Being Indian in post-colonial Hong Kong: Models of ethnicity, culture and language among Sindhis and Sikhs in Hong Kong

Using data from four focus groups, this paper examines the ways in which Hong Kong Sindhis and Sikhs talk about ethnic identities and their relationships to culture and language. It finds that in all the groups, a range of different ‘cultural models’ (Gee, 1999) of ethnicity, culture and language are drawn upon, with the same participants sometimes using several different models as they position themselves within the group discussions. However, the data also suggest that there may be a tendency for the two communities to foreground different models of ethnicity. Specifically, Sikh participants tend to draw more on an essentialist model of ethnicity than do the Sindhis, while the Sindhis seem to be more prepared to draw on more flexible models of the relationships between identity, culture and language.