Introduction

As of November 2024, there were 15,782 non-refoulement claimants (NRCs) in Hong Kong (Security Bureau 2025). NRCs are persons who have lodged claims with the Immigration Department of Hong Kong (ImmD), asserting a risk of torture, inhuman treatment, and/or persecution if returned to their countries of origin (Immigration Department 2021). Under the Unified Screening Mechanism (USM) implemented in 2014, the ImmD assesses the claims, with reference to the definition of torture under section 37U of the Immigration Ordinance (Cap. 115), the absolute and non-derogable rights under the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance (Cap. 383), and the persecution risk with reference to the Refugee Convention (Immigration Department 2024). Substantiated claimants are referred to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for refugee status and resettlement, while unsubstantiated claimants are subject to removal or deportation. Between 2014 and 2021, approximately 99 percent of claims were rejected (Legislative Council Commission 2022), indicating an extremely low success rate.

NRCs in Hong Kong were predominantly from Southeast Asian countries, including 3,154 Indonesians (20 percent), 3,028 Vietnamese (19 percent), 2,312 Pakistanis (14.6 percent), 2,140 Indians (13.6 percent), 1,884 Bangladeshis (11.9 percent), 1,382 Filipinos (8.8 percent), and others including Sri Lankans and Nigerians (11.9 percent) (Security Bureau 2025). Since the NRC population includes both adults and children (Immigration Department 2024) and some have formed their families during their sojourn in Hong Kong, services addressing the needs of NRC families, including parenting, have become a critical focus for social work practice.

This research started from the wondering of the first author. He has a decade of frontline social work experience with NRC parents and families in Hong Kong, through direct casework (e.g. counselling, home visits, case management) and supervision of junior staff. However, he considered his practice-based understanding of NRC parents’ parenting experiences to be partial and incomprehensive. For example, narratives obtained in practice are often fragmented due to time constraints in service delivery and clients’ selective omission of sensitive information (e.g. legal violations) when interacting with government-funded service providers. Also, during help-seeking, clients tend to emphasize negative experiences, instead of the regularities and everydayness of parenting, unless these are relevant to their requests. The incomprehensive understanding may lead to superficial assessment and intervention, including difficulties in fully empathizing with clients’ situations and in recognizing their wisdom and strengths in their everydayness. Besides, existing literature has also paid insufficient attention to the unique needs and features of NRC parents. Accordingly, this study aimed at apprehending the originary appearance of NRC parents’ parenting experiences during their sojourn in Hong Kong and its implications to social work practice.

Reflecting on the study of family social work

A literature review on parenting theories was conducted to identify relevant concepts and frameworks for understanding parenting experiences. Given the limited research on parenting experiences of NRCs in Hong Kong, studies on relevant populations such as international migrants and refugees, and ethnic minorities in Hong Kong were also reviewed.

Parenting in family social work

Parenting is a multifaceted construct shaped by cultural and contextual factors, which contains various components (e.g. caregiving, emotional warmth, discipline) that collectively drive child development (Lansford 2022). In family social work, various theories and models provide lenses for understanding parenting practice which informs social workers’ assessment and interventions with parents.

Some theories focus on parenting methods, from which social workers can assess and guide clients for their parenting practice. For example, social learning theories emphasize operant conditioning and modelling in reinforcing desired or reducing undesired child behaviors, while theories of parenting styles illustrate the features and effectiveness of different parenting styles (e.g. authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, neglecting) (Asmussen 2011). These frameworks enable social workers to assess the suitability and effectiveness of clients’ parenting approaches considering their context and their children’s characteristics, and to offer concrete guidance.

In addition, some practical tools are adopted in direct practice. For example, the Family Assessment Risk Variables (Walker and Tabbert 1997) identifies sixteen risk factors of child maltreatment in five domains (i.e. precipitating incident, child, caretaker, family, and interaction between family and agency). The Assessment Framework Triangle (London Safeguarding Children Partnership 2022) categorizes parenting capacity into six dimensions: basic care, ensuring safety, emotional warmth, stimulation, guidance and boundaries, and stability. These tools offer structured frameworks for comprehensive assessment of parenting capacity and risk of child maltreatment.

Beyond parenting method or competence, some theories attend to parenting tasks across stages. For example, the Family Life Cycle Theory (Carter and McGoldrick 1980) outlines key family tasks across six developmental stages of family, which inform parenting practice. For instance, assuming child-rearing responsibilities for families with young children (stage 3) and balancing adolescents’ autonomy and parents’ guidance and care for families with adolescents (stage 4). Similarly, Galinsky’s (1987) Six Stages of Parenthood describe the evolving parental tasks in image-making stage, nurturing stage, authority stage, interpretive stage, interdependent stage, and departure stage. These perspectives remind practitioners of considering temporal changes and shifting demands on parents.

While these theories highlight various facets about parenting, they may also constrain understanding when applied uncritically. Some important aspects of parenting which fall outside established framework may be overlooked, especially concerning non-mainstream and marginalized population. Indeed, parenting is a fluid construct and can evolve across time and cultures (Lansford 2022). This underscores the need for social workers to apprehend the unique parenting experience of their concerned client groups to obtain originary understanding. In this case, the NRC parents.

Particularity of parenting

In the process of migration, migrant parents’ parenting orientations (e.g. values, beliefs, and styles) developed in the original context undergo modifications (e.g. maintain, abandon, and adopt), in response to the host society’s parenting norms, values, and styles (Ochocka and Janzen 2008), and their evolving practices and wisdom may in turn influence and contribute to the host society. The concept of Multivoicedness (Bergset and Ulvik 2021) captures the multiple sources of voices (e.g. past, present, new impulses) in construction of their parenting practice within migrant parents due to the cultural shift. As migrants, NRC parents can be expected to exhibit distinctive parenting experiences emerging from their movement across cultural contexts.

For refugee parents, in addition to the cultural challenges such as contradicting parenting practice between their own practice and those prevalent in the host society (e.g. Ramsay 2016) and the conflicts between parental values and those conveyed by schools or other socialization agents (e.g. Moinolmolki et al., 2020; Rivalland 2020), they tend to experience the additional powerlessness and choicelessness in parenting across different stages of involuntary migration, such as sudden changes of family systems and structures due to conflicts, wars, and family separation in pre-flight contexts, and families’ adaptation to refugee camps, screening procedures, or resettlement services during the resettlement process (Williams 2010). Previous studies also reveal that ineffective refugee procedures and inadequacy of social protection and integration support could generate psycho-social stresses to refugee families (Pezerović et al., 2019). Children in such families are also vulnerable to development of physical, emotional, and psychological problems linked to poverty and social isolation (Grant and Guerin 2014). On this basis, NRC parents are likely to experience additional powerlessness and parental stress in their parenting roles as forced migrants.

For parenting of NRCs in Hong Kong, the related literature is lacking. There was shortfall of studies related to children of asylum seekers and refugees residing in Hong Kong (Choy and Shi 2021), while there were only a few studies in Hong Kong about health and health-seeking experiences of African asylum seekers and refugees (e.g. Wong et al., 2016; Wong et al., 2017; Wong et al., 2018) and about mental health of asylum seekers and refugees (e.g. Ng et al., 2023). To understand possible cultural features relevant to NRC parents, studies on ethnic minorities’ parenting experiences were therefore reviewed. For instance, Pakistani parents in Hong Kong have been found to prefer home-based parenting and to engage less with school functions and activities due to cultural factors (Chee and Ullah 2020). Cross-cultural research further suggests that Pakistani parents hold higher educational aspirations for their children than local Hong Kong parents, for the hope of increasing the social mobility through education (Chan and Li 2020). Another study found that ethnic minority mothers emphasize Chinese learning acquisition to enhance their children’s social mobility, while simultaneously worrying that exposure to Chinese culture may erode their heritage culture. These findings suggest that NRC parents in Hong Kong may likewise experience tensions around their children’s education and cultural identity (e.g. selection of their preferred language of learning).

In summary, research on migrant parenting highlights the significance of cultural factors, while studies on refugee parenting underscore the additional powerlessness and stresses experienced by forced migrant parents. In the absence of direct research on NRC parents in Hong Kong, this study points to potential features of their parenting experiences but indicates the need for closer apprehension. Also, while the existing studies on ethnic minority parenting in Hong Kong have primarily focused on parents’ considerations regarding children’s development, the present study centers on parents’ own parenting experiences.

Given the substantial knowledge gap, this study seeks to uncover the parenting experiences of NRCs in Hong Kong and the meanings behind. We raised two core questions:

1. What is the lived parenting experience of NRCs during their sojourn in Hong Kong?
2. What are the meanings behind their parenting experience?

When social worker meets phenomenology

This article was developed from the most salient findings of the first author’s doctoral thesis, which was supervised by the second author, who emphasized the value of phenomenology for gaining a deep understanding of human lived experience. Phenomenology, as the study of phenomena, begins with a wondering about how phenomena present themselves to us (Van Manen 2016), making it well-suited for grasping the ‘whatness’ of lived human experiences.

Research design

Heideggerian interpretive phenomenology was adopted as the research approach. This is a meaning-giving approach of investigation (Van Manen 2016). While Husserlian descriptive phenomenology focuses on capturing the essence, the essential structures, of a phenomenon in particular lived experiences (Polkinghorne 1989), Heideggerian interpretive phenomenology extends to understand Dasein which means ‘being there’ and ‘being in the world’ (Horrigan-Kelly et al., 2016) to uncover the being of the being (Van Manen 2016).

Heidegger argued that the inquest of the meaning of being has been forgotten, unattended to, or concealed (Heidegger 1962). Because Dasein is always already ‘in’ the world and displays itself to us every day in a taken-for-granted manner, we may naively believe and assume we already understand it (Macann 1993). To understand Dasein, one must return to worldly activities and the average everyday interactions which are Dasein’s daily engagement with the world, including how Dasein is ‘being alongside the world’, ‘being with others’, and ‘being oneself’ (Horrigan-Kelly et al., 2016). Phenomenology therefore means ‘to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself’ (Heidegger 1962: 58).

In this study, through exploring NRC parents’ everydayness, the aim is not to capture universal structure or essence of parenting. Instead, the goal is to discern the complexity, uniqueness and meanings of NRC parents’ parenting experiences, with attention to contextuality and temporality during their sojourn in Hong Kong, and to see how they are ‘being alongside the world’, ‘being with others’ and ‘being oneself’.

Data collection

Purposive sampling was used. Parents currently residing in Hong Kong with non-refoulement claim and having been parenting their children in Hong Kong for at least one year were recruited. Minimum duration of one year was set to ensure adequacy parenting experience in Hong Kong, allowing for their parenting modifications and meaningful reflections. Ethical approval was obtained from the Human Subjects Ethics Review Committee of the university concerned, with the reference number: HSEARS20230423002.

Participants were recruited through community outreach, referrals and personal network. Written informed consent, covering the study purpose, confidentiality, and logistical arrangements, was obtained prior to interviews. The length of each face-to-face semi-structured interview lasted for approximately an hour. Each participant received HKD$150 in cash as an honorarium in recognition of their time and contribution. Although participants were offered the option to have interviews at the university, they all opted to be interviewed at or near their homes to minimize travel costs and for convenience. Interviews took place from June to July 2023, in which four in parks or playgrounds, two in restaurants, and six at participants’ homes. All interviews were conducted in English by the first author.

Participant background

Twelve NRC parents, including three fathers and nine mothers, participated in the study. Five were from the Philippines, four from Indonesia, one from Pakistan, one from India, and one from Morocco. Six were single mothers, and the remaining six were parents in two-parent households. Their ages ranged from thirty-two to fifty-three years, with the mean age of forty. The children’s ages ranged from one to eighteen years, with the mean age of five. Although children’s ages varied considerably, the focus of this study was on the parents themselves, particularly their parenting experiences. Variety of parenting approaches were treated as the manifestations of the essences and meanings of their parenting experiences.

The length of participants’ sojourn in Hong Kong ranged from 6.5 years to 25 years, with the mean 11.8 years, while their duration as NRC ranged from 7 months to 14 years, with the mean 7 years. All female participants were former domestic helpers in Hong Kong before lodging their non-refoulement claims. Reasons for their applications included political issues (three participants), religious or family problems (six participants), and financial crisis (one participant). One participant reported a reason not related to life-threatening circumstances.

All participants were recipients of humanitarian assistance from International Social Service Hong Kong Branch. They all lived in subdivided rooms in old buildings, supported by rental subsidies under humanitarian assistance.

Analyzing the materials

Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Pseudonyms were used to protect the identities of participants. Data were analyzed using procedures from Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith et al., 2009) complemented by reflective methods for theme analysis as outlined by Van Manen (2016).

Lived experience of parenting

The ‘whatness’ of the parenting experience of NRC parents during their sojourn was captured in the following five themes: (1) competing deprivation with guilt and shame, (2) drifting in sojourn, (3) grounding in the immediacy of life, (4) coping with loneliness through parenting, and (5) enduring hope in parenting. They would be illustrated as follows.

Competing deprivation with guilt and shame

NRC parents’ parenthood was the process of competing deprivation filled with guilt and shame. They were restricted by the immigration policies and laws to take up employment in Hong Kong unless they were permitted by the government. Without income, they lived in poverty. All NRC parents in this study were recipients of humanitarian assistance from the Hong Kong government. Eva (thirty-six years old, Indonesian single mother) emphasized,

‘The life is very hard, because of no job. Living in Hong Kong is very expensive. Life is very expensive. So here, only the government, the ISS (i.e., Internation Social Service Hong Kong Branch, the commissioned social service agency by the Hong Kong government in administering the humanitarian assistance to non-refoulement claimants), helping us… That is really hard.’

Moreover, since the humanitarian assistance was in-kind and non-monetary, in the process of fostering a child, the NRC parents lacked the flexibility to allocate cash to fulfill certain reasonable needs of children, such as non-reusable diapers, toys, and clothing, which induced their guilt. Lydia (forty-one years old, Filipino single mother) shared:

‘We cannot provide what our children need. If they need something, we can just say next time. Sometimes it really hurts. It really hurts. Sometimes they just want to buy toys, or they want to eat. But I cannot buy’.

NRC parents therefore actively searched for donations from non-governmental organizations and churches or sought help from friends. They eventually became experts on locating community resources. However, reaching out for help induces feeling of shame, especially when you realize that you might never be able to repay their kindness. Kala (forty years old, Indonesian single mother) shared:

‘It’s hard to ask others, because when you do not have job, how can you return back… For me, it’s too hard. If we have big problem, sometimes we might need to borrow. (Interviewer: Are they lending money or just giving it to you?) Begging’.

When NRC parents failed to fulfill the life demands in legitimate ways, some might turn to undesirable or illegal activities. Kala shared that her NRC Nepali husband was ‘in jail for two years’ due to illegal working because ‘the child will start going to school’ and more education-related expenses would be needed. She stressed about the unbearable financial hardship as an NRC parent. She said:

‘If you are refugee, and no job, you become nothing. So sad… I mean better for refugee, you go back. Especially if you have baby, very hard here… You cannot live here. Very hard’.

Drifting in sojourn

Besides, the temporary nature of the stay as NRC in Hong Kong revealed powerlessness and hopelessness in their parenting experience as a sojourner. Once their claim was determined as unsubstantiated, they could be deported or detained anytime. Frances (forty years old, Filippino mother) shared about her observation when she reported to ImmD. She said:

‘They (i.e., the immigration officers) suddenly stopped them (i.e., the NRCs) to go back home. They said to us, ‘Wait, wait for a while!’ But then they won’t let them go, and they will put them inside (i.e., the detention center)’.

All parents in this study therefore denied any potential to formulate their long-term plans for their children. Frances shared:

‘If they send you the paper stating that your case is finished already, even though your child is still studying, if they said you must go back, then you must go back’.

George (forty-six years old, Pakistani father) echoed it and said:

‘What plan? Nothing can be planned! Even if I plan, that’s useless, because I cannot follow. If tomorrow when I go to sign, they put me inside. ‘You go back!’ So, what can I do? Nothing’.

Besides, their children, though born in Hong Kong, would inherit the same immigration status as their parents, and be restricted to work even after completing their education in Hong Kong. The NRC parents acknowledged this despairing reality. George expressed his discontent. He said:

‘The baby born here, how come torture claim? How come we make story on her? If she is born here, how she can have story about problem in Pakistan (father’s country of origin) or problem in the Philippines (mother’s country of origin)?’

Some NRC families had additional burden on facing involuntary separation of the family in the deportation process if the parents came from different countries of origin. Ann (forty-five years old, Indonesian mother) who had an Indian husband shared:

‘We have family, but they separate (us) from the father. Sometimes, if thinking like this, sometimes crying. My husband will need to go back to his country, and then I also need to go to my country’.

After the departure, it was never easy to get family reunion. Kala shared:

‘If he gets married with me in Indonesia, he must become Muslim too. So, if he does not want to change the religion, that would be difficult… My husband is Buddhist. My husband always said we cannot get married, because his family will not accept me, because I am a Muslim people’.

Confronted with an uncertain future and the harsh reality that even their children would be denied the right to work, NRC parents were lost and overwhelmed by hopelessness, despair, and anger in their parenting journey.

Grounding in the immediacy of life

Unlike working parents who must juggle the demands of work and family roles, NRC parents could devote fully to their parental responsibilities. Majority of the NRC parents frankly admitted that they chose to focus on the present, in order not to overthink about the hardship of sojourn. Betty (forty years old, Indonesian mother) shared:

‘I just think about taking care of my sons… I am not thinking about next, next, next… I just think now what I do, what I have, what I can do for my sons… Later is later; now is now. This is my life… I am not thinking about the next. I am thinking about now’.

Without plans for their children, the NRC parents, in their parenting philosophy, emphasized more on the present personal growth of children, instead of academic performance. For example, Ivanna (thirty-nine years old, Filipino mother) shared that she valued moral development of children such as living ‘in a good moral’, to be ‘friendly’ and ‘humble’, and to ‘respect other people’.

Furthermore, living within the Hong Kong context, the NRC parents developed distinctive parenting practices which incorporated both their own cultural and religious traditions and the elements of local Hong Kong parenting. While Hector (thirty-three years old, Indian father) shared that he taught his daughter ‘Hindi’ and the Indian customs such as ‘Indian clothes, like how to wear and how to do the make-up’, Desmond (fifty-three years old, Moroccan father) shared that he regarded her daughter as a ‘Hong Kong girl’ and he would ‘want her to be like this in Hong Kong, because she is born here in this country’. Ivanna instead shared that she would want her son ‘to learn more about both culture in the Philippines and in Hong Kong’.

The parents also showed signs of adapting to the Hong Kong restrictions on parenting. For example, George shared that he would not employ physical punishment for disciplining children as it was strictly prohibited in Hong Kong. He said:

‘I used hand very fast, but here, it’s not allowed. But in my country, for my father or my mother, they don’t like to talk too much with me, because they are also hot tempered. Here, we will call them mental problem person’.

As seen, the NRC parents chose to focus on the immediacy of life, by integrating the Hong Kong parenting practice and their cultural and religious customs (Here) and by concentrating on the daily and the present parental issues (Now). This conscious choice allowed them to shield their minds from spiraling into anxiety about the uncertain future and the hopelessness it could bring.

Coping with loneliness through parenting

The NRC parents’ parenthood was also the journey of loneliness and isolation since they lacked the support network from family or relatives with blood relations in Hong Kong. The loneliness sometimes started from the moment when the mother has just given birth to the child. For example, Eva shared:

‘And before, I got caesarean. And then it was very hard for me… Nobody visited me. Even my family cannot come here. That was really so hard and so sad’.

Jasmine (thirty-two years old, Pilipino mother), despite having experience of raising two children in the past when she was in her home country, also found it difficult to raise her daughter in Hong Kong alone. She said:

‘That was very hard for me, because it’s my first time on my own… When the baby was crying, I cried also, because I did not know what to do’.

Some NRC parents fortunately could rely on limited support from friends who can provide both practical and emotional support in their parenthood. For example, Kala sought help from her friend during the time when her husband was detained due to illegal work. She said:

‘After the operation, I cannot control my body, and I must carry him alone. And my home is at 7/F at that time… I just asked my friend whom I know for long time. I always tell her to come up and help me for shopping, because it was only me and him at home for 2 years’.

Betty also shared how her one and only friend accompanied her to cope with the difficult time. She shared:

‘I am alone here. Who help me? When he was born, I was alone. It’s so difficult, so sad. Because no people help. Don’t have anything, no people help outside. No home. Only have one friend, talking and then help me’.

In the journey of loneliness, the NRC parents found their most reliable source of support, the family they formed with their children. Lydia told her son and daughter that ‘whatever happened’, they are the ‘real family’ and they ‘need to take care of each other’. She added:

‘My son knows what I have been through since I am here… I experienced some people who would make you down… I am really thankful because my son really understands me’.

Betty also shared how significant her sons supported her to undergo all the pains and hardship. She said:

‘Before I was alone. Who can make me happy? Who can smile at me like this? Now my son is growing. I can talk, can share… He understands my inside is too painful’.

In dealing with the suffering and loneliness in parenthood, the NRC parents received not only the support from their friends, but most importantly, the support from the family they formed with their children through parenting.

Enduring hope in parenting

NRC parents endured hope in their parenting. Once the child was born, their identity changed. They are now NRC parents. The children’s needs are more important than that of themselves. Lydia prioritized love on children over her personal needs. She said:

‘Every parent has different stories, different experience, but more important is to love your children, because that’s more important than anything else… Even I sacrifice for them, as long as they are happy… They are more important than anyone. Even no guide or what, I still choose them’.

Although living as NRC in Hong Kong was tough, passive, and hopeless, living as NRC parents appeared to present a different story. Clara (thirty-five years old, Pilipino mother) said:

‘For parenting, it’s happy… Because every day when you wake up, you are thinking about what should do, what to do with her, with your kid. Have new discovery on things, or more activities she can do’.

Frances also shared:

‘When I give birth to her… One of the memorable things is, you know, the happiness and the pain you feel on the same day… (After she grows up) Many places we went together… That’s memorable for me because we are always together, and I see her smile when she sees the things’.

With the new identity as parents, they tended to care solely about their children and to disregard their own issues. For example, Desmond shared:

‘For me, my problem is my daughter… For us, no problem, we can stay as refugee until we die… But for child… I really can just think for her. I don’t think for myself. Me? Never mind for myself’.

Hector also had a similar view. He said:

‘I never think about myself now. I just hope she will be growing and will have a nice life in Hong Kong. I never think about what I do, or what my life can be. I just think about her’.

Their parenthood was full of hope, and that suddenly transformed the life of the parents. For example, Lydia said:

‘I am motivated, because I always tell myself I am lucky. I am very lucky that I have two children. That is a blessing to me’.

They also had reason to improve themselves. George said:

‘She teaches me how to cool down. Sometimes she makes me angry, but what can I do? I cannot hit her. Just control myself. So, she gives me a big lesson how to control self, how to manage the anger’.

More importantly, they must be strong for their children. Frances said:

‘Because what will happen on her if you are weak? So, you need to be strong. Not for yourself, for your child!’

Lydia also showed her determination. She said:

‘Just fight! As long as you are with your children… Don’t give up… As long as you believe in yourself, or your children believe in you, that’s more important’.

Jasmine also showcased her resilience in her story of suffering. She shared:

‘I lost my house because I did not afford to pay… We try, with my daughter, to sleep on the floor without anything… I was crying, because I see her, my daughter, sleeping on the floor with nothing. It’s cold. She was not comfortable. And even there was cockroach on the floor. If me alone, I can handle. But seeing my daughter with me like that in that situation, that is a very, very, very bad thing ever. It will never happen again… I am just trying to be very strong for her and for me also. Not to get sick, so I can take care of her properly. We are not expecting anyone to take care of us… I stand for what I did. I stand for the mistakes I did… My life is okay!’

By fulfilling the parental roles and responsibilities, and with the love on their children, the NRC parents became motivated and strong. They endured hope in parenting.

Discussion

Limitations

This study has several limitations. First, although all participants reported being able to communicate in fluently in English, it was not their first language. This may limit the depth and nuance of their self-expression. To mitigate this, the interviewer used clarifying and probing questions to facilitate elaboration and to check understandings of meanings of their messages. Second, the sample size was relatively small by including only twelve participants. However, by the tenth interview, thematic saturation appeared to have been reached, in which subsequent interviews tended not to yield new insights. Following discussion with the second author, two additional interviews were conducted to confirm saturation. Third, most participants were from Southeast Asian countries, due to recruitment challenges. This composition, however, aligned with the NRC profile in Hong Kong, where nearly 90 percent of NRCs originate from Southeast Asia (Security Bureau 2025). Lastly, the findings are provisional in nature. Given that Dasein could only be apprehended utterly as a whole when death brings life to an end (Macann 1993), NRC parents’ parenting experiences can only be concluded once their sojourn in Hong Kong has ended. Thus, their experiences and meanings remain open-ended and subject to change over time.

Issues of validity and trustworthiness

Sundler et al.’s (2019) evaluative concepts of reflexivity, credibility, and transferability were used to guide and monitor the research process. Reflexivity was addressed through maintaining a phenomenological attitude, including bracketing presumptions, particularly during interviewing and data analysis to reduce bias. The first author initially intended to use an existing parenting framework to explore parenting experiences. Following the second author’s guidance, he shifted to phenomenological understanding through apprehending the everydayness and the originary appearance of the concerned experiences. Reflective methods for seeing meanings (Van Manen 2016) were also adopted, with deliberate self-reminders to remain open and to ‘wonder’, when analyzing and re-analyzing the materials to ensure participants’ originary messages be captured. Engagement in dialogue with existing literature and with the first author’s prior practice experience with NRCs only started after the finding section was developed and completed. Regular supervisory meetings with the second author further supported ongoing reflexive monitoring and reduction of bias. Credibility was achieved by making authors’ reasoning, positioning, and thought process transparent and explicit to readers, including the first author’s background, his initial wonder on the concerned experiences, his relationship with the second author, and the rationale for selection of methodology. Transferability was addressed by grounding the implications of the study in the first author’s decade of casework experience with NRC families, in related literature, and in consultation with the second author.

Implications

For literature

This study focused directly on the originary appearance of NRC parents’ parenting experiences within their concrete temporal and contextual horizons. It was neither derived from nor restricted to specific themes in parenting literature. Through examining their everydayness in ‘being alongside the world’, ‘being with others’, and ‘being oneself’, several unanticipated findings emerged. These included NRC parents’ deliberate, rather than passive, decision to engage in parenting in the here-and-now given the hopeless sojourn (being alongside the world); their active resistance to isolation by forming families through parenting their children in the absence of, or with minimal, extended family support (being with others); and the significance of parenting in imbuing life with hope and meaning in circumstances otherwise marked by hopelessness (being oneself). These meaning-centered aspects of parenting are often underemphasized in existing parenting theories. For example, learning theories, attachment theories, and parenting style theories primarily address the effectiveness of parenting practices (Asmussen 2011), while assessment frameworks (e.g. Walker and Tabbert 1997; London Safeguarding Children Partnership 2022) attended mainly to parenting competence and risk of maltreatment. Theories of parenthood such as the Family Life Cycle Theory (Carter and McGoldrick 1980) and Galinsky’s (1987) Six Stages of Parenthood focus more on parental tasks at different stages of family development. These theories collectively foreground parenting in relation to child development and tend to assume that the main goal of parenting is to raise the child, without adequately attending to parents’ inner landscapes, motives, and resilience, all of which shape their parenting decisions.

In this study, NRC parents’ awareness of the constraints imposed on them as sojourners prompted flexible reconfigurations of their parenting philosophies and practices. This highlights that there is no single or universal goal or standard of parenting. Instead, parenting is contingent on contextuality and temporality. Accordingly, parenting theories need to engage more fully with the ‘why’ of parenting, not only the ‘how’, to better capture the complexity of parenting.

The parenting experiences identified in this study reflect key elements of Ochocka and Janzen’s (2008) model of immigrant parenting, in that parents modified their practices by deciding what to retain from their original practices and what to adopt from new practices during their sojourn in Hong Kong. However, for NRC parents, their modifications were shaped not only by cultural interaction, but also by the perceived duration of their sojourn and their anticipated plans for future destination. Therefore, incorporating such temporal considerations would enrich the model by including how time and future orientation structure the process of parenting modifications.

Besides, this study also resonates with Williams’ (2010) discussion of refugee parenting in the pre-settlement stage. NRC parents’ inclusion of considerations of cultural values and material deprivation in shaping their parenting practice, their formation of family through parenting to confront feelings of isolation, and the stressors related to the screening process from Immigration Department echo with William’s emphasis on family interactions, parent’s cultural background, material deprivation, and migration-related stressors when working with refugee parents. However, the significant impact of NRC parents’ perceived duration of sojourn and their corresponding plans, which influenced their parenting choices, was not explicitly addressed in William’s discussion. Integrating parents’ perceived temporality would enrich William’s analysis by attending to the flexible and unpredictable nature of refugee parenting in the dynamic world.

The Dasein of NRC parents as sojourners in Hong Kong was found to shape a distinctive and unique parenting that differs from that of ethnic minority parents with more settled status in Hong Kong. While existing literature suggests that ethic minority parents in Hong Kong often experience tensions regarding their children’s education (e.g. Chan and Li 2020) and cultural identity (e.g. Tam and Chan 2015; Gu and ToNg 2020), NRC parents in this study seldom formulated long-term plans for their children or expressed aspirations for upward social mobility through education in Hong Kong. Instead, they had a deliberate focus on the present and exhibited openness and flexibility in their parenting choices. This can be explained by their lack of hope and restricted formal opportunities for development in Hong Kong, given their status as NRC sojourners.

For practice

From this study, the profound impact of performing parental roles on NRC parents which transformed their experience of life from despair to meaningfulness was identified. While the meaning-making in parenting experience is often overlooked in social work practice, these findings suggest that practitioners should engage parents in dialogue about meanings of parenting in practice. Notably, the process of data collection itself unintentionally serves as an intervention. During interviews, as participants reflected on their everydayness of parenting, they started recognizing the memorable stories with their children, significant self-growth in the journey and their inner beliefs as parents, which were once neglected but now have become vital sources of nutrients and motivations in their parenthood. Several participants appeared to be more relieved and motivated after recognizing those meanings given by parenting. As argued by Löbel (2020), for refugee parents, having a child may provide greater meanings in life, which in turn can enhance their mental health. For NRC parents, who are prohibited from working and remain stranded in Hong Kong without prospects, the act of parenting provided a sense of purpose and meanings in their lives. Accordingly, social workers working with NRC parents are advised to incorporate the dialogue about meanings of parenting into their practice.

Besides, this study also highlights the importance of temporal considerations as sojourners in shaping NRC parents’ parenting, including their mentality of ‘going with the flow’, their valuing of time, and their deliberate choice of parenting in the here-and-now (e.g. prioritizing moral growth and relationship with the children over academic and career development), all of which reflect their elasticity despite the existing constraints. In practice, if social workers overlook the temporality underlying these parents’ choices, they may diligently intervene to enhance parents’ parenting skills, knowledge, and motivation to cultivate their children’s competitiveness. Those efforts, however, may not align with the parents’ temporal horizons or priorities. Social workers working with NRC parents are therefore advised to adopt a temporally sensitive approach, by explicitly exploring parents’ sense of time and future, and formulating interventions that are responsive to their temporal positioning and preferences.

For policy

This study identified various hardships experienced by NRC parents, including the limited autonomy in allocating resources for their children’s needs and for discipline (e.g. use of tangible rewards) due to restrictive in-kind humanitarian assistance received, the absence of future prospects for NRC children who will also be restricted to take up employment upon reaching adulthood, and the risk of involuntary family separation upon deportation for NRC families formed in Hong Kong by NRC parents from different countries of origin. These hardships are closely linked to the inefficient and long screening process of the Immigration Department. Prolonged residence in Hong Kong intensifies their hardships. Over time, NRC parents must continually adapt their parenting in response to the developmental stages of their children, NRC children need increasingly concrete plans for their future, and NRC adults are more likely to establish families with other NRCs in the community, thereby increasing the complexity of their difficulties.

It is therefore suggested that the Hong Kong government should either speed up the overall screening process to address the issues at their root or should provide more holistic support to the NRC population which could alleviate their hardship. This includes making humanitarian assistance more flexible (e.g. cash-based support) to support NRC parents’ capacity to meet children’s ongoing needs and to exercise effective parenting, formulating policies for employment permission and support for NRC youth to enable future development, and analyzing the resolutions regarding the involuntary family separation upon deportation. The government concerned should proactively address the problems faced by real, flesh-and-blood people, rather than perpetuating a refugee policy that effectively promotes social exclusion (Ng 2020).

Conclusion

Drawing on a decade of casework experience with the NRC population, the first author considers the present study successfully captures essences of NRC parents’ parenting experiences within their temporal and contextual situations, as reflected in the five themes discussed above. At the same time, the study generated new practice insights, particularly regarding the significance of temporal factors and the meaning of parenting in enduring hope for the parents themselves.

Research on refugee populations is crucial not only due to the global prevalence of forced migration, but also because refugees represent a marginalized group characterized by profound suffering, hardships and vulnerabilities. This study of NRC parents’ parenting experiences serves as a preliminary attempt to investigate this vulnerable group and captures ‘a screen’ of this social phenomenon at this historical moment. In consideration of the significant number of NRCs in Hong Kong, further empirical work in this area is highly recommended.

Besides, the value of phenomenological research in apprehending the originary appearance of lived experiences through an inquiry into everydayness is also shown in this study. As logotherapy (Frankl 1986) states, personal life meanings can only be accessed dynamically through experiences and choices within the subjective worlds of the participants at a concrete situation, instead of being determined by pre-defined life meanings. Besides, as Furman (2007) cautions, studying solely on the extraordinary can lead to distortion or even ignorance of the true nature of social phenomena. Similarly, Tsang (2014) reminds social workers to attend to the ordinary dimensions of clients’ lives, which might endow their personal meaning and significance. Through dialectical reflection on the co-existence of opposites (Tsang 2000) such as the ‘the extraordinary and the ordinary of parenting’ and ‘specific themes in parenting literature and the originary appearance of parenting experiences’, deeper insights, which might be overlooked if the ordinary dimension is ignored, can be generated.

Phenomenology research has been applied across professional disciplines such as pedagogy, medicine, psychiatry, and psychology (Van Manen 2016). In nursing, is has been recognized as valuable for nurses to understand patients’ experiences which are not readily measurable (Thomas and Pollio 2002). In view of the lack of phenomenology study in social work, we would like to call for more phenomenological studies on the lived experiences of service users across diverse social work settings.