An Intersectional Approach to Understanding the Experiences of Social Integration Among South and Southeast Asian Mothers in Hong Kong: Mapping Dialectical Social Imaginary

While research has documented the barriers faced by Hong Kong’s growing South and Southeast Asian (SSEA) populations, their gendered experiences have not been fully explored. This study addresses this gap by examining how SSEA women navigate their roles as women, mothers, and immigrants. Drawing on 54 in-depth interviews, we identify three types of “dialectical social imaginaries” experienced by SSEA women: balancing traditional and changing family roles; moving between silence and resistance to racialized bias; and negotiating distance and belonging across co-ethnic and local communities. These social imaginaries are dialectical in the sense that they reflect different and often opposing forces of gendered expectations and cultures, which play a key role in SSEA women’s experiences of migration. Findings show that motherhood norms continue to affect women’s schedule, mobility, and labor force participation. While many normalize everyday discrimination, mothers often mobilize voice and action to protect children. Class status intersects with ethnicity: some middle class participants deliberately draw boundaries with foreign domestic workers in order to avoid stigmatization. These dynamics reveal how gendered expectations, racialized labor, and language systems co shape experiences of migration, belonging, and mobility. Centering women’s narratives, the study emphasizes the importance of the concept of “dialectical social imagination” for future research on the intersection between gender, migration, and culture. It underscores the need for gender-sensitive policies and practices attuned to cultural knowledge and social inequality.