Project Overview
This funded research project examines how ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong navigate language, race, identity, and belonging within educational and social spaces. Focusing particularly on South Asian youth, it explores how young people construct, negotiate, and resist racialized and linguistic identities while confronting inequalities in their educational experiences.
Through decolonial literacy engagement, the project creates spaces for youth to critically examine dominant ideas about language, race, migration, and identity and to produce their own counter-narratives. Using dialogic, multilingual, and multimodal activities, the research explores the possibilities of antiracist pedagogies for strengthening critical awareness, youth agency, and more equitable educational practices.
Project at a Glance
Project Period
2024–2025
Funding
Start-Up Research Grant, The Education University of Hong Kong
Role
Principal Investigator
Location
Hong Kong
Participants
Ethnic minority youth, ages 15–24
Research Approach
Workshop-based, multilingual, multimodal, and dialogic inquiry
Research Focus
Language · Race/ism · Identity · Belonging · Decolonial Literacy
Acknowledgment
I gratefully acknowledge IDEA Center, Hong Kong, for its valuable partnership and support for this project. The Center generously provided space for the research workshops and assisted with the recruitment and engagement of ethnic minority youth participants, making an important contribution to the successful implementation of the project.
Research Questions
01
In what ways does engaging in dialogic literacy practices help Hong Kong ethnic minority youth develop critical awareness about language and race in education?
02
To what extent do Hong Kong ethnic minority youth articulate their identities and social experiences in educational institutions through multilingual and multimodal texts?
Research in Action
The project uses workshops as a research methodology, creating collaborative spaces in which young people can explore lived experiences and imagine how those experiences might be understood or transformed. Rather than treating youth simply as sources of data, the workshops engage them in critical dialogue, creative meaning-making, and reflection on language, race, identity, and place.
Creating Multilingual & Multimodal Texts
Participants use multiple languages, images, writing, and other modes to represent their identities and experiences and develop counter-narratives to dominant representations.
Reading Texts Critically
Selected texts provide starting points for discussing memories, identities, racialization, language, and young people’s experiences in Hong Kong.
Dialogic Conversations
Focus groups and open-ended interviews create spaces for youth to discuss language, ethnicity, race, education, and belonging with one another and with researchers.
Publications & Outputs
Sah, P. K. (2025). Antiracist workshops as sites of resistance: Ethnic minority youths’ multilingual and multimodal counternarratives to linguistic racism and nationalized identities. Language Awareness, 34(3), 749-773. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2025.2555949
Sah, P. K. (2026). “Your English sounds almost British”: Everyday linguicism and racialized subjectivity of an international student in Hong Kong.TESOL Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.70158
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