Asian Diasporas: Week 5: Politics of the Diaspora

Michael Peter Smith’s article “Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics” discusses about the lived experience of transnational migrants, exiles and refugees in the time of globalization and how global grassroots movement are slowing affecting the culture and politics of the local communities. He introduces the term “borderless people”: people who live in one national state that is not their country of origin, but at the same time adopts a hybrid culture. Smith believes that the “borderless people” are the future of hybrid cultures. Note that a majority of these “borderless people” travel to different countries for better job opportunities, and they send regular remittances to their family and/or relatives overseas.

In the chapter “Whose Community is it Anyway?” in Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community Culture and Politics in the Diaspora, Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde highlights a momentous case study where the Vietnamese-American community becomes politically fragmented on the naming of a business district, where the conflict escalated to anticommunist red-baiting. Valverde reveals the politics of the diaspora by highlight the still deep-seated emotions towards Vietnamese communism and how it still informs the community’s politics to this very day. During the Madison Nguyen controversy, it seemed like the entire Vietnamese community turned their backs on Madison and a recall campaign was started by the protest organizers. Throughout the controversy and the recall campaign, the true nature of the protest organizers was revealed; they were jealous of Madison’s position of power. In the Vietnamese rendition of Confucianism, she is seen as the daughter of the community and, therefore, subject to their whims. Being a female politician creates the additional expectation that she must serve the Vietnamese community no matter what, Valverde reveals that this tension is ultimately what led to the “Little Saigon” controversy. In an extra twist, Valverde points out that the elder males of the Vietnamese community were jealous of her position and desired the power for themselves. “The older generation look at Madison and they ask themselves, ‘Why is it her and not me that had that position?’” The chapter pinpoints the motivations behind the controversy with Madison Nguyen and reveals the nuanced, multifaceted dimensions that make up the politics of the Vietnamese diaspora.