International Theory 17 In addition to resisting government power by breaking the law, confronting police, trespassing, and occupying public spaces, members of Refugee Union and Refugee Occupy also engaged in resistance by asserting their political agency in a context where that was seen as either impossible or condemnable. The dominant norms in Hong Kong dictated that asylum seekers should behave as passive and compliant recipients of state aid or private charity—not as members of the political community exercising independent agency.80 Moreover, international law and institutions have a history of characterising refugee policy as apolitical and purely humanitarian.81 At times, this supposedly apolitical status has been invoked to justify curtailing the political activities —and denying the political agency—of refugees. Johnsson surveys several such curtailments in various international law instruments, including prohibitions on refugees: • acting ‘contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations’, • participating in ‘subversive activities’ against any state, • acting in any way ‘likely to detract from the exclusively civilian and humanitarian character of refugee camps and settlements’,82 • engaging in ‘political, military, and propaganda activities likely to prejudice good relations’ between their home and host countries, and • acting in any way that could ‘affect the strictly civilian and humanitarian nature of camps and settlements’ or endanger a regional peace process.83 It is also more generally an assumption of the state system as currently structured (reflected in the Political Authority Principle) that individuals exercise their political agency primarily through their states. This assumption diminishes stateless people’s political agency. Thus, the assumption that stateless people are not and should not be political agents—as opposed to mere recipients of humanitarian aid and charity—is not only prominent in the Hong Kong case, but in international law and norms more broadly. It is this assumption that participants in Refugee Occupy directly challenged, even when they did not break the law. By asserting their identities as asylum seekers, re-conceptualising the ‘asylum seeker’ as a rights bearer, highlighting their standing as members of Hong Kong’s political community, and exercising their political and social agency to provide public goods and services (e.g., meals, tent housing, public relations, escorts to government offices, assistance in navigating government bureaucracies) from within their camp, participants in Refugee Occupy refused to play the roles dominant norms ascribed to asylum seekers.84 We can clearly see the emphasis on rights protection, membership in Hong Kong’s political community, and political agency in the letter Refugee Union sent to ISS during its 2014 food aid protests.85 The letter, demanding more transparency in food prices (to stop ISS from shortchanging asylum seekers), opens: We are the Refugee Union, an association of refugees that represents nationals of many countries seeking asylum in Hong Kong. Our stated mission is to seek justice 80 See ibid., esp. 207, 210. See Johnsson 1991, 581–2; Siegelberg 2020, 62–5. 82 This requirement also appears in the more recent compilation UNHCR (2009, 63, Conclusion no. 48). 83 Johnsson 1991, 582. 84 Vecchio and Ham 2018, 213–4. 85 Ibid., 211. 81 https://doi.org/10.1017/S175297192500003X Published online by Cambridge University Press