Homing aspirations of African students in Hong Kong
Organizer
The Chinese in Africa / Africans in China Research Network Conference Organising Committee in collaboration with the Centre for Cultural Research and Development at the Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong; and the Institute for Emerging Markets Studies at HKUST.
Event Title
CAAC2021 8th Online Mini-symposium : Can Hong Kong Be Home? Sub-Saharan Africans’ Experiences of Belonging/Not Belonging
Document Type
Symposium
Date
10-29-2021
Time
9:00 p.m.
Venue
Online Session via Zoom
Description
Hong Kong has an academic system quite different from that of mainland China, and has only recently begun to accept promising PhD students from sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions around the world. What remains unclear, however, is what these students will do after they are educated in Hong Kong. In this paper, I seek to unravel the homing aspirations of African PhD students in Hong Kong. Do they want to establish a ‘home’ in Hong Kong after graduation? Is this legally possible for them? Is this economically possible? Is this culturally possible? What factors are involved in shaping whether or not Hong Kong can seem home for them? This ethnography, written by an African student, uses his own experience and the experience of several other African PhD students in Hong Kong to explore their experiences in Hong Kong in terms of their education, everyday life in the city, and their hopes, dreams and fears for the future.
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Thebe, P. (2021, October 29). Homing aspirations of African students in Hong Kong [Video podcast]. Retrieved from https://commons.ln.edu.hk/videos/913/
Additional Information
Speaker
Phillip THEBE is a PhD student in anthropology from Zimbabwe at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and is researching the aspirations of Africans in Hong Kong and mainland China. He holds a Hong Kong PhD Fellowship.