This paper elucidates a critical reading of language policies that uncovers its racial discourse arising from its intersection of power, equity and diversity, particularly the historical remnants and recent demographic changes in Asia. Home to Asia are a sizeable number of Confucian societies that respond differently to equity and diversity when compared to their Western counterparts. Underlying this response is the Confucian conception of social justice expressed through the idea of impartiality rather than equity (Kennedy, 2011). Such conception invites new challenges on striking a balance among supporting the ethnic identities, languages and cultures of minority groups and avoiding social separation and ethnic conflicts.In this paper, we turn to this challenge in Hong Kong, where Chinese language acquisition is a repeatedly reported concern of ethnic minorities in the local (government-funded) education system. We draw on two studies with ethnic minorities, their parents and teachers that involved a documentary analysis, interviews, and classroom observations. We particularly attend to the interests of the dominant group to unpack the nature of these language policies, several important factors related to complexity, contextuality, complicity, complementarity, and continuity of linguistic capital (Pennycook, 2000, p. 50).By plotting the continuity and transformation of language policies in the pre- and post-handover periods in Hong Kong, the emerging findings suggest how certain Confucian ideologies manifest in past and current policies and linguistic practices in education for ethnic minorities. The paper highlights conflicting educational expectations, policies and practices, revealing how centrism in educational intervention reflects the proclivity towards new-integrationist (assimilationist) approaches to cultural diversity (Gube & Gao, in press). The outcome can be a cultural condition that privileges impartiality and sameness.Going against the “grain” of such

How migrants, refugees and minority groups acquire a sense of belonging in their adopted society is a concern for nations worldwide as they aim to balance the diversity and inclusion of growing numbers of migrants with ensuring harmony and cohesion across society. In postcolonial Hong Kong, the population diversity is accompanied with a swift change in the racialisation of Hong Kong where minorities in schools find themselves categorised as 'non-Chinese speaking' ('NCS') rather than a 'Hongkonger'. The NCS label stigmatises young people as linguistically and academically deficit, de-legitimises acceptance by the local Chinese, Cantonese speaking majority designated as 'Hongkongers'. Yet how minority youth interpret their status as 'NCS' and negotiate belonging in Hong Kong has received scant attention. This qualitative study is a substantive and theoretical contribution to the literature on how multilingual minorities can construct a positive sense of place-belonging to their adopted city. Reflecting the contentious nature of the politics of belonging, we found that students challenged and sought to redefine the narrow, prevailing identity of a 'Hongkonger'. Rather, they stressed their multilingual identity, historical affiliations, emotional attachments and place-belongingness to the city in order to legitimate their entitlement to sociopolitical belonging in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Much of the existing literature on social capital and university choice processes postulates that family networks of underrepresented students from poor and minority backgrounds are disadvantaged in university resources and in turn deficit in social capital returns. The literature implies that school-based networks are essential to fill the university information voids at home. Less research, however, poses questions about whether the university resources occupied by school personnel are automatically available to less-privileged minority youths. To grasp the dynamic interplay between ethnicity, class and school-based social capital, this study drew on Lin's conceptualisation of homophilous and heterophilous social networking and explored the university choice and application processes among poor and working-class South/Southeast Asian minority students in Hong Kong. The participants' accounts uncovered the restrictions of school networks on norms, expectations and accessibility of information sources. The research results raise concerns about how to activate both homophilous and heterophilous ties for minority youths' widening access to higher education.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

The literature on acculturation illustrates that a bulk of non-dominant ethnocultural minorities consider themselves bicultural, involving both dominant and ethnic cultures. Yet, little is known about how bicultural individuals perceive and construct dual cultures, and how their two cultural identities are played out in daily interactions. While these issues are under-researched, they are vital to policy and practice initiation towards ethnocultural minorities’ integration and upward mobility as well as for the receiving society’s social cohesion and economic competitiveness. To this end, this study used the concept of bicultural identity integration and tapped into the processes of biculturalism among 16 secondary school students coming from South and Southeast-Asian groups in Hong Kong. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to unearth the internal construct of bicultural identity and the trajectories of adapting to dual cultural influences across space. The participants’ accounts displayed a high level of cultural harmony yet low blendedness in choosing to separate affiliations into cultural domains. This internal complexity reflects the contradictory juxtaposing of ‘cultural diversity’ in the host society and its segregated schooling for minority student population.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

The enactment of the revised School Places Allocation Systems at the compulsory stage in 2004 had the aim of desegregating Hong Kong's non-Chinese linguistic minority (NCLM) students by including them into ethnic Chinese-dominated mainstream primary and secondary schools. Because of the presumed cause-consequence relationship between desegregated school participation and academic achievement, in specific second language Chinese (CSL) acquisition, the challenges that such students face in participating in mainstream education and learning Chinese, no doubt, deserve to be examined. This qualitative study conducted in-depth interviews with 18 secondary students of South Asian/Southeast Asian minority backgrounds enrolled in mainstream schools. Drawing on both cultural and institutional paradigms of explanation for educational achievement, we argue that the reasons inhibiting the minority students' academic involvement are not simply their linguistic challenges but also the institutional constraints in the mainstream education system unique to this population. This study calls for a shift in school desegregation arrangement from one focusing narrowly on physical desegregation to a more comprehensive set of policies that embrace the institutional factors including teacher expectation, resource availability, and bilingual support, crucial to reduce racial differences in achievement.

Despite rapid growth at the 12-year compulsory education stage, Hong Kong’s non-Chinese language minority students make up only 1.3% of the whole full-time postsecondary student population; their attendance rate is 13.8%, far behind the overall rate of 43.8%. Policy and research focus on their secondary school graduation with a widely recognized nexus between Chinese language deficiency and academic underachievement. Yet lower participation rates in postsecondary education (PSE) and nonlinguistic risk factors that account for under-representation have received scarce regional attention. The current study attempts to fill this gap. Utilizing the multiplicity and convertibility of capital in the Bourdieusian conception, this study elicits non-Chinese language minority students’ voices and identifies the interplay effects of multiple capitals on the participants’ pathways to PSE. Findings provide insights into the dynamic processes of convertible capitals and accessing PSE when developing holistic policies that are able to address linguistic and non-linguistic hurdles in the college choice process.
[Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

Understanding the value of monocultural acculturation orientation to the host culture (assimilation) and bicultural acculturation orientation (integration) for language learning is critical in guiding educational policy and practices for immigrant students. This study aimed to enhance our understanding on the relationship between acculturation orientation and second language (L2) learning. It generated two conceptual models to describe how cultural identification affects language learning as hypothesized in different theories on identity and L2 learning and tested these two hypothesized models in the immigration context of Hong Kong. A survey was conducted among a group of senior high school South Asian minority students on their learning of the language of the host culture, Chinese, to provide the basis for comparison. It was found that the students mainly adopted the bicultural/integration orientation and that bicultural orientation was the optimal acculturation orientation for learning Chinese. Bicultural orientation influenced the participants' Chinese language learning outcome through impacting psychosocial well-being and engagement with the target language and community. The findings suggest that we need to take both linguistic and psychosocial adjustment factors into consideration when conceptualizing the role of identity in L2 learning. Furthermore, this study cautions us against a context-independent stance toward the utility of assimilation for language learning.
[Copyright of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2014.887054]

Background: The research literature linking children's educational outcomes with levels of parental involvement has in many instances resulted in the location of disadvantage being placed on lack of parental involvement, something that has been the case with South Asian parents in Hong Kong (Au, K., Multicultural issues and literacy achievement, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Association, 2006; Jeynes, W. H., A meta-analysis - The effects of parental involvement on minority children's academic achievement, Education and Urban Society 35: 202218, 2003; Hau, K. T., Tracking the adaptation and development of non-Chinese speaking children (NCS) in mainstream schools, Retrieved from http://www.edb.gov.hk/FileManager/EN/Content_7065/exe_summary%20eng.pdf, 2008; Tsung, L., Zhang, Q., and Cruickshank, K., Access to majority language and educational outcomes: South Asian background students in postcolonial Hong Kong, Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education 4, 1-16, 2010).
Purpose: This small-scale research study examines the educational involvement of Pakistani and Nepalese parents, and explores the difficulties and challenges South Asians face to succeed in school.
Design and methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 South Asian parents (five Nepalese parents and five Pakistani parents). Interviews were semi-structured and consisted of open-ended questions about parents' educational aspirations, ability in tutoring children with homework, and arrangement of home-learning activities. Transcribed interviews were subjected to content and thematic analysis.
Results and discussion: The findings indicate that South Asian parents, despite high aspirations for the education of their children, feel that they lack the linguistic and cultural capital valued by the mainstream society in Hong Kong. This prevents effective involvement in the education of the children.
Conclusion: Understanding the perspectives of the parents offers insights into ways in which

There is a growing interest in research on language teacher identity as relevant research suggests that language teacher self-identification has an impact on their language teaching. The present paper explores the self-identification and subsequent effects on their actual teaching vision and practice of 16 Chinese language subject teachers teaching Chinese as a second language to South Asians in Hong Kong. Data collected from classroom observations and interviews with the teachers demonstrate that Chinese language subject teachers negotiate with South Asian learners and construct their teaching in ways that enable them to create an environment where they see themselves as linguistic torchbearers and cultural transmitters while acquiring a strong feeling of success professionally. This research implies that teacher identity is a kind of pedagogy through which language teachers can reproduce or counteract hegemonic discourses and ideologies that oppress South Asians as non-native language minorities.
[Copyright of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2011.622558]