Integration policy and South Asian minorities in Hong Kong

In chapter 17, Kam-yee Law and Kim-ming Lee provide an updated evaluation of the overall performance of integration policies by focusing on South Asian minorities (i.e., Indians, Pakistanis, and Nepalese), who had been in Hong Kong for over 170 years but continued to live under disadvantaged conditions. The implementation of integration policies, focusing on the experience and constraint of the non-government organizations as implementing agents of the policies, is also examined because South Asians are the main targets of these social services. Law and Lee find that in general the integration policies seem to be working, but not well enough to integrate ethnic groups into Hong Kong society. Racial discrimination in Hong Kong has been reduced, though many South Asians are still confronted with various forms of discrimination in their daily life. Many South Asian lower-strata people are still locked in low-paid elementary jobs. The government policies have failed to address structural inequalities between Chinese and South Asians. Law and Lee also identify five types of NGOs that serve ethnic minorities, however, all of them have limited capacities to help South-Asians integrate into Hong Kong society. Copyright © 2016 Xiaowei Zang.