Struggle, Juggle and Erasure: Intersectional Positionality and the Paradox of Political (Dis)engagement

Tuesday, 19 May 2026 | 13:00 to 14:30 ET | Room 857, Eighth Floor, Kaneff Tower, Keele Campus, York University and virtually via Zoom

Political quiescence within migrant communities is a rational, structural consequence of how individuals navigate their social location in a host society. Using the migration of Hongkongers on the BN(O) visa to the United Kingdom as a critical case, I argue that the observable decline in mobilization is a calculated response to the performance-based nature of settlement. This navigation is driven by a profound sense of political helplessness arising from unsynchronized priorities between the state and the migrant, alongside a fractured communal solidarity rooted in administrative legal categorizations and conflicting interpretations of reciprocal mandates.

The resulting "struggle and juggle" between the desire for societal integration and the moral duty of political visibility forces a strategic negotiation of presence and erasure in the public sphere, often resulting in a recalibration of agency rather than a withdrawal from the political. As traditional advocacy faces a "wall of ineffectiveness," individuals leverage their intersecting identities to move beyond mass mobilization, seeking out new, localized institutional spaces to enact more sustainable, recontextualized modes of civic engagement within the hostland’s structures.

Eunice Leong-ming Chan is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Lancaster University focusing on the lived realities of the post-2019 BN(O) migration route to the United Kingdom. Her research investigates how migrants internalize a transactional contract with the host state and how this mentality shapes their social boundary work and relational calibration. Through this lens, she explores why high-status migrants experience a profound political speechlessness, seeking to nuance conventional narratives of integration by revealing how neoliberal settlement structures can effectively silence the voices they claim to protect. In Spring 2026, she is a visiting scholar at the York Centre for Asian Research.

Virtual attendees can register using this link.

This event is presented by the Hong Kong Studies Group at York University.