ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore the various ways in which social workers in Hong Kong have, or have not, engaged with political issues, often involving social welfare advocacy approaches. It begins with an historical overview of the British colonial experience leading to the beginning of decolonisation in the late 1970s. The chapter highlights the way that governments and civil society struggled to come to terms with issues of human rights protection and democratisation, and how social workers started to become part of what has been described as the Umbrella Movement, arguably the most significant political action in Hong Kong in the twenty-first century. Ever since the negotiation of the change of sovereignty, the colonial government took the initiative in democratisation and introduced partial democracy in 1980s. However, after the handover, the Chinese government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government were reluctant to progress with the democratisation. Such reluctance triggered the public to use a democratic movement to confront the Chinese sovereign state. The Sino-British Joint Declaration opened up the possibility of universal suffrage as a form of democratisation in Hong Kong, and democratic movements have intensified. The chapter uses this context, in particular the ideas that challenge the move from partially representative democracy constructed by the government to deliberative democracy led by the public, to explore how social workers became involved in this situation of political conflict and shared hopes for democratisation. Such changes occurred not only because of the impact of the democratic movement, but also an awareness of international influences on the development of the social work profession in Hong Kong, bearing in mind the experience of social workers in other regions of conflict.
