Social Integration of the Hong Kong South Asian Populations

Lee, Kim-Ming
Division of Social Sciences, Community College of City University

Law, Kam-Yee
Department of Social Sciences, Hong Kong Institute of Education

Kwok, Kim
Division of Social Sciences, Community College of City University

Working Paper 27 August 2012

Social integration of the Hong Kong South Asian populations Introduction We are all living in the age of migration (Castles and Miller 2009). Not only do Western countries receive mass influxes of immigrants from various places with various sociocultural backgrounds, the relatively homogeneous East Asian societies, like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan also confront with the situation. While social incorporation policy of immigrants has long been established in Western countries as they were traditional destination of migrants of their colonies, it is a new concern for the East Asian governments. The immigration in terms of migrant workers and foreign brides forces the Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese governments continuously revise their social policies so as to find a way to deal with the associated problems (Yang and Lu 2010; Kim 2009). Multiculturalism is even employed as a policy objective to integrate immigrants, notably in South Korea (Kim and Oh 2011; Parreas and Kim 2011). Hong Kong also faces with the problems of incorporating immigrant groups into the mainstream society. This paper discusses research findings from a qualitative study about the formulation and implementation of social integration policies towards South Asian ethnic groups in Hong Kong. It is argued that the Hong Kong government embarked its integration policies out of political demands from international communities and domestic human rights groups. However, the integration policies are poorly formulated and there are many implementation problems. Historical background Compared with other East Asian societies, Hong Kong is definitely an immigrant society with majority of its populations coming from Mainland Chinese immigrants and their offspring (Law and Lee 2006). However, this does not mean that immigrant integration is straightforward and discrimination against is absent. As an ex-British colony, nonChinese populations have existed for a long time. During the early colonial period, Chinese was the main target of discrimination by the white Europeans. Social integration was not a problem because most migrants were transitory and seldom settled permanently. For Chinese migrants, they moved back and forth between Hong Kong and their Mainland hometown, while non-Chinese migrants (Europeans and Asians) also temporarily settled in Hong Kong for businesses or job opportunities. Everything changed after the Communist took over China. The Chinese immigrants were no longer transitory, but settled down and helped the industrialisation of the Hong Kong economy. Racial discrimination against Chinese also subsided partly because of the worldwide civil rights movement and partly due to the rising economic power of the Hong Kong Chinese. However, Hong Kong did face with the integration problems with new Mainland migrants when a Hong Kong identity emerged in the 1980s (Siu 2008). The emergence of the Hong Kong identity signifies the formation of an imagined ethnic entity, the Hongkongers, which comprise of old Mainland immigrants and the locally born Chinese. Just like Japan and Korea (Han 2007; Lie 2001), a myth of ethnic homogeneity was engendered among Hongkongers in spite of the existence of a number of small culturally different non-Chinese ethnic minorities. Thus, Hong Kong is always considered as monocultural instead of multicultural in the mindset of majority Hongkongers. This unique Hong Kong culture can be said as a hybridity of selective

elements from British colonialism and Chinese culture. The Hong Kong culture, exemplified by the core values1 free, enterprising, excellence, innovative, and quality living (Brand Hong Kong 2010:10-11), is regarded as the foundation of the economic miracle and good governance of Hong Kong. Therefore, except Western cultures, other cultures, including the Mainland culture, are generally considered inferior to the Hong Kong culture (Law and Lee 2012). This cultural supremacy inevitably leads to racism and discrimination against the supposedly culturally inferior ethnic groups. Not only does this cultural racism feed into personal racism, but also be crystallised into institutional racism that socially excludes ethnic minorities from participating in the mainstream society (Dominelli 2008). Since new Mainland immigrants are considered culturally different from Hongkongers, they are often discriminated at the cultural, institutional and personal levels. The cultural affinity of Mainland immigrants is much closer to the Hong Kong culture than those of the South Asian ethnic minorities. Hence, one can expect that the social integration of the Hong Kong South Asians is much more difficult than and different from that of Mainland Chinese. In order to socially integrate immigrants, combating various forms of racism is of paramount importance. In order to eliminate cultural racism and establish genuine social integration, simply helping immigrants to acquire the host society language, improving their human capital (i.e. education and skills), and building up their social capital are not enough. Mutual recognition and respect between majority Hong Kong Chinese and ethnic minorities have to be actively pursued. Anti-discrimination and social integration of ethnic minorities Anti-discrimination law is seldom legislated without political motives and struggles. The Hong Kong case typically reflects this brutal truth. Before the enactment of the Race Discrimination Ordinance (RDO), the Hong Kong government consistently denied the existence of racial discrimination (Law and Lee 2012) and the debate about race equality had been discussed since the ratification of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 (Baig 2010). In the Joint Declaration, a memorandum stipulated that Hong Kong people of Chinese descent would be granted Chinese nationality, but nothing about the nonChinese. At the same time, the British government announced that people of Hong Kong who held British passport did not have the right of abode in the United Kingdom. As a result, the Hong Kong ethnic minorities, especially for Indians, Nepalese and Pakistanis2 who relinquished ancestral citizenship to get British passport, might face stateless after 1997. The nationality issue provoked them to launch political lobbying and campaigns in the United Kingdom and in Hong Kong. This is the first visible political action pursued by Hong Kong ethnic groups, notably the Indian community, though Hong Kong Chinese seemed to be indifferent to their plight. Nonetheless, it did arouse concern from local and international human rights organisations (Baig 2010:103-113). The British government ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1969, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1976. All these international treaties were extended to Hong Kong. However, the colonial government did not publicise or make known the obligations to these treaties to the public until the negotiation of the Joint Declaration. Right after the June 4 Massacre in 1989, local nongovernmental organization (NGOs), human rights groups and political

leaders urged the colonial government to incorporate the treaties into domestic laws so as to safeguard human rights after the handover (Baig 2010:114-116). Consequently, the Bill of Rights Ordinance was passed in 1991, the Sex Discrimination Ordinance and Disability Discrimination Ordinance in 1995, and the Family Status Discrimination Ordinance in 1996. The Equal Opportunities Commission was set up in 1996 to oversee the implementation of the ordinances (Baig 2010:120). Nonetheless, the legislation of the RDO did not materialise until 2008. The success of the RDO enactment can be attributed to the political pressure exerted from both internally by local and migrant NGOs and externally by international organizations (Tang, Lam, and Ngai 2004). The politics of the RDO not only fostered the cross-ethnic cooperation between local and migrant NGOs, more importantly, also forced the government to start formulating and implementing social integration measures for the migrants. Even before the enactment of the RDO, in 2002, the Home Affairs Bureau (HAB) established the Committee on the Promotion of Racial Harmony (CPRH), a consultative body comprising members from NGOs and ethnic minority communities to advise the state on racial issues. The Race Relations Unit (Race Relations Unit) also commenced operation in 2002 both to provide secretary supports to CPRH and provide a range of support services, either by implementing its own programs or through sponsoring NGOs. In 2003, the Ethnic Minorities Forum (EMF) was set up to provide a more regular formal channel of communication among the government, Hong Kongs ethnic communities and the NGOs dedicated to serving ethnic minorities. What kind of social integration policies did the government formulate? Are the policies able to integrate ethnic minorities into Hong Kong society? In the following sections, we try to answer these two question after presenting the methodology of our study. Methodology Qualitative methods are employed so as to gain in-depth understanding of the dynamics within the formulation and implementation processes of the Hong Kong social integration policies. Besides thoroughly reviewing official documents related to ethnic minorities, indepth interviews were conducted with Indian, Nepalese and Pakistani migrants, and social service NGOs. The reason of focusing on Indians, Nepaleses and Pakistanis but not the others is that they are the main service target of NGOs. In 2011, Indonesians, Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis, and Nepaleses constitute the largest five ethnic groups, with 1.9%, 1.9% 0.4%, 0.3% and 0.2% of total Hong Kong population respectively (Census and Statistics Department 2011b:Table 9). Although Filipinos and Indonesians, most being foreign domestic helpers (FDHs), are the largest ethnic groups in Hong Kong, they are the least protected under the RDO. According to the immigration policies and the exemption clauses of the RDO, FDHs are denied the right of permanent residency, thus Filipinos and Indonesians cannot enjoy full citizenship rights including many social services and welfare benefits, except the basic labour legislation protection (Lee and Law 2012). The Indians, Pakistanis, and Nepaleses are different. Many of them are the second- or even third-generation immigrants. However, they are unable to integrate into the Hong Kong society because of language and cultural (negative stereotypes) barriers that deprive them of employment opportunities and access to social services (Crabtree and Wong 2010). As a result, they are the main targets for the social integration policies.

Totally, 44 South Asian immigrants have been interviewed. Since the South Asian populations are concentrated in some districts rather than scattering around Hong Kong, we select individual informants from these districts: (1) Tsim Sha Tsui, Jordan and Yau Ma Tei, in 2011, with 42.1%, 12.9% and 18.5% of total Nepalese, Pakistani and Indian populations respectively; (2) Yuen Long, with 27.3% Nepalese and 13.2% Pakistani populations; (3) Kwai Ching, with 12.7% Pakistani population; and (4) Kowloon City, with 11.5% Indian and 6.7% Pakistani populations3. The informants are recruited either in the community centres/NGOs or ethnic enterprises. An official from the Race Relations Unit, which is responsible for coordinating ethnic minority services, and a key informant from the Hong Kong Council of Social Service (HKCSS), an umbrella organisation for Hong Kong social service NGOs, are interviewed to gain an overview of the social integration policies. The HKCSS is a good place to look at because it is an umbrella organization of social service NGOs, comprising 401 agency members which provide over 90% of the social welfare services (HKCSS n.d.). We also interview eight NGOs providing ethnic minority services. Three of them are commissioned by the government to provide specialised minority services. Another three are HKCSS member NGOs. Lastly, two non-HKCSS member NGOs are also interviewed to provide non-mainstream NGO viewpoints. All interviews are conducted face-to-face and last for one to two hours. The formulation of the social integration policies The Hong Kong government always claims that it embraces the idea of inclusive society so that all individuals can enjoy equality and respect in different areas of life (Hong Kong Government 2012). In spite of the official claims, there is only one official policy document, Legislating against Racial Discrimination: A Consultation Paper, that states clearly what the integration policy is. The integration policy comprises three elements (Home Affairs Bureau 2004:para. 23): 1. 2. 3. to provide practical assistance to members of ethnic minorities to facilitate their settlement in Hong Kong and their integration into the wider community to address the problem of racial discrimination against ethnic minorities; and to promote equal opportunities for all ethnic groups.

However, the above guidelines are very vague. According to our informant from the Race Relations Unit, They are just policy direction, not specific measures. In more concrete terms, we help those who have difficulties in adapting to Hong Kongs life because of language problems, cultural or religious differences. We first help them settle down, and then assist them to overcome difficulties in education, employment, and ultimately enable them to participate into the mainstream Hong Kong society Our integration policy is not assimilationist. Assimilation is one-way, but social integration is two-way. We are not forcing ethnic minorities to adopt our culture. We do not pursue cultural harmony simply through passive mutual tolerance, but actively help them become part of the society with the emphasis that they maintain their own cultural characteristics.

Undeniably, the Unit has tried their best to help ethnic minorities within the government framework. Through soliciting ideas and opinions from different ethnic and local NGOs, four HAD-subsidized district-based support service centres have already been operating since 2009. These centres provide a series of services targeted at the needs of ethnic minorities, including counselling and referral services, interpretation services, Cantonese and English language classes as well as other integration programs, like induction programs, employment supports, interest classes, mutual support groups and community development. In order to effectively consolidate Hong Kongs ethnic minority communities, the Unit joins with the Radio Television Hong Kong to launch three radio programmes in Nepali, Urdu (the Pakistani language) and Bahasa Indonesian, and sponsors two community support teams, one for the Pakistani community and another for the Nepalese community. In the 2011-12 Policy Address, the Chief Executive announces that one more support service centre and two sub-centres will be set up to extend the existing service coverage and two additional radio programmes in Hindi and Thai will be provided. In education, the Unit sponsors NGOs to host cross-cultural youth learning programmes (including Cantonese and tutorial classes) and after-school tutorials. The Unit has already launched the Harmony Scholarship Scheme in the academic year 200304 to award students actively participating in racial harmony building activities. Through the Community Care Fund (under HAD administration), financial assistance is also given to eligible ethnic minority students to take international public examinations for Chinese and English proficiency and to non-school-attending to take language courses. With all these measures and programmes, the Secretary of Home Affairs (2012b) remarks, HAD has taken a proactive approach in continuing the existing support services, and put in place new initiatives through enhanced district partnership and media partnership to better help ethnic minorities integrate into the local community. So far, the initiatives have been effective and well received by the ethnic minority beneficiaries. In spite of the official claim of success, many NGO informants say otherwise. Comparing to other policy areas, the integration policy is given a very low priority in the governments agenda. The policy is not even mentioned in the missions of either the Home Affairs Bureau (HAB) or HAD which are supposed to oversee the integration matters. The major administrative unit to implement the policies, the Race Relations Unit, only has four full-time staffs. No wonder one of our respondents queries about the determination of the government in integrating ethnic groups into the Hong Kong society, Before the legislation of the RDO, the Race Relations Unit was under HAB, a policy-making authority. Once, the Race Discrimination Bill was passed, the Unit was transferred to the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau (CMAB). It is understandable that the CMAB has to ensure all government policies complying to international human rights standards. But recently, the Unit has been transferred back to HAD, but not HAB. You know, HAD is the executive branch of HAB. It implies that the government seems to consider the current policy framework is good enough. The upcoming tasks are to design relevant measures.

Indeed, HAB is traditionally a political entity: not responsible for social policy but for political control and social stability. In the colonial period, the Home Affairs Branch was responsible for aligning political forces in support of the colonial state through its District Offices. Through its top-down community building agenda, the Home Affairs Branch kept oppositional societal forces in check by funding trusted NGOs to organize the community (Lee 2005:62). This tradition carries over to the post-handover government. Thus, the implications of subsuming social integration of immigrants under the jurisdiction of HAB are four-folded. First, it is a response to the political demands raised before and after the enactment of the RDO. Second, the social integration process has to be administratively controlled to avoid intensifying further political demands that jeopardise the legitimacy of the government. Third, the integration policies are not above or even on par with other social policies because the primary objective is to keep the international critics and the local advocacy groups silent. Finally, under the guise of social integration, the government makes sure that the disadvantaged situation of ethnic minorities will not turn into racial conflicts. In fact, the measures undertaken by the Unit are very narrow in scope with regards to employment, education and cultural dialogue with majority Chinese. The South Asian immigrants are more concerned with the services provided by other departments, instead of HAD. For instance, some immigrants with limited Cantonese and English ability are concerned with getting sufficient medical attention from public hospitals; other immigrant parents are worried about the education of their children; still some Pakistani young people are eager for a place to play cricket. The so-called integration services are simply bridging and referral services that enable immigrants to get access to other mainstream services to meet their needs. As a whole, the integration services only constitute a small portion of social services in principle available to ethnic minorities. HAD is mainly responsible for community services. Most services are provided by different bureaus and departments which have their own policy objectives and emphases. At least, six other government authorities are important to ethnic minorities: the Hospital Authority, Housing Authority, Education Department, Social Work Department (SWD), Employees Retraining Board, and Labour Department. As a coordinating body, HAD does not have the jurisdiction to request these departments and authorities what to do. When an ethnic issue arises, the mechanism HAD can do is to ask the relevant department to send a representative to attend the meeting of the more formal CPRH or the less formal EMF. The representative would answer the questions raised by the concerned party at the meeting. If the issue cannot be resolved in the meeting, the representative would relay the request back to his/her department and send a written reply in the next meeting. Some issues recurrently occur in the agenda of the CPRH or EMF. This implies that these issues have ever been resolved. In fact, the whole policy decision-making and policy-formulation processes with regard to ethnic minority integration can be described as disjointed and incremental. It is disjointed because different government authorities have their own policy agenda. Moreover, as discussed later, they subsume the needs of ethnic minorities under the rubric of the wider Hong Kong Chinese society rather than the vague integration framework laid out in 2004 by HAB. In their everyday operation, maybe due to cultural

insensitivity or ignorance, there is no consideration of ethnic minorities special needs. Usually, even the special needs of ethnic minorities are known, they dont have initiatives to change the established practices (probably because of bureaucratism) unless political pressures are amassed and exerted. When policy changes need to be made, it is frequently in a small and piece-meal manner so as to meet the political demand with least efforts (Lindblom 1959). This kind of disjointed incrementalism, as argued by Tang (1998), is the basic nature of the social policy making from late 1970s to mid-1990s. Consequently, the provision of social services to ethnic minorities is fragmented and this fragmentation reflects the lack of an overall, long-term integrated settlement framework of the government. The implementation of the social integration policies In Hong Kong, most social services are delivered through NGOs subvented by the government. To understand the implementation of the integration policies, it is important to look into the institutional structure of Hong Kong state-NGOs relations. Lee (2005) characterizes Hong Kong NGO regime as statist-corporatist in which the state tends to limit freedom of NGOs and yet finances designated NGOs to provide social and welfare services in selected areas. The state controls and steers NGOs through funding and administrative monitoring. Before the millennium, the state did not have any plan for integrating ethnic minorities into the Hong Kong society. Although some frontline workers were eager to serve and fight for ethnic minorities, their senior management and board of directors were reluctant to approve. As a social worker prominent for her fighting ethnic minority interests comments, The local NGOs seldom recognized the needs of South Asian immigrants in the late1990s. Even noticing the service gap, my colleagues felt that we had to serve the HK people first, then the new Chinese immigrants. The last thing was to help the non-Chinese (eAlumNet 80 2009). As a matter of fact, there were a few government-subvented social service NGOs provided limited services to ethnic minorities and joined with other advocacy NGOs to discuss the racial discrimination issues. Nonetheless, as noted by Baig (2010), they did not join any political action to campaign for the RDO legislation, probably fearing for losing government funding. The number of NGOs providing ethnic minorities increased in the 2000s when the government changed its policy orientation. Apart from traditional public funds, like the Community Chest of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the government set up several new public funds available for NGOs to apply for serving ethnic minorities, like the Equal Opportunity (Race) Funding Scheme and Community Investment and Inclusion Fund (CIIF) and Community Care Fund (CCF). Moreover, the government, though HAB and CMAB, provides direct funding to NGOs to implement its integration policy, especially after the RDO enactment. Despite the increase of funding, NGOs are still constrained by the governments administrative control. Under the influence of neoliberalism and new public management, the government introduced various measures, Service Quality Standards (SQS), Funding and Service Agreements (FSA), Lump Sum Grant (LSG), and Competitive Bidding to

control NGOs (Leung 2002). The managerialism seriously deteriorates the professional roles of social service providers and cultivates short-term, well-standardized, taskoriented (not people-centred), and competitive (rather than cooperative) practices in fulfilling quantifiable targets (Tsui and Cheung 2004). Under this neoliberal context, NGOs have a lot of constrains in devising innovative programmes to serve ethnic communities, unless those programmes gain endorsement from the government. Moreover, NGOs also lack flexibility to adjust their programmes necessary to deal with implementation problems. Nonetheless, managerialism does not totally preclude NGOs pursuing the social justice ideals. Indeed, the government needs a responsive social service delivery system to maintain its political legitimacy (Lam and Perry 2000). Thus, government-subvented NGOs still have certain amount of autonomy, provided that they do not challenge the government. We can identify four ideal types of service delivery models among NGOs providing ethnic minority service. The first type, specialized NGO, receives funding mainly from HAD4 to run some specialized services for ethnic minorities. The typical examples are the NGOs which successfully bid for opening the ethnic minority support centres. The main advantage of getting HAD funding is that it is extra money on the top of recurrent funds from the SWD. Thus, the NGO can expand its services and introduce new services to ethnic minority without draining its own funds. Moreover, the NGO can position itself as specialist in ethnic minority service provision, at least in the eyes of government officials. The main drawback, according to one informant working in a NGO without major HAD funding, is the lack of autonomy and flexibility to devise and implement programmes that genuinely help ethnic minorities. The management of specialized NGOs has to comply with the conditions as long as they want the funding to be continued. As he comments, Once you got the specialized fund for ethnic minority services, you are restricted by service contract clauses, types of target groups, areas of service provision, and target number of clients served etc for instance, recently we had a returned South Asian Hongkonger who wanted to rent a place. We referred him to a NGO receiving funding to serve asylum seekers. But they said they merely served asylum seekers. You know, they have all the networks to find places for asylum seekers, why not help my client? In defence, another informant from a support centre argues that, The conditions listed in the tender are very broad; you still have autonomy in submitting service contract proposal with the tailor-made programmes fit to your organisation missions. Moreover, I cant see the restrictions imposed by the general fund provided by SWD, like the Lump Sum Grant and Service Quality Standards, are less stringent than those by specialized funding. Hence, the tenders specified by the government do not totally dictate the service delivery and programme design of the recipient NGOs. The specialized NGOs can still have space to devise and deliver their own ethnic minority services; however, the scope of innovation is still limited because programmes are inevitably subject to the approval of HAD. Usually, as an authority to ensure social stability, HAD is quite conservative in

experimenting new ideas and service models. As an interviewee from another support centre reveals, We had greater autonomy in the past when CMAB oversaw our programmes. They are more open and imposed less monitoring. Now HAD seems to more careful about our programme content. For instance, we have organised a radio programme for our Pakistani client. Every time, HAD requests us to submit the recording to them afterward and sees whether there is any inappropriate content. Because of their close monitoring, when we want to raise the social awareness of our clients on the top of simply meeting their needs for living, we have to do it bit by bit. Furthermore, the competition among NGOs for the specialized funds is very intense as the amount of money involved is quite large. After a term of two years, the contract is extendable if the performance of the awarded NGO is acceptable to HAD. As one of our NGO informants observes, some NGOs would set unreasonable service targets in order to win the bid and ignore whether their staff are able to deliver them. There are always cases, mentioned by the same informant, that specialized NGOs would cross district to serve more ethnic minorities so as to fulfil the service targets and levels stated in their contract. They can do that because HAD does not take the district-based policy as serious as SWD. Under the jurisdiction of SWD, a NGO cannot cross district to serve clients that locating in another district, even though it is just a street next to the NGO. Specialized NGOs would also initiate contacts and collaborate with ethnic NGOs. But their relationship can be described as somewhat instrumental. Although services can certainly be delivered to ethnic minorities effectively and efficiently through establishing an inter-organizational relationship, the interactions and cooperation are usually oriented to finishing the contracted tasks, like organizing a cross-cultural festival, and fulfilling service targets, rather than raising the social and political awareness of their clients. This instrumental relationship may be due to the close monitoring of HAD The second type community-work NGOs, serve the needs of the district through community development strategy. They totally rely on SWDs recurrent fund to provide ethnic minority services. Under lump sum grant, community-work NGOs have the autonomy and flexibility to allocate resources to different service areas according to their priority. It is up to the NGO whether it would set a high priority to serving ethnic minorities without any interference from SWD. The obvious disadvantage of this approach is no extra money; any additional ethnic minority service would reduce resources for other services. However, the advantage is to avoid competing with other NGOs for funding. As explained by our informant, We are very autonomous to devise our ethnic minority services. From SWD perspective, we are not directly under them; they are just entrusted by HAD to manage us. Our work is under the policy domain of HAD. Our responsibilities are defined by HAD, sorry, like promoting community inclusion and social harmony. Although we are under the monitoring system, like SQS, SWD does not see us as their mainstream service providers; we are technically under HAD. You see, this is why we get the flexibility and autonomy. For instance, the ICYs (Integrated

Children and Youth Services Centres) of our agency elsewhere can only help ethnic minority young people up to age 24. But we do not have such constraints because we are doing community work. Since we are doing community development, we can serve anyone in the community. If we can serve youth, why not ethnic minorities! The ambivalent attitude of SWD towards community development gives communitywork NGOs greater than other NGOs can have. When the first community development programme, the Neighbourhood Level Community Development Project (NLCDP) was introduced in the late 1970s, the operational responsibility including subvention and supervision was remained in the hand of SWD, but the policy decision authority was shifted from SWD to the Community Building Policy Committee, chaired by the Secretary of Home Affairs. Indeed, the whole community development policy was orchestrated by HAD to maintain social stability (Leung 1990:Chapter 5). As a result, community development was seen as peripheral to SWD, and this colonial legacy carries on till today. As mentioned before, SWD has rigid control over cross-district services. So far as the services are provided within the district, community-work NGOs can experiment any programme that fits to their goals of integrating ethnic minorities into Hong Kong society. In one of the community-work NGOs we interviewed, the social workers there recognize the needs of let the third-generation Pakistanis young people go out of their own community and participate into the wider Hong Kong society. They contact a mosque to see whether it is feasible to develop a local cultural tourism program so that the Pakistani youth can be trained as guides. If successful, the programme not only enables their clients to get a job and have more interactions with the Hong Kong Chinese, but also helps promote the Islamic culture to the mainstream Hong Kong society. Community-work NGOs will also launch some fee-charging services and courses, like social skills development classes, to reduce the financial constraints that may affect other service provision. However, the income generated from these services is circumscribed by the socioeconomic conditions of the district in which the NGO locates. The NGOs in better-off districts can make more income from the fee-charging classes than those in poor districts. In addition, if the NGO is operated under or affiliated with an agency, like a church or an international NGO, it may have more resources to provide ethnic minority services, so long as its board of directors favours the move. The third type, entrepreneurial NGOs, have to continuously find various sources of funding to support their ethnic minority services. Neither do entrepreneurial NGOs have major HAD support nor use LSG to finance ethnic minority services. They have to seek different project funding from various sources or use internal funds. The advantage is that the NGOs has greater autonomy, comparing to the specialised NGOs, as most public funds have less stringent clauses on service provision than HAD. Unless, using internal funds, they do not need to worry about draining resources from other services as community-work NGOs do. In addition, since their ethnic minority services are not subvented by SWD, they can provide services anywhere. But the disadvantage is that the social workers have to continuously search for funds in order to continue the services, because public funds normally finance projects within a period of time, and mostly nonextendable. If they use internal funds, they have to convince the senior management and

board of directors to continue the funding. However, this disadvantage can turn into an advantage: when seeking ways to get other funding sources, the NGO will experiment new things or modify the existing strategies adopted in service provision so as to convince internal and external funders. As an informant explains, We have provided ethnic minority services since 2000. But at that time, we lacked resources and supports. It was very difficult to survive, not to say expand the services. The thing changed when we successfully got a fund from CIIF in 2003. In 2004, we launched a service that tried to mix the Mainland and Pakistani immigrants in order to have complementary effects as well as creating social capital in these ethnic communities. After the CIIF funding ended in 2006, we reflected that we should do something different other than direct services. We decided to experiment on social enterprise so as to let South Asian women have more connections with the mainstream society and learn some business skills. We noticed that there was a newly found fund, called, the Enhancing Self-Reliance through District Partnership Programme5. So we applied and succeeded. We run a social enterprise to sell ethnic-style products and services up to now. After the legislation of RDO, we saw another opportunity. As we sensed that there would be a huge need for translation and interpretation, we decided to establish a new social enterprise which could create more full-time and part-time job opportunities for ethnic minorities. But now we think that we may overestimate the demand. Fortunately, we have a big client, the Hospital Authority, which provides sufficient resources for us. For entrepreneurial NGOs, their success and sustainability enormously depends on the enterprising skills and innovative ideas of the management. They have to continuously get new ideas to bid funding from various sources, invent new ways of empowering ethnic minorities and simultaneously generate incomes to sustain their services. The main operational logic is to experiment a project, modify it through trials and errors, until finding out a viable and sustainable model of service provision. Building a close network with ethnic NGOs is essential to the operation of entrepreneurial NGOs. Ethnic NGOs are regarded as partners and collaborators rather than simply client groups. Through interacting with ethnic NGOs, new and innovative service provision ideas and practices may be induced. Moreover, these ethnic NGOs may become partners in implementing new service models. When no relevant ethnic NGOs can be identified in the experimenting period, an ethnic group/association would be organized to serve as a collaborative partner. If successful, the ethnic group spins off from its mother entrepreneurial NGO and operates in its own, and the mother NGO will replicate another ethnic association based on the successful formula in other places, or start a totally different project to search other service models. The downside is that it requires a lot favourable factors to be successful. If an entrepreneurial NGO has a large finance reverse and a supportive board of directors, the success rate will be higher because it does not need to worry about the intense competition in bidding external funds and uses a lot efforts to guarantee internal assistances. Comparing the three types of NGOs, community-work NGOs have flexibility somewhere between the more restricted specialized NGOs and the more autonomous

entrepreneurial NGOs. Two more two implications can be drawn by contrasting entrepreneurial and community-based NGOs. First, community-based NGOs can be as innovative as entrepreneurial NGOs, though their innovative capacity may be somewhat limited by their district-based orientation. While it is an imperative for entrepreneurial NGOs to seek for innovation, community-work NGOs do not have this mandate. As a result, it is up to the management to determine how progressive their community-work NGO in pursuing the goals of immigrant integration. Moreover, not all districts have large South Asian populations. Community-work NGOs located in those districts, like the Southern District, may not have any incentive to develop ethnic minority services at all. Second, once a community-work NGO determines to provide quality ethnic minority services, similar to entrepreneur NGOs, they will contact and communicate with ethnic NGOs to improve their services and even seek opportunities for forming partnership. However, there are also chances that community-work NGOs will merely treat ethnic NGOs as one of their clients, if their management is not progressive enough. The fourth type, non-government-subvented NGOs, totally receive no funding from the government. The obvious advantage is that they are completely autonomous in what they are doing. But the apparent disadvantage is the lack of resources. As a result, they are very small, and usually a one-person organisation. Unlike entrepreneurial NGOs, they rely more on building up reputation and strong relations with ethnic groups in securing external funding. In many ways, non-government-subvented NGOs like entrepreneurial NGOs. But they are smaller and totally without government subvention or internal reserve. Though bidding funding by innovative ideas is still important, building ethnic networks and personal reputation are even more significant. The role of reputation and ethnic network plays for this type of NGOs is recollected by one of our interviewees, I started this NGO out of religious calling. Without any government supports, I use my own savings to open this centre and worked alone for serving the neighbourhood. After a few years, there are always groups of minority children and mothers gathering in my centre. People in this district know it. NGOs and the District Council know it. So volunteers come and NGOs ask for collaboration. The District Council invites me to sit in their meeting. Even a Yuen Long NGO came to Kowloon to ask for co-organising an after-class tutorial programme because I can easily get him more than twenty students. The final type is mainstream social service NGOs. It is a kind of residual category comprising a group of heterogeneous NGOs provide few ethnic minority services. These NGOs are mainly subvented by SWD. Since SWD is not the main responsible agency for social integration, it has no clear and definite ethnic minority policy in providing social services. Instead, the services are divided into different functional areas. Services in each area are provided with an orientation towards the majority or mainstream Hong Kong Chinese population. Consequently, if ethnic minority clients have special requests (like Halal foods) or cannot speak Chinese, they would have difficulties to get access to social services provided by mainstream NGOs. There are seven major service areas under SWD: social security, family and child welfare, services for elders, rehabilitation and medical social services, services for offenders, community development and young people. Mainstream NGOs are highly involved in all areas. But community development

is marginal within the SWD service framework because it is regarded as in the domain of HAD. In contrast, the NGOs in the other six service areas are strongly controlled by SWD. These NGOs have little room to manoeuvre their LSG to provide ethnic minority services. They have comparatively fewer connections with ethnic NGOs because they usually provide individual-based social services and most of their ethnic minority clients are referrals from the other local NGOs rather than ethnic NGOs. The most important barrier for them to serve ethnic minorities is the lack of professionals in their corresponding service area who can simultaneously meet the service criteria set by SWD and provide proper services to ethnic minorities.

Conclusion Under strong international and internal political pressure, the government eventually admitted the problems of the failure of ethnic minorities to integrate into Hong Kong mainstream society and enacted the RDO in 2008. However, our study shows that the integration policies are flawed by its low policy priority, disjointed incremental policymaking, and highly controlled implementation. Launching integration policies is simply a means to silence critics and establish a good international image for the Hong Kong government. Comparing with other governance issue, the integration of ethnic minorities is not a major concern. The government lacks an overarching, long-term view about integration. Consequently, the disjointed incrementalism inscribed within different government bureaus and departments engenders the fragmentation of the integration policies. Regarding implementation, we have identified four types of NGOs serving ethnic minorities. All of them play a limited role of social integration, especially mainstream NGOs. Specialized NGOs are deliberately created by the government to perform integration functions. Since their services are subject to strong government scrutiny, they lack the autonomy and flexibility to provide innovative services other than those helping ethnic minorities adapt to the Hong Kong society. Both entrepreneurial and community-work NGOs do have autonomy and flexibility to experiment some innovative programs. But their integration function is also limited. For the former, unless they can find out a success model that can be replicated in scale, they are highly constrained by inadequate long-term funding. For the latter, their integration effort is circumscribed by their emphasis on district-based community building and unable to spread to other districts. Finally, the non-government-subvented NGOs can build up a strong network with ethnic minorities, but they are seriously limited by size and funding.

Notes
1

These five values are taken from the official city marketing project Brand Hong Kong. However, there is no consensus about what Hong Kong core values really are. For instance, in his 2011-12 Policy Address, former Chief Executive Donald Tsang (2011:para. 209) defined the core values as freedom, respect the rule of law, and treasure equality, justice, integrity, pluralism and inclusiveness. Indeed, the notion of core values was suggested by a group of 300 professionals who published the Hong Kong

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