One afternoon in early January 2012, a group of MHKFRA ex-wife and widow members staged a demonstration in front of the new Legislative Council complex in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong, urging the government to exercise discretion to allow them to formally settle there on the grounds of “special familial circumstances.” Suk-kuen, a deserted wife in her late thirties from southern Guangdong Province whose husband had disappeared before her OWP was approved, represented the group to speak in front of the public and media:
My name is Suk-kuen. We are MHKFRA members. We have once been Hong Kong people’s wives. Our day-to-day lives, consumption patterns, and all other activities conducted here [in Hong Kong], big or small, such as taking our children to and from schools, are basically the same as those of other Hong Kong people. But due to different reasons—some of us have divorced or others’ husbands passed away or went missing, we now have become cross-border single mothers.
Over time, both mainland and Hong Kong governments didn’t give us attention or assistance. In order to remain in Hong Kong to take care of our [citizen] children, we make regular trips back to the mainland for permit renewals and run around different government department offices across the border to appeal our cases. Some wait in the entrance of [the local mainland exit-entry offices] for a whole day just to be given a 90-, 14-, or even seven-day TWP. Only a few lucky ones are granted a One-year Multiple Exit Endorsement [OYMEE]. This arbitrary practice of [permit approval on the part of the PRC] has made us so confused and exhausted. [By contrast,] for the sake of economic purposes, the governments across the border have allowed [eligible] residents in Shenzhen, old or young, deaf or blind, to easily obtain the OYMEE to enter Hong Kong.101 But for us, a needy group of single mothers, who need family reunion and need to nurture the next Hong Kong generation, we haven’t received the government’s attention at all. Please stop citing the [Hong Kong] Basic Law or “this and that” policy [as an excuse] to deny us your [the government’s] responsibility. Although we are poor
101 Since April 2009 the PRC has allowed 2.68 million permanent residents of Shenzhen to potentially apply for a multiple-exit TWP for individual visit to Hong Kong. See footnote 49 in Chapter 2.
and powerless, you [the government] should not assault our love for our children as mothers.
When we return to the mainland for permit renewals, our children need to take a leave of absence from school in order to go with us [if no arrangement can be made for someone to look after them in Hong Kong]. Some take two weeks off while some take a month or even one and a half months off. After returning to school, our children can’t catch up with the class and start to lose confidence in studying. They also lose a sense of security in other matters. Their childhood has been negatively affected.
We are helpless and are always under enormous stress causing many of us to have chronic illnesses. Do you [the government] really want us to eventually give up our children and hand them over to you [for the government to raise]?102 Neither you nor we want this to occur. We don’t want our children to become orphans.
We strongly demand [formal] residence in Hong Kong or a channel for us to apply for an OWP right now, and an OYMEE or half-year multiple exit endorsement [before a long-term solution can be made].
In this nearly three minute long testimony, Suk-kuen articulated the many different everyday struggles of taking care of their Hong Kong citizen children that TWP ex-wives and widows face while living temporarily in Hong Kong as “visitors.” As mentioned in Chapter 1, returning to live in mainland China with their Hong Kong children is not an option for them because their children do not have a household registration in the PRC. Furthermore, under existing immigration rules, ex-wives and widows’ eligibility for settlement in Hong Kong via OWP, based on spousal reunion, is nullified because their marital status has changed. However, their need to take care of young children in Hong Kong is not considered state-sanctioned grounds for OWP approval. Legally, the only way out for these women is to wait until they reach the age of 60, and then apply for OWP based on elderly dependence to reunite with their Hong Kong children. When they finally reach eligibility, they then can expect to wait another several years until the OWP is approved. Sadly, this would translate into an incredibly long waiting period for
102 Some ex-wives and widows said that they had once been advised by social welfare agents to consider giving the custody of their children to the Social Service Department of the SAR government, which refers children in need of adoption to Po Leung Kuk, an accredited social service organization in Hong Kong providing adoption referral services for potential adoptive parents in Hong Kong and overseas.
the women’s formal settlement in Hong Kong, in some cases up to 30 years or more. The substantial prolongation of TWP ex-wives and widows’ liminal status has created deleterious effects on their already vulnerable situation.
Having said that, however, something salient that is reflected in the demonstration above, and that is at the heart of this chapter, is how marginalized non-citizen women like Suk-kuen, usually too afraid to speak at their first couple of MHKFRA meetings, later felt empowered to step out and speak for themselves and their children in the context of collective struggle. For many women, as Lister argues, “involvement in community organizations and social movements can be more personally fruitful than engagement in formal politics which is often more alienating than empowering” (1997:31). Local activism strengthens self-esteem and develops political consciousness and a sense of personal agency, both essential attributes of citizenship (ibid.:39).
In the case of TWP ex-wives and widows, most face extra hardships in daily life as compared to their married counterparts, but still work together to generate a larger collective power to challenge hegemonic orders.
This chapter looks at the trajectories of ex-wives and widows I met at MHKFRA to emerge as new political and “citizen-like” subjects in Hong Kong. Despite lacking political membership, TWP women transformed themselves into “citizen-like” subjects by developing political consciousness and gaining a particular political subjectivity in the course of activism.
They learned about the idea of claiming rights and “enacted” (Nyers and Rygiel 2012) their personal and collective agency to negotiate rights and belonging in Hong Kong, transforming themselves into “visible” political subjects and reworking their “legal nonexistent” (Coutin 2003a) situation. Certainly, the personal trajectory of becoming a rights-bearing individual varies among women. Some women were less confident in making claims to state and non-state
agencies, at least initially, because they considered themselves not to have the “legitimate”
identity that would entitle them to have their voices heard and demands met (see Chapter 4). But for others, their experience of living in Hong Kong where the “protest space” (Kuah-Pearce and Guiheux 2009) is larger and more socially and politically tolerant than in China, coupled with their social participation in MHKFRA, have allowed them to view their individual-state relationship differently from the past when they lived in China. Their changing view of the individual-state relationship has had positive implications for their sense of political subjectivity in relation to the state. This chapter first examines women’s “additional marginalization”
(Narayan 1997) in society due to their marital status constraint. Then it considers how women’s social participation in MHKFRA has provided them with an opportunity to get out of their isolated, usually cramped living quarters; to be in company of fellow women with similar concerns and experiences; to learn and equip themselves with “adequate language” (Pun and Wu 2006) to articulate their needs and interests in the public sphere; and equally important, to develop a positive sense of self and personal agency, despite their poverty and “visitor” status, in the course of activism.