ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the socio-legal and economic consequences of the politics of illegality based on extensive empirical research. It also examines how asylum seekers negotiate and survive the politics of illegality and resultant criminalization. The chapter focuses on extensive ethnographic research comprising over 100 asylum seekers, non-governmental organization workers and segments of the local population in Hong Kong who normally interact with asylum seekers. In the New Territories in Hong Kong, a long path from the main road in a rural area led to legally questionable dwellings where a group of asylum seeker participants lived. Hong Kong’s asylum policies are designed to be deliberately harsh on asylum seekers in order to deter other travellers from following in their footsteps. Mathews argues that in a neoliberal economic environment such as Hong Kong, the police largely limit their intervention in order to allow business to grow.
