for survival. This book has advanced our understanding of diaspora by demonstrating that the sense of solidarity and the spirit of mutual support among diasporic communities should not be taken for granted. Over time, the spirit of mutual support among refugee communities might collapse when an individual member’s self-interest and sense of security have been threatened. Transnationally, the refugees have various degrees of network connections. Although they are physically immobile, the refugees in this book are all active agents in transnational social fields to different degrees and

172 Conclusion scales. Overseas remittances coming into Hong Kong or Bangkok through Western Union was one typical example. These low-end money exchanges are not merely financial transfers but also engender vital sociocultural networks and relationships across international borders. Similarly, when it comes to economic activities, the refugees acted as a nexus between overseas buyers and local sellers. Over the years, I observed that quite a large number of these low-end global business transactions were facilitated by refugees in both places. Certainly they were one of the major contributors in what Mathews’ calls “low-end globalisation”. Another example of socio-­ economic transnational networks is the use of digital technology such as mobile phones and computers. While mobile phone and computer use is almost universal among the refugees in Hong Kong and Bangkok, they use mobile phones and computers not only for communication purposes but also for maintaining emotional and imaginative connections to their homelands. This book offered detailed ethnographic accounts examining the underlying social ties in the formation of refugee diaspora. As I have shown in Chapters 5 and 6, the refugees despite their various national origins, ethnicities, and religions actively create both formal and informal diasporic communities in Hong Kong and Bangkok. The communities provided a wide range of information and support services, as well as sociocultural spaces for the refugees to come together in the host society. As mentioned, this book perceived a refugee diaspora as “a framework for the study of a specific process of community formation” (Butler 2001: 194). Here, I highlight the social ties that bind the refugees that emerged due to refugee consciousness in exile. Consciousness, according to Castles and Davidson (2000), is a property of particular sorts of social relationships and is formed around an understanding of the social distance that separates the refugees from the local population. While refugee consciousness involves experiences of loss, marginality, and exile in a foreign society, this suffering coexists with the hope to survive, to restore life, and to permeate oneself within a foreign sociocultural environment while still preserving the past in memory. In Hong Kong and Bangkok, while refugees gave up their citizenship of their home countries, their identity of “refugee” is not “legally recognised” under domestic laws. They are trapped in legal limbo. It is this collective self-understanding of the limbo-like existence and longing for a “home” that stimulates the desire to connect with others “here and there”. Alex’s and Tom’s stories of hardship and prolonged displacement clearly illustrated that “home” is not necessarily a place to go to. During their first few years in Hong Kong or Bangkok, their hopes for third-country resettlement were remarkable. In mentally shifting between two worlds, the past and the present—between homeland and Hong Kong or Bangkok—for a prolonged period of time, however, their ideas of “home” have changed. As I found out, “home” for them can be an embodied experience to recreate

Conclusion  173 certain affective and homeland-related cultural markers that facilitated their emotional adjustment in prolonged displacement. As Svašek (2012: 4) points out, “objects, images, tastes and smells may come to ‘stand for’ particular human others.” Sensorial engagement with “things from home” (Svašek 2012) is an important way for the refugees to have inner dialogues with the absent homeland or “imagined community” (Anderson 1991) throughout the journeys. Asked about their meanings of “home”, a majority of refugees defined it as “a place where I feel secure”, or “It is a place I feel very calm”, or “It is a place where rules and regulations work”. When we further asked where their home was, all of them expressed that they had two “homes”. They considered their home country their first home because it was their place of birth, whereas they treated either Hong Kong or Bangkok as their second home because it was the place where they were living with family and friends A Burundi refugee in Hong Kong explained, The first home can be your motherland, where you were born. Because where you were born, it really has many stories about you and your surroundings. And then the second home, is where you are living. Yes. Because there is a prophet says that…where you feel safe it’s your home. The refugees’ definition of “home” changed over time. Having spent years trapped in limbo, they have developed the concept of “homes” rather than a singular meaning of “a home”. It means there is a “home” in the home country as original, birthplace and root; and there is another “home” in either Hong Kong or Bangkok as a place where they felt secure, peaceful, and happy. These “double attachments” to both homeland and host society were not enacted through their periodic physical transnational mobility between the places. Rather, they were enacted through the tension between actual, remembered, and imagined emotional encounters with “things from home” in what I call transnational space of asylum. Transnational space of asylum is an emergent transnational social structure in which cross-border networks facilitate the movements of people, objects, information, ideas, and religious messages in the context of asylum-seeking journeys. As stressed, being transnational does not mean that the people are necessarily physically mobile. Rather, the stories of the refugees in this book demonstrated that stranded refugees could be active agents in the transnational space of asylum. Although much scholarship on refugee diaspora has led us to consider homes places of nostalgic longing (Smith 1994 cited in Chu 2010), what the refugee diasporas in both cities showed me through their imaginations and everyday practices was the active navigation in the transnational space of asylum in which they tried to improve their economic livelihoods and recreated familiarity and belonging in both territorialised and de-territorialised environments.

174 Conclusion

Embodied bordering and migration-security nexus in Asia The lived experiences of asylum-seeking journeys were significantly diverse because of their unequal access to social, economic, and cultural resources, which subsequently determined their differential treatment by border regimes and their experiences in host society. Instead of treating “asylum-seeking journeys” as subjectless abstraction, this book acknowledged the critical insights of feminist migration scholars (Hyndman 2004; Scheel 2013) that mobility is always embodied and relational. In the context of asylum-­seeking journeys, it is in and through the encounters that borders and refugees come into being as such (Ahmed 2000). Without borders, there would be no asylum-seeking journeys and refugees. That is to say, borders only become actualised when refugees are trying to cross them (Scheel 2013). As Scheel argued (2013), migrants on the move are compelled to appropriate mobility and other resources within and against border regimes. These conflictive dialogues of action take place in their embodied encounters with the means and methods of border control. Through the analysis of “embodied encounters” (Scheel 2013), the relationships of conflict between migration and the attempts to regulate it and the possible emergence of moments of uncontrollability can be studied. This book forms part of the attempt to acknowledge the performativity of asylum-seeking journeys. Inspired by the idea of “embodied encounters” Scheel (2013) suggested, I point future research to the study of embodied bordering in asylum-seeking journeys. The study of embodied bordering highlights the refugees’ ongoing embodiment in navigating and negotiating both national and social borders in exile. What I seek to emphasise by speaking of embodied bordering is, in turn, that it is a particular person in a particular body who tries to both navigate mobility and negotiate immobility in his/her encounters with the migration regimes, officials, people, objects, and environment throughout the journeys. It is the interplay of physical and inner-world journeys. The study of embodied bordering relates to asylum-seeking journeys’ research in three ways. First, embodied bordering establishes a dynamic relationship between borders, both national and social, and refugees’ practices of appropriation at the centre of analysis. Second, the study of embodied bordering suggests that ­asylum-seeking journeys and regimes do not exist as such, but are brought into being in and through the ongoing interactions between refugees and those who control their mobility and immobility such as the immigration officers, UNHCR officers. Thus, the analysis of “embodied bordering” can shed new light on the performative interactions through which borders and refugees are created. Third, the study of embodied bordering encapsulates the experience and negotiation of borders at the site of the refugees’ bodies, which are not only subjected to regulation (biopolitics), but also reconstruct and resist the ideas about identity and difference (agency). The body not only symbolises social values, but is also capable of producing meaning. It is a site of contesting meanings, borders, and boundaries (Butler 1993). Thereby, the

Conclusion  175 study of embodied bordering can contribute to the identification of certain asylum-seeking cultural practices performed by refugees from their homelands to the host society. To understand how the asylum-seeking journeys in Asia unfold and how the refugees make sense to their lives in prolonged displacement, the experiences and voices of refugees themselves are crucial. This book has sought to expound upon these questions in detail. According to Johnson (2016: 383), “it is engagement at this level that enables us to give context and content to the policies that govern cross-border migration as well as the everyday life of migrants” who encounter or avoid police and immigration officials, who live in the first asylum port in Asia—the limbo of asylum-seeking journeys—and who challenge government laws and regulations, “revealing the politics of security, citizenship and mobility that shape key parts of our contemporary world” (Johnson 2016: 383). As the end and departing point for this book, let me look at the larger implications of asylum-seeking journeys in Asia. Kofi Annan, then ­Secretary-General of the United Nations, made this comment in 2015 in response to the refugee crisis in Europe: It is time to accept the reality that, like the waves on the seas that many of the migrants traverse, the ebb and flow of human movement cannot be stopped. That is why the international community must manage migration with understanding and compassion. (Kofi Annan Foundation 2015) If his remark encapsulates the attitudes of most governments, then the manifestation of this is in the apathy and compassion displayed by Hong Kong and Bangkok governments in the cases of Alex and Tom, respectively. The word “refugee” conjures up an image of someone who has entered the country by illegal means, who is seeking to take economic advantage of the host society, and who is a threat to sociopolitical and economic stability (Dauvergne 2004). Moreover, there is a fear that granting and recognising rights to refugees will only attract more of them, which will in turn result in the abuse of the refugee system by economic migrants and human traffickers. Despite Asian’s economic achievements and aspirations for global power, most Asian countries are locked into state-centrism with respect to humanitarianism, as well as backwardness in exercising international human rights laws. Apparently, state-centrism focuses on sovereign rights and state security, which are at odds with the liberal universal emphasis on humanitarianism, human rights, and refugee protection based on the notion of human security. The principal sources of refugee protection are the 1951 Refugee Convention. However, only a very few Asian states are signatory parties to the convention. Scholars offer different explanations for Asia’s lack of commitment to this international refugee regime. The first emphasises “good neighbourliness”. It relates to the non-interference principle of the so-called “ASEAN way” (Acharya 2000), meaning states do not interfere

176 Conclusion with neighbouring countries by raising sensitive issues. This explanation argues that refugees represent a “foreign policy complication” (Suhrke 1993) that requires bilateral negotiation between the host country and the country of origin, with great emphasis on sovereign jurisdiction (Abrar 2001). To stabilise the political economy in the region, it was wise for South and Southeast Asian countries to practise “good neighbourliness” in the context of decolonisation without engaging with this sensitive trans-border refuge-seeking issue. The second explanation rests on the great economic costs of accession (Suhrke and Zolberg 1999; Castles 2001). The Vietnamese boatpeople saga in Hong Kong was a good example, in which accommodating and assisting the Vietnamese boatpeople in refugee camps over three decades brought a heavy financial burden to the Hong Kong government. Although the Vietnamese boatpeople saga came to an end when the last refugee camp closed in 2000, the United Nations still owed the Hong Kong government HK$ 1.16 billion (SCMP 2014). The third explanation for why many Asian states are not willing to accept refugee settlement is because migrants are seen as endangering the already fragile social cohesion of developing countries in Asia (Suhrke 1993), in which ethnic divisions have a history of creating domestic friction (Jacobsen 2001). Notably, moral imperatives are limited. Their fundamental concerns are state security and economic interests that justify restricting or turning away as many refugees as possible. In the 20th century, millions of people in Asia experienced mass displacement. The majority relied on the companionship and empathy of neighbouring countries, as well as those farther away, to offer asylum. Currently, Asia hosts approximately 3.5 million of refugees (UNHCR 2017). As a regional powerhouse, it is time for Asian leaders to contribute back to the international community by offering assistance and protection to those who are forcibly displaced. Asia is the only region in the world that lacks a regional agreement on refugees. This region requires regional standards and protocols for refugee policy. In fact, there has been an evolutionary move towards regional cooperation. In 2002, Bali Process, an official international forum, was formed to address human trafficking and other transnational crimes. Now, the Bali Process has 48 member states from both within and outside Asia, including Hong Kong and Thailand. In 2016, the member states agreed to a legally non-binding set of aspirations through the Bali Declaration on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons, and Related Transnational Crime. The declaration recognises that “while recognising the sovereign rights and legitimate interests of states to safeguard their borders and determine their migration policies…irregular migration (including refugees) requires a comprehensive regional approach, based on the principles of burden sharing and collective responsibility” (Bali Process 2016). The declaration clearly highlights the tension between national security and human security of refugees. The debate on the migration-security nexus tends to emphasise aspects related to national security, which is understood as the protection of the interests of the citizens and legal residents of the

Conclusion  177 state (Wohlfeld 2014). Koser (2011) once argued that understanding migration as a national security issue determined the policies used to counter the threats. It is used to justify “greater surveillance, detention, deportation and more restrictive policies” (Koser 2011). This in turn also has an impact on the human security of refugees. The current policies of the European Union demonstrate the difficulty to developing approaches that provide a balanced combination of national security and human security perspectives. With the Bali Declaration concluded in 2016, is it possible to reconcile the two perspectives in Asia in the near future?

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Index

Note: Italic page numbers refer to figures. accommodations: Bangkok 150–1; co-national networks 148–9; dependence 119; Hong Kong 83–4; illegal housing in Sham Shui Po 120; mutual assistance in social networks 119, 150–1 action and practice 140–1 activism: political 15; reclaiming identity and negotiating security 133–4 acute refugee movement 44 Africa: displacement causes 48 African refugees 65, 136; in Bangkok 68; direct air routes 65–7; in Guangzhou 68; local marriage and legal identity 138–40; Middle East routes 67; in Pratunam Market 148–9, 157; in Sham Shui Po 127 African traders 123–4 agency: of change model 9; and social networks 12–14 Al-Sharmani, Mulki 32 anchors: young refugees 10 Anderson, Benedict: classificatory grid of nation-states 59 Annan, Kofi: refugee crisis 175 anticipatory refugee movement 44 anti-refugee discourse: hosting society governments 107 anxiety: host society governments 105–8; prolonged screening mechanisms 91–2; resettlement/returning home 108; see also emotions Arendt, Hannah: diasporic consciousness 109 ASEAN way 175–6 Asian displacement 176 Asylum Access 26, 27

Bali Process 176 Bangkok: arrival 64–5; easy-to-meet visa requirements 21; exile routes 65–8; field access 25–7; Refugee Centre 26–7; Refugee Convention (1951) 3; refugee flows 21; see also Thailand Bangkok governance of refugees 22, 92–5; anti-refugee discourse 107; asylum seeker/recognised refugee certificates 95–6; anxiety apparatus 105–8; detention centres 97–9; displaced persons vs. illegal immigrants 93; illegal immigrants/ overstayers status 105; immigration laws and regulations 92–4; street arrests and home raids 95–7; UNHCR screening mechanisms 99–103 Bangkok prolonged displacement: co-national networks 148–50; diaspora reliance 147; emotions 147, 158–9; employment 157–8; expanding networks 151–4; financial struggles 156–8; homing practices 163–6; imagined futures 166–7; mutual assistance and support 150–1; Pratunam Market 144; security 147, 161–3; self-reliance 143; Silom Road 145; stranded journey 143–7; stress 160; Sukhumvit Road 145; Sutthisan 145–7; transnational networks 154–6; trust 160–1 Bangkok Refugee Centre (BRC) 95; social capital 151–3 Basch, Linda: transnationalism 14 Bauman, Zygmunt 106 Beckett, Samuel 140

194 Index “becoming a refugee” 49–50; arriving in host societies 64–5; deciding to cross the border 54–5; deciding to flee 50–2; emotional departure 62–4; exile funds 55–7; refugeeness 72; social networks role 55; stage of hesitancy 53–4; travel documents and permits 57–60; travel skills 61–2 behavioural model of migration 54 “being busy” 140–1 Benezer, Gadi 4, 6–7; The Ethiopian Jewish Exodus 8; journey studies 9 Bohra-Mishra, Pratikshya: conflict and violence influence on migration decisions 54–5 border crossing: arriving in host societies 64–5; decision-making process 54–5; embodied mobility 69–72; emotional departure 62–4; extended zone of crossing 57–8; legal creditability 60; performative aspect 2–3; travel documents and permits 57–60 borders: defined 22–3; embodied 174; governance 22–4 BRC see Bangkok Refugee Centre (BRC) burden vs. benefit 6 bureaucratic identity of refugees 73–4 Burmese refugees 42–3 Butler, Judith 99 Butler, Kim: diasporas 15 Cambodian refugees 40–2 Castles, Stephan 7; consciousness 172 CAT see Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) categorisation of refugees: host governments 103–5 causes of displacement 2, 5, 48–9 “chain of mediation” 71 Chan, Kwok Bun 38 Chinese immigrants: Hong Kong asylum 35–6 Chinese refugee problem 36 “choices of memory” 137 Christian Action Centre for Refugees 25; food and financial assistance 118; social space 119–20 Chu, Julie: chain of mediation 71; extended zone of crossing 57–8; legal creditability 60 Chungking Mansions 112–13; main entrance 114; South Asian food stall 115; Western Union 114

circular journey 10 classificatory grid of nation-states 59 closed camps 37 Coleman, James 118, 160, 171 collective identities 161; reclaiming 133–4 Collewet, Louise 98 colonial clauses: Hong Kong 77–8 communities: imagined virtual 166–7; see also diasporas Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) 37–8 co-national networks: Bangkok 148–51, 160–1; Hong Kong 119–21 conflict(s) 174; and displacement 48–9; effects on migration 54; influencing migration decisions 54–5; intensity 55; in Nepal 49; political 49; religious 51, 121; in South Asia 49; in Sri Lanka 54, 102; in West African nations 48 consciousness 172; diasporic 109 Constable, Nicole: ethnography of everyday life 29 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) 78, 88 coping strategies 53; imagined futures 166–7; prolonged displacement stress 132–3 cost-benefit analyses 6 CPA see Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) Cresswell, Tim 5 Crossroads Foundation Hong Kong: volunteer work 125 culture: expanding social networks 151–4; homeland-based 135–7; intimate relationships 165–6; transnational networks 171–2; transnational ways of belonging 164–5 Davidson, Alastair: consciousness 172 decision to flee 50–52, 169; border crossing 54–5; ethnic group tensions 51; ideas of escape 52; politics 50; religious freedom 51; social networks role 55 dependency: governance of refugees in Hong Kong 85; mutual 119 deportation fears 131, 158–9 deprivation of human rights: Asian laws 175; Hong Kong 82–3 destination countries: pull factors 5; selecting via social networks 55

Index  195 detention centres: Bangkok 97–9, 158–9; Hong Kong 79–81 diasporas 15–16; collective solidarity 109; consciousness 109; exploitative relationships 171; fear and distrust 161–3; formation 172; illusion of community 161; reliance for survival 147; social marginalisation 171; socio-economic interactions 170–1; transnationalism 171–2 differentiated mobility 69 direct air routes 65–7 disorientation: embodied mobility 70 displaced persons 43, 93 displacement: anxiety 108; Asia 176; causes 2, 5, 48–9; first-asylum ports 170; internal 53–4 Doná, Giorgia: imagined virtual communities 166–7; protracted refugee situations 3 double attachments: homelands and host societies 173 Douglas, Mary 22; conflict and violence influence on migration decisions 54–5 dreams of hope 166–7 dressing style 61–2 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt 16 Dufoix, Stephane: illusion of community 161 easy-to-meet visa requirements 21, 68, 92 economics: cost-benefit analyses 6; host society insecurities 73; host society stability 106–7; informal economies 126–9; settlement rejection by host countries 176 education: Bangkok Refugee Centre 26; refugees in Hong Kong 86–7 Education Bureau 86–7 embodiment: bordering 174; diasporic communities 109; emotions 19; food preparation/consumption 137–8; homing practices during prolonged displacement 135–7, 172–3; mobility 69–72; presenting as tourists 57–62; reclaiming collective identity 133–4; security 18; temporality 169–70 emotions: departure 62–4; embodiment 19; habits and being busy 140–1; hopelessness/helplessness 131–2, 159; identity formation 19; insecurities 130; negotiating security 133–4; prolonged displacement 158; shame 83–4, 131; stress coping strategies 132–3; worry 158–9; see also fears

employment: accommodation problems 83; Bangkok 157–8; food provisions 84–5; Hong Kong 125–9; shame 83–4, 131 escape process: deciding to flee 50–2; see also preparations to escape The Ethiopian Jewish Exodus (Benezer) 8 ethnic group tensions: migration driver 51 ethnography of everyday life 29 exile consequences 6 exile funds 55–7 exile routes: direct air 65–7; embodied experiences of mobility 69–72; illegal land and river 67–8; Middle East 67; neighbouring countries 68 exploitative relationships 171 extended zone of crossing 57–8 “fake” refugees 106 Falun Gong practitioners 155 fears 19; prolonged displacement 131, 147, 158–9; recognising/granting rights of refugees 175; social interactions 161–3 field access 24–7 field methods 29–32 financial assistance: Bangkok refugees 94–5; borrowing money 125–6, 157; Hong Kong refugees 83; transnational networks 122–3, 154–5 food: Bangkok 152; Hong Kong 84–5; identity formation 137–8; sharing homeland-based 136 forced migration 65; anxiety 106; causes 50; cost-benefit analyses of 6; stage of hesitancy 54; studies 22–4 foreign loans: exile funds 57 foreign policy complications 176 fragile states: cause of displacement 5 globalisation: economic 79; low-end 126–9; political 79 good neighborliness 176 governance: anxiety apparatus 105–8; categorisation of refugees 103–5; legal and illegal status 77; national security vs. human security 176–7; recognising/ granting rights fears 175 governance of refugees in Bangkok 92–5; anti-refugee discourse 107; asylum seeker/recognised refugee certificates 95–6; anxiety apparatus 105–8; categorisation of refugees 103– 5; detention centres 97–9; displaced

196 Index persons vs. illegal immigrants 93; illegal immigrants/overstayers status 105; immigration laws and regulations 93–4; street arrests and home raids 95–7; UNHCR screening mechanisms 99–103 governance of refugees in Hong Kong 77–9; accommodations 83; anti-refugee discourse 107; anxiety apparatus 105–8; categorisation of refugees 103–5; colonial clauses 77–8; dependency 85; deprivation of human rights 82–3; education 86–7; food provisions 84–5; global constraints on immigration control 79; illegal immigrants/overstayers status 105; legal human rights protections 79; lengthy screening mechanisms 87–92; liberal visa regime 78–9; mandatory detention 79–81; prolonged stress and anxiety 91–2; recognisance papers 81–2; shame 83–4; unified screening mechanism 78 Grabska, Katarzyna 32 habits 140–1 helplessness: prolonged displacement 131–2 history of refugee movements: Burmese 42–3; Chinese immigrants 35–6; Indochinese 39–42; Vietnamese boat people 37–9 Hitchcox, Linda 37, 54 homelands: double attachment with host societies 173; foreign policy complications of refugees 176 home raids: Bangkok refugees 95–7 homing practices in Bangkok 163–4; dreams of hope 166–7; intimate relationships 165–6; mutual assistance and support 150–1; Pratunam Market 144; Silom Road 145; Sukhumvit Road 145; Sutthisan 145–7; transnational ways of belonging 164–5 homing practices in Hong Kong: Chungking Mansions 112–13; food preparation/consumption 137–8; homeland-based objects 135–7; local marriage 138–40; meaningful lives 140–1; mutual assistance and dependence 118–19; Sham Shui Po 115–16; sharing homeland-based food 136

Hong Kong: arrival 64–5; Chinese immigrants 35–6; CPA 37–8; Crossroads Foundation 125; easy-tomeet visa requirements 21; exile routes 65–8; field access 24–5; government approaches to refugees 22; humane deterrence policy 37; Immigration Control Ordinance 36; Refugee Convention (1951) 3; refugee flows 21; Touch Base Policy 36; unfair screening mechanism 133, 134; Vietnamese boat people 37–9 Hong Kong governance of refugees 77–9; accommodations 83; antirefugee discourse 107; colonial clauses 77–8; dependency 85; deprivation of human rights 82–3; education 86–7; food provisions 84–85; global constraints on immigration control 79; government as anxiety apparatus 105–8; illegal immigrants/overstayers status 105; legal human rights protections 79; lengthy screening mechanisms 87–92; liberal visa regime 78–9; mandatory detention 79–81; prolonged stress and anxiety 91–2; recognisance papers 81–2; shame 83–4; unified screening mechanism 78 Hong Kong homing practices: food preparation/consumption 136–8; homeland-based objects 135–7 Hong Kong prolonged displacement: borrowing money 125–6; Chungking Mansions 112–13; emotional insecurity 130; employment 126–9; expanding social networks 119–21; fear and shame 131; homelandbased culture 135–7; hopelessness/ helplessness 131–2; meaningful lives 140–1; mutual assistance and dependence 118–19; negotiating security 133–4; Sham Shui Po 115–16; social networks 116–18; stranded journey 111–12; stress coping strategies 132–3; transnational social networks 121–5 hope: deciding to flee 169; dreams of hope 166–7 hopelessness: prolonged displacement 131–2, 159 host societies: arrival 64–5; challenges 2–3; consequences of exile 6; cost-benefit analyses 6; double

Index  197 attachment with homelands 173; fears of recognising/granting rights to refugees 175; government anxiety 105–8; government categorisation of refugees 103–5; insecurities 73; labels 16; rejection of refugee settlement 176; viewing refugees with suspicion 107; see also prolonged displacement Huguet, Jerrold W. 94 humane deterrence: Hong Kong 37; Thailand 40 humanitarianism: concerns 74; deprivation of rights 82–3, 175; legal protections in Hong Kong 79; statecentrism 175 human security 18; national security and 176–7 human trafficking 176 Hynes, Tricia 160 IDCs see Immigration Detention Centres (IDCs) identification documents 75–6, 82, 139 identity formation 11; action and practice 140–1; bureaucratic refugee 73–4; diasporic 163; emotions 19; food preparation/consumption 137–8; homeland-based objects 135–7; identification documents 75–6; illegal immigrant and overstayers status 105; labels 16; local marriages 138–40; paper status 81–2; presenting as tourists 57–62; prolonged displacement 3; reclaiming collective 133–4; self-imposing 60; shame 83–4; temporality 169–70; transnational ways of belonging 164–5 illegal employment: Bangkok 157–8; Hong Kong 125–9 illegal immigrants 3, 19–20, 38, 85, 130; Bangkok 73, 93, 105; Hong Kong 73, 75, 105–7; label 3; status 77, 105, 138; Thailand 147, 163; “Touch Base Policy” 36; undesirable 23 illegal land and river exile routes 67–8 illusion of community 161 imagined homes: food preparation/ consumption 137–8; homeland-based objects 135–7; local marriage 138–40 imagined virtual communities 166–7 immigration cards 60 Immigration Departments: pending cases 2

Immigration Detention Centres (IDCs) 97–9 Immigration Ordinance of Hong Kong 36, 80–1 individual journey patterns 44–5 Indochinese refugees 39–42; Cambodians 40–2; Laotians 39–40; Vietnamese 41–2 informal economies: Bangkok 157–8; Hong Kong 125–9 informant observations 28 Initiation Programme 86, 87 Innes, Alexandria J. 13; human security 18; performative security 17 insecurities: homeland 72; host societies 73; prolonged displacement 73–4, 147 institutional challenges 7 internal displacement 53–4 International Social Service Hong Kong Branch (ISS-HK) 83, 85 iPhone buying employment opportunities 127 Iqbal, Hannah: young refugee journey experiences 10 Jenkins, Richard 104 Johnson, Heather 12, 175 Justice Centre Hong Kong 25 Karen National Union (KNU) 42–3 Kaytaz, Esra Stephanie 9; circular journey 10 Keller, Stephen L. 54 Kelly, Philip 121, 160 Khao I Dang 40–1 Khlong Toey Market 146 Kloosterman, Robert 129 KNU see Karen National Union Koser, Khalid 177; social networks role in asylum cycle 13 Kunz, Egon F. 14; refugee flight patterns 44 labels 16 landing cards 60 Laotian refugees 39–40 legal creditability 7, 60 legitimate travel: embodied differences from smuggling 69–72 local marriages: Hong Kong 138–40 local mobility: coping strategy 53 loneliness: prolonged displacement 159

198 Index low-end globalization 172; Bangkok 155; Hong Kong 126–9 Lusis, Tom 121, 160

non-governmental organisations (NGOs): field access 24–7; social capital 151

Malkki, Liisa 32; refugeeness 72 manual labor: Bangkok 157; Hong Kong 127–8 mapping exile routes: direct air routes 65–7; illegal land and river 67–8; Middle East 67; neighbouring countries 68 Marcoux, Jean-Sebastien: choices of memory 137 marginalisation: collective experience 109; government categorisation 103–4; illegal immigrant/overstayer status 105; prolonged protection claim processing 112; social 171 marriages: and legal identity 138–40; Thai context 165–6 Massey, Doreen: differentiated mobility 69 Massey, Douglas S. 54–5 mass flight patterns 44 material insecurities: host societies 73 Mathews, Gordon 79, 123, 124; Chungking Mansions 113; low-end globalisation 126 memory 20; choices of memory 137 Middle East 143; displacement causes 48; exile routes 67 Middle Eastern refugees 120, 156, 157 migrant journeys: asylum-seeking comparison 11–12 migration middlemen: transnational social networks 122 mobility: differentiated mobility 69; embodied bordering 174; embodied experiences 69–72; internal 53–4; local 53; prolonged immobility 92 money lending: Bangkok 157; Hong Kong 125–6 Munn, Nancy: action and practice 140–1

Orderly Departure Program 37 out-group networks 121

National League for Democracy (NLD) 43 national security: human refugee security tensions 176–7; threats to 107 neighbouring countries exile routes 68 Neumayer, Eric 5 1951 Refugee Convention 3; signatories 76; source of protection 175 1967 Protocol 77–8

Pakistani refugees 127, 157, 171 paper status 81–2 Peberdy, Sally 129 performativity: embodied encounters 174; presenting as ordinary tourists 57–62; security 17–18 person-to-person money transfers 57 physical security: Bangkok refugees 95–7; homelands 72–3 politics: migration driver 50; regional standards 176; rejection of refugee settlements 176; security 22–4 Pratunam Market, Bangkok 144; African refugees in 148–9, 157 precipitating events: migration decisionmaking 54–5 preparations to escape: emotional 62–4; exile funds 55–7; learning travel skills 61–2; travel documents and permits 57–60 prolonged displacement 3; conditions 22; homing practices 172–3; identity reconstruction 3; security 73–4 prolonged displacement in Bangkok: co-national networks 148–50; diaspora reliance 147; emotions 147, 158–9; employment 157–8; expanding networks 151–4; financial struggles 156–7; homing practices 163–6; imagined futures 166–7; mutual assistance and support 150–1; Pratunam Market 144; security 147, 161–3; self-reliance 143; Silom Road 145; stranded journey 143–7; stress 160; Sukhumvit Road 145; Sutthisan 145–7; transnational networks 154–6; trust 160–1 prolonged displacement in Hong Kong: borrowing money 125–6; Chungking Mansions 112–13; emotions 130–2; employment 126–9; expanding social networks 119–21; homeland-based culture 135–7; meaningful lives 140–1; mutual assistance and dependence 118–19; security 133–4; Sham Shui Po 115–16; social networks 116–18;

Index  199 stranded journey 111–12; stress coping strategies 132–3; transnational social networks 121–5 protection claims processing mechanisms: Bangkok 99–103; CAT 87–8; Hong Kong 87–92; RSD 89–90; USM 91 “protracted refugee situations” 3 Punpuing, Sureeporn 94 push-pull framework 5 Putnam, Robert D. 121, 151, 160, 171 Ramadan, Adam: temporality of refugee status 169–70 Rath, Jan 129 receiving societies see host societies recognisance papers: Hong Kong 81–2 Refugee Convention (1951) 3; signatories 76; source of protection 175 refugeeness 32, 72 refugees: defined 32Refugee Status Determination (RSD) 78; Bangkok 99–103; Hong Kong 89–90 Refugee Union 25, 133–4, 163 regional refugee standards 176 relationships: exploitative 171; intimate 165–6; local marriage 138–40; research 24–7; trust 160–1; see also social networks religion: avoidance in social networks 121; field access 24–7; migration driver 51; social network support 153 religious networks 153–4 research relationships: building and developing 24–7 resettlement: anxieties 108; mechanisms 2; third-country 73 returning home: anxieties 108 Riano-Alcala, Pilar 19 Richmond, Anthony H. 54 Ritchey, P. Neal: behavioural model of migration 54 Robin, Cohen 161 Rogerson, Christian M. 129 RSD see Refugee Status Determination (RSD) Safran, William 15 sales employment opportunities 126–7 Sassen, Saskia: global constraints on immigration control 79 Scheel, Stephan: embodied encounters 174

Scott, James: state project of legibility 59 screening mechanisms: Bangkok 99–103; CAT 87–8; Hong Kong 87–92; RSD 89–90; USM 91 security: border governance 22–4; European Union 177; government anxiety 106–7; human 17; national vs. human 176–7; negotiating in Bangkok 161–3; negotiating in Hong Kong 133–4; performative 17–18; prolonged displacement 73–4; Refugee Convention (1951) 175; refugees as external threats 107; settlement rejection by host countries 176; statecentric 17 self-imposing identification: legal creditability 60 self-reliance: prolonged displacement in Bangkok 143 settlement rejection 175–6 shame: deprivation of work 83–4, 131 Sham Shui Po 115–16; illegal housing 120; popular meeting point 116 signatories: Refugee Convention (1951) 76 Silom Road 145 smuggling services: costs 56; embodied differences from legitimate travel 69–72; emotional departure 63; learning travel skills 61–2; travel documents 58 social capital 116; diasporas 170; NGOs and community 151 social networks 116–18; borrowing money 125–26, 157; co-national networks 148–50; deciding to flee 55; diasporas 170; employment 126–9; exile fund gathering 55–6; expanding in Bangkok 151–4; expanding in Hong Kong 119–21; exploitative relationships 171; illusion of community 161; marginalisation 171; mutual assistance and dependence/ support 118–19, 150–1; negotiating security 133–4, 161–3; out-group networks 121; religious avoidance 121; role in asylum cycle 13; shared understanding of subordinate social status 117; social capital 116; trust 160–1; see also transnational networks social world of refugees 27–8 socio-economics: local interactions 170–1; transnational networks 171–2

200 Index Soi Arab in Nana, Sukhumvit 146 South Asia: displacement causes 49 South Asian food stall: Chungking Mansions 115 South Asian refugees 21, 65; at Chungking Mansions 126; exile routes 65–7; in Guangzhou 68; in Sham Shui Po 127Southeast Asia: displacement causes 49 Sri Lankan refugee(s) 50, 76, 96–8, 103, 122, 130, 142, 148, 150, 152, 153, 157 stage of hesitancy 53–4 standard journey: Bangkok 143–7 state-centrism: humanitarianism 175; security 17 state fragility: cause of displacement 5 state project of legibility 59 status: categorisation of refugees 103–5; identity documents 81–2; illegal immigrants and overstayers 105; legal through marriage 138–40; refugee 169–70; screening mechanisms in Bangkok 99–103; screening mechanisms in Hong Kong 87–92; shared understanding of subordinate 117 stranded journeys: Bangkok 143–7; Hong Kong 111–12 street arrests: Bangkok refugees 95–7 street stalls, in Pratunam Market 144 stress: prolonged displacement 132–3, 160; prolonged screening mechanisms 91–2 Sukhumvit Road 145 Sutthisan 145–7 Svašek, Maruška 19, 129, 173 Swell, William H. 171

transnational networks 171–2; business opportunities 123–4; information sharing 121–2, 154; borrowing money 122–3, 154–5; volunteer work 125 transnational space of asylum 173 transportation modes: costs 56; embodied mobility 69–72 travel documents and permits: obtaining 57–60 travel skills: learning 61–2 Trump, Donald 3, 106 trust: social networks 160–1 Turner, Victor 22–3, 161

temporariness: first asylum ports 169–70 terminology, use of 32 Thailand: Burmese refugees 42–3; Indochinese refugees 39–42; see also Bangkok Thatcher, Margaret 37 third-country resettlement 73 torture claim screening: Bangkok 99–103; CAT 87–8; Hong Kong 87–92; RSD 89–90; USM 91 Touch Base Policy 36 tourist visas 58–9 trading and recycling businesses 128–9 transnationalism 14–16

Wahlbeck, Östen 14, 15 Wat Mahamariamman 145 Western Union: Chungking Mansions 114 Willen, Sarah 29 Wood, Geof 16 worry: prolonged displacement 158–9

UNHCR Hong Kong 89 UNHCR Thailand 99–103 unified screening mechanism (USM) 78, 91 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): humanitarian assistance in Bangkok 95; protracted refugee situations 3 urban refugees 20; building and developing research relationships 24–7 Van Hear, Nicholas 122 Vecchio, Francesco 127 Vertovec, Steven 15, 161, 170 Vietnamese boat people: Hong Kong asylum 37–9; Thailand asylum 41–2 Vine Church 25 violence: influencing migration decisions 54–5 Virag 94 visas: easy-to-meet 21, 68, 92; Hong Kong 78–9; tourist 58–9 volunteer work: transnational social networks 125

Young, Oran 90 young refugees: anchors 10; education 86–7; journey experiences 10 Zagor, Matthew 73 Zetter, Roger 4–6, 9, 16, 111 Zizek, Slavoj 106