PhD thesis defence by Mariusz Bogacki
This thesis investigates how grassroots identity is formed and reshaped in contemporary Hong Kong amid the city’s rapid autocratisation. While Hong Kong identity has long been understood as an ambiguous and evolving cultural construct shaped by Chinese heritage, British colonial legacies, and a cosmopolitan outlook, it has often been studied through quantitative surveys, elite discourses, or media analysis. These approaches tend to marginalise the agency of ordinary citizens and fail to capture how identity is lived and negotiated in everyday contexts. This limitation has become particularly acute following the 2020 introduction of the National Security Law, which triggered a profound socio-political transformation and which severely constrained avenues for political expression. This thesis addresses the following research questions: 1) How should Hong Kong identity be conceptualised and explained today?; 2) How do the processes underpinning grassroots, bottom-up identity formation operate at a time of rapid socio-political transformations in Hong Kong?; 3) More broadly, what can Hong Kong teach us about identity formation amid autocratisation?
In order to address the shortcomings of the existing scholarship on Hong Kong identity and to answer the research questions, this thesis develops and makes use of a novel analytical framework, the Say-Do-See framework, which draws on political ethnography and operationalises identity through the triangulation of narratives (what people say), practices (what people do), and spatial-symbolic perceptions (what people see). By foregrounding the lived experiences, everyday practices, and perceptions of ordinary Hongkongers, the framework challenges dominant top-down or elite-centric narratives of identity. The framework is employed across three empirical chapters, each grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and photo-elicitation techniques in combination with an engagement with three theoretical frameworks on identity formation.
The first empirical chapter engages social identity theory to examine the civic aspects of identity among Hong Kong populations. It shows how Hongkongers are redefining their civic relationships vis-à-vis the state through strategies of adaptation, individualisation, and low-risk expressions. These redefinitions range from reluctant compliance to subtle shifts in everyday behaviour and discourse, highlighting how autocratisation is reshaping civic self-understandings without necessarily extinguishing them.
The second empirical chapter draws on symbolic interactionism to analyse the cultural aspects of Hong Kong identity. It argues that in response to political pressure, many Hongkongers are actively striving to highlight and redefine distinctive aspects of Hong Kong identity, as well as seeking new ways to express cultural uniqueness. This process is both defensive and creative, suggesting that autocratisation has, paradoxically, reinforced cultural identity at the individual level.
The third empirical chapter uses postcolonial theory to explore the temporal dimensions of identity. It reveals how memory, especially of the colonial era and the 2014 and 2019 protest movements, is being actively curated and enacted through everyday practices, symbolic references, and spatial engagements. The past has become a site of resistance and self-definition, with collective memory emerging as a critical component of postcolonial identity preservation in Hong Kong.
The thesis culminates with a chapter that discusses the conceptual, analytical, and theoretical contributions of the study. Conceptually, it proposes an updated definition of Hong Kong identity in the era of autocratisation rooted in a distinct city identity but with Chinese characteristics. Analytically, it outlines how the implementation of Say-Do-See framework results in rigorous, systematic, and transferable methodological framework to study grassroots identity amid autocratisation and beyond. Theoretically, it establishes a set of theoretical propositions to the existing theoretical frameworks, resulting from the combination of the application of theoretical pluralism and the Say-Do-See framework. Finally, the chapter culminates with prototype of a theory of identity formation amid autocratisation, proposing that studying autocratisation requires serious engagement with the politics of identity not merely as an outcome of repression, but as a terrain of adaptation, resistance, and reinvention. The theory argues that identity formation amid autocratisation is a multi-scalar process involving top-down state strategies, bottom-up everyday practices, and horizontal networks of solidarity and meaning-making. In conclusion, I answer the research questions and debate whether Hong Kong is just another Chinese city now as well as what the future holds for Hong Kong’s ever contested identity.
Mariusz Bogacki is PhD candidate at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of European University Institute (EUI), and a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz. His research focuses on the role of identity and nationalism in post-colonial and post-communist societies, as well as qualitative and interpretivist methodologies. Mariusz’s doctoral research explored identity formation in post-2019 Hong Kong, combining ethnographic fieldwork, participatory, and visual methods. In his current research at the University of Konstanz, he investigates the role of nationalism in democratic backsliding in Poland. Mariusz is also a part time lecturer in Qualitative Research Methods at the Technical University Darmstadt, and an instructor in Qualitative Methods at the School of Transnational Governance at the EUI. Mariusz has held visiting scholar positions at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of California, Berkeley, and Goethe University Frankfurt, and worked as a Research Associate at University of Glasgow.
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