Social exclusion

The term social exclusion was coined by French socialist politicians to describe those excluded from the social security system (Taket, Crisp, Nevill, Lamaro, Graham, & Barter-Godfrey Reference Taket, Crisp, Nevill, Lamaro, Graham and Barter-Godfrey2009:6). Today, it covers all excluded groups experiencing deprivations and inequities, including older people, ethnic minorities and migrants, and those with disabilities. Regarding this, racism and social exclusion are closely interrelated. For one, being a normative belief system, racism asserts the superiority or inferiority of groups based on race (Nash Reference Nash1962:285), leading to systematic deprivation and exclusion of the inferior. For another, being a discriminatory practice, racism also socially excludes particular racial groups from equal opportunities and access to resources.

Early definitions of social exclusion tended to highlight ‘a never-ending shopping list of things’ (Popay Reference Popay2010:295) that people were excluded from. Recent definitions, however, suggest a bidirectional process (Kronauer Reference Kronauer and Andreß2019:51–76; Fu Reference Fu2021). They acknowledge unequal power relations in multiple dimensions and emphasise the drivers of inequality while also foregrounding the agency of those excluded, viewing them not only as the subjugated but as agents actively engaged in mitigating social inequalities. Taking exclusion/inclusion as a continuum rather than a dichotomy, current definitions avoid the reductionist labelling of people, focusing more on relational power dynamics in the exclusionary process.

Recent years have seen increasing attention to the role of language in social exclusion (Fleming Reference Fleming2017:25–43; Fleming Reference Fleming, Jaspers and Madsen2019:122–45; Fu Reference Fu2021), which is comprehensively summarised in Wesselmann and colleagues’ social exclusion model (see Table 1; Wesselmann et al. Reference Wesselmann, Grzybowski, Steakley-Freeman, DeSouza, Nezlek, Williams, Riva and Eck2016:3–23). This model features two major social exclusion experiences—rejection (being explicitly or implicitly told that one is not wanted) and ostracism (being ignored by others)—that elicit adverse psychological outcomes.

Table 1. Taxonomy of social exclusion experiences and outcomes in everyday life (Wesselmann et al. Reference Wesselmann, Grzybowski, Steakley-Freeman, DeSouza, Nezlek, Williams, Riva and Eck2016).

According to this model, dehumanising language refers to language use that degrades the target as inferior to the ‘human being’. Discrimination and stigmatisation occur when someone ascribes negative values to a target and treats them unjustly. Hurtful laughter refers to exclusive practices that make people feel excluded (Klages & Wirth Reference Klages and Wirth2014:8–13). Microaggressions—exclusionary everyday comments or behaviour—involve microassaults (verbal and non-verbal discriminatory acts), microinsults (insensitive communication that subtly degrades race/ethnicity), and microinvalidation (implicit invalidation and negation of an individual's experiences and thoughts). Averted eye gaze involves eye contact avoidance, inducing feelings of ostracism, and ‘being forgotten’ refers to either deliberate or unintentional non-inclusion. ‘Information exclusion’ is exclusion from important information, and ‘biased language’ is using exclusive language that disregards other social groups. ‘Language ostracism’ occurs during communication in which individuals or groups are ostracised or condemned to silence due to language inability. Finally, ‘uncomfortable silence’ involves unexpected pauses during communication, disrupting the conversation flow and threatening the solidarity between social actors.

While collecting data, we found that most episodes mentioned during the interviews fit into the taxonomy of Wesselmann and colleagues’ model; therefore, we deductively analysed and categorised our data according to the a priori themes provided by this model. However, we observed that the model generally summarises the types of social exclusion that are mostly triggered by language inability or realised by language use. The inductive examination of the data pointed to a more insidious factor—race—that leads to the social exclusion faced by African migrants in Hong Kong. To examine this, we also adopted raciolinguistics as a complementary framework to help present a holistic account of race, language, and social exclusion in the current context.

Raciolinguistics

For decades, sociolinguists have documented, parsed, and classified race and language, emphasising how linguistic signs index racial identities, inducing prejudice towards immigrants (Fu Reference Fu2021; Choi, Poertner, & Sambanis Reference Choi, Poertner; and Sambanis2021:236). Nevertheless, recent discussion has turned to indexical inversion, shifting the analytic attention from the speaking practices of racial minority subjects to the hearing practices of listening subjects (Cushing & Snell Reference Cushing and Snell2023:367). Theorised by Flores & Rosa (Reference Flores and Rosa2015:149–71; Rosa & Flores Reference Rosa and Flores2017:621–47), raciolinguistics interrogates the co-naturalisation of language and race historically and contemporarily, considering how the associations between language ideologies and social categories produce the (imagined) perception of linguistic signs in speaking subjects’ utterances. In raciolinguistic ideologies, the racialised speaking subjects are heard and stigmatised as deficient by the listening subject based on the racial positioning, regardless of the extent to which they approximate the ‘linguistic norms’ (Flores & Rosa Reference Flores and Rosa2015:149–71). For instance, Cushing & Snell (Reference Cushing and Snell2023:379) showed that school inspectors in England, most of whom are white, heard the linguistic practices of working-class children as ‘non-standardised’ and racialised this community as ‘limited’ and ‘deficient’ accordingly. Furthermore, Subtirelu (Reference Subtirelu2017:477–505) hypothesised that the Spanish-English bilingualism of US Latinxs is assigned less value and may even be associated with wage penalties, reflecting deficits that employers ‘hear’ in the linguistic repertoires of this group.

Therefore, race and language are inextricably intertwined, and their intersection is embedded in the broader systems of power structures and social inequality. As such, we need to approach race and language together, rather than treating them as two discrete processes, to contest the broader structures of supremacy (Alim, Rickford, & Ball Reference Alim, Rickford and Ball2016:5). Based on such theorisations, this study examines how Africans in Hong Kong are positioned as raciolinguistic others vis-à-vis the Chinese listening subjects. It argues that it is the racialised ideology of inferior language, rather than language itself, that serves as an essential mediating factor in social exclusion, and this positioning of ‘African English’ as inferior reflects the ongoing colonial logic of ‘Standardised English’ in the postcolonial setting of Hong Kong.

Linguistic ostracism and social disadvantage

Our study showed that linguistic ostracism, a communication experience in which people are ostracised because of limited language ability (Hitlan, Zárate, Kelly, & DeSoto Reference Hitlan, Zárate;, Kelly; and DeSoto2016:422–36), was common in participants’ daily encounters. The three official languages in Hong Kong are Cantonese, English, and Putonghua; English is widely used in the government and legal, professional, and business sectors, and Cantonese is the mainstream language (88.9% of the population speaks Cantonese; Hong Kong – The facts 2024). Though Hong Kong is an English-speaking society, lacking Cantonese speaking skills still limits opportunities and social circles.

Linguistic ostracism was an issue in the workplace as participants were ignored due to a lack of Cantonese ability.

1. (1) And they speak Cantonese, and I can't figure out what they are saying. It's just once in a while they say, “Oh yeah, oh sorry, and this is what we are saying”. And then they say [it] in English. … I'm still facing the challenge at my current workplace. I can't participate in everything. My colleagues in the office, and of course, officially, when we go for a class to teach, we use English. But, for communicating with colleagues in an informal setting, they seem to use Cantonese. (PBA, male, 34)

Excerpt (1) illustrates how PBA was not actively engaged in daily office interactions due to the linguistic barrier. PBA came to Hong Kong for a master's degree and stayed after graduation. After three years in Hong Kong, he was teaching economics at a university when interviewed. With limited skills in Cantonese, PBA could not understand his colleagues’ conversations as they preferred using Cantonese to English in the workplace. Consequently, he could not engage in certain activities with his colleagues and, thus, felt left out and disconnected. Human beings have a social need to interact with work colleagues to affiliate themselves and nurture a sense of belonging. In multilingual workplaces, language ostracism occurs when co-workers speak a language that the target is unfamiliar with in their presence, thwarting their need to belong. As Hitlan, Kelly, Schepman, Schneider, & Zárate (Reference Hitlan, Kelly, Schepman, Schneider; and Zárate2006:56–70) suggest, this loss of social engagement in the workplace may lead to lower levels of commitment to the workgroups or organisations, as well as fewer organisational citizenship behaviours. Notably, this exclusion may not be motivated by malicious intent but by inadvertent obliviousness (Robinson, O'Reilly, & Wang Reference Robinson, O'Reilly; and Wang2013:209–10): People may naturally form social bonds with those who share similar backgrounds while unintentionally leaving out those with (linguistic) dissimilarities.

Another participant, a mother of schoolchildren, was ostracised from the school's parenting programmes due to language barriers.

1. (2) There are a lot of things that … exclude parents, because … me and my husband can't speak Chinese. If they have some programs, they'll say, “Oh, the medium of communication in this program is Cantonese, so I guess you can't come”. Being excluded from most of the school activities is really challenging for us because we try to be as involved in our kids’ education as possible. (PER, female, 35)

PER had come to Hong Kong six years earlier to pursue her PhD degree and was a lecturer when interviewed. Her youngest daughter was born in Hong Kong and was attending a Chinese-speaking kindergarten. Given their inability to speak Cantonese, the kindergarten organiser automatically assumed she and her husband (also African) could not come to the parenting programs, ostracising these ‘burdensome’ group members as they might disrupt group functioning. In so doing, the organiser also disallowed PER and her husband's subjectivity in choosing whether to attend or not.

Africans are also denied or ignored in various services, confronting a discrepancy between what they anticipated and what actually happened. Twelve out of the thirty participants mentioned experiencing denials of service during the interviews. One salient example was PYE, a jewel dealer from Ghana who had lived in Hong Kong longer than any other participant. When a dispute arose with a local, he called the police to settle the conflict. Unexpectedly, the police, who had poor English, went to the offender for information. This failure to engage with the informant due to the language barrier greatly disadvantaged PYE in the police investigation, triggering a sense of unpredictability and ostracism.

1. (3) I called the police, … and [they] would not come to me, the one who called 999. … they went to the local Hong Kong person. They started talking in front of me. And I said, “Hey, officer, I am the one who called you. I'm the one calling; you should listen to me”. I understand that because they don't speak English, sometimes they need an interpreter. [It] makes things complicated. (PYE, male, 40)

Using impolite language to exclude

As social animals, people value social connections with others. However, interpersonal bonds are not easy to form or maintain. Rejection occurs when others do not want to develop a relationship or engage with someone (Wesselmann et al. Reference Wesselmann, Grzybowski, Steakley-Freeman, DeSouza, Nezlek, Williams, Riva and Eck2016:5–7), resulting in a series of mental and physical issues (Sjåstad, Zhang, Masvie, & Baumeister Reference Sjåstad, Zhang, Masvie; and Baumeister2021:116–25). In social exclusion, rejection cues can be found in various verbal forms.

First, dehumanising language involves derogatory verbal expressions used to label individuals or groups, which suggest the target's innate inferiority (Wesselmann et al. Reference Wesselmann, Grzybowski, Steakley-Freeman, DeSouza, Nezlek, Williams, Riva and Eck2016:5). In hate speech, dehumanisation is a common discursive strategy that distinguishes ingroups from outgroups, legitimising the controversial practices of social exclusion (Lee Reference Lee2020:335). PJO listed a series of experiences of discrimination in Hong Kong, one involving being discursively excluded from humanity.

1. (4) And they like to use the word hak gwai (黑鬼), which means black ghost or something. It's a Chinese word that they normally call the Black people here. I've had it before, like on the train … they normally say it to Africans. (PJO, female, /)

Hak gwai, literally meaning ‘black ghost’, is a common Hong Kong racial epithet that reduces Black people to creatures on the border of humanity. The person who used hak gwai not only described PJO as black and ghost-like but also identified her as a ‘non-human being’. This diabolising process reinforced the hierarchical consciousness of ‘race’ and potentially justified the social exclusion against the diabolised (Dikötter Reference Dikötter2015:24–26). PJO expressed that when she heard somebody call her something like that, she would usually tell them she could understand the word. This act reflects that the excluded are not merely passive recipients of social exclusion but can also be resisters who courageously confront discrimination.

Second, microassaults, which involve explicitly offensive verbal actions, were observed in the data, with twenty-two out of thirty participants mentioning a relevant experience.

1. (5) The dog came towards me …. The dog wanted to jump on me, so I shouted and said, “You know, you need to hold your dog. Your dog is going to bite me”. She came and held her dog, and then she told me, “It's just a dog. How can you be so scared?” … I told her, “But you need to hold your dog; otherwise it will bite me”. …. Then she said, “Oh, maybe, because you're so black, [the dog] can't see you. (PJO, female, /)

Here, an unleashed dog rushed at PJO and scared her. However, instead of apologising, the Chinese dog owner put the blame on the victim for being so black that the dog could not see her at night, thereby constructing PJO's skin colour as the cause of the incident and a dog attack as a natural outcome. Accordingly, the dog owner unabashedly turned herself from victimiser to victim, absolving her own responsibility for unleashing the dog. This victim blaming humiliated and disadvantaged the victim, reflecting the inferiority of blackness in Hong Kong, which was easily scapegoated in the conflict.

Another form of verbal microaggression reported by four out of the thirty participants was microinsult, that is, insensitive communications that implicitly devalue race/ethnicity.

1. (6) As soon as you walk in, they say, “No, no, no”, like “[Do] you have … papers?” …. Because they perceive Africans to all be refugees. …. So, if you say, “No, I'm not a refugee”, they're like, “Oh, so you have an ID?” When you say, “Yes, I have an ID”, they all look at you … like they're very surprised that you have an ID. (PJO, female, /)

While seeking an apartment, PJO visited property agents in Hong Kong. However, some immediately asked her for papers when she walked in, communicating a demeaning message that all Africans are refugees. When PJO showed her ID, they were surprised because Africans’ legal identity in Hong Kong counters their typical stereotype, which degrades Africans as unwanted and poverty-stricken ‘underdogs’ who cannot afford to pay rent. This instance of a microinsult belittled PJO's race, conveying the racial insensitivity of the perpetrator.

Addressing linguistic exclusion

Rejection and ostracism are the two major types of social exclusion. In confronting social exclusion, many participants felt offended, rejected, and ignored, resulting in self-doubt, low self-esteem and confidence, and a widening disparity between them and the local community. Nevertheless, their narratives also indicated they did not merely accept this; they also exhibited agency in ameliorating social disadvantages. We identified three solutions adopted by Africans in Hong Kong to alter social exclusion: learning the local language, taking initiative, and promoting intercultural communication, which is illustrated at the end of this section.

Acknowledging the communicative utility of Cantonese, eighteen of the thirty participants manifested positive language attitudes. They began learning Cantonese via various means, such as YouTube, attending language training courses, or picking up the language from colleagues, friends, and church members. Ten participants received institutional support from both schools and the church.

1. (7) At my church, they teach us Cantonese. I've registered my name, and I want to learn it. It's difficult living with people whose language you don't understand. (PST, female, 28)

2. (8) My church, the Church of Pentecost, has started a Cantonese class … and we will learn the language. I think that will be a big solution to some of our major problems here if we learn the language. (PVI, female, 31)

In addition, parents’ ideologies about language affect family language planning for children (Seo Reference Seo2021:105–24). As a mother, PJO experienced the social barriers that a lack of Cantonese created and saw the benefits of acquiring it. In her view, multilingualism is instrumental in improving her family's well-being in Hong Kong. She planned to raise her children speaking both Chinese and English.

1. (9) I'd like him to speak Chinese, [to] speak Cantonese and Mandarin, because I see the benefits of knowing the languages here. Because for me, I find it difficult in some places, …. I want my son to learn and be able to mix freely with people here. If he knows the language, then I think life will be much easier for him. I want him to learn Chinese, [to] learn how to speak it and how to write it. (PJO, female, /)

Additionally, PYE, who experienced language exclusions when dealing with the Hong Kong police, also displayed agency in improving the situation. In particular, he took the initiative to urge the Hong Kong police to improve their English skills, especially in Tsim Sha Tsui and Kowloon, where ethnic minorities congregate. According to him, linguistic ostracism was consequently alleviated.

1. (10) [Now their] English grammar is very good, better than before [in] 2004, 2005 2006, when it was horrible. It's horrible to have a police officer who doesn't speak English. The initiative was … so good. I'm so proud of it. We've done a good job. (PYE, male, 40)

Raciolinguistics: It is race, per se

Though most participants believed that narrowing the language barrier would solve some of their problems, unfair treatment went beyond communication issues. POW expressed that her friends’ children were rejected because of their race. Born in Hong Kong and of African descent, they speak native Cantonese, but their language proficiency could not shield them from discrimination.

1. (11) Their kids can speak Cantonese because [they] were born here. Then, they asked their kids to speak to these people. They speak to them in Cantonese; they tell them there is a place available, you can check it out. The moment they get there, and they see they are Africans, they tell them there is no vacancy here. You cannot rent the place here. It's something most … Africans who have stayed for longer periods have experienced. (POW, female, 34)

At first, the children of POW's friends, who are native-born and fluent Cantonese speakers, were easily accepted when looking for a house online. This was potentially because, in the online space where appearance loses its visibility, language replaces race to temporarily serve as the identity marker. However, when they arrived in person and disclosed their race, language lost its distinguishing function once blackness became visible. The rejection they later received indicates that language, at least in Hong Kong, is not the essential identity marker. Even a person speaking perfect Cantonese (indistinguishable from a native) is still at risk of being excluded if they are not an Asian Cantonese speaker. Arguably, this debunks the assumption that the modification of the linguistic practices of the racialised speaking subjects is key to eliminating racial hierarchy (Flores & Rosa Reference Flores and Rosa2015:155).

Another instance also exemplified how the linguistic practice of a racialised person is stigmatised, although the practice corresponds to the ‘standardised norms’ to a large extent (Flores & Rosa Reference Flores and Rosa2015:149–71).

1. (12) In my first semester, it was bad. Even [in] my teaching evaluations, the students didn't give me a chance. They evaluated me very poorly. “I just don't understand when she speaks; I can't understand the accent”. (PER, female, 35)

PER, a lecturer, was evaluated poorly in her teaching due to her ‘accented English’. However, her English was fully understandable during the interview and comprehensible to the AI transcriber. Moreover, the common language of instruction in Hong Kong universities is English. This poor performance evaluation articulated a raciolinguistic ideology from the perspective of the Chinese listening subjects—Africans’ linguistic practices of English deviated from the ‘standard English’, a colonial and social construct based on the language of the white bourgeoisie (Cushing & Snell Reference Cushing and Snell2023:364–67). Even when the subject complied with the ‘standard language’, her English continued to be positioned as deficient and incomprehensible. As such, PER and her language use were racially stigmatised.

Our data also shows that this racialisation of language leads to a disadvantaged position in job-seeking for minorities. Seven out of fifteen non-student participants opined that the requirement for Cantonese during job hunting made them less competitive. Three chose the teaching profession due to language limitations, though their majors were not teaching-related. Furthermore, their inability to speak Cantonese or Putonghua excluded them from high-paying jobs and limited them to positions below their qualification level.

1. (13) Those jobs, you tend to take them, but they are below your qualifications … and your professional needs. But you tend to take them … because that's what is available. (PLO, male, 38)

At the time of the interview, PLO was engaged in engineering. He recounted the problems he experienced while job-hunting. He estimated that 80–90% of Hong Kong jobs require Chinese, even those where employees do not have to communicate with people, making finding jobs difficult for individuals who do not speak Chinese. Before obtaining ‘an international and professional job’, PLO took an unspecified low-paying job for ethnic minorities but later quit due to communication challenges with his colleagues who had limited English skills.

However, not all immigrant groups face similar barriers in Hong Kong, a global city where English is officially the mainstream language. Tong, Su, & Fong (Reference Tong, Su and Fong2018:79–108) observed that white immigrants, who are normally from more developed countries, seem to enjoy a labour market advantage over their counterparts from peripheral countries, though they are also largely unskilled in Chinese. This challenges the assumption that Africans are disadvantaged in the labour market due to inadequate linguistic skills. Rather, the phenomenon must be further contextualised into the global structure of power. Though English is associated with elite status by the dominant language ideologies in Hong Kong (Fleming Reference Fleming2017:28), through the lens of raciolinguistic ideology, Africans’ linguistic repertoires are racialised and assigned less value than the unmarked speech produced by the white speakers of ‘standard English’. This results in unequal opportunities in job-hunting. As such, African immigrants’ disadvantage in the labour market may be more related to their lower status within Hong Kong's social and racial hierarchies than their linguistic skills.

Exclusionary language of silence

This raciolinguistic assumption was further evidenced in situations where language was absent. Non-verbal microassaults against Africans were the most reported form of social exclusion in public spaces, such as trains, lifts, and buses. Seventeen of the thirty participants mentioned people moving away from them on the train or not wanting to sit next to them. Four participants reported people pinching their noses closed when they came near or walked into a lift. Two typical examples were:

1. (14) When you take a bus, nobody wants to sit near you …. When you are in an elevator or lift, they hold their nose like you smell. And a lot of [other] very nasty stuff. (PYE, male, 40)

2. (15) I was sitting down [on the train], a lady was there …. I sat beside her, and she just stood up. I was like, “Whoa”. (PGE, female, 32)

Then, participants also indicated that intensive staring could induce a feeling of exclusion. In Wesselmann et al.'s (Reference Wesselmann, Grzybowski, Steakley-Freeman, DeSouza, Nezlek, Williams, Riva and Eck2016:8–9) model, averted eye gaze is ‘a primary cue for communicating ostracism to others’; however, this study found that intense eye gaze can serve the same role. Eleven out of fifteen participants reported that they had been stared at in public; some pinpointed the alienating effect the gaze had on them. POW noted that people's constant staring made her conscious of being foreign.

1. (16) The other aspect was … everybody kind of stares at you. It is like you are foreign being here. …. Why is everybody staring at me? It makes you self-conscious about being different. (POW, female, 34)

Excerpt (16) exemplifies the process whereby others’ gaze led POW to reflect on the Self. This ‘looking glass self’ (Cooley Reference Cooley, O'Brien and Kollock1997:303–305) mirrored POW's foreignness in Hong Kong society, reinforcing the imagined alien-ness in her mind. Eye gaze can, thus, also be a powerful social cue to alienate ‘Others’ and make them feel ostracised. However, what one person experiences as exclusion may be inconsequential to another. While three participants stated feeling uneasy, others claimed they became used to the gaze and ignored it after a while or never even noticed it. This implies there is no single narrative about social exclusion: its experiences and outcomes vary among the recipients for various reasons and depend on different situational cues (Wirth, Sacco, Hugenberg, & Williams Reference Wirth, Sacco, Hugenberg and Williams2010:878–79). One possible reason for this variation, as Gerber & Wheeler (Reference Gerber and Wheeler2014:14–27) explain, is that those who expect rejection appear to be less distressed when rejection occurs.

Interestingly, one participant deployed impolite stares as a resistance strategy.

1. (17) I think once I was on a bus … one lady looked at me, and she just [PST rolls her eyes]. I was like, “Hmm, is that deliberate?” … so I turned again, and then she [PST rolls her eyes] again. I was like, “Okay, then it means that is deliberate”. So, when I also looked at her I also [PST rolls her eyes]. And when she looked at me, she [PST rolls her eyes] again. Okay, you want a war. I'll give it to you. So, I was also [PST rolls her eyes]. I was basically fighting her all the way and everything. (PST, female, 28)

When PST noticed a Hong Kong Chinese person roll their eyes at her, an act that communicates judgment and disdain, she rolled her eyes back. She metaphorically constructed this mutual eye-rolling as a war between her and the Hong Kong Chinese individual, portraying herself as a brave warrior. In so doing, PST manifested her agency in resisting social exclusion.

Non-verbal rejection also occurred because of the ‘invisibility’ related to blackness in Hong Kong society. As shown in excerpt (18), when POL tried to hail a cab, Hong Kong taxi drivers would not stop for her but stopped for her Chinese friend. POL proposed two theories: (i) her ethnicity was not welcomed, and (ii) they thought she could not afford the fare. She also wondered whether the drivers could not ‘see’ her because her skin was dark.

1. (18) You can spend a very long time trying to stop the taxi drivers. That has happened to countless of us. …. You can see the taxi is available. So, you try to stop it. It will not stop for you. But they will maybe stop for a Chinese friend …. Sometimes you ask yourself questions: “Is it that I am too dark that the person cannot see I'm stopping them?” or “Do they think I don't have the money to pay or am I not a person?” …. I can pronounce my destination in Chinese or Cantonese. … So, it has nothing to do with you not knowing where you're going. (POL, female, 33)

POL underlined that she was denied service because of race and its affiliated stereotypes, not a language barrier. Blackness is visually conspicuous in Hong Kong society since most of the population is Asian. Nevertheless, socially speaking, blackness sometimes causes ‘invisibility’. Thus, Africans in Hong Kong are paradoxically trapped in this interplay of visibility and invisibility, which marginalises them socially.

Addressing racial exclusion

Contrary to the discourse of integration, which argues that linguistic assimilation is essential for immigrant integration and reducing social exclusion, our study suggests that race, not language, is the root cause of social exclusion, at least in Hong Kong. Accordingly, the reduction of social exclusion should not merely emphasise language training but also fundamentally improve racial sensitivity. In this context, two participants mentioned their efforts to promote cultural sensitivity by engaging in intercultural communication with Hong Kong police stations and schools.

1. (19) I used to train Hong Kong police [on] cultural sensitivity issues, long before the protest. We used to have a meeting with the Tsim Sha Tsui police station. … Every year, we have three or four meetings with [them]. (PYE, male, 40)

2. (20) I volunteer with a social enterprise teaching cultural education. A lot of times, what I end up doing is going to different local schools … and chatting with some of the high school students, … primary school students, and even university students, just helping them have better cultural awareness. (PAK, male, 29)