Beyond the Sunday Spectacle: Foreign Domestic Workers and Emergent Civic Urbanisms in Hong Kong

Abstract

This chapter explores the practice of urban commoning by examining the ways in which Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers make use of the city’s public spaces for their collective leisure activities on Sundays and public holidays. Building on recent scholarship that posits the urban commons as a window for understanding urban collectivities and everyday spatial practices, the chapter illustrates that the production of urban commons always entails interaction and constant negotiations with existing governmental structures and relations of power. Through the study of self-organized activities of a marginalized group and how these activities have been regulated by various institutions in specific spaces, this chapter seeks to illustrate that the urban commons both constitute an object of government whilst engendering new forms of collectivities that defy urban norms.