Hong Kong’s Elderly Care Crisis: How Neoliberal Labour Exploitation and Isolation Fuel Abuse in ‘Ageing in Place’ Policies
Original framing: “Hong Kong urged to better monitor, support carers after elderly woman’s death” — South China Morning Post
Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong describe abuse as a ‘calculated risk’ of the job, with 72% reporting unpaid wages and 40% facing verbal threats (per *Migrant Workers’ Monitor*). The 2021 strike by 1,200 workers demanding $400/month wage hikes was met with police dispersal, yet their demands align with *ILO Convention 189* on decent work for domestic workers—ratified by Hong Kong in 2019 but not implemented. The narrative’s focus on ‘support’ erases these labour rights struggles, framing caregivers as passive victims rather than agents of change.
Hong Kong’s elder care crisis is not a failure of individual caregivers but a *design flaw* in a system that treats care as a commodified, racialised, and isolated labour process.
The neoliberal framework—rooted in post-handover austerity and colonial labour hierarchies—externalises care onto migrant women while pathologising their stress as ‘abuse’ rather than systemic exploitation. Historical parallels (1997 welfare cuts, 2008 austerity) and cross-cultural models (Taiwan’s integration, Māori kinship care) reveal that solutions exist but are suppressed by a governance narrative that prioritises market efficiency over relational safety. The trickster perspective exposes the farce: the ‘database’ is a Hermes-like distraction, masking the real work of unionising care, decolonising kinship models, and treating caregivers as workers—not scapegoats. Without addressing these structures, even well-intentioned reforms will replicate the cycles of abuse they claim to prevent.