1. Introduction

The presence of over 200,000 Filipino domestic helpers is a defining feature of Hong Kong's social and urban landscape, a direct consequence of the city's economic development and evolving family structures since the late 20th century. While they live and work in the city, their experience is inherently transnational, situated between the private, often isolating, sphere of their employers' homes and their own familial roles in the Philippines. Their fixed weekly rest days, primarily on Sundays, perform a dramatic weekly transformation of public spaces across Hong Kong into vibrant, temporary enclaves. While well-documented gatherings occur in Central's statuary squares and under the overpasses of Mong Kok, our research focuses on a significant yet less-studied congregation at Lik Sang Plaza in Tsuen Wan. Here, Filipino domestic helpers do not merely socialize; they engage in a complex ecosystem of economic and social activities, from sending meticulously packed balikbayan boxes (literally, "repatriate boxes") to purchasing specific culinary ingredients unavailable in mainstream markets. This paper investigates this phenomenon through a cultural geography lens, exploring how the unique spatial and economic layout of Lik Sang Plaza facilitates a crucial site for cultural maintenance and how this gathering reflects an ongoing, nuanced "struggle for place" within the host city.

Our analysis is guided by a synthesis of theoretical concepts that illuminate the production of social space. Michel Foucault’s heterotopia provides a powerful starting point, describing "counter-sites" that exist within every culture, but are "simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted" (Foucault, 1967). These spaces are often linked to slices of time, or "heterochronies." Lik Sang Plaza functions precisely as such a heterotopia, particularly on Sundays. It becomes a space tied to the specific temporal rhythm of migrant workers' rest days, where the dominant commercial logic and social norms of Hong Kong are temporarily suspended and replaced by a distinctly Filipino-centric economy and social order. It is a space of illusion, exposing the reality of Hong Kong's reliance on migrant labor, and a space of compensation, seeking to create a perfect, microcosmic version of a Filipino community abroad.

This transformation is further elucidated through Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad, which conceptualizes space as a social product composed of three elements (Lefebvre, 1991). First, Spatial Practice (Perceived Space) refers to the physical layout and daily use of Lik Sang Plaza—its corridors, shops, and adjacent open areas. Second, Representations of Space (Conceived Space) is the space as planned by architects, developers, and authorities; a commercial plaza for retail and pedestrian flow. The Filipino community's activities, however, generate the third element: Representational Spaces (Lived Space). This is the space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, where users appropriate and redefine the conceived environment. Through their spatial practices, the community resists the plaza's intended use and re-inscribes it with their own cultural meanings, creating a lived space of identity, memory, and community, thus completing a dynamic process of spatial production.

Spatial Layout and Regional Environment: The Anatomy of a Hub

Tsuen Wan’s urban fabric is fundamental to understanding the organic emergence of Lik Sang Plaza as a community hub. Satellite imagery and field observation reveal a high-density residential area characterized by a stark socio-economic diversity of housing, from the gleaming, securitized towers of Vision City to the weathered, densely populated tong lau (tenement buildings) in districts like Yi Pei Square. These varied residential landscapes, whether catering to affluent dual-income families requiring household management or elderly and new immigrant families in need of childcare and eldercare, generate a concentrated and sustained demand for live-in domestic help. This localized demand is met by a visible clustering of Filipino domestic helper recruitment agencies in the vicinity, establishing Tsuen Wan as a nodal point for the community even before their day of rest.

Figure 2: The open space in the Yi Pei Square
(Source: taken by the authors on 20/11/2025)

Figure 4: The distribution of Shopping Centers in Tsuen Wan MTR station
(Source: Google Map)

For Filipino domestic helpers, Sundays at Lik Sang Plaza are more than leisure; they are a vital act of cultural reaffirmation and psychological decompression. After a week of work within the constrained and often regulated space of their employers' homes, they actively reclaim public space to build community and practice traditions. A key example of this cultural adaptation is the reinvention of the Kamayan feast—a traditional Filipino practice of communal eating with one's hands from a spread of food laid on banana leaves. In the context of Hong Kong, where banana leaves and large-scale feasting are impractical, the tradition is ingeniously transformed into communal picnics on cardboard sheets or mats in the open spaces near the plaza. Through sharing homemade adobo and pancit, taking group photos and TikTok videos, and speaking in their native tongues, they forge a powerful community bond. This creates a temporary ethnic enclave, a "little Manila" that actively mitigates the isolation and alienation of living abroad.

This cultural maintenance is intrinsically tied to economic activity. Inside Lik Sang Plaza, a parallel economy flourishes, catering almost exclusively to their needs. Remittance centers like Cebuana Lhuillier and LBC are not just shops; they are sites of ritual where hard-earned wages are transformed into familial security, ensuring children's education and parents' medical care. Parcel services are surrounded by helpers meticulously packing balikbayan boxes filled with clothes, toys, and non-perishable food, a physical manifestation of love and sacrifice. These activities are profound rituals of care that rebuild and sustain familial ties across borders, making the plaza a crucial node in their transnational lives and a space where their identity as breadwinners and caregivers is honored and enacted.

However, this vibrant creation of a temporary enclave is not without its tensions, revealing a "struggle for place" that underscores the contested nature of public space. The very act of spatial appropriation creates friction with local residents who hold a different conception of the same space. On weekdays, the area around Lik Sang Plaza functions as a commuter pathway, a "representations of space" dominated by the swift, purposeful flow of local pedestrians. On Sundays, this conceived order is disrupted. The same space is occupied and transformed by large, static gatherings, leading to tangible tensions over noise levels, physical congestion, and the perceived right to use and control public space.

Local residents often perceive this occupation as an infringement, a territorial challenge that diminishes their power and comfort in their own neighborhood. This perception fuels a cycle of contention: complaints are lodged with district councils, and stories are pitched to local media, which often frame the issue as a problem of obstruction and nuisance. This public discourse, in turn, pressures authorities like the police and Food and Environmental Hygiene Department to periodically "reassert control," perhaps by moving people along or increasing signage. The plaza thus becomes a visible frontier where the social contract between the transient migrant workforce and the permanent host community is constantly being tested, negotiated, and redefined. It is a silent dialogue of presence and resistance, where the act of claiming space for cultural survival is met with efforts to maintain spatial order.

In conclusion, Lik Sang Plaza in Tsuen Wan serves as a critical heterotopia for Filipino domestic helpers—a site of cultural compensation, social reproduction, and economic resilience within the hyper-capitalist and often impersonal landscape of Hong Kong. Its specific spatial history, economic viability, and strategic location enable a marginalized community to actively maintain its transnational identity through a dynamic interplay of social gathering and informal commerce. This spatial appropriation, powerfully analyzed through Lefebvre’s triad, demonstrates how a "lived space" can be produced from below, challenging the top-down "conceived space" of urban planners.

Yet, this process inherently involves a continuous struggle for place with local residents, highlighting the complex and often contentious politics of public space in a dense, competitive urban environment. Despite these underlying tensions, a fragile, dynamic balance has emerged over time, reflecting a mutual, if often unspoken, accommodation driven by economic interdependency and the pragmatic realities of shared urban life. Looking forward, this space holds the potential for a more profound and genuine multiculturalism in Tsuen Wan. It is a potential future where Filipino domestic helpers can find a more secure and accepted sense of belonging, and where the local community can come to appreciate, rather than merely tolerate, the dynamic and essential cultural landscape that these migrant workers help create every Sunday.

References

Foucault, Michel. (1984). “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias.” Translated from Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité no. 5: 46-49,

Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.

Manalo, A. B. (2025). Kitchen Kapwa: How Filipino food literature reveals decolonial Community-Building [MA thesis, University of St. Thomas]. https://researchonline.stthomas.edu/esploro/outputs/graduate/Kitchen-Kapwa-How-Filipino-Food-Literature/991015325435703691

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