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.

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.]

Educational issues in relation to ethnicity and language education policies have been underexplored in Asian contexts. In particular, issues related to ethnic and linguistic minority students have not received much attention in the post-colonial context of Hong Kong. This paper highlights challenges and tensions faced by Nepali ethnic minority students in two Hong Kong schools arising from language policies adopted by the post-colonial government. Based on data arising from interviews with 28 secondary school Nepali students in 2013 and 2014, and an observation of two schools with a sizeable population of Nepali ethnic minority students over a period of more than two years, this paper investigates how students face the pressures of learning through the medium of either English or spoken Cantonese and written Chinese. Analysis of the data reveals that these students face inequities in schools due to neglect of attention to their overall educational development, discrimination in the institutional settings, and lack of opportunities to maintain their own heritage language and identity. Based on the findings, this paper proposes a multilingual education model for ethnic minority students, drawing on the models set out in Adamson and Feng (2014. "Models for Trilingual Education in the People's Republic of China." In Minority Languages and Multilingual Education, edited by D. Gorter, V. Zenotz, and J. Cenoz, 29–44. Dordrecht: Springer), which has potential to redress the balance.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

As it entered the second decade of the postcolonial era, Hong Kong had undergone significant socio-economic changes which had impacted students' perceptions of cultural identity and their language attitudes. This study, conducted in 2009, reports on an investigation into the related perceptions of the postcolonial generation who grew up in Hong Kong after the change of sovereignty. A total of 1265 questionnaires were analysed and group interviews were conducted with a sample of 48 respondents. Despite the outstanding achievements of China in the past decades, results indicated that the majority of the informants still retained a strong local identity while only a small percentage demonstrated identification with the nation. Although the different identity groups converged considerably on their attitudes towards Cantonese (the local language) and English (language of the coloniser), they differed significantly on their attitudes towards Putonghua (the national language of China). Yet, the generally positive attitudes towards all three languages offer evidence of support for an ongoing process that fosters multilingualism and multiple identities.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2010.539692]

The 2010/2011 academic year marked an important turning point in the development of Hong Kong's medium-of-instruction (MOI) policy as it offered secondary schools greater autonomy in determining their MOI policy. This paper examines the implementation of the new fine-tuning MOI policy in a representative secondary school. It compares its school-based language policy with students'(Years 7, 8 and 10) self-reported data about their actual use of English over a five-day week. At the junior secondary level (Years 7 and 8), the findings indicate a close alignment of policy and practice only in the English-medium subjects, whereas in some other subjects, the proportion of use of English could not be clearly determined due largely to the complexity of the school-based policy and teachers' flexibility and autonomy in practice. Furthermore, it is revealed that a highly sophisticated language-using situation at the senior secondary level (Year 10) poses potential challenges for the transition of students graduating from the junior level. The paper concludes by suggesting that a likely outcome of this newly implemented policy will be a return to the colonial government's laissez-faire policy in the 1980s and 1990s, where there was virtually no monitoring of policy implementation.
[Copyright of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2013.770518]

Greater China is used in this article to refer to mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Macao. While a holistic approach is adopted to present and compare the rapid spread of English and development in English language education in these geographically close, and sociopolitically, culturally and economically interrelated but hugely different societies, an emphasis is placed on mainland China owing to its size and diversity of its population. Through describing and juxtaposing English language use and education, this article unfolds the stories of the spread of English in these societies in the past few decades. It draws on the research data and discussions included in the author's recent book English language education across Greater China, with evidence and findings from other recent publications. On the basis of these discussions, this article critiques the frequently cited models and notions used to describe the spread of English in post-modern societies. It argues that there is a need to come up with new conceptual models in order to catch the essence of the phenomena in the contemporary societies.
[Copyright of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2012.661435]

This paper offers insights into an under-researched area of Chinese language learning among Hong Kong's less affluent South Asians, a group whose members have often been stereotyped as unable to function in the Chinese medium instruction (CMI) teaching system. Data were collected from a survey of approximately 300 South Asian secondary school students and from follow-up semi-structured interviews with 30 student participants. By cross-examining students' language competency and practice in Chinese, English and mother language(s), the research found that South Asian students, even though in a majority language environment, invest less in Chinese language learning and practice. Their language motivation is instrumentally driven and there is a lack of adequate family support for learning Chinese. It thus highlights the role of schooling and teachers' support in Chinese language learning as the main remedy for insufficient parental involvement. This research argues that in order to attain high competency in the Chinese language, which is considered important for upward mobility, there is an urgent need for teachers and researchers to understand the limited use that students make of the Chinese language and to develop a suitable teaching pedagogy for fostering language motivations.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2010.539693]

This paper investigates the identity construction and language practice of a group of mainland Chinese immigrant students studying at a secondary school in Hong Kong, and explores the underlying reasons for, as well as the individual and group identities derived from, those language choices and practices. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the immigrant students and through observations in the school context, which focused on their views and attitudes concerning Putonghua maintenance, Cantonese and English learning and their perceptions of language ideologies in the school context. The marginalised position of Putonghua and its non-use in and out of classrooms reflects the social distinctions or language hierarchies found in the local school context. To resist the marginalised practice in the school context, the immigrant students employ their cultural and linguistic resources to establish and maintain Putonghua-speaking social networks and to imagine a proficient multilingual identity within the broader social context. The findings suggest that immigrant students should raise their awareness of language ideologies in the school context and recognise existing contradictions and discontinuities. It is also suggested that language ideologies could be incorporated into teachers' professional development.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2011.614350]

Informed by linguistic ecological theory and the notion of identity, this study investigates language uses and identity construction in interactions among students with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in a multilingual university. Individual and focus-group interviews were conducted with two groups of students: Hong Kong (HK) and mainland Chinese students. The findings indicate that, while different languages position their speakers in different symbolic spaces, language users employ a variety of languages for different identification purposes, and exercise symbolic power in various ways in order to be heard and respected. It is also found that language often plays a substantial role in achieving a sense of intimacy among group members and that the huge inherent differences, despite the umbrella of 'unity' between HK and mainland China, lead to a mutual non-identification between HK and mainland students. The study extends understandings of the interconnected relations of languages and context.
[Copyright of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2010.532876]