This paper explores the barriers to supporting South Asian (Pakistani, Nepalese and Indian) migrant children with special needs and their families encountered navigating Hong Kong’s special needs system and accessing education and healthcare services. It adopts concepts of stigma and disability rights. It draws on semi-structured interviews with fifteen South Asian children and young people with special needs (age 5–21; M = 10; F = 5) and their families, and seven professional practitioners based on the qualitative descriptive method. Informants experienced intersecting stigmatization that included (1) institutional exclusion, (2) daily life microaggressions, and (3) misunderstandings and a lack of awareness education. Simultaneously, some were empowered through (4) support and accommodation, and (5) spiritual support from religion. This paper reveals a paradox embodied by Hong Kong; it is an Asian multicultural city committed to embracing the vision of disability inclusion while failing to ensure necessary support to reduce the stigma experienced by culturally diverse children with a disability. It makes recommendations based on a socioecological framework and concludes that concerted efforts by relevant authorities and organizations should be made to reduce stigma by taking into consideration the intersecting stigmas, specific resources unique to migrant communities, disability rights and cultural sensitivity.

This article reports on qualitative research investigating Pakistani minority youth’s political engagement in the 2019 Anti-Extradition Movement in Hong Kong. Some informants’ engagement was inhibited by challenges such as institutional limitations, while others identified various opportunities. This article presents an Asian example from a unique historical context to illuminate the potential role of political engagement in ethnic minority youth’s personal and social development and how the citizenship social work framework enhances understanding of ethnic minority youth and cultural competence in multicultural social work. Furthermore, it advocates social work as an empowering agency to implement citizenship rights for ethnic minority youth.

The sexual prejudice faced by sexual minorities or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning/queer (LGBQ) students has been studied extensively around the world in the last two decades; however, it has only recently received attention from Hong Kong Chinese society, specifically in relation to this subtle form of prejudice. In the last decade, there has been an increase in the amount of literature examining the experiences of individuals encountering sexual orientation microaggressions, which are defined as discrimination or sexual prejudices manifested in subtle forms, particularly when directed toward socially marginalized groups, such as sexual minority students. The current study used a qualitative descriptive approach and semi-structured interviews to explore the themes of sexual orientation microaggressions experienced by Chinese sexual minority students. Several contextual themes to categorize microaggressions emerged: (1) the approval of heteronormative culture; (2) the use of heterosexist languages; (3) the assumption of sexual abnormality; and (4) the allowing of institutionally endorsed microaggressions. The results suggest that sexual minority students in Hong Kong experience diverse forms of microaggression in schools. The implications for the need to support LGBQ students are discussed, especially in addressing sexuality education in schools and the training of school professionals.

This article explores how moral norms shape migrant women’s small businesses and examines the implications for immigrant social integration. It draws on qualitative data collected in Hong Kong in the period 2014–2018. Findings from the study suggest that the picture of Asian migrant women in business as either a silent supporter or independent entrepreneur is incomplete. Rather, it is a more complex picture shaped by the intersection of class, gender, ethnicity and religion. Female immigrant entrepreneurship and female empowerment have a complicated relationship, where moral norms both facilitate and constrain women’s business activities. This study contributes to the literature on immigrant economy by suggesting that moral norms should not be overlooked for their implications on the long-term social integration of women immigrants.