["International Migration, Volume 64, Issue 5, September 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nAfrican student migration to China has increased markedly in recent years, driven by China's internationalisation agenda. While existing scholarship has focused largely on African students' educational motivations and precarious transcultural navigation in mainland China, far less is known about how African students experience Hong Kong as a potential site of belonging. This paper asks: Can Hong Kong be home for African students? Drawing on a 3‐year ethnography (2019–2023) with African higher‐education students, complemented by ongoing informal engagements in 2024, the study examines students' everyday experiences, the opportunities and constraints they encounter and the strategies they employ to cultivate belonging. The findings reveal Hong Kong as a distinctive socio‐political and institutional space where shifting governance, racialised encounters and transnational ties intersect to shape aspirations and senses of home. Rather than a fixed endpoint, home emerges as a negotiated, ongoing process. The paper contributes new empirical insights into African student mobility and advances theorisation of belonging by conceptualising home as fluid, iterative and shaped by mobility, marginality and aspiration.\n"]