Discrimination in housing markets and social networks: A study of Ghanaian students in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of racial discrimination in the real estate market in Hong Kong. Due to the limited supply of rental apartments and the domination of the market by the local Chinese, ethnic minority who are black and cannot speak Cantonese have many barriers when hunting for an affordable house. Building up on Small’s organizational network perspective, this paper tries to study the role of social network based on organisations in the house hunting process by Ghanaian students in Hong Kong. Their experiences reflect that an organization is an important place for disadvantaged groups to establish a more diverse network, ethnic minority students thus can access resources that are not embedded in their racial network. Students can rent an apartment with the help from the new network mainly because these network members have diverse social backgrounds, such as local Chinese or more experienced international students. It shows that the university could play a role in the house hunting process, such as being a guarantor. Also, NGOs can do more to help ethnic minorities build a more diverse social network as it is not easy for them to contact people from different social groups without the help of organizations.