Hong Kong '22

The Children Left Behind Project

I am grateful to be starting work with PathFinders Hong Kong this week. Migrant women in Hong Kong are facing a crisis as a series of Covid-19-related emergencies have cut off their sources of livelihood and put their children at risk. Cut off from the support of their communities of origin, this vulnerable community often sees its needs overlooked.

PathFinders works to provide legal guidance, health resources, employment supports, and mental health services for migrant women as well as their children. Building on my study of seasonal migrant parents in India, I hope to use what I have learned to support this organization with their programming for children directly impacted by maternal migration. I look forward to using what I learned during my time leading Government Partnerships at Aangan to serve as a cultural bridge and apply best practices from across India to the Hong Kong context. I am extremely grateful to the Women & Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School for making it possible for me to support with this work as nonprofits in the region are strapped for resources but in urgent need of support.

Being able to contribute to this effort during a time when ex-pats are leaving the city and vulnerable communities are still suffering from the after-effects of Covid-19 is a privilege, and is sure to be the perfect way to continue pursuing my professional goal of supporting migrant communities, particularly vulnerable children and women. I look forward to reflecting on my work and what I am learning in this space.

My First Week

I started my job with a fabulous team at PathFinders Hong Kong this Monday. I am working on a research report to prepare for a roundtable in November -- outlining the experiences of migrant domestic workers who come to Hong Kong for work, usually from Indonesia and the Philippines. These women have multiple, complex caretaking relationships with the children they leave behind with fathers and caretakers in their origin countries, the children they look after on behalf of the employers who hire them, and the children they may get pregnant with during their time in Hong Kong. I am tasked with figuring out how to most succinctly present the challenges faced by all three kinds of children as they navigate their relationships with these migrant mothers, as well as the questions of home, identity, safety, and economic security with which these women grapple.

The City's Spatial Sensibility

As I continue to acquaint myself with what Hong Kong looks and feels like, I've been curious about the uber-efficient uses of space I see around me, how walkable the city is, and how every nook and cranny that could be turned into something useful seems already to have been.

I started this Sunday morning by reading the Hong Kong Urban Planning Department's "Urban Design Guidelines" to try to start to understand why this city looks the way it does. Some notable excerpts included:

"The Hong Kong Island has a magnificent natural setting with the spectacular Victoria Peak overlooking Victoria Harbour and Kowloon Peninsula. Developments in the north shore of Hong Kong Island should respect the dominance of Victoria Peak and other ridgelines / peaks when viewing from Kowloon side, in particular from the West Kowloon Cultural District; Cultural Complex at Tsim Sha Tsui; and the waterfront promenade at Kai Tak Development (Figure 3). Uncontrolled building height for developments within the view corridors which may breach the building free zone should be avoided."

I found especially amusing this objective selection of the "most beautiful harbor cities in the world" included in the document:

"The fascinating juxtaposition of the mountains, sky and sea combines to form everlasting images. Being one of the five most beautiful harbour cities in the world: Sydney, Vancouver, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro and Hong Kong, panoramic view from Victoria Peak to Victoria Harbour should be preserved."

And notes like this provided some explanation for how much of the space is a recreational paradise, with areas to be active or just take a breather and sit down so easily accessible.

"Where practicable, continuous waterfront promenade should be provided for public enjoyment such as strolling, jogging, cycling, fishing, sitting where appropriate. Points of interest or nodes such as landscaping areas, sitting out areas, lookout areas, boardwalks, and small piers which strengthen the vitality of the waterfront should be encouraged."

My favorite line, though, had to be, "Lack of land in Hong Kong makes it difficult to respect human scale..." Aptly put, as the buildings tower over us in front of the formidable sea.

How the Other Half Lives

All of the intentionality in these planning guidelines also got me thinking about whom the city is intentional towards: it seems that not much happens by accident here, and yet we also know that 200,000 people live in the city's "cage homes," full-size apartments divided into 6 to 7 separate areas by cages that afford the resident perhaps a greater degree of privacy than what they may be able to afford in terms of standalone housing at the same budget.

I am reminded also of the many apartments we toured the past few weekends, where the "helper's room" was smaller than most powder rooms, and consisted mostly of a bench (to sleep on) and a shelf (to keep a few items). As I work to understand the lives and experiences of Hong Kong's domestic workers, I hold on to curiosity about how the city has created open spaces—or not—for different groups of people.

The Migrant Indebtedness Trap

I've been using my research time lately to delve into the various mechanisms that keep migrant domestic workers, most of whom come here to provide their children with a better life, from being able to do so. The average wages for a domestic worker are about HKD 2572, or USD $325, a month. This amount is  used to support 3.7 family members on average. 

Apart from low wages, other factors that make it difficult for sufficient money to make it home in the first place include:

• high fees required to remit through formal financial institutions
• extractive fees charged by employment agencies for placement service
• loans taken from moneylenders with extremely high interest rates

Because of the lack of options that migrant workers have when choosing banks from whom to take loans, they don't have bargaining power (i.e. the ability to go to another bank) to remit money to their families, allowing banks to charge as high as 10% of their wages in these fees. Since migrant workers often don't have the ability to take standard loans from financial institutions, moneylending companies charging as much as 25% in annual interest are typically the only ones who will lend to them. And the process of moving to a new country and being placed with an employer brings with it a range of hidden fees, such as the "placement fee" that many employment agencies charge. 

As I continue my research on the impacts of maternal migration on children (most of which are mixed because the additional remittances are found to improve children's standard of life to some degree), thinking through the variety of roadblocks that stand in the way of the money even making it home will be key.

PathFinders team retreat at Dream Impact

The Importance of Nurturing Conversations for Left Behind Children

One of the research insights that came up during my PAE (Masters thesis) process when looking at the impact of seasonal labor migration in India on children left behind was how much of a difference good, substantive conversations with parents on a regular basis can make for children. My research on children left behind in the context of labor migration to Hong Kong from Indonesia and the Philippines echoed the same point. 

Zhao and Wang found that “Conversations that went beyond “daily trivia” and touched on school life, learning experiences, and feelings served to increase secure attachment of children to parents. Just talking  to a parent more regularly on topics that matter to a child, such a seemingly simple and everyday task, has the potential to make a meaningful impact on children’s mood and aspect, and lower depression symptoms.”

It seems simple, but even if a parent is away, phone conversations of important substance to both parent and child can:

• make children feel like their migrant parent is still involved and interested in their lives
• create space for parent-child bonding through migration
• allow the migrant parent to frame her reasons for migrating to the child through her own narrative
• allow a smoother transition in the parent-child relationship when the parent returns home

This phenomenon will no doubt become more and more important as so many family relationships around the world continue to become “long-distance” and raises the questions:

• Is it possible to parent from afar? 
• What do developmental interactions look like in a long-distance context?
• What are conversations that parents can be having to play a meaningful role in their children’s development while also allowing them privacy?

The protective power of these conversations holds great promise for simple policy interventions with the ability to go a long way – which is why I find this so exciting!

The Relationship Between Community & Child Development

Thinking back to HGSE Professor Junlei Li's framework for developmental relationships, I've been reflecting on the role of other community networks that left behind children in Indonesia and the Philippines have, even in the absence of mothers who are migrant domestic workers. 

Masten, A. S. (2014). The short list and implicated protective systems. In Ordinary magic: Resilience in development. The Guilford Press, pp. 147-173 

It is common for other kin to step in to supplement caretaking capacity when mothers migrate to provide labor in Hong Kong. In the sending regions of interest, it may be culturally assumed that these relatives will step in to provide care. As Parreñas noted regarding the Philippines, “Extended kin generally are not altruistic. They tend to accept their added workload with some hesitation. They view the work left behind to them by migrant mothers as a burden and cultural expectation that they have no choice but to fulfill.” 

While having deep roots in the community is crucial for community, we also must interrogate the gendered norms and expectations surrounding kinship care. I'll be reflecting on ways to provide support to extended kin who provide this uncompensated labor to support children.

Child Development Framework Informing the Migration Decision

As I've been working on the report we will present at the roundtable in November, I've been thinking through the pieces of a child's well-rounded development that may be influenced by parental migration. I visualized those building blocks through the following simple illustration:

Unfortunately, according to my research those are the same components that a migrant domestic worker mother may hope to improve through her decision to migrate. The underlying assumption is that access to more financial resources will lead to access to better healthcare and education, well-rounded development, and overall satisfaction and quality of life.

However, as I noted in my post on Week 5, due to the ways in which resources are extracted from migrants, there may be several barriers to the money a mother earns meaningfully benefiting her child's development. And, even insofar as it does, it's crucial to consider the corresponding negative impacts on children's development that may occur as a result of the alternate caretaking arrangements made in the absence of a parent's physical presence. 

It is this framework that I've decided to adopt in the final report, which we will present at a roundtable for Children's Day in November: examining impacts of these new caretaking scenarios on children's mental health, physical health, education, and sense of community connectedness and belonging.