Vanishing Selves under Hong Kong’s Unified Screening Mechanism

As of September 2016, there were 10,477 outstanding protection claims in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Despite the city’s longstanding history of refugee flows, it is one of the regions of the world with the slowest pace of claims processing and one of the lowest degrees of acceptance of claims. According to the Hong Kong Immigration Department, only 65 out of close to 30,000 cases have been deemed substantiated since 2004, which amounts to less than 0.4 percent of applications. Although it is not a signing party to the Refugee Convention, in 1992 the Convention Against Torture (CAT) has been extended to Hong Kong. It served as the main international human rights legal provision for processing asylum claims, handled by the Immigration Department. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) functioned in parallel as an organization for refugee determination status, assessing claims lodged under the 1951 Refugee Convention. Up to 2004, the legal mechanisms for processing and assessing torture claims were scarce and rather unclear. From 2004 onwards, as a consequence of appeals and judicial reviews lodged by claimants, the Court of Final Appeal (CFA) entered rulings that have served as guidance for setting up a torture screening mechanism (Loper 2013). From March 2014 the Unified Screening Mechanism (USM)⁽¹⁾ was set in place. It is handled by the Immigration Department, which processes claims on all possible grounds, that is, including persecution risks as listed in Article 33 of the Refugee Convention (UN Refugee Convention). Claims substantiated under Article 3 of CAT (UN CAT) are granted a stay of deportation until the assessed risk is considered to have disappeared from claimants’ countries of origin. Claims substantiated under persecution risks are referred to UNHCR. Subsequently, the UNHCR carry out an independent assessment and, if they accept the claim, they will arrange for resettlement.

The current paper looks into the processes of construction and loss of identity incurred by asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong (labeled non-refoulement claimants). Our argument is that institutional arrangements operate as implements that construct and shape experience, that allow for the emergence of specific kinds of selfhood, while removing the opportunities for others to arise. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s insights into total institutions, we liken the USM to a total institutional context and aim to investigate the selfhood that these institutional arrangements allow for. We contend that the phase of claiming asylum is a liminal stage in the lives of protection claimants – they are no longer who they used to be in their countries of origin, yet they have not become whom they expect to: refugees. We look into the conceptualization of temporality as devised by the legal provisions and its contribution to mortification of selfhood as experienced by our interviewees. We argue that the process of claiming asylum is one rifled by distrust and suspicion. We analyze the distinction between “real” and “fake” asylum seekers drawn by our research participants.

The current paper is part of a wider study of the everyday lives of asylum seekers in Hong Kong. It relies on 25 in-depth interviews conducted between March-December 2016 by both authors. All interviews were carried out in English. The length of interviews varies from one hour to seven hours. In addition to background information such as asylum seekers’ length of stay, their lives before coming to Hong Kong and their reasons for seeking asylum, we inquired into their relationships with their counterparts, NGOs and the wider community, as well as social resources available to them. All interviews were integrally transcribed and then coded into relevant themes. We recruited respondents with the help of two NGOs which offer support and assistance to asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong. All interviews were held either in the NGO offices or in public areas (such as coffee shops or parks).

Eight of the respondents are female (from East Africa and South-East Asia) and 17 are male (coming from different parts of Africa, South-East Asia, the Middle East and the former USSR). We use pseudonyms and only indicate the region where our informants come from, but not the name of the country in order to ensure their anonymity. The average age of respondents is 38, with the youngest being 25 and the oldest 57. Eleven of them had higher education and were working in their respective professions before coming to Hong Kong. Another ten held different management, teaching or qualified jobs. Four of our respondents were foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong at the time of lodging their non-refoulement claims. Regarding the marital status of our respondents, although most of the respondents were single (unmarried) at the time of interview, five were single upon coming to Hong Kong but formed families here. In addition, six of our female interviewees were single mothers (three of them fled their countries with their children and three of them became mothers in Hong Kong).

We challenge the notion that experience is a universal given; rather, together with Desjarlais (1997) we contend that experience “is the result of specific cultural articulations of selfhood (namely, a sense of self as possessing depth, interiority, unity, stability and the capacity for transcendence) as well as certain social and technological conditions that foster and legitimize the sense of self” (Desjarlais 1997: 13). In this vein, we look into provisions and proscriptions for asylum seekers, aiming at uncovering the effects of such regulations on the constitution of selfhood.

To further our argument, we look into Erving Goffman’s account of asylums (1961a; 1961b). We argue that it can be fruitful in understanding the process of identity construction and identity loss of individuals seeking political asylum. Our argument is that the institutional arrangements for asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong shape their experiences and have similar effects of mortification of the self as the ones discussed by Goffman. Looking at political asylum as a virtually transient phase, we mean to comprehend how its incumbents manage their identity. While it cannot be argued that life in the asylum determination process in Hong Kong is identical to life in total institutions as described by Goffman (1961a) in his essay, our contention is that there are similarities, especially in terms of the threats posed by institutional arrangements to selfhood.⁽²⁾ The institutional definition of asylum seekers, their rights but, most importantly, the restrictions imposed on them imply notions of moral worth, ways of belonging and of being excluded, a suspension of their identities prior to lodging their claims and a ruthlessly equalitarian modality of processing claims. The experience of seeking protection in Hong Kong is compared by our interviewees to being in prison, having one’s rights suspended, being stuck in time in spite of its passing.⁽³⁾

We read Erving Goffman’s account of total institutions (Goffman 1961a) as a commentary into the transformations underwent by selfhood and identity in the interaction between individuals and institutions. Taking the mental hospital as an ideal type, Goffman theorizes their existence as a means for exercising social control. What is at stake is not curing mental disease, but rather moral action upon a flawed, defective self, in need of reformation (Scott 2011). Goffman’s analysis depicts a completely regimented life, with every aspect of it being carefully designed and closely monitored by the institution. Thus, a distinctly bounded organization surrounded by walls which effectively mark and segregate those on the inside from those on the outside: inmates and the wider society are clearly separated. The former are not only isolated from the latter, they are also effectively rendered outsiders to it. This procedure creates a tension between the two worlds and it gives the institution “strategic leverage in the management of men (sic!)” (Goffman 1961a: 13). The mechanisms by means of which this is accomplished revolve around a bureaucratic and egalitarian manner of processing newcomers that is irreverent to their identities, their concepts of self and ways of life on the outside. Rendering impossible specific forms of behavior and action (such as holding a job or deciding what to do with one’s time, with one’s body) amounts to “disculturation” or “untraining”. Autonomy and self-determination are revoked. In the total institution, we are presented with a mortified self, one that undergoes “a series of abasements, degradations, humiliations and profanations of self. He (sic!) begins some radical shifts in his moral career, a career composed of the progressive changes that occur in the beliefs that he has concerning himself and significant others” (Goffman 1961a: 14). Specifically, the processes of mortification of the self begin with admission procedures during which inmates are stripped off their appearance, assigned a number (rather than be processed by their name, the most significant aspect of identity), they are deprived of the right to perform the roles they took for granted on the outside and cast into one, master status (Hughes 1993/1945): that of inmate.

Goffman goes on to show the encompassing tendencies of total institutions: the claims they lay on the time and interest of inmates, which result in further removal and isolation from the outside world. Another point to be made concerns the incompatibility between the work-payment structure operating on the outside and the total institution. According to Goffman, organizations and institutions create all-encompassing conceptions of their members, not simply in their capacity as members, but as human beings. Thus, institutions in which individuals are, in any way, embedded or incorporated engender conceptions about identity with great implications for the self. “To engage in a particular activity in the prescribed spirit is to accept being a particular kind of person who dwells in a particular kind of world” (Goffman 1961a: 186). Subsequently, the encompassing tendencies of total institutions give inmates’ selves a moral dimension, that of a flawed self in need for reformation.

There is a wealth of scholarship that emphasizes the fluidity of selfhood and identity in interaction with different institutional settings. Pollner and Stein (2001) articulate the biographical labor carried out in “self-processing organizations” revolving around drawing a sharp distinction between a current, faulty self and a better version of it achievable by means of hard work on the self. Weinberg (2001) analyzes the efforts carried out in clinics offering support to patients suffering from mental illness and encouraging them to take control over the disease that is working within them as a strategy for self-empowerment. Loseke (2001) looks into the creation, in shelters supporting battered women, of formula stories in a process that amounts to the social construction of victimhood and of the battered self. Without accounting for total institutional contexts, these authors bring up the relational dimension of selfhood and identity and the impact of institutional arrangements on the elaboration of selfhood.

Our aim in the current paper is to broaden the scope of Goffman’s notion of total institutions and tease out the impact on selfhood of institutional arrangements that are not physically bounded by walls and do not have the distinct purpose of reforming the self, but may result in transforming it. In this light, we aim to make sense of political asylum in Hong Kong. Susie Scott’s study on reinventive total institutions (Scott 2011) has already showed that effective work of reformation of self can be carried out in settings that are not bounded and where entry is voluntary. Moreover, Scott brings out Goffman’s conflation of institution and organization: while Goffman takes the organization to be the sum of institutionalized practices, Scott points out the distinction between the structural dimension of organizations and the practice oriented nature of institutions as “culturally normative routines of interaction” (Scott 2011: 14).

To this amendment, we add yet another: the fact that certain institutional settings, while by no means physically bounded and with no apparent claim on the time of their members, without removing them from the wider society, but by rendering impossible certain modes of action, impose on their members scripted modalities of interaction, thus effectively shaping the roles they can take up in society, the variety of selves available to them and leave little freedom by way of enacting those selves. In Goffman’s depiction of total institutions, the outside world and the world of the asylum are constituted as two distinct realms and re-entry into the former is leveraged by the latter and conditions upon it the behavior of inmates.

We argue that, by means of legal definitions, proscriptions and provisions, seeking non-refoulement protection in Hong Kong exposes incumbents to constant transformations of self which, by means of disculturation and untraining processes, result in its mortification. They are not a wanted population: defined as illegal immigrants, suspected of being economic migrants, they are, thus, barred from taking up employment; official avenues and implements for identity construction are effectively voided (such as training, education or professionalization for adults; even when they participate in such courses, obtaining credentials and having them officially recognized is close to impossible). Asylum seekers are marked by a double stigma, that of their racial differentness on the one hand and their legal status on the other, the absence of any form of ID (the institutional leverage for entry into the wider society) other than their recognizance paper, which prevents them from taking up opportunities otherwise available to officially recognized – legal – residents of the HKSAR. And while the institution makes little claims on the time of asylum seekers (they are required to report to the Immigration Department every four or six weeks), their very existence in a state of limbo is what compounds their marginalization and exclusion from the wider society and their further mortification.

The legal language employed circumvents the terms “accepted claim” and “rejected claim”. Applications are either substantiated or not (HKSAR, Notice to Persons Making a Non-Refoulement Claim).⁽⁴⁾ Applications that have been deemed unsubstantiated can be appealed. Torture claimants whose applications have been substantiated are granted a discretionary stay of deportation until the assessed risk is considered to have disappeared. Substantiated claims on persecution grounds are referred to the UNHCR chapter in Hong Kong where the claim is further investigated. In case the claim is deemed successful, the UNHCR will arrange for resettlement of the applicant. The Hong Kong government’s refusal to become a member of the Refugee Convention and to grant political asylum is reflected in its definition of incumbents of the non-refoulement claiming process. They are treated as “illegal immigrants” and “foreigners who smuggled themselves in” (LC Paper No. CB(2)1832/14-15(03)) and who are liable to removal. As a matter of fact, a condition for lodging a non-refoulement claim is to be liable to removal and be in the situation of having to surrender to the Immigration Department. Claims cannot be lodged by persons with a valid visa in Hong Kong (HKSAR Notice). Thus, official records advise against referring to them as “asylum seekers” or “refugees”:

The government assists asylum seekers but assistance is meant as a measure to prevent destitution rather than regarded as a matter of human rights. This reflects an egalitarian manner of processing claims, very often irreverent to particular cases and individual needs, such as gender, age, traumatic experiences and the further challenges they may pose. While the allowance is hardly enough to prevent destitution, let alone ensure a decent living, the government maintains that it is kept low in order “to prevent a magnet effect”, in other words, to prevent it from becoming attractive for too large a number of potential economic migrants.

The subsidies for non-refoulement claimants consist of free legal assistance and waiving medical fees for accidents and emergency services. Protection claimants who are minors can attend public schools. Utilities allowance is 300 HKD and transportation allowance is determined depending on the distance from claimants’ residence to the Immigration Office where they need to report every six weeks. Housing allowance consists of 1,500 HKD transferred by ISS-HK (the NGO contracted by the government to distribute the subsidies) directly to landlords, as are agent fees (which cannot surpass half a month’s rent worth) and a one-month deposit when signing a new contract. Considering how expensive rents are in Hong Kong, asylum seekers (especially those who are single) usually find themselves in the situation of sharing flats (even rooms) with others in the same situation. While this constitutes a particular infringement of legitimate livelihood expectations of any adult person, it poses special challenges for claimants who have been through traumatic experiences and have a hard time adjusting to the presence of and sharing space with strangers.

Food allowance consists of supermarket coupons distributed in the amount of 1200 HKD, 12 non-cashable, non-refundable, non-transferable coupons each worth 100 HKD. They can only be used for purchasing food items in the Welcome supermarket chain. Choices are limited to the range of items available in these stores. Moreover, asylum seekers are denied the right to purchase items such as alcohol or cigarettes. Prior to December 1, 2015, items such as ice-cream, chocolate and other sweets could not be purchased, but this restriction has been lifted since. ISS-HK contracts are renewed every month and this is conditioned upon asylum seekers producing receipts in the amount of 1,200 HKD, a measure meant to prevent them from selling the coupons and using the cash for procuring produce elsewhere (usually at cheaper prices). Toiletries and cosmetics are distributed at ISS-HK centers on a monthly basis and, as regards clothing, “Provision of clothing relies on external donations, ISS-HK encourages service users to tap into their own resources for clothing” (ISS-HK website).

There is a lot of research pointing to the loss of credibility of the asylum determination process and that of asylum seekers, who are likened to economic migrants. Fassin and D’Halluin (2005) underline the trends of giving more weight to expert testimony and certification rather than to victims’ accounts; Moore (2013) discusses labels such as “asylum shopping” which effectively undermine narratives of persecution and cast asylum seekers as economic migrants, and Jubany (2011) talks about a culture of disbelief entrenched in the training of immigration officials who assess claims. This not only leads to increased suspicion on behalf of immigration officers when assessing claims, but it also places asylum seekers in the position of proving themselves as “genuine”, “real”, as opposed to “fake” or “bogus” asylum seekers, that is, economic migrants (Matthews 2011). Against this backdrop we discuss narrative efforts at establishing oneself as genuine protection claimants by our interviewees. By mirroring official criteria of assessment while leaving aside the actual merits of their claims, these accounts aim at undermining official suspicion and manage to objectify the fulfillment of official conditions into the genuine asylum seeker.

Edward is a torture claimant from West Africa and he has been in Hong Kong for over 12 years. This is his take on how the genuineness of applicants should be assessed:

While Edward is willing to concede that there are some cases in which claims may not be justified under the CAT, he rejects the tendency of casting all asylum seekers as bogus and suggests that attention should be paid to applicants’ relationship to their case. And in explaining how might one’s relationship to one’s case be assessed, Edward mentions, among others, consistency of the story, the extent to which an applicant is articulate enough to tell a coherent and non-contradictory story, but also sticking to one’s scheduled appointments with the Immigration Department. Interestingly enough, these criteria mirror the ones listed in the HKSAR Notice under the heading “Behavior Damaging Credibility”. The strategy that our interviewees resort to, that of providing cues for how to assess genuineness, we argue, accomplishes two things: one the one hand, it relays criticism of those counterparts that are only in Hong Kong looking for “greener pastures”, as some of our Christian interviewees referred to those suspected of being economic migrants, thus making it harder for the “real” protection claimants to get their claims through. On the other hand, it functions as a means of taking distance from behaviors deemed discreditable. An example of this second strategy is given by Amalan, a South East Asian refugee in his 40s who has also been in Hong Kong for over 12 years and is awaiting resettlement by the UNHCR:

Amalan’s account comes as an explanation as to why he refused to look for (illegal) employment in Hong Kong throughout the time he has been waiting for a decision on his case (which took over 10 years) and after he was recognized as a refugee more than two years ago. As Gordon Matthews (2011) shows, these actions usually discredit asylum seekers and refugees not only in the eyes of the authorities, but also in those of their counterparts. “Real people” never engage in risky behavior – working illegally and risking getting caught and arrested, taking drugs, becoming inebriated or causing any sort of trouble that could antagonize local residents and lead to unfavorable outcomes on their claims. This is what “failed cases” do. And failed cases include two categories of people. The first one refers to those whose claims got rejected. But if we look carefully into the extract, failed cases are cast into opposition with “real people”, that is, genuine refugees who are truly escaping persecution. Therefore, the second category entailed by failed cases refers to bogus asylum seekers, economic migrants who do not mind jeopardizing their claims in order to make a quick buck. Not only does Amalan’s opposition of failed cases and real people illuminate the moral hierarchy of the asylum landscape in Hong Kong, it also objectifies genuineness into established, substantiated claims and fakeness into those whose cases got rejected, thus legitimating official criteria of assessment and substantiation and engendering distrust and suspicion among refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong of their counterparts.

Finally, we present Mihail, a protection claimant in his late thirties coming from the former USSR. His account is one of establishing himself as a true victim of political persecution while casting doubt on the reasons that drove others to the city:

Mihail’s account aims at establishing him as a genuine refugee, one that can be verified by looking into the five categories listed under Article 33 of the Refugee Convention. He challenges both potential economic migrants (as lazy people who come to HKSAR to live on government assistance) and people who are displaced because of wars in their countries, seeing how these are not legitimate grounds for obtaining international protection.

Proving themselves as genuine asylum seekers in a sea of over 10,000 suspected economic migrants not only speaks to our interviewees’ strives to demonstrate their entitlement to being in Hong Kong. It establishes their moral status as people fleeing from persecution, by means of mirroring official criteria while, at the same time, challenging official suspicion. The merits of their cases are brought up only to the extent that they match up official criteria, institutional requirements for genuineness.

Another salient issue in our interviewees’ accounts is the experience of temporality which indexes exclusion and unpredictability as markers of mortification of the self. Asylum seekers in Hong Kong have all the time in the world. Matthews (2011) and Shum (2014) talk about the psychological distress posed by the issue of boredom: prohibited from working, asylum seekers are under the constant stress of wasting away and have to find a way to spend their time. Some of them resort to illegal employment (even some of our interviewees, who concede that working illegally is wrong, have admitted to us that they worked at some point during their stay in Hong Kong), others to volunteering with different NGOs, some attend classes either to make some money or simply to be in the company of others and feel useful. But the general feeling is that of helplessness engendered by the inability to control the pace of the decision-making process, to influence the policy barring them from working and to be able to plan for the future.

Alice, a South-East Asian mother of a three-year-old in her thirties talks about the impossibility of envisioning a future:

Alice voices the concerns of an unbearable present and that of an unforeseeable future. Her account opens the way for understanding the processes of untraining and disculturation asylum seekers are subject to during their stay in Hong Kong. Many of them arrived in the city while in their 20s and still find themselves in a state of indeterminacy in their 30s and even 40s. Their needs are narrowly established according to an institutional definition of measures preventing destitution, which barely provide for shelter and food. Regarded as economic migrants flooding Hong Kong to wallow in its wealth, protection claimants are barred from engaging in things that would suggest they are welcome: work, education, social and cultural integration. By means of this, they are effectively rendered into outsiders to Hong Kong society. Alice’s account is by no means singular. The recurrent theme of wasted time, energy and potential can be read through in all the accounts we gathered. Tariq, a South Asian man in his fifties voices out the same malcontent: the feeling of living an outsider’s life in the beautiful city of Hong Kong. It conveys not only the experience of poverty, but also that of exclusion, of a parallel existence:

Feeling limited as a human being, reduced to someone whose needs consist of eating and sleeping. Many of our interviewees have told stories about transcending this condition (by forming families, by looking for ways to empower themselves, militating for their rights, taking classes to better themselves). But the fact remains that, in official classifications, asylum seekers are defined as illegal immigrants and while barred from working, they are only offered assistance meant to prevent destitution. And keeping in mind that Hong Kong is one of the most expensive places in the world, the assistance does not even suffice to cover the bare necessities (such as rent costs) and places further strains on our interviewees to find solutions for themselves.

Asad is an East African refugee in his mid-twenties waiting for resettlement. He compares seeking asylum in Hong Kong to being in prison: unable to work, study or travel, the city itself is a prison:

Asad’s account is powerful in evoking the contradictions so deeply entrenched in Hong Kong society. On the one hand, it evokes a city of extreme speed and mobility, where thousands of people come and go every day, a cosmopolitan city of business and finance. On the other hand, it brings to light the parallel existence of asylum seekers who, in many cases, see the city as their prison. Without an ID that would allow him to travel, work or study, without being able to predict when a decision will be made on his case, Asad cannot even allow himself to envision a future (as opposed to the interviewer whom, in his opinion, is working on her future as they are talking). The next five years could bring anything: he could still be in Hong Kong (in his thirties) waiting to be resettled or he can be on his way to starting life as a refugee.

This paper aims at broadening the understanding of Erving Goffman’s concept of total institutions and extending it to settings that do not wall its incumbents in and has no clearly stated purpose of working on their selfhood. We look into rules and practices as resources shaping experience and impacting selfhood. We argue that, by means of institutional arrangements, official classifications and definitions as well as by means of official and institutionalized suspicion, the Unified Screening Mechanism in Hong Kong functions as a total institutional context that shapes the experience of seeking protection in Hong Kong and plays an important role in the elaboration of selfhood of asylum seekers. We discussed the governmental assistance – humanitarian, not concerning human rights – meant to prevent destitution. Grounded in an egalitarian and bureaucratic practice of claims processing, the food allowance is not only limited in amount, but also in content and choice: only the items carried by one supermarket chain are technically available to asylum seekers. This effectively shapes the diet of asylum seekers and is irreverent to their culinary and cultural customs. The housing allowance is limited in amount and compels asylum seekers to share their apartments or, in many cases, even their rooms. This measure is indifferent to the special needs of claimants who have been through traumatic experiences and face special challenges when it comes to forming bonds of trust or sharing their space with strangers.

A second issue we tackled were official definitions rifled with suspicion of protection claimants of being economic migrants rather than genuine victims of persecution in their home countries. This transfers institutional suspicion onto asylum seekers themselves in their evaluation of counterparts. Moreover, we presented our interviewees’ attempts at undermining this suspicion and entertaining the institutional expectations by mirroring official standards for claims assessment while setting aside the merits of their own claims. Lastly, we looked into the experience of restrictions and the unpredictability of the process and their impact on selfhood.

We contend that the institutional arrangements for asylum seekers in Hong Kong amount to disculturation or untraining in Goffman’s understanding. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work, they cannot perform the jobs they were doing in their home countries (although many of them were highly skilled professionals) and they cannot learn new skills in Hong Kong. And even though some manage to fend for themselves and find alternative means of making money, there are no institutional ropes for incumbents. On the contrary, whatever they manage is grounded in their own talent for making connections, their own creativity and inventiveness. Those lacking these qualities or those who are unwilling to put them to use and risk jeopardizing their claims, are sentenced to living on humanitarian assistance. Disculturation and untraining result in further removal and exclusion from the broader society. In Goffman’s words, the institution does not seek cultural victory or assimilation, there is no effort to ensure the integration or adjustment of asylum seekers in Hong Kong. The purpose of institutional arrangements is not to make them comfortable in a society which can be their host, at times, for more than 10 years. The egalitarian manner of processing claims and the level of assistance regardless of potential individual special needs is indicative of “encompassing conceptions” of the institution regarding its members. Living under these institutional arrangements effectively transfers onto the incumbents the institutional vision of themselves with great impacts on processes of identity loss and identity construction. Access to the wider society is leveraged by holding an ID card. Lacking that, asylum seekers’ behavior is consequential for the outcome of their claims.