Negotiating Chineseness and Hong Kongness on and off the pitch : a case of naturalized football representatives of Hong Kong

This thesis tries to interrogate the intertwined relations between race, ethnicity, citizenship, and national identity in the context of football in Hong Kong, with a focus on the experiences of local football fans and Hong Kong’s naturalized footballers as they were at the centre of the heated debate related to identity politics between Hong Kong and China when the two teams were playing against each other in the World Cup Qualifying Stage in 2015. This study builds on the theoretical framework of Anderson, Billig, and everyday nationalism to explore how Hong Kongness and Chineseness are being represented, perceived, and negotiated in the case of Hong Kong’s naturalized footballers. With the use of qualitative interview and Critical Discourse Analysis, the case of naturalized footballers becoming representatives of Hong Kong in football is a meaningful addition to the discussion of understanding (sub)national belonging when outsiders of the imagined community of Hong Kong eventually become representatives of the city and how their presence is being perceived by other members within the same imagined community. This thesis is written based on interviews with 10 fan groups representatives and 10 naturalized footballers of Hong Kong, with findings from a Critical Discourse Analysis of 589 selected news articles related to the representation of Team Hong Kong’s naturalized footballers. It is argued while claims were being made regarding the ‘Hong Kongness’ of the naturalized footballers, the use of boundary setting categories in Chinese-language newspapers had consolidated the current hegemonic hierarchy of race and ethnicity in Hong Kong. The interview findings suggested a conditional acceptance of the naturalized footballers that is being masked by the articulation of Hong Kong’s ‘internationalness’ and an instrumental mentality. And the case of Hong Kong’s naturalized footballers suggested that ‘Hong Kongness’ and ‘Chineseness’ are imagined differently