Ethnic minority employees in Hong Kong face racial microaggression in the workplace: study

Ethnic minority workers in Hong Kong experienced more than two instances of subtle or unintentional insults related to their race in the workplace over the past year, a university study has found.

The study, conducted by Lingnan University and Baptist University from January 2023 to June 2024, explored the issue of microaggression that ethnic minority workers faced in the workplace.

Microaggression refers to subtle and often unintentional comments or behaviours that convey a negative or derogatory message towards a marginalised group.

“This topic has not been researched systematically nor discussed because a lot of the focus has still been around discrimination, which is seen as a more obvious and serious form of behaviour,” Lisa Leung Yuk-ming, associate professor of the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, who led the research, told the Post on Saturday.

Between June and September last year, researchers collected 596 surveys from ethnic minority workers. Among the respondents, 91 per cent identified as South Asians.

About 57 per cent of the survey respondents believed their employment difficulties could be attributed to their ethnic minority identity.

More than 60 per cent of respondents reported feeling that they received lower salaries compared with their Chinese or white counterparts with similar experience levels.