Well, truthfully, we were quite confused upon first reading both the Michael Peter Smith and Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde pieces. More so in trying to connect the two to one another due to the way that Smith’s usage of terms jumps everywhere to explain other concepts. Valverde’s is less confusing in that way, though trying to place the two beside one another for a comparative analysis was a little difficult. From our understanding the two pieces seem to serve as reflections for one another, how transnational grassroots politics allows for the formation of new kinds of ideologies and power dynamics between the role of the transmigrant in a hegemonic society, while Valverde’s chapter discusses the outcome of trying to revolutionize too soon for others to keep up and accept. This can be seen in the way that Madison Nguyen’s decision not to use “Little Saigon” as a way of being respectful and objective was met with anger and resentment. The reaction Madison received is a testament to how unready society was at the time to accept and experience change in power dynamics. Such a power dynamic entails the way migrants function in a western society, and this is to say that western societies, particularly the United States, has expectations of subservience from migrants due to a long history of orientalism. Smith’s piece touches more so on concrete examples in which changes made by transmigrants have demonstrated an occurence of transcension in the power dynamics by highlighting the successful work of transmigrants and their ability to navigate across systems trying to bar them from opportunities. Obviously this isn’t a new thing, but it is a major example of a shifting world for folks that are ready for change, which in itself is one way of harnessing power.
The main topic about Michael Peter Smith’s “Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics” is “transnational grassroots politics,” which is practiced by “transnational migrants and refugees” that in “some ways partake of two nation-states but in other ways move beyond them” (15). Smith implies a blurring of lines where transmigrants are concerned. Their ability to participate in spaces such as their homeland and their host land, while also giving back to the homeland in their host land is an interesting phenomenon, because not only is this a clear form of transnationalism, it is also a clear form of the grassroots politics prefaced in the article.
Smith mentions three case studies in which transmigrants have been able to successfully utilize their own experiences as a transmigrant into “on the ground” work that allows them a free space in society. Transmigrants play a particular role in the way that societies are set up by both acting as free agents in the global and national context, obviously their reasons for migrating vary, but when they are able to integrate into society, they place themselves at a better advantage of reaching a new kind of society. In previous years, society has been homogenized as means of control, it is a political move made to keep notions of the superior and inferior; however, transmigrants prove a point to blur these homogenized lines and create their own spaces.
By the end of Smith’s article, they include cases in history that exemplify the concepts of “grassroots politics” that would help one understands this concept of moving beyond the global-local duality. One of which was the Guatemalan refugee return and auto-coup failure with an internationally meditated discussion of political return and credit claiming between the repressive Guatemalan government and the rebel National Revolutionary Unity Front. These targeted folks that are "returning/relocating/reconstituting" refugees are not given a voice in politics. Their negotiations with the Guatemalan government ended with the rebel group, ironically, joining forces with the government in order to control and combat the type of media attention that these refugees are receiving.
Valverde, in her work of Transnationalizing Vietnam, addressed how Vietnamese diaspora had to negotiate their cultural and political identity—in specific reference to the case of Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen. Madison Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American scholar and politician who ran for the office of Vice-Mayor in the city of San Jose back in 2008. This chapter of Transnationalizing Vietnam mainly discussed the politics behind Madison Nguyen’s campaign and addressed some other political events relating to the Vietnamese diaspora. Madison’s ambition was to be a strong representative of her ethnic community because San Jose’s population consists of many Vietnamese diasporas. However, issues relating to her campaign for Vice-Mayor rose when controversy hit her political image. When it came time to decide the name of a business district in San Jose, she did not support the choice of naming it “Little Saigon”, resulting in her being wrongly accused of a communist and leading to a full-scale recall election (Valverde, 113).
For those who may not know, Saigon was the name of the capital of South Vietnam before the communist party took over in 1975 after the end of the Second Indochina War, or more popularly known as the Vietnam War, and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City, after the Communist party’s president. This is why, when Madison Nguyen decided to name the business district Saigon Business District, there were many overseas Vietnamese people who protested against Madison Nguyen and wanted her recalled. Matters became worse when she became engaged to her current husband who was an international student from Vietnam and had unknown relations to the homeland because the Little Saigon proponents thought he was possibly a communist as well. In addition to that, the President of Vietnam at the time was visiting the U.S. around the time of their wedding which apparently raised more suspicions.
The Vietnamese American community believed that their preference in “Little Saigon” was “the only way to represent overseas Vietnamese and their experiences as refugees fleeing a community-controlled Vietnam,” since it gave a sense of national symbolism. These people even went as far as organizing a community named “Committee for Little Saigon” (CLS). Even when hosting and inviting members of the community to a meeting that explained her rationale and process in deciding the name for the business district, which was resolved as Saigon Business District because she drew a compromise between different perspectives. In the end, Madison Nguyen won the election, was titled Vice Mayor of San Jose, and the long-spanned controversy had come to an end, giving us a glimpse of politics in San Jose.
No comments:
Post a Comment