Poverty and Social Marginalization

Rose Wu

Poverty is not only a question of economic survival or the lack of food and shelter. In a comparatively affluent society like Hong Kong’s, poverty also refers to the situation whereby certain social groups are excluded from social and community participation and are marginalized and disempowered. What make me feel sad about Hong Kong is that the poor are always being despised as people who are less human and who deserve to be abused.

In this article, I will highlight three cases as illustrations to point out how poverty as a system creates the social marginalization of the poor in Hong Kong.

The first case is about the marginalization of the 210,000 Asian women who are employed in Hong Kong as domestic workers. Most of them are from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal and other South Asian countries. To the people of developing countries in Asia, to migrate overseas as a foreign worker is a way to survive and to try to rid oneself and one’s family of poverty. For an Indonesian domestic worker, the income that she earns in Hong Kong is about 20 times more than what she can earn at home. Because of this, there are more than 13 million Asian migrant workers laboring overseas who carry the mission of improving the economic situation of their family back home, and yet, these women are often exposed to abuse.

Recently, there was a case about an Indonesian woman named Samian who arrived in Hong Kong in June 1999. She was employed by a Chinese family as a domestic worker. She not only did the housework for her employer’s family at home, but she was also forced to work in her employer’s factory. She usually began working at 5 a.m. and finished at 2 a.m. the next day. Her case was brought before the court because she was forced to work 21 hours a day and was beaten by her employer with a toilet brush if she did not finish the ironing one morning. From her testimony, she usually skipped sleep to allow herself more time to finish her work, but the long hours often left her tired and unable to work quickly. Unfortunately, the tragic story of Samian is only one of the many hundreds of cases involving Asian domestic workers who are abused verbally, physically and sexually in Hong Kong.

Poverty not only makes Asian domestic migrant workers vulnerable to abuse, but their race, their gender and their nature of work also create social marginalization in

which their problems are more easily ignored or disregarded by the government and local community. Thus, when we tackle issues of poverty, we have to analyze the issue through the lens of race and gender as well as cultural discrimination. For Asian domestic workers, the cause of their suffering is not only because they are poor; it is also because of our prejudice toward women and their race as well as ethnic differences.

The second case I want to describe involves the discrimination that Hong Kong’s people exhibit toward new immigrants from mainland China. For instance, there is the story of a Chinese woman named Ah-fong who came to Hong Kong to join her husband a few years ago. Her husband is a temporary worker who sits in Mongkok every day waiting to be hired to carry wooden goods and furniture. Because his work is never secure, Ah-fong decided to collect cardboard and cans on the street and sell them for about 40 cents per box (US$0.05) each day while her two children go to school. Their life though is still difficult. Although Ah-fong tried to convince her husband to apply for social security from the government, her husband is strongly against her suggestion because her husband cannot accept the shame that this can entail since the government officer once commented that immigrants from China who apply for Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) are lazy and irresponsible.

Another experience which made Ah-fong feel even more helpless and angry was when she was offered a cleaning job for HK$20 dollars per hour (about US$2.60); but when the employer realized that she was a recent immigrant from China, he refused to hire her and asked her to leave. Again, Ah-fong’s experience is not an isolated incident; it is only an example of how hundreds and thousands of new Chinese immigrant women are being discriminated against and marginalized by the local community. Because of poverty, they are willing or feel forced to marry a Hong Kong man, but their illusion is shattered soon after they move to Hong Kong and discover that their husbands are unemployed and live a life of poverty in Hong Kong.

Many new immigrant Chinese women like Ah-fong suffer, on one hand, from the social stigma of being lazy and irresponsible, a perception that the Hong Kong government intentionally perpetuates in order to make them scapegoats for society’s problems and to gain public support for the government’s policy of cutting social security. On the other hand, these women also face a high risk of domestic violence and sexual abuse at home. Because of their social marginalization, these women find it difficult to seek support and sympathy from the public. In fact, there have been many suicides committed by new Chinese immigrant women because of their economic desperation and their isolation from the community.

The last illustration that I want to use to point out how Hong Kong society further marginalizes the poor involves the Standard Chartered Bank which recently announced that there will be a HK$100 (nearly US$13) monthly charge on savings accounts in which the balance drops below HK$10,000 (US$1,282) on any day during the month. This is an increase from a HK$25 (US$3.20) fee on balances below HK$5,000 (US$641). Only elderly people on welfare are exempt from the new charge. Hong Kong’s biggest bank, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, although it does not have any immediate plans to increase its charges, is reviewing the situation. In fact, “higher bank charges are an irreversible trend; this is going to be a trend,” says Stephen Cheung Yan-leung, a professor of finance at the City University of Hong Kong. From a business perspective, small accounts are more expensive to maintain. The fee increases already announced are designed to remold depositor bases, encouraging customers to consolidate or close small accounts.

Who are the people most affected? Of course, the poor. Take, for example, Man Yuk-king, a Shamshuipo mother of three, who says the new charge will be a hardship. Her family’s back balance has shrunk to HK$3,000 (US$385) since her husband became unemployed three months ago. She added that HK$100 might mean nothing to wealthy people, but it is enough to feed her family for two days.

For Yuk-king, there is no choice but to maintain her account even if her bank initiates a HK$100 monthly charge on low-balance accounts. Her three children, all in primary school, receive HK$895 (US$115) in textbook assistance each year. The government pays this by autopay so recipients must have a bank account.

From the above illustrations, the causes of poverty become more clear. In fact, poverty is not only an issue of economic justice; rather, it affects how human dignity and social relationships are being abused and broken. In this sense, poverty also means abuse. The harsh reality is that if you are poor you have no rights and people can do what they want with you. They can stigmatize you as being a burden on society or mock you as being lazy. They can also exploit you by lowering your wages. For poor women, they are even more vulnerable to both physical and sexual abuse. From the cases of Asian domestic workers and new immigrant women from mainland China, we see how gender and race discrimination are interlocking factors that cause poverty among women and other Third World countries.

Are There Any Alternatives to Eradicate Poverty?

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa in his policy speech in October 2000 stated that eradicating poverty would be high on the Hong Kong government’s agenda in the future. However, while he assured the people of Hong Kong that the government had not forgotten the less fortunate people in the community, he also stressed that the long-term solution to helping the jobless and poor was not to follow the example of a welfare state, which had proven a failure in other countries. What he proposed was to have non-governmental organizations (NGOs) work with the government to solve the problems of unemployment and poverty. This new approach reflects an attempt by the government to change the social values and mindset of society, emphasizing the importance of self-reliance. The belief is that public debate on the issue of the income gap between the rich and the poor should no longer simply concentrate on how much of the total pie of government spending goes to welfare payments. Instead, the focus should be on the combined efforts of the government, the private sector, NGOs and individuals to eliminate poverty in the long term.

However, to truly address poverty, the root causes of this form of socio-economic oppression must be tackled. This calls for a change in government policies that support the existing economic and social structure that create and maintain such an unequal distribution of wealth in the community. To begin, we must not look at poverty as a problem caused by the poor or to look at the poor as less fortunate. Instead, poverty is a form of human oppression which is supported by the interlocking economic, political and social structures.

As for the churches in Hong Kong, the mainline ecumenical denominations are still maintaining a distance by talking about the poor instead of taking any action to bring about a change in government policies because they are part of the status quo. As for the evangelical churches, there have been some cooperative efforts initiated by some evangelical NGOs and church leaders to launch a campaign at the beginning of 2001 to raise HK$10 million (US$1.28 million) to assist the poor. Their approach is first to go to different districts to visit 500 families who are in need. Secondly, to distribute 500 supermarket coupons worth HK$200 (US$26) to needy families. While I appreciate the efforts which the evangelical churches have initiated to help the poor, I still question whether this is the right approach to take to tackle poverty in Hong Kong.

The first concern is that this charity approach disregards the structural cause of poverty. Moreover, this approach will not lead to any social and economic transformation because we lose sight of examining the power dynamic of our society. Secondly, this approach also has a tendency of treating the poor as people who wait for our mercy and grace and reinforces the victimized image of the poor. The poor may feel a little better by receiving some immediate assistance from these efforts, but they are not empowered as people who are independent and dignified.

Based on the above analysis and reflection, I want to propose three directions for the eradication of poverty in Hong Kong: (1) educate ourselves as well as the public to understand the root causes of poverty within the context of globalization and the interlocking oppression between classism, sexism and racism; (2) create a wider spectrum of solidarity among the poor in order to resist the existing unjust economic structure and to overcome the internal division of all marginalized people, such as migrant workers, the new Chinese immigrants and the poor in Hong Kong; and (3) plan strategies and seek alternative models of development which can empower the poor as well as build a sustainable economy for the future of humanity.