Local and global, but not national: citizenship education of South Asian migrant students in post-colonial Hong Kong

Abstract

Citizenship education is an essential state apparatus to create desirable citizen-subjects and to legitimize the state. While the requirement for love of country is often taken for granted in citizenship education, this is problematic in the context of migrant students who are negotiating dual citizenship – of the sending and the host countries. This is further complicated when the host society itself is experiencing an identity crisis. This research focuses on post-colonial Hong Kong when the city finds itself at the crossroads of identity, struggling to keep a unique Hong Kong identity distinct from mainland China. The most salient example is the recent anti-national education campaign led primarily by students, parents and teachers, who successfully demanded the removal of national education as a compulsory curriculum in primary and secondary schools. When even Hong Kong citizens have issues with citizenship education, what would be citizenship education for non-locally born non-Chinese students at this particular historical juncture? Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in two secondary schools in Hong Kong which have a critical mass of South Asian migrant students, this paper seeks to explore how ethnic minority students and their Hong Kong Chinese teachers understand citizenship education. It argues that while citizenship education is meant to create patriotic citizens, both students and teachers in this research paradoxically render that the national should be addressed with a sharp critical eye in citizenship education. Nonetheless, they have competing claims. While teachers aim at fostering local Hong Kong citizenship, students aspire to become global citizens.